chiliedogg comments on They punch left to protect and defend the right

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 0 points 2 months ago (6 children)

I've spent 30 years fighting to make the world a better place. I've volunteered endlessly. I've worked for non-profits and government agencies. I've supported progressive polticial candidates monetarily and through volunteer work. I've been academically published for my work in environmental science. I've had an AK pointed at my head while delivering medical supplies in South America.

I pull my weight trying to make things better. And I also understand that we have an entrenched system that, while very broken, also has mechanisms built in to change it.

The biggest hurdle we have right now is a 2-party system that right now is a choice between center-right and fascist authoritarianism. As a leftist, I don't love either choice, but I also understand that if we continue to elect the fascists that we won't have an opportunity to move the country leftward. So I hold my nose, vorlte Democrat in the general election, and support leftist candidates in the primaries.

And that's the whole secret. Vote left in the primaries and vote Democrat in the General. And our failure tondo that is why we're in such a shithole situation. In 2000, if just 1% of the Green Party Voters in Florida had voted for Democrat instead of Nader, George W Bush would never have been President. Think about all the harm caused by just a few people deciding Al Fucking Gore wasn't enough of an environmentalist.

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[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 1 point 2 months ago (5 children)

And there lies the trap, you all don't really have a choice do you?

You are right, your biggest hurdle is the two party system. Your next issue stems from that, you blame people who don't vote for a party you also don't really agree with. This is not rational but here you are, stuck and unwilling to do anything else. It is telling you reference an election so long ago (2000 if my memory is right is 26 years ago) that it is hardly even in the same ecosystem of shit you are in today.

You have all went so far past the point that doing damage control by voting dem means much (a reason they keep losing is that its been the request for so long people resent it). You are all so far lost that your own people are voting to distroy everything just to feel like they have a choice, but they dont, not at least in a meaningful way. Because the underlying issue is still there, voting dem may delay the process but not stop it as the dems don't have any incentive to fix things, its their whole platform gone if they do.

So yes, please vote left in the primaries, vote dem when you have no other choice. But please push for new parties, support them, lean on your state to push back on federal control, to the point of separation if possible. You can't just keep telling people to do the same things that are not working and be getting upset when even the idea of anything else is presented. Because you will at this rate and course never address the issues, it will never be the "right" time and as you do damage control things will keep sliding.

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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago (4 children)

Without a true parliamentary system or ranked choice voting, there will always be a 2-party system. It's an unavoidable feature of our voting and legislative system. And both parties benefit from keeping it as a 2-party system and will never support legislation that changes it. It would require a fundamental change that I support, but is politically impossible for the foreseeable future.

In the meantime, supporting third parties I agree with results in wars of choice and gestapo. So I instead support candidates as nominees for the party that is less harmful.

Changing the 2-party system is essentially impossible. Changing the parties themselves is easy. Look at how much worse the GOP managed to get in just the last 20 years.

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[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 1 point 2 months ago (3 children)

It’s an unavoidable feature .... I instead support candidates as nominees for the party that is less harmful.

Not unavoidable, not impossible and you are just pushing the problem down the road in the best case. You are at the end of that road, your midterms will let us all know if you even have the ability to vote them out (I assume its not going to go as well as anyone hopes).

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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

Name a country with a legislative and electoral system like the US that hasn't broken down into a 2-party system. The US's system was designed specifically not to give parties power, and it broke into a 2-party system in the first month's of the first Presidential administration.

Yes - the specific parties have changed, but not since before the Civil War, because it's easier to change the existing parties than to get new ones off the ground.

Hell - the Republicans used to be the progressive party while the Democrats were the Southern slave-owning racist shitheads. Texas - the solid Republican stronghold - has only had 5 Republican governors in its history (one of which shouldn't really count since it was a Reconstruction governor), but has had 38 Democrats, and sent its first ever Republican-majority US House delegation to Congress in 2004.

It's not because Texas became super conservative. It's because the parties changed.

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[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

You are projecting your issues on other nations, The 2 party issue is almost only an american issue (one you tend to try to spread).

Even places that have 2 main parties don't have the same issue since they let other parties exist, the us does not. I can't think of another nation (that is not a single party state) with something as stupidly restrictive as the electoral collage and us style party system.

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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 point 2 months ago

The electoral college has been an issue from the beginning. We had an electoral tie just 12 years into the process, and the 1876 election was the biggest electoral clusterfuck in American history.

But the problem we've had all along is how to address it. Constitutional Amendment is the solution, but that would require the parties who benefit from the system to change it, and that simply isn't going to happen. The most-recent Amendment (27th) was ratified by Maryland in 1789 and became law in 1992, and it was a no-brainer prohobiting Congress from giving themselves raises that took effect prior to the next House term.

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