The GoP?

[hobbsyoyo]

This still describes a large portion of democrats.

Not any more, really. The GOP of the last 20 years has lurched so far to the right that middle of the road would be several towns over from them. I don't think it's really useful to describe the Democrats in terms of Republican-lite anymore.

Contrasted to the left, who often decide to just sit out an election to send a message to the DNC for nominating a candidate who only met 90 out of 100 of their personal metrics, thereby handing the race to the literal worst.

I guess my current case-in-point of this is all the complaints over Warren choosing not to forego corporate donations to finance a general election campaign. Sure, it's not ideal but the structure of our campaigns practically mandates it. To be fair, I haven't seen anyone here say they'd pass on voting for her if she got the nomination. It just strikes me as somewhat silly to to pick up on and trash her over or even a good reason to vote against her in the primary. Sure, maybe Bernie will unlock the secrets of raising a billion dollars in small donations or otherwise figure out how to run a general election bid in such a way that he doesn't require that level of financing. But I'm not willing to bet the next four years on it and I'm fine with a more practical approach to winning the election. After she's in office, I expect her to make good on campaign-finance reforms though. And I don't think Bernies ground breaking efforts in utilizing small donations to run in (and lose!) primaries is particularly indicative of how well that will translate to the general. And yeah, the DNC wasn't very friendly to his campaign last time he ran in the primaries. It's not like the RNC will play softball with him should he advance to the general.

 

[Estebonrober]

Not any more, really. The GOP of the last 20 years has lurched so far to the right that middle of the road would be several towns over from them. I don't think it's really useful to describe the Democrats in terms of Republican-lite anymore.

I guess my current case-in-point of this is all the complaints over Warren choosing not to forego corporate donations to finance a general election campaign. Sure, it's not ideal but the structure of our campaigns practically mandates it. To be fair, I haven't seen anyone here say they'd pass on voting for her if she got the nomination. It just strikes me as somewhat silly to to pick up on and trash her over or even a good reason to vote against her in the primary. Sure, maybe Bernie will unlock the secrets of raising a billion dollars in small donations or otherwise figure out how to run a general election bid in such a way that he doesn't require that level of financing. But I'm not willing to bet the next four years on it and I'm fine with a more practical approach to winning the election. After she's in office, I expect her to make good on campaign-finance reforms though.

Oh I'm completely in agreement with the GoP lurching so far rightward as to now longer be the Republicans in the 90s in any shape or form. They've become completely nativist, disassociated from any sort of empirical reality, and incredibly easy to anger. Not many of their policies these days would have flown just 10 years ago, much less 20 within their own ranks.

I've said it before to the Bernie people here, I support Warren but it will be on us to hold her feet to the fire. The amount of disappointment if her administration doesn't fix corruption a lot and medicare for all will be disastrous.

 

[Zkribbler]

...it will be on us to hold her feet to the fire. The amount of disappointment if her administration doesn't fix corruption a lot and medicare for all will be disastrous.

We'll need to break the GOP's stranglehold on the Senate. Obama had great plans, but the GOP made him the most filibustered President in history. They didn't care if the nation failed as long as Obama failed along with it.

 

[Patine]

The REAL needed thing to improve American political culture and give American voters REAL choice in elections is to break the corrupt and rigged power of the whole political Duopoly and create a functional and heathy(er) viable multi-party system. Until then, the U.S. political culture and system will continue to be one of the five worst in the First World, alongside Japan, Singapore, Portugal, and Hungary.

 

[sophie]

Contrasted to the left, who often decide to just sit out an election to send a message to the DNC for nominating a candidate who only met 90 out of 100 of their personal metrics, thereby handing the race to the literal worst.

This is a pretty severe mischaracterization of the equation for me. Bernie is 85-90/100. Warren is like 75/100 if you buy her progressive rhetoric - and there is good reason to be skeptical of that. A generic Democrat like Obama-Kerry-Gore is like 60/100 while a generic Republican like Rubio or Romney or McCain is like 40/100, and that 20-point gap is basically just because they have horrifically awful takes on LGBT rights and abortion. Take those away and generic Republicans and generic Democrats are virtually indistinguishable. Now I don't disagree that voting to beat Trump takes precedence over "sending a message," because the literal lives of actual LGBT, Muslim, and Latinx people are at stake here, and foreign policy stances otherwise can be seen as essentially ceteris paribus (unless Bernie or Tulsi is in the picture). But that being said, I can't begrudge someone voting their conscience and staying home because, the equation is different for others, and hey, at the end of the day, the gap between like, a 45 and a 25-35 is significantly less than between 45 and 85-90, and sending a message about not continuing to endorse the genocides, bombings, human rights abuses, authoritarian regimes, extrajudicial coups, etc. and not taking Union rights or healthcare seriously simply weighs more heavily. I can't begrudge someone for those absolutely legitimate concerns.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The sole goal for 2020 should be to beat Trump and then take the Senate. Nothing is more important. Everything else can wait.

 

[Patine]

The sole goal for 2020 should be to beat Trump and then take the Senate. Nothing is more important. Everything else can wait.

In Southern Rhodesia in 1980, beating the oppressive, exploitative, racist, arrogant White Minority Prime Minister Ian Smith was also "all that mattered," to many there. So, they proceeded to elect Robert Mugabe. I'm just saying...

 

[Birdjaguar]

In Southern Rhodesia in 1980, beating the oppressive, exploitative, racist, arrogant White Minority Prime Minister Ian Smith was also "all that mattered," to many there. So, they proceeded to elect Robert Mugabe. I'm just saying...

Neither Mugabe nor his clone is not in the running for POTUS.

 

[FriendlyFire]

In Southern Rhodesia in 1980, beating the oppressive, exploitative, racist, arrogant White Minority Prime Minister Ian Smith was also "all that mattered," to many there. So, they proceeded to elect Robert Mugabe. I'm just saying...

I look forward to Native Americans and Native Mexicans seizing land back from White settlers !
Not to worry Republicans have their AR15s in case the Democrats ever elect another Hitler JFK, or Lincoln

Nothing says MERICA then the murder of Americans best Presidents

 

[Zardnaar]

Bleep.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The REAL needed thing to improve American political culture and give American voters REAL choice in elections is to break the corrupt and rigged power of the whole political Duopoly and create a functional and heathy(er) viable multi-party system. Until then, the U.S. political culture and system will continue to be one of the five worst in the First World, alongside Japan, Singapore, Portugal, and Hungary.

Yes but sitting out the elections in protest only means the Republicans will continue to dominate. Reform is not possible so long as they keep winning elections and in fact goes backward as the Republicans continue to use their power to manipulate our already lop-sided election laws in their favor.

This is a pretty severe mischaracterization of the equation for me. Bernie is 85-90/100. Warren is like 75/100 if you buy her progressive rhetoric - and there is good reason to be skeptical of that. A generic Democrat like Obama-Kerry-Gore is like 60/100 while a generic Republican like Rubio or Romney or McCain is like 40/100, and that 20-point gap is basically just because they have horrifically awful takes on LGBT rights and abortion. Take those away and generic Republicans and generic Democrats are virtually indistinguishable. Now I don't disagree that voting to beat Trump takes precedence over "sending a message," because the literal lives of actual LGBT, Muslim, and Latinx people are at stake here, and foreign policy stances otherwise can be seen as essentially ceteris paribus (unless Bernie or Tulsi is in the picture). But that being said, I can't begrudge someone voting their conscience and staying home because, the equation is different for others, and hey, at the end of the day, the gap between like, a 45 and a 25-35 is significantly less than between 45 and 85-90, and sending a message about not continuing to endorse the genocides, bombings, human rights abuses, authoritarian regimes, extrajudicial coups, etc. and not taking Union rights or healthcare seriously simply weighs more heavily. I can't begrudge someone for those absolutely legitimate concerns.

To the bolded, I absolutely can because there is no meaningful comparison between Trump and any of the Democratic contenders. Even the worst, least liberal Democratic candidates are not going to commit treason to create and maintain power. None of them are running on platforms of open racism, misogyny, corruption and handing over the state to corporate interests. All of them have some plans to combat climate change, compared to all generic Republicans but most especially Trump, who denies it's even happening and has rolled back decades of environmental reforms and is trying to prop up coal.

And I have thought about it a lot because last night I started to type out that in elections against more normal Republicans like Romney or McCain, I couldn't begrudge people sitting out the election because Obama wasn't a massive break from those two. But on reflection, the people who sat out Obama's election in 2012 helped increase the Republican majority in the House and handed over the Senate. And that's on top of Democrats sitting out the midterms* and handing over the House in the first place. Obama deserves a lot of criticism for not being progressive enough but there were a lot of things he pushed for (like a carbon tax) that simply wasn't possible when he lost Congress because people didn't vote. At some point you can't blame him for not having the votes to go enact more progressive policies - especially since one of the attacks against him was that he used so many presidential resources (like Air Force One) on his near-endless campaigning on behalf of Democratic candidates. It's not like he didn't try to win congressional elections to help him enact his policies.

And of course people also beat up on him because the ACA was a limp-noodle form of universal healthcare but that overlooks the fact that was as progressive as the electorate was willing to go and in fact passing the ACA partially cost him the House as it drove up turnout for the GOP in 2010 - the other part of that equation being that our side didn't turn out. But back to your points, no, I don't think that voting for someone like Clinton is tantamount to supporting the continuation of genocides, bombings, human rights abuses or being anti-union. I think at best you could claim a Clinton-like candidate doesn't go far enough on those issues but the key thing is that the Republican candidates actively push against those initiatives.

Maybe Clinton wouldn't have supported unions enough but she wouldn't have gone about trying to break them. Maybe she wouldn't have curtailed the bombings, but I don't think she would have extended them to the level Trump has. And she wouldn't have been locking kids in cages at the border or solicited foreign help to win elections or obstructed justice to that end. The same is true of almost all of the current crop of Democrats to an even greater extent as for the most part they're even more progressive than she was.

It really sucks that we are stuck with this two party system and that the Democrats tend to put forward non-ideal candidates. But it's the system we have and we have seen that sitting out the election means we lose, massively, on all the issues we care about. Even if the voting Democrat means only losing less on these issues rather than winning, that's still far better than the alternatives. And that's only for Presidential contests - we've seen again and again that when the Presidency isn't on the line, progressives just sit out the elections which hands over Congress to the worst of the worst. 2018 was hopefully a watershed moment where that begins to change, but we have to sustain that momentum. Sitting out next year if a lackluster Dem is at the top of the ticket is tantamount to endorsing the Republican agenda if only because that's the way our system works.

*And yeah, I'm aware that in each of Obama's midterms, the Democrats got more votes than Republicans. Unfortunately, that's simply not enough thanks to federalism and gerrymandering. And those trends are only going to get worse so long as our side keeps sitting out the elections and not turning out at the same rates as the GOP.

 

[Patine]

Yes but sitting out the elections in protest only means the Republicans will continue to dominate. Reform is not possible so long as they keep winning elections and in fact goes backward as the Republicans continue to use their power to manipulate our already lop-sided election laws in their favor.

As an outsider looking in (if only across the flimsy barrier of the 49th Parallel in the American media-infested Great North), I don't really see the Democrats as the "Party of Reform or Change" they're made out to be, either. They too benefit too much from the current broken, corrupt, and rigged political system that constantly steals true political choice and whole elections from the American voters. And for all their talk, they NEVER seriously propose the reforms at the deep-seated level they're really needed at. Like the Republicans, they kind of ignore of deep-rooted, fundamental issues really plaguing the nation. Both parties just endlessly play "whack-a-mole" with the symptoms of those issues, and then congratulate themselves on a "job well done." Plus, what incentive do the Democrats have to change the core system - they're the other half of the corrupt political Duopoly, and they too have a sizeable "natural constituency" who has no other "viable" choice to vote for - no matter who the DNC nominates through the wonky and unrepresentative primary cycle. The corrupt and forced two-party system is a much bigger problem in the long-term than getting rid of Trump. As I've said several times on these forums - Trump is a symptom of the problems in the U.S., be is not a cause of them.

R.I.P. Ross Perot - a man with the courage and wherewithal to challenge the Duopoly and a bold vision to end their corrupt and rigged grip on power, even if the rest of his platform sucked and was utterly unworkable.

 

[Zkribbler]

As an outsider looking in (if only across the flimsy barrier of the 49th Parallel in the American media-infested Great North), I don't really see the Democrats as the "Party of Reform or Change" they're made out to be, either. They too benefit too much from the current broken, corrupt, and rigged political system that constantly steals true political choice and whole elections from the American voters. And for all their talk, they NEVER seriously propose the reforms at the deep-seated level they're really needed at.

The how do you explain H.R.1, the first item passed by the Democratically-controlled Congress [and ingloriously sat upon by Mitch McConnell]?

https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/1/text

 

[MaryKB]

I don't really understand complaints about "two party system," I mean isn't it similar in most places? Americans also have the Green Party, and Libertarian Party, and Independents ... but in Canada isn't it always sort of a back-and-forth between the Liberals and PCs? And in the UK, don't you mostly have either Labour or Conservatives? I'll totally admit my knowledge isn't the most thorough, but it seems that way to me at least I don't really see a lot of differences.

I like how primaries work ... so you really have more than 2 candidates for each position, just you have voters have some elimination rounds until you're down to just those running for each party.

 

[rah]

Illinois is so gerrymandered that most state districts run unopposed, so the only real election is the primary.

 

[Patine]

I don't really understand complaints about "two party system," I mean isn't it similar in most places? Americans also have the Green Party, and Libertarian Party, and Independents ... but in Canada isn't it always sort of a back-and-forth between the Liberals and PCs? And in the UK, don't you mostly have either Labour or Conservatives? I'll totally admit my knowledge isn't the most thorough, but it seems that way to me at least I don't really see a lot of differences.

I like how primaries work ... so you really have more than 2 candidates for each position, just you have voters have some elimination rounds until you're down to just those running for each party.

In Canada, it is the always the Liberals and the main right-of-centre party du jure at the Federal level (the modern Conservatives officially formed in 2003 are not EXACTLY the same continuous party since John A. MacDonald's Conservatives) - though other parties have won Provincial governments, and parties outside those two have definitely won enough seats and vote shares to drastically affect Federal elections and force minority governments since the rise of old Progressive Party broke the solid two-party system in Canada in the 1920's - this situation, in terms of shifting results and taking EV's (or almost so) from the Duopoly Parties - has only happened in 8 U.S. Presidential Elections since the end of the U.S. Civil War - 1892, 1912, 1924, 1948, 1968, 1980, 1992, and 1996. Also, two big flaws inherent to a solid two-party, wherever it may be found, are the unrealistic and counter-productive Neo-Manichaean view of politics it forces, along with the "sports team winning against the other at all costs" mentality of elected officials, as opposed to working toward the good of the nation and people as a whole - an attitude that COULD be argued as an utter abdication of the office of "public servant" and even treasonous and seditious to the interests of their nation and people, as well as forcing a view that one MUST take a side and support that side all the way down, and that policies and platforms made to be more adaptive, productive, beneficial, forward-looking, innovative, and reform-oriented that do not conform to either side become unwelcome, sidelined, and ignored, not to mention the much more obvious tendency to create vicious "us-and-them" internal socio-political divides. The other is, if you can't stand who "your party" nominates, you either have to sit at home or vote for a naturally antithetical party - and thus your vote is cheated.

 

[Lexicus]

I don't really understand complaints about "two party system," I mean isn't it similar in most places? Americans also have the Green Party, and Libertarian Party, and Independents ... but in Canada isn't it always sort of a back-and-forth between the Liberals and PCs? And in the UK, don't you mostly have either Labour or Conservatives? I'll totally admit my knowledge isn't the most thorough, but it seems that way to me at least I don't really see a lot of differences.

I like how primaries work ... so you really have more than 2 candidates for each position, just you have voters have some elimination rounds until you're down to just those running for each party.

Compaints about the "two party system" are invariably misguided, the people making them don't really understand what they're criticizing. All three of the countries you're listing, however, have first-past-the-post voting and in such circumstances it is optimal to build the largest coalition possible, hence a two-party system (or two-and-a-half parties which is kinda what it's like in Canada, UK is complicated by the multiple nations thing so you have Labour, Conservatives, SNP, and Lib Dems and even Plaid Cymru tho I think they're much weaker than the SNP in general).

In countries where they have proportional representation rather than first-past-the-post there are often more than two viable parties. One example of such a system is Israel which recently had elections.

 

[Patine]

Compaints about the "two party system" are invariably misguided, the people making them don't really understand what they're criticizing. All three of the countries you're listing, however, have first-past-the-post voting and in such circumstances it is optimal to build the largest coalition possible, hence a two-party system (or two-and-a-half parties which is kinda what it's like in Canada, UK is complicated by the multiple nations thing so you have Labour, Conservatives, SNP, and Lib Dems and even Plaid Cymru tho I think they're much weaker than the SNP in general).

In countries where they have proportional representation rather than first-past-the-post there are often more than two viable parties. One example of such a system is Israel which recently had elections.

Actually, I do understand very well what I am criticizing, and why. And I do have many flaws, problems, issues, broken governmental mechanisms, ease of corruption and (in many individual electoral districts or ridings for legislative bodies) incumbents, wasted votes, cheated elections, lack of true choice in leadership, easy abuse of power and trust, etc., etc., to quote in my point-of-view. So please, do not tell me, at least, I don't know what I'm criticizing in your self-righteous defense of broken and sub-optimal political system.

 

[MaryKB]

In Canada, it is the always the Liberals and the main right-of-centre party du jure at the Federal level (the modern Conservatives officially formed in 2003 are not EXACTLY the same continuous party since John A. MacDonald's Conservatives) - though other parties have won Provincial governments, and parties outside those two have definitely won enough seats and vote shares to drastically affect Federal elections and force minority governments since the rise of old Progressive Party broke the solid two-party system in Canada in the 1920's - this situation, in terms of shifting results and taking EV's (or almost so) from the Duopoly Parties - has only happened in 8 U.S. Presidential Elections since the end of the U.S. Civil War - 1892, 1912, 1924, 1948, 1968, 1980, 1992, and 1996. Also, two big flaws inherent to a solid two-party, wherever it may be found, are the unrealistic and counter-productive Neo-Manichaean view of politics it forces, along with the "sports team winning against the other at all costs" mentality of elected officials, as opposed to working toward the good of the nation and people as a whole - an attitude that COULD be argued as an utter abdication of the office of "public servant" and even treasonous and seditious to the interests of their nation and people, as well as forcing a view that one MUST take a side and support that side all the way down, and that policies and platforms made to be more adaptive, productive, beneficial, forward-looking, innovative, and reform-oriented that do not conform to either side become unwelcome, sidelined, and ignored, not to mention the much more obvious tendency to create vicious "us-and-them" internal socio-political divides. The other is, if you can't stand who "your party" nominates, you either have to sit at home or vote for a naturally antithetical party - and thus your vote is cheated.

What you're describing sounds more like "partisanship" to me, and I don't see how that's specifically linked to there being two major parties? I've lived in both Canada and the United States, and honestly I've had trouble seeing any real major differences, except people here tend to be a bit more passionate, and of course Congress works a little different from Parliament.

 

[Lexicus]

Actually, I do understand very well what I am criticizing, and why. And I do have many flaws, problems, issues, broken governmental mechanisms, ease of corruption and (in many individual electoral districts or ridings for legislative bodies) incumbents, wasted votes, cheated elections, lack of true choice in leadership, easy abuse of power and trust, etc., etc., to quote in my point-of-view. So please, do not tell me, at least, I don't know what I'm criticizing in your self-righteous defense of broken and sub-optimal political system.

I am baffled as to how you can read my post as a defense of a two-party system, let alone a self-righteous defense of same. A certain phrase you're very fond of springs to mind:

the unrealistic and counter-productive Neo-Manichaean view