Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[None]

What is worrisome though is that the Rebulicans (the politicians I mean, not the entire voter base, there's plenty of moderates amongst those) as a whole keep defending the capitol stormers. The few that didn't left the party.

Since then it doesn't really matter anymore whether to vote Republican or Democrat. It's choosing between different flavours of the same pile of rot.

um

one pile of rot didn't try to overturn an election, or run on a policy of obstructionism, or chose not to impeach a president leading an attempt to overturn an election, or garner support by shredding women's reproductive rights, or insist the pandemic is a hoax, or fall back on red-scare paranoia tactics, or chose not to impeach a president for extorting an ally for political clout, or is rejecting a sorely-needed infrastructure bill and green energy foresight?

You tell me it doesn't matter any more whether to vote Republican or Democrat and then you go have a good long look at Texas.

If both parties are rot, one's yogurt and the other is a goddamn whale carcass. Grab a spoon and pinch your nose.

[martinuzz]

Oh you're quite right. If I had no other options to choose from than Republican or Democrat, I would most definitly vote Dems too, for all the reasons you mentioned, and more.

My point was more that there are no other options to chose from.

[MaxTheFox]

Choosing between Dems and Reps is, forgive the weird analogy, like choosing between eating a raw lemon whole and eating a raw potato whole. Sure I'd rather the lemon but ideally, I'd want something else entirely. Like an apple or a nice bunch of grapes.

[nenjin]

Anyone tune in for Trump's most recent rally? The chatter is that he gave the AG all the ammunition he needed to charge him.

[Robsoie]

i'm not aware of most of the specifics of the USA political system, out of the president not being elected by the people voting but by some other people that are voted in an electoral college that lead to some funny results sometime.

But what i find strange is why people always report there is always only a choice between democrats and republicans in nearly every elections in the USA , i mean according to this :
https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_registered_2020_presidential_candidates
in the last election there was

Prior to the election, 1,212 candidates filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to run for president.

It can't be possible that those thousands of guys were only either democrat or republican ? 

Considering how many of "those democrats are crap" and "those republicans are crap" , how come there's no other political party gaining traction then ? is there some kind of "filtering" to prevent other political group to kick the 2 ones that are in power out ?

[Starver]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republican_efforts_to_restrict_voting_following_the_2020_presidential_election

Might or might not include what was meant. You might or might not prefer a news-site version instead.

Sure. There were indeed cases of suppression. But not in all states, or even most. Most of those measures aren't at all restrictive for legitimate voters from a quick skim of the article.

Shortening opportunities to vote, lessening the locations to vote, increasing the possibility to throw out legitimate votes that you consider 'inconvenient', or prevent voting at all for a whole demographi..

Were cases, are cases, potentially will be (further) cases.

Oh, and the drive to allow faithless electors[1], once all's said and done (on top of the zero penalty situation still much prevalent).

Not all are 'totalitarian' in scope, but you said you'd not heard of legislation of that kind, and now you have. HTH, HAND.


And I'm not saying this is all Republicans. And I daresay there's Democrats trying to actively offset the other way, but on the whole with a completely different competence and/or ability. Either not getting much done about it, on average, or absolutely so hypercompetent that the Grand Plan is happening perfectly with absolutely nobody realising it (depending upon who you ask about it). My own opinion is that they're on the whole still happier playing the altruist in the Prisoner's Dilemma, despite past experience... But maybe there's some deviousness in there too.


[1] To which you could add the bipartisan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact if you wish to balance it.

[Lord Shonus]

i'm not aware of most of the specifics of the USA political system, out of the president not being elected by the people voting but by some other people that are voted in an electoral college that lead to some funny results sometime.

But what i find strange is why people always report there is always only a choice between democrats and republicans in nearly every elections in the USA , i mean according to this :
https://ballotpedia.org/List_of_registered_2020_presidential_candidates
in the last election there was

Prior to the election, 1,212 candidates filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to run for president.

It can't be possible that those thousands of guys were only either democrat or republican ? 

Considering how many of "those democrats are crap" and "those republicans are crap" , how come there's no other political party gaining traction then ? is there some kind of "filtering" to prevent other political group to kick the 2 ones that are in power out ?

The vast majority of those are crackpots that might, on a good year, get literal tens of votes if they ever make it onto a state's ballot* at all. You have one or two "major" third parties (currently the Libertarians and the Greens), but both are, for the most part, batshit insane and appeal only to extremists and other crazies. Their primary function is to serve as a protest vote - people who hate the Republican candidate but don't want to vote D vote Libertarian, people who hate the D candidate but don't want to vote R vote Green.

This is because US parties do not work like the parties in most other nations. Not only is each composed of 50+ different parties under a national committee, but there's no actual membership requirement. If I went out, collected the necessary signatures, and started running for Senate calling myself a Republican, there isn't a thing the Ohio Republican Party could do about it besides refuse to endorse me. Same for the other parties. This, for example, is how Bernie Sanders can sit as an Independent (meaning "no party") candidate in the Senate for decades and then join the Democrat primary - there's nothing the Dems could do to say he can't.

It is entirely possible for one of the parties to be shoved out entirely and replaced with a new one - the Republicans did that to the Whigs in the 1850s. The reason that this doesn't happen isn't for any sinister reason. It doesn't happen because the voters are mostly happy with the current party system. The vast majority of the "both sides are the same" and "we need a third party" and "burn the whole system down" stuff you hear online is from a very small subset of the population. A pretty significant portion of it isn't even from the American electorate - most of the big "Holding Biden Accountable" Twitter accounts and online sources tracking "Biden's broken promises" (the vast majority of which he never promised in the first damn place) are from Europeans, with the biggest and most quoted one being from a British communist activist. In the wider country? Most people are perfectly fine with the way things are.

*To run for President, you not only have to register with the FEC, but you need a specific number of signatures from registered voters in a state to get on that state's ballot. If you want to run in more than one state (which, obviously, is something that you have to do if you want to win), you have to collect those signatures in all fifty states to get on all fifty ballots. The big parties handle this entirely, with their members providing the signatures for whoever wins their primary.

[Random_Dragon]

It also doesn't help that the way FPTP style voting, together with our drunken mess of an electoral college system, basically guarantees that there's only room for 2 parties.

CGP Grey has an old video that more or less explains how FPTP voting in particular tends to nudge things towards two-party systems, and explains some other complications.

[MrRoboto75]

It also requires you to be a rich eccentric if you want to force your way on the ballot, like yang and Bloomberg did last time, or an utter fuckton of donation money.  Campaigns at anything above local level are long and expensive.

[McTraveller]

The problem with any voting system is it is inherently "most points wins" which is a kind of tyranny by the majority, even if it only happens to be by the majority regarding one policy or elected person at a time.

I'd be really curious if there is any way to set up a system where policies can be meaningfully proportional according to votes, rather than the general policies we have today which are all-or-nothing.  I don't know how that would work in practice, given some things are inherently all-or-nothing, but it's an interesting lunchtime thought.

[Frumple]

I have never heard of this, and I can't find any information about it from a quick search

I can't believe you missed the whole storming the capitol thing, which was very much alike the Munich Putsch.

I meant the legislation. Of course I heard about the storming attempt lmfao. A bunch of crazed alt-righters do not the whole party make.

Here's one example in Arizona. Iirc there's been similar moves in a few other states (Georgia, one of the carolinas? Isn't at the top of my head), trying to empower the legislature or executive with the ability to just functionally or explicitly yeet election results if they don't like them.

[None]

It's worth marking as well that the voting restrictions are being made particularly in the what, eight, ten swing states that decide the margins on the electoral college? They don't have to be sweeping changes across the nation to change the results for the nation- you just need to make it difficult enough for the disabled, the poor, the minorities, the immunocompromised, busy parents, single parents, (the sorts of people more likely to vote left as a factor to their continued survival), to lack the time or means to register and vote to curve the outcome of the election. If your voting bloc is primarily old white people with unlimited time and the fear of God/existential peril of Communism/ the Mexicans drilled into their heads and you kerjigger it so that that bloc is the only group of people with the time and fervid commitment to vote, you've won. That's why having The Other as an enemy for the Conservative party is so critically important- there's nothing that the party offers them gratis that isn't steeped on a fear or hate that they themselves have cultured, but that's besides the point.

It's a bit like this- assume it was legislated that I needed a REAL ID driver's license to vote. The DMV is half an hour away, there's no public transportation that gets there, they're only open until 4:30, I work 8:30-5:00 every weekday, and they're closed on weekends. It's counting on me getting there during work hours with another form of ID (say, birth certificate, or SSN card), having those in my personal possession (and not, say, with my parents), having a means to get there, being willing to stand in the DMV for half an hour to get that information processed, and having the forty bucks or however much it costs for processing. Fortunately, I am not immunocompromised, I have PTO available to go do this (so my job is not jeopardized if I'm not there), I have my own car, I have my own passport, I have a driver's license already so I can legally drive there, I have no other obligations at home that prevents me from dedicating the 1.5 hours to get the whole thing done, or longer if I had to rely on public transportation, were it available.

Knock out any of those pegs and I'm no longer able to vote. All by no decision of my own, save that I wish to continue surviving. This is why voting by mail was such a boon for the common voter, and why republicans so viciously tried (and succeeded in places) to clamp down on our capacity to vote by mail in the future, and why the discussion around the Jan 6th Insurrection were around 'fraudulent' mail-in ballots.

[anewaname]

Choosing between Dems and Reps is, forgive the weird analogy, like choosing between eating a raw lemon whole and eating a raw potato whole. Sure I'd rather the lemon but ideally, I'd want something else entirely. Like an apple or a nice bunch of grapes.

Yes.

CGP Grey has an old video that more or less explains how FPTP voting in particular tends to nudge things towards two-party systems, and explains some other complications.

Excellent... this video explains why I am apathetic towards voting except when I really dislike one of the candidates.

[JoshuaFH]

Yeah, I think it's a no brainer that the Republican party is currently, and sliding deeper still, into fascism. Moreover, it's obvious that that the Democratic Party is honestly so spineless and toothless that considering them anything less than Republican Enablers is being generous. My own pet theory however is that the trend towards Fascism is actively fueled not by Republicans, but by big business and the 1%. You basically can't run as a politician without donations, and the biggest donors are the very wealthy. The Wealthy Elite already have their mitts in our legislature, with generous contributions fueling the equally generous legislation from the government.

I would say that the kind of Nazi-esque Fascism that we know from history won't happen, if only because in Nazi Germany businesses were suffocated by the Nazi bureaucracy, so much so that Germany would have economically collapsed even if they won WW2. I'm thinking that the new American Fascism we see brewing today is only a stepping stone to eventually behead the government, and usher in an era of corporatocracy. Government by corporations. No longer would the 1% simply be egotistic amateur astronauts, but the actual lords of the land that make the laws and control the armies. I'd say to stop the rush towards fascism, we simply need to completely halt the influence that big business has on the government.

[Iduno]

The important part of having a divided ruling party like the US is that one gets to be the "good guys" and one the "bad guys." The "good guys" spend years pretending like they're forced to do terrible things (building concentration camps, executing leaders of progressive movements, taking corporate money to make good-sounding bills terrible for citizens), and then the "bad guys" get to spend years making the most of the precedent, then ceding power back so the cycle can run again. And people will just assume it's all being done in good faith, because they have terrible pattern recognition skills when they think their team is trying. It's how we got Bush, then Trump, and it'll keep getting worse, because that's the intended path.