They (US politics) literally do though, right? At least that’s my impression as a non US person.
If my understanding is correct it would need an overhaul of the constitution to change that, right? (The part about representatives of states cascading to select the representatives who then select the boss).
I’m quite uneducated though in US politics so perhaps I’ve got something completely wrong!
The number of combinations of choices in social and human affairs is pretty much infinite so politics in a real Democracy could theoretically be infinite-sided (though only if there were no “representatives” of citizens and people directly voted on everything - i.e. direct Democracy)
Because the US isn’t really a proper Democracy (more like an attempt at one), the vote itself in American has only 2 real options, but there are other ways to expand the number of choices because the two main parties in America are umbrellas for ranges of possibilities and they do have somewhat democratic (rigged, but still with more choices than the actual vote) internal selection systems in the form of Primaries.
If one properly analyses it, it turns out the presidential selection system in the US, then it’s really a multi-stage affair in which two of the stages - the Primaries and the actual vote - are open to the public (though there is quite a lot of selecting going on behind closed doors even before the Primaries),
So if people participate in both Primaries and the actual vote, they de facto have more choices than 2.
Also another thing to keep in mind is that this is a cyclical process and the outcomes in one cycle - i.e. who won and by how much - influence what happens in the next cycle so the vote itself defines not just what happens in one election, but also which choices will be made available - i.e. which candidates will be fielded - in the next.
All this means that if one actually cares and makes an effort, there’s more “Democracy” to be had than it might seem at first sight and the vote itself has more influence than just that immediate choice, so anybody claiming that “you have no choice but to vote lesser evil” either has a simplistic view of things or are purposefully trying to deceive others.
This is without going down into the whole local politics and civil society participation, which in the US is almost as livelly Democratic as in Europe.
You are correct although I don’t even think the two party system is related to the constitution. I think it’s more about precedent than anything else. The country is too conservative to change the way things are done even when it’s not legally bound. I’d love to leave this shithole. The day trump won in 2016, I lost faith irreparably that we’d ever be decent again. As you can imagine, 2024 nuked the tiny sliver of hope I had again. I expect the worst moving forward. I grew up in a world that this generation was supposed to be able to fix. But the oligarchs have ensured only the oldest most corrupt rich asswipes alive can access power so that dream is dead.
They (US politics) literally do though, right? At least that’s my impression as a non US person.
If my understanding is correct it would need an overhaul of the constitution to change that, right? (The part about representatives of states cascading to select the representatives who then select the boss).
I’m quite uneducated though in US politics so perhaps I’ve got something completely wrong!
The number of combinations of choices in social and human affairs is pretty much infinite so politics in a real Democracy could theoretically be infinite-sided (though only if there were no “representatives” of citizens and people directly voted on everything - i.e. direct Democracy)
Because the US isn’t really a proper Democracy (more like an attempt at one), the vote itself in American has only 2 real options, but there are other ways to expand the number of choices because the two main parties in America are umbrellas for ranges of possibilities and they do have somewhat democratic (rigged, but still with more choices than the actual vote) internal selection systems in the form of Primaries.
If one properly analyses it, it turns out the presidential selection system in the US, then it’s really a multi-stage affair in which two of the stages - the Primaries and the actual vote - are open to the public (though there is quite a lot of selecting going on behind closed doors even before the Primaries),
So if people participate in both Primaries and the actual vote, they de facto have more choices than 2.
Also another thing to keep in mind is that this is a cyclical process and the outcomes in one cycle - i.e. who won and by how much - influence what happens in the next cycle so the vote itself defines not just what happens in one election, but also which choices will be made available - i.e. which candidates will be fielded - in the next.
All this means that if one actually cares and makes an effort, there’s more “Democracy” to be had than it might seem at first sight and the vote itself has more influence than just that immediate choice, so anybody claiming that “you have no choice but to vote lesser evil” either has a simplistic view of things or are purposefully trying to deceive others.
This is without going down into the whole local politics and civil society participation, which in the US is almost as livelly Democratic as in Europe.
You are correct although I don’t even think the two party system is related to the constitution. I think it’s more about precedent than anything else. The country is too conservative to change the way things are done even when it’s not legally bound. I’d love to leave this shithole. The day trump won in 2016, I lost faith irreparably that we’d ever be decent again. As you can imagine, 2024 nuked the tiny sliver of hope I had again. I expect the worst moving forward. I grew up in a world that this generation was supposed to be able to fix. But the oligarchs have ensured only the oldest most corrupt rich asswipes alive can access power so that dream is dead.