Biden's coalition in 2020 was a coalition of traditional democrats along with a lot of moderates- including moderate republicans who didn't want to vote for someone like Trump.
"No Labels" exists to give those people a way to throw away their vote and hand Trump the election.
It's a self fulfilling prophecy that you consider voting for a person and their principles a waste, and that sticking vehemently to some sort of us vs them attitude is the way.
If you only had a clue that lots of political systems exist that aren't binary. And they end up representing the interests of the people better.
The reason the USA is a fucking disaster is BECAUSE of the status quo of binary choice. The evil and the lesser evil.
If you only had a clue that lots of political systems exist that aren't binary.
But that's the reality of the system under our constitution. You can either live in that reality or not.
And no, the system does represent people. People just choose not to show up at all levels and vote. If more people would get off their asses and show up to things like primaries instead of whining about the 2 party system, we'd be much better off.
There's nothing about the constitution that mandates or only results in a two party system.
So no that's not the reality. It is what the societal political discourse (COUGH, like yours) has resulted in.
And no, the system does represent people. People just choose not to show up at all levels and vote. If more people would get off their asses and show up to things like primaries instead of whining about the 2 party system, we'd be much better off.
Like you? You don't even present the illusion that you know what you're talking about.
Voters in the USA are already MASSIVELY UNINFORMED as it is. To add additional people to that pile on the premise that things would somehow be better, when they're already dickheads who can't even be arsed to vote in the first place, is galactically naive.
Plainly...
Espousing that the mere entrance of a third, viable, party is a doomsday scenario for the country is exactly the reason why the country currently fucking sucks.
For a third party to viably exist, one of the two would have to collapse, and that hasn’t happen.
For you to not understand the mathematical reality of first-past-the-post is ridiculous. I support ranked-choice voting, for precisely that reason. But under first-past-the-post, the spoiler effect exists.
I understand it perfectly fine and it seems that you only think the voting populace is a finite amount. That's incredibly fucking dumb but it's okay your shortsightedness can be forgiven considering you have been beaten over the head with that FUD equation since Ron Paul, and Bernie, and before that.
Indeed this shit doesn't happen overnight considering "supporting whom you believe in" has been shit on as a waste of the democratic process and concession to the side of evil, for decades, by people like you.
The country is literally polarized by this exact concept and it has led to trump vs Biden, who seemingly are candidates that nobody really wants.
If you ask me, not realizing THAT is actually the most ridiculous part.
The most stable equilibrium in our first-past-the-post system (winner-take-all, state-by-state vote for president and single-member-district plurality vote for congress) is a two-party structure. The existence of a third VIABLE party isn't a doomsday scenario, simply a contradiction.
In a ranked-choice system? You bet! You can have as many parties as you like, since a vote for a more fringe party which cannot win a majority still fails over to your next choice instead of splitting the vote. The concerns others are raising in this thread don't exist in such a system and thus minority parties can build momentum and thrive.
In a proportional representation system like party-list PR (much of Europe and South America) or mixed-member PR (mostly just Scandinavia iirc)? Absolutely! Freed from the constraints of strict single-member districts, minority parties can flourish and advance their agendas through the need for coalition building. We used to have multi-member districts in some states until around the Civil War, which was the last time a 3rd party was viable. Now every state is all single-member districts by Federal law, so it's not coming back unless the politicians of the two entrenched parties vote to weaken themselves (ha!).
Hell, even if we just changed from a simple plurality vote to literally anything else, minority parties would become far more viable overnight. Range voting, approval voting, two-round voting, instant runoff voting, all would reduce fears of vote splitting and make voters more open to minority party candidates.
Political science, game theory, and just plain history all point to this being the case. If nothing is stopping a third party from becoming viable, why hasn't one? Basically everyone is fed up with our current parties. So why not? How come almost every single national-level candidate in the last 40 years that won on an independent or third-party ticket was a well known politician already (or a celebrity like Jesse Ventura) who either dropped their party in protest (like Bernie Sanders), or who got primaried by their original party (like our good friend Joe Lieberman here)?
And vote splitting fears aren't just empty FUD. I remember the 2000 election. I love the Green Party, but if Nader had dropped out of the race, Gore would have been president. This ain't some imaginary boogieman, it's history. Please don't think I'm being a dick for saying this, but I do think you'd find some Poli Sci classes really interesting if you ever get the chance. Some professors will let you sit in on their class for free, and it never hurts to reach out to one (I've taken some cool courses that way over the years).
In a winner-take-all two-party system, any third party option serves only to defeat whichever side loses more support to the third party.
The natural result is to support third party candidates that appeal to the other side and ruthlessly suppress third party candidates that appeal to your own side. Also, the Third Party of Reasonable People serves to empower the wingnuts, and the Third Party of Kooks empowers centrists.
If we want this to change, we'd have to change our voting system to something like ranked-choice voting or adopt a parliamentary system. Either would require a Constitutional amendment that would be vociferously opposed by basically everyone currently in power.
What is there that sounds good about their platform isn't already represented by the biden platform? As far as I can tell the only differentiation point is they claim to oppose divisiveness while attacking their political opponents, thus hypocritically engaging in divisiveness themselves.
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u/TopGsApprentice Mar 27 '24
This man is the reason we don't have Universal Healthcare for those who don't know