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On January 03 2022 23:18 KwarK wrote:
People don’t recognize how important primaries are in a simple plurality system. You don’t really have any kind of choice in the general election, you can either vote for the guy attempting to bring about a fascist theocracy or you can vote for the other guy. At that point it really doesn’t matter who the other guy is.
The election that should be capturing your interest is the one where you pick the other guy. Voting for him (against the fascist) is a formality, what matters is getting the best possible other guy. We cede so much power to parties in terms of selecting the other guy for us and the parties don’t represent our best interests. The Left need to do to the Democrats what the Tea Party did to the Republicans, fuck the neoliberal moderates, they’re still going to vote for whoever the party picks because the Republicans will run Voldemort as their next candidate.
This is spot on imo, they literally had a slogan called "Vote Blue No Matter Who," Im not sure it could get more blatant.
Have to overcome all of the conventional "wisdom," that states that Hillary Clintons and Joe Bidens are all that we're allowed/able to have against fascists, though.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
It is fortunate, then, that the primary system is one where there’s occasionally explicit foul play (e.g. 2016 presidential), a massive advantage for incumbents and/or party favorites, and a set of rules that essentially allow the party to pick exactly who they want by going into back rooms and smoking cigars. The exceptions, the 1% of the time that favorite candidates get primaried or someone like Trump wins more popular support than Jeb!, make headlines but don’t represent the way it works “up and down the ballot” at large.
Given what the makeup of who the establishment actually is and how campaign finance influences results, and given that primaries are rigged and the general election isn’t much of a choice, it’s really more of a corporatocracy than any resemblance of a “the people decide” democracy. The difference between the choices that are actually allowed to make it to the ballot are little more than controlled opposition.
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Northern Ireland25470 Posts
On January 03 2022 23:51 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 03 2022 23:39 WombaT wrote:On January 03 2022 22:45 Gorsameth wrote:On January 03 2022 22:09 WombaT wrote:
Is there no recall mechanism for a Senate seat at all, or does it exist but the bar is set so prohibitively high as to be de facto impossible.
Sinema the candidate and Sinema the Senator could be two entirely different people.
There’s a marked difference between not delivering on promises once ensconced in Washington with political realities, compromises and roadblocks to factor in, and having no intention to and blatantly lied to one’s electorate.
It’s a difficult line to draw in a non-arbitrary, codified way, but like pornography I know it when I see it.
There’s a lot else wrong systematically, but at its very core a representative democracy absolutely requires elected representatives to represent the folks who installed them. If they have blatantly lied to get there, they shouldn’t be safe until the next cycle.
If you think this is actually a big problem why does Congress have such a high re-election rate. Why are they not getting voted out? Whether a big problem or not, it seems structurally odd for such a mechanism not to be there. Rarely happens here, but it does happen from time to time. A lot of US mechanisms fall into the ‘good in theory, bad in practice’ camp for me, being distorted with our current political, technological and social circumstances. The lack of a recall mechanism seems to be both bad in theory, bad in practice. I assume the re-election rate is higher despite atrocious approval ratings because, it’s an even more two party system, and well specifically a Senate seat is a bigger prize than a seat in a unicameral Parliament. If I can’t primary the shitbag from my own party, I’m either not voting or voting for the shitbag. In the U.K, there will either be a credible alternative that I like, with the added buffer that it’s one seat, so not massively impactful in all likelihood. The balance of power in the US is frequently a deadlocked Senate or a 1/2 seat swing either way, that’s a really impactful amount of sway for my hypothetical protest vote. Approval ratings for Congress on a whole are, extremely low as well, which I imagine is important. A 20% approval rate for a cherished institution with an 80+ approval rate among the populace and you’re fucked. If it’s 20% for 30% or whatever the actual number is, I assume people just shrug that politicians are going to be politicians and so don’t get too animated. If it’s a badly functioning cesspool full of people of dubious character, what’s the difference which dubious person you’re sending. But yeah lots of factors, I assume others in here have more sensible and data-backed analyses than my spitballing. There are primaries where you can vote for another candidate to be your parties representative in the actual election. Once elected tho a representative serves until the end of their term, and that is the case in most democracies that I know off. Removing an elected official prior to a new election is not a thing.
It is in the U.K, albeit in a limited fashion (and instituted relatively recently) that cannot be triggered by the public, and with the bar of high misconduct/law breaking being the bar. But yes you are correct, I’d assumed some form of recall mechanism was more commonplace than it is, so hey I’ve learned something.
I wonder why it’s not more widespread, especially with the US’ systems and how they were codified.
The natural corrective mechanism over a misbehaving legislator is their party clamping down on them, but I was under the impression a lot of US political structures were initially built without quite the rigid party structure in mind and more independent legislators in mind, representing their constituents across a huge swathe of country with rather differing priorities.
Different times as well I suppose, neither people nor information travelled particularly quickly compared to our time, so I suppose you would need to trust your representatives to get on with it in peace, and a term was secure for practical reasons as well.
Someone will no doubt enlighten/correct my spitballing once more, which would be handy.
Indeed the preponderance of ‘good idea but doesn’t work well’ almost invariably revolves around clashes between checks and balances that would absolutely work with dynamic coalitions of elected officials, and just don’t work particularly well in the duopoly we see today.
Making a perfect system is tricky, just ask the Founding Fathers, it does feel rather odd that you can campaign on a platform, do the exact opposite and you’re untouchable until your next election when you’ve already got that money and that sweet corporate gig you sold your soul for.
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On January 04 2022 01:34 LegalLord wrote:It is fortunate, then, that the primary system is one where there’s occasionally explicit foul play (e.g. 2016 presidential), a massive advantage for incumbents and/or party favorites, and a set of rules that essentially allow the party to pick exactly who they want by going into back rooms and smoking cigars. The exceptions, the 1% of the time that favorite candidates get primaried or someone like Trump wins more popular support than Jeb!, make headlines but don’t represent the way it works “up and down the ballot” at large. Given what the makeup of who the establishment actually is and how campaign finance influences results, and given that primaries are rigged and the general election isn’t much of a choice, it’s really more of a corporatocracy than any resemblance of a “the people decide” democracy. The difference between the choices that are actually allowed to make it to the ballot are little more than controlled opposition.
This is certainly how it feels and I think is largely to blame for low voter turnout. I probably sound like a broken record but I still think it's ridiculous how such a large and diverse country has only two political parties. Fringe ideas like wanting to outlaw all abortion should have proportionate representation, not control of half of the government. Same with very popular ideas that always get sunk due to power struggles between two factions.
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On January 04 2022 02:22 Starlightsun wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2022 01:34 LegalLord wrote:It is fortunate, then, that the primary system is one where there’s occasionally explicit foul play (e.g. 2016 presidential), a massive advantage for incumbents and/or party favorites, and a set of rules that essentially allow the party to pick exactly who they want by going into back rooms and smoking cigars. The exceptions, the 1% of the time that favorite candidates get primaried or someone like Trump wins more popular support than Jeb!, make headlines but don’t represent the way it works “up and down the ballot” at large. Given what the makeup of who the establishment actually is and how campaign finance influences results, and given that primaries are rigged and the general election isn’t much of a choice, it’s really more of a corporatocracy than any resemblance of a “the people decide” democracy. The difference between the choices that are actually allowed to make it to the ballot are little more than controlled opposition. This is certainly how it feels and I think is largely to blame for low voter turnout. I probably sound like a broken record but I still think it's ridiculous how such a large and diverse country has only two political parties. Fringe ideas like wanting to outlaw all abortion should have proportionate representation, not control of half of the government. Same with very popular ideas that always get sunk due to power struggles between two factions. FPTP leads to a 2 party system. Doesn't matter how diverse the voters are when its winner takes all. Coming 2nd out of a dozen parties is the same as coming last, you get absolutely nothing.
I don't buy that voters have nothing to say when we have the Tea party seizing the party against the wishes of the establishment as an example in recent history.
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On January 04 2022 02:46 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2022 02:22 Starlightsun wrote:On January 04 2022 01:34 LegalLord wrote:It is fortunate, then, that the primary system is one where there’s occasionally explicit foul play (e.g. 2016 presidential), a massive advantage for incumbents and/or party favorites, and a set of rules that essentially allow the party to pick exactly who they want by going into back rooms and smoking cigars. The exceptions, the 1% of the time that favorite candidates get primaried or someone like Trump wins more popular support than Jeb!, make headlines but don’t represent the way it works “up and down the ballot” at large. Given what the makeup of who the establishment actually is and how campaign finance influences results, and given that primaries are rigged and the general election isn’t much of a choice, it’s really more of a corporatocracy than any resemblance of a “the people decide” democracy. The difference between the choices that are actually allowed to make it to the ballot are little more than controlled opposition. This is certainly how it feels and I think is largely to blame for low voter turnout. I probably sound like a broken record but I still think it's ridiculous how such a large and diverse country has only two political parties. Fringe ideas like wanting to outlaw all abortion should have proportionate representation, not control of half of the government. Same with very popular ideas that always get sunk due to power struggles between two factions. FPTP leads to a 2 party system. Doesn't matter how diverse the voters are when its winner takes all. Coming 2nd out of a dozen parties is the same as coming last, you get absolutely nothing. I don't buy that voters have nothing to say when we have the Tea party seizing the party against the wishes of the establishment as an example in recent history.
I think a big thing with the Tea Party is that stopping stuff from being done is a lot easier in the US compared to actually doing things. The Tea Party fundamentally wants the government to do as little as possible, so they just need to vote against the stuff their party wants to do, and they get massive control. The party can only do the stuff the tea party wants, because the tea party can just stop everything else and still be happy, because nothing being done is just fine for them.
On the other side, if you have a similarly sized group of representatives who want to actually do something, they need to convince all or almost all of their party to vote for the thing they want. Which is a lot harder to do.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
US parties have the power of nationally significant coalitions but little more regulation than that of private corporations. They should fix that at least.
The European coalition-building process is not without its own “consensus against the people” tendencies either, so I hesitate to play the game of assuming that things are better across the ocean.
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On January 04 2022 02:22 Starlightsun wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2022 01:34 LegalLord wrote:It is fortunate, then, that the primary system is one where there’s occasionally explicit foul play (e.g. 2016 presidential), a massive advantage for incumbents and/or party favorites, and a set of rules that essentially allow the party to pick exactly who they want by going into back rooms and smoking cigars. The exceptions, the 1% of the time that favorite candidates get primaried or someone like Trump wins more popular support than Jeb!, make headlines but don’t represent the way it works “up and down the ballot” at large. Given what the makeup of who the establishment actually is and how campaign finance influences results, and given that primaries are rigged and the general election isn’t much of a choice, it’s really more of a corporatocracy than any resemblance of a “the people decide” democracy. The difference between the choices that are actually allowed to make it to the ballot are little more than controlled opposition. This is certainly how it feels and I think is largely to blame for low voter turnout. I probably sound like a broken record but I still think it's ridiculous how such a large and diverse country has only two political parties. Fringe ideas like wanting to outlaw all abortion should have proportionate representation, not control of half of the government. Same with very popular ideas that always get sunk due to power struggles between two factions.
I've learned it's not a particularly novel observation or feeling. Nor is the example of someone like Fred Hampton for what happens in the US to people bold enough to have it, and act on it effectively. Granted not every example is so unambiguous as the federal government/FBI getting caught conspiring with local law enforcement (including a Democrat District Attorney) to outright assassinate them.
Can't seriously discuss how/why the US is still a 2 party FPTP country with the 2 parties it has or what to do about it without recognizing that part too.
The idea that "voters need to vote better" is similar to the "bootstraps" argument to me in that it fundamentally misses the nature of the problems at hand.
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On January 04 2022 03:08 LegalLord wrote:
US parties have the power of nationally significant coalitions but little more regulation than that of private corporations. They should fix that at least.
The European coalition-building process is not without its own “consensus against the people” tendencies either, so I hesitate to play the game of assuming that things are better across the ocean.
I like it a lot better here. I can vote for something i believe in (and it is actually meaningful), as opposed to only being able to vote for the single option which is not a crazy fascist.
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On January 03 2022 21:20 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On January 03 2022 12:30 Mohdoo wrote:On January 03 2022 11:10 Zambrah wrote:On January 03 2022 01:21 Mohdoo wrote:On January 03 2022 01:15 mierin wrote:
One of these days, "but Republicans are evil" isn't going to be enough to explain things like why 8 democrats voted against increasing the federal minimum wage. Because 8 democrats were elected by people who weighed the pros and cons of the available options, which ended with those 8 democrats being elected. If these people were voting in a way that is a deal breaker to their constituents, they would not be elected. The problem is the voters. You're assuming a far more informed and motivated US electorate than reality presents imo. Not to mention the kind of difficulty presenting a primary challenge to an established Democrat that doesnt literally and directly insult their constituency. The system doesnt work nearly that cleanly, established Democrats have the money, they have the connections, they have the brand recognition, fighting them in an election is very hard, and not because they're so keenly in tune with their voters. We’re saying the same thing. Regardless of how or why, people are voting for the people we have. It isn’t hopeless against the establishment. We have numerous examples of progressives, such as AOC, winning against establishment dems. It can happen when people vote for it. AOC bends the knee to the establishment Dems when they need her to, same goes for the rest of "the squad". Besides the obviously skewed electoral system (heavily favoring conservative neoliberal establishment Dems in several ways) there's always the Bidens and Sinemas who will just lie. I think you're misplacing your confidence in the potential of the US's bourgeois democracy, particularly when it looks poised to be handed over to Trump and Republicans over the next few years.
Regardless of what happened after being elected, there was a large effort to prevent AOC from being elected. She defeated a 10-term incumbent.
If different people aren't able to elect different representatives, how do you explain Texas when compared to Oregon? How is Bernie a senator? I think you and Zambrah are fundamentally viewing the problem incorrectly because you try to frame it as something that can't be fixed when it totally can. In every great revolution in history, the deciding factor was widespread willingness to participate and to properly frame what ideas were good and what ideas were bad.
It isn't some weird form of victim blaming to point out we have a profound issue with capitalism-fueled-propaganda destroying cultures and communities. Framing the issue correctly is the only way to resolve it. Until you can change people's minds, this is just another Twitter rant.
May I ask how much time you have spent in neolib/conservative communities that identify with capitalism as a form of pride? I really think that echo chambers have made you not understand just how many people are deeply proud of capitalism and how widespread those beliefs are. It is a daunting, awful reality.
Looking at national trends of areas where people move away from and where people move to tells a pretty clear story. It is sad that it only makes the senate worse. But it isn't some weird rolling of dice that Indiana and Oregon have such different senators.
Personally I think the senate should just be dissolved. I don't think we benefit from having the senate, at all. It should just be congress and president. We are way past the point of it making sense to have 2 separate stages of representatives.
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Northern Ireland25470 Posts
On January 04 2022 03:11 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2022 02:22 Starlightsun wrote:On January 04 2022 01:34 LegalLord wrote:It is fortunate, then, that the primary system is one where there’s occasionally explicit foul play (e.g. 2016 presidential), a massive advantage for incumbents and/or party favorites, and a set of rules that essentially allow the party to pick exactly who they want by going into back rooms and smoking cigars. The exceptions, the 1% of the time that favorite candidates get primaried or someone like Trump wins more popular support than Jeb!, make headlines but don’t represent the way it works “up and down the ballot” at large. Given what the makeup of who the establishment actually is and how campaign finance influences results, and given that primaries are rigged and the general election isn’t much of a choice, it’s really more of a corporatocracy than any resemblance of a “the people decide” democracy. The difference between the choices that are actually allowed to make it to the ballot are little more than controlled opposition. This is certainly how it feels and I think is largely to blame for low voter turnout. I probably sound like a broken record but I still think it's ridiculous how such a large and diverse country has only two political parties. Fringe ideas like wanting to outlaw all abortion should have proportionate representation, not control of half of the government. Same with very popular ideas that always get sunk due to power struggles between two factions. I've learned it's not a particularly novel observation or feeling. Nor is the example of someone like Fred Hampton for what happens in the US to people bold enough to have it, and act on it effectively. Granted not every example is so unambiguous as the federal government/FBI getting caught conspiring with local law enforcement (including a Democrat District Attorney) to outright assassinate them. Can't seriously discuss how/why the US is still a 2 party FPTP country with the 2 parties it has or what to do about it without recognizing that part too. The idea that "voters need to vote better" is similar to the "bootstraps" argument to me in that it fundamentally misses the nature of the problems at hand.
Voting is merely the end of a rather long pipeline, subject to all of the sorts of pressures you frequently outline, and which I tend to agree with.
People voting better wouldn’t fix everything, not even close, but people could certainly vote better.
There are certainly parallels with bootstrapping, differences too in it’s bloody difficult to do the former, it’s not to cast a more judicious vote.
Electoralism has very clear limitations, but say having some left-leaning Democrat caucus of equivalence to what the Tea Party has done in injecting those particular politics into the GOP shouldn’t be an impossible bar.
As things stand that wing is too small to exert all that much influence and gets whipped back into line for the most part.
The wider problems still loom large, but it’s something moderately better in the interim.
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Northern Ireland25470 Posts
I wonder if MTG is an absolute calculating charlatan or an absolute dumbass/lunatic/both
Jaysus
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If different people aren't able to elect different representatives, how do you explain Texas when compared to Oregon? How is Bernie a senator? I think you and Zambrah are fundamentally viewing the problem incorrectly because you try to frame it as something that can't be fixed when it totally can. In every great revolution in history, the deciding factor was widespread willingness to participate and to properly frame what ideas were good and what ideas were bad.
No, I'm well aware that electoral politics can be fixed, but I also can kill everyone I come into contact with with a single punch to the head, but the odds of that are extremely unlikely, not least because people aren't just going to let me come up to them and punch them in the head. My problem with electoral politics being framed as so important is, 1. the scale of time on which is operates is huge, and huge time scale means a lot of things, but in the case of the US it means huge time for fascists to get in power, lots of continued suffering and hardship, lots of time for the billionaires and the politicians, etc. to develop, create, and deploy capitalist propaganda and framing devices. 2. the system itself is set up to be so easily abused and misused by bad actors that reforming it takes a colossal stroke of luck or an absurdly long time frame. AOC proved you can win against an incumbent... when an incumbent basically tells their constituency that they don't care about them, like literally. In the mean time lots of other challenges have failed because challenging the Democrats is very very hard, their one area of real aptitude is keeping their party basically on lock down for their conservative faction.
It isn't some weird form of victim blaming to point out we have a profound issue with capitalism-fueled-propaganda destroying cultures and communities. Framing the issue correctly is the only way to resolve it. Until you can change people's minds, this is just another Twitter rant.
My issue here is that we do have a capitalism-fueled-propaganda machine ruining shit and brainwashing people into supporting ruining shit, but I dont blame the brainwashed, I blame the propagandists. I target blame towards the people with power and encourage others to do the same, the people who we need to actually beat the wealthy and connected are the people who most often get shit on, the cletuses and what have you. Time spent belittling working class people is better spent harassing Joe Manchin, and every Senator from Delaware, and Kristen Sinema, etc.
May I ask how much time you have spent in neolib/conservative communities that identify with capitalism as a form of pride? I really think that echo chambers have made you not understand just how many people are deeply proud of capitalism and how widespread those beliefs are. It is a daunting, awful reality.
Dude, I live in Virginia. Neolibs up north, conservatives down south. I am deeply aware of how casually racist people here are, Im deeply aware of how deep the propaganda penetrates, I work with people who run the spectrum of "dont care just trying to get by dont have energy for anything else," through full on "I hate Joe Biden and love Trump and also black people are reaaaaal shifty, but like, I dont mean that in a racist way haha."
Try walking up to these types and going, "man, those fuckin' cletuses that vote Trump, really ruining our country right? We should kick them out and let them all just live in Nebraska or something so our country can move forward!"
What I do is I say, "yeah I dont like Joe Biden either, all politicians really, they really screw the working class, we really gotta rally against the politicians and Bezos' of the world." At this point theres the potential for an anti-socialism comment, from here I just tell them socialism just means workers own the company, that the billions their company generates wouldnt all just go to the CEO, that they'd get a real cut of those profits, and after all, they work hard, why shouldnt their hard work be rewarded with a cut of the profits they help generate? And they're usually fairly amenable to that.
They mostly get behind the sentiment of statement two, obviously its not that easy to completely remove them from their capitalism-best-thing mindset, but its better than deriding them for their crappy beliefs.
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On January 04 2022 09:41 WombaT wrote:
I wonder if MTG is an absolute calculating charlatan or an absolute dumbass/lunatic/both
Jaysus
Can we use anything else but MTG to refer to her? Greene maybe? MTG always gets me exceedingly confused, because it always means Magic The Gathering first to me.
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Northern Ireland25470 Posts
On January 04 2022 18:43 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2022 09:41 WombaT wrote:
I wonder if MTG is an absolute calculating charlatan or an absolute dumbass/lunatic/both
Jaysus Can we use anything else but MTG to refer to her? Greene maybe? MTG always gets me exceedingly confused, because it always means Magic The Gathering first to me.
If you scroll up and see at the top of the page ‘US Politics Megathread’ then chances are it’s not about the card game.
Nah I agree, especially as MTG is cool and MTG/Greene fucking sucks.
I quite like the use of full name acronyms sometimes, feels too hip and snappy for a Greene.
Speaking of it’s bothering me as per the previous sentence as I’m now drawing a blank on others commonly referred to in this way other than AOC. There must be more right?
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You never know, a Leftist politician recently got elected president in Chile, and hes a Magic the Gathering player.
Apparently plays BR Land Destruction, so hes clearly trying to give leftists a bad name.
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Maybe "exceedingly confused" was slightly hyperbolic. It is more along the lines of:
"Magic The Gathering is a calculating charlatan or an absolute dumbass? How does that even make any sense? Ah, politics, so it is about that woman instead."
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I had somewhat similar thoughts. I first saw the MTG (it's written in capitals, so obviously that is the first thing my eyes lay on) and thought "How on earth did USMT ended up talking about Magic?", must be interesting. Then I read the rest of the sentence, and it was clear, who is it about.
@Zambrah he is clearly a corporate shill in disguise.
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EPT
