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[Magistrum]

I often wonder whether I'm wrong to support electoralism, but it's the sort of thinking that gets pretty dark.  Maybe it's okay to normalize and explain socialist ideas like I try to do.

Electoralism is okay, but I think the problem would be to fall for the trap of thinking it's the only viable/legitimate way to move foward.

I commend your efforts on molding people's mind. As support increases though, I believe it would be way better to build a parallel state wherever we find enough revolutionaries than spend what little precious resources we have on trying to get in the incredibly manipulative american elections. Then instead of getting done in by disinformation campaigns and electoral manipulation we can be done in by the police.

[MrRoboto75]

Major election reform will never happen.

You have to win the game in order to change the rules of the game, but if you can already win under the current rules, why change them.

[Lord Shonus]

If either party gains true dominance for any length of time, it will shatter. Both parties are a conflicting mass of interests that are held together as much by the threat of the other party as anything else.

So if one party shatters, the other will room which would give third parties a much better chance than currently, right?

More that a new party or set of parties would amalgamate from the mass. Might still be called Democrats and Republicans, but they'd be significantly different in structure and platform from what they are now. It has happened before - we're currently on the Sixth Party System, and the Republicans were introduced at the start of the Third.

[Micro102]

If either party gains true dominance for any length of time, it will shatter. Both parties are a conflicting mass of interests that are held together as much by the threat of the other party as anything else.

Hard disagree. Republicans vote together on things far more often than democrats do. They have undergone a process of distillation, where their demographics have gotten narrower and narrower, and their positions more extreme. Republicans tend to shift their votes based on political expedience far more than democrats do. Trump insulted Ted Cruz and his wife, and then Cruz kissed his ass. Republicans removed Liz Cheney from her post in 16 minutes over her saying "the election wasn't rigged" (unfortunately we have no record. We have a recording of Paul Ryan saying "No leaks, that's how we know we're a family". Their recent platform was "whatever Trump wants". And Russia may very well have some kompromat on them. And when the politicians demonstrate they don't care about people dying to covid or global warming, then we know they don't care about policy.

So the politicians don't actually hold any values, and the voting base is ready to shift their opinions to support their politicians, so before any sort of breaking apart happens, we would likely see a repeat of the Nazis. If they crush their enemy that is the democrats, then they will need to find another enemy for their voters to rally against and vote and donate over. Maybe it's immigrants. Maybe it's the homeless. Maybe it's the "deep state communists". And their base is already primed to go after those groups. What issue is going to divide them? Nothing comes to mind. Compare that to the democrats where conservative democrats refuse to accept marijuana or single payer healthcare and progressive democrats cheer those on.

And didn't they have that "any length of time" already? Two years of full control and they worked on stacking the courts.

[Lord Shonus]

That two years is proof that they're not as unified as they seem. Two years of total control, they managed to fill two SC seats and pass a rather limp tax cut bill. Because most of what they were pushing (particularly killing the ACA) didn't actually have support from their base. Sure, there were a lot of other appointments, but those are super routine.

The dems have accomplished more in slightly under six months.

More importantly, dominance is more than a single House term. If Clinton and Obama had both lost, then you'd be talking about GOP dominance. Part of the reason the GOP seems so monolithic is that they're shrinking in power and relying too much on a dwindling number of single-issue voters - even folks that agree with the GOP position on most things are increasingly finding their identity politics intolerable.

[Micro102]

I just see that as them needing their boogey man. They didn't bother to create a separate plan for the ACA because if they did, they would have one less thing to blame the democrats for, and would have to actually demonstrate some sort of policy. That doesn't tell me they are divided, that tells me they are just grifters. And I already knew that.

Their base may be divided on repeal or not, but are they going to divide based on lies that they didn't bother to investigate in the first place? FOX news told them the ACA was bad, and then it will tell them something else is bad, and they will move on. It just can't be compared to a progressive in the democrat party arguing for a more efficient and moral healthcare system that the rest of the developed world has.

[Lord Shonus]

No, the biggest reason the repeal failed is because their aging voter base revolted. The GOP base may hate Obamacare, but they sure do like the Affordable Care Act.


Literally every proposal was "We want to get rid of X", "HEY! I LIKE X, jackass".

[Micro102]

Well those revolts didn't seem to stop over 90% of their politicians from voting to repeal it (you would think more of the GOP would be afraid of their base abandoning them). I don't recall some big movement in their base to keep the ACA, but I sure do recall a ton of polls with republicans calling for it's repeal. At least in part.

[Max™]

The GOP keep losing the popular vote and getting presidencies anyways.

GOP senators especially lately received something like 10~15 million fewer votes yet have a 50/50 tie.

They're actively working to lock in permanent minority rule, they stole 2 supreme court seats and filled the one between with a bitchbaby who ranted about beer at his confirmation hearing while dismissing the absurd idea that a boozy white dude fratbro might have gotten a bit rapey in the past and promising retribution.

Said supreme court seats played a part in gutting the rest of the voting rights act, leaving what is in place without enforcement or oversight ability and without the teeth to bite the bad actors they can't investigate anymore.

They're rushing around to put in place "fixes" to the very systems which did annoying things like preventing them from stealing an election for the big orange dumbfuck loser, they're also noticeably interested in avoiding any suggestion that ES&S machines be investigated, which seems less like the boy who cried wolf than discovering the boy was a wolf all along and blaming another farmer to work up a panic so nobody notices he's eating sheep.

We lucked out due to the orange dumbfuck being so incompetent the best he could come up with to help him steal an election was some asshole scooby doo villain in a rudy giuliani mask who was later revealed to be rudy giuliani, and he woulda gotten away with it too if he wasn't so busy wondering why his hair is leaking shoe polish and smearing boogers on his face.

Now we have a chance to undo this shit and put in place guardrails so a more competent fascist can't drive us over the cliff into a dictatorship but some stupid west virginia cunt is too invested in "MUH FILIBUSTER" to notice how racist he looks or how giddy he's making all the protofascist cunt republicans rubbing their hands together gleefully because if he keeps it up they might get away with their evil schemes next time!

[wierd]

Partially related to the above...

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/16/politics/daca-ruling-hanen/index.html

Fed judge rules DACA illegal. Suspends new applicants.

[scriver]

Major election reform will never happen.

You have to win the game in order to change the rules of the game, but if you can already win under the current rules, why change them.

Defeatism is pointless and only saps your own wishes. We've both gone from even shittier systems where only rich landholders were allowed a voice despite much heavier (and more violent) suppression to what we have today. Reform is absolutely possible.

[MrRoboto75]

Major election reform will never happen.

You have to win the game in order to change the rules of the game, but if you can already win under the current rules, why change them.

Defeatism is pointless and only saps your own wishes. We've both gone from even shittier systems where only rich landholders were allowed a voice despite much heavier (and more violent) suppression to what we have today. Reform is absolutely possible.

Rich capital owners always had far more political influence than you or I will ever have, because they are rich.  Election campaigns are expensive as hell and a large portion of that expense is bankrolled by the rich.  Hell, we had several presidential canadates that basically ran because they were rich enough to humor running for their own ego.  Elections are also often biased towards whoever can spend the most on the election campaign.  And once elected, who can afford lobbying the government, the rich.

Never mind the presidential election doesn't actually care about who got the majority of votes.  The senate may as well be the supreme court where the only reason anyone leaves office is because they're 90 years old and fucking died.  The senate is never going to give themselves term limits.

Either way the country's going back to company towns where nobody owns anything and everyone swears fealty to a landlord, whether you or I think we have any say in that.

[McTraveller]

The GOP keep losing the popular vote and getting presidencies anyways.

GOP senators especially lately received something like 10~15 million fewer votes yet have a 50/50 tie.

I agree that there are shenanigans^TM with gerrymandering and voter suppression, but please don't use specious arguments.

You can't use aggregate numbers like that for Senators; those are specifically per state, so using national totals is misleading.

It's equivalent to saying that a baseball team that won one of its games in a best-of-5 series by 10 runs but lost the other two games by 1 run each should have won the series.  It just doesn't work that way.

I mean are you really saying that if a Senate candidate in CA wins by a margin of 5 million votes, it should override a win of the opposite party in a one of the many states that doesn't even have 5 million people total population?  Besides which, I'm pretty sure that Senators are always statewide races so are immune to gerrymandering (but are not immune from other voter suppression tactics).  Basically it's only House races and other state races (not federal) that depend on smaller districts that are susceptible to gerrymandering.

[Micro102]

It's equivalent to saying that a baseball team that won one of its games in a best-of-5 series by 10 runs but lost the other two games by 1 run each should have won the series.  It just doesn't work that way.

I would say a better analogy would be if the republicans went to bat 100 times, but ended up with 110 hits. Somehow the people they appeal to have more voting power than the ones they don't appeal to. And that's due to extensive gerrymandering(if we are talking just senators then I don't think gerrymandering is actually involved) voter suppression.

[Max™]

The GOP keep losing the popular vote and getting presidencies anyways.

GOP senators especially lately received something like 10~15 million fewer votes yet have a 50/50 tie.

I agree that there are shenanigans^TM with gerrymandering and voter suppression, but please don't use specious arguments.

You can't use aggregate numbers like that for Senators; those are specifically per state, so using national totals is misleading.

It's equivalent to saying that a baseball team that won one of its games in a best-of-5 series by 10 runs but lost the other two games by 1 run each should have won the series.  It just doesn't work that way.

I mean are you really saying that if a Senate candidate in CA wins by a margin of 5 million votes, it should override a win of the opposite party in a one of the many states that doesn't even have 5 million people total population?  Besides which, I'm pretty sure that Senators are always statewide races so are immune to gerrymandering (but are not immune from other voter suppression tactics).  Basically it's only House races and other state races (not federal) that depend on smaller districts that are susceptible to gerrymandering.

Did a rewrite on that and messed up my phrasing, which was supposed to say that due to shit like wyoming and the dakotas and the general nature of the senate itself, the 50 GOP senators received millions fewer votes total than the 50 democrat senators, and represent several million fewer people on top of that.

A wyoming senator representing half a million people at best should not have the power to utterly cancel out 15 million or more people represented by a senator from cali or ny, especially given that there is no room to argue they have any sort of good faith intentions any longer.

I knew long ago they would never try to do what is best for most, or even what is best for many, only what is best for a very few, and what is worst for many.

They are broadly unpopular and support unpopular things, but cling to power due to a mixture of straight up cheating or by abusing lingering rules and systems which either directly empower their minority of voters or indirectly allow them to basically nullify the goals of the entire rest of the country.