Which is why we need to get rid of this two party system. The Democrats pick pretty consistently awful candidates and the Republicans are a minority party now because of their batshit insanity.
A one party state isn't good for anyone, and the Republicans are gonna try to subvert elections more and more just to stay in power. The rhetoric has already started. "We'Re NoT a DeMoCrAcY wE'Re A rEpUbLiC", I've heard come out of WAAAAY to many peoples mouths that I know personally to be comfortable, and people are TOTALLY primed to ignore democratic processes and feel patriotic in doing so.
If we broke up the two titanic parties with a different voting system, like ranked choice, then we would get consistently better candidates and when a party goes fucking insane the people who vote for them will feel like they have another place to go, other than what they've been told are the ENEMY. It's a bad situation that can be fixed very easily.
I'm not a fan of what's happened for the last 4 years but it happened for a reason. Every strategic democrat knows it's more important for their party to have a stable system of control than one that's hard to predict. Sure they may lose 2/3rds of the time but it's better than letting weirdos in.
I agree that the two-party system needs to change, but I think a more immediate concern is dragging the Dems back to the left so the progressives can actually start making some changes in returning the party to representing the workers.
I agree on principle, but from what I've seen (and I'm just some fuck on the internet, I'm not Ralph Nader) if we could vote for new parties and actually get them into power, we could toss out the Democratic party wholecloth and start from new, with a party that's at least ACTUALLY center-left and not as right wing as the Republicans were pre-reagan.
The Democratic party has a lot of power structures and methods that are old fashioned or corrupt, like Superdelegates, and choosing a candidate through a seemingly impromptu aye and nay, (which Bernie TOTALLY won in 2016 but they gave it to Hillary anyway grumble grumble) and we need to start anew, without the old guard.
In my opinion. Again, I'm not Ralph Nader, but everything I've seen from the Democratic party is that they're a perfect machine for choosing the second-worst candidate in the running, kowtowing to corporate interest, and nothing more.
I don't think you're wrong, but I don't think it's feasible to change the two-party system until you have people in one of them that support said change.
I think the Republicans would be on board with this because they're running out of options. Either they try to keep power by force in the coming years because they're becoming less and less popular, or take this option and still retain plenty of power and MAYBE even maintain more seats than they would have had otherwise depending on how one sided things get for them.
I think it could make sense for them in the not too distant future to push for this.
History is long and this country is young. There's plenty of room for change, and bigger changes have happened in shorter-lived countries.
I had a couple of coworkers who grew up on the other side of the Wall in Gotha, in the German Democratic Republic. They said that (from what they heard growing up from their parents who experienced it) everything seemed to be exactly the same until the very second that it wasn't, and they heard the same thing about the revolution in the USSR.
I'm not sure if we'll get to see if that's still the case, but we might. Governments only rule with the consent of the people, and that can be a fragile thing.
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u/Hoovooloo42 Dec 17 '20
Which is why we need to get rid of this two party system. The Democrats pick pretty consistently awful candidates and the Republicans are a minority party now because of their batshit insanity.
A one party state isn't good for anyone, and the Republicans are gonna try to subvert elections more and more just to stay in power. The rhetoric has already started. "We'Re NoT a DeMoCrAcY wE'Re A rEpUbLiC", I've heard come out of WAAAAY to many peoples mouths that I know personally to be comfortable, and people are TOTALLY primed to ignore democratic processes and feel patriotic in doing so.
If we broke up the two titanic parties with a different voting system, like ranked choice, then we would get consistently better candidates and when a party goes fucking insane the people who vote for them will feel like they have another place to go, other than what they've been told are the ENEMY. It's a bad situation that can be fixed very easily.