I think that at the very first hint of fuckery, everyone should vote in the green party’s primaries and write in the progressive candidate that the party is exerting influence to block. Democrats don’t deserve voters ever again if they’re not going to listen to them.
We can just walk in and take over the green party. They’re tiny and have tiny primaries.
That doesn’t alter the fact that the entire electoral system in the US is Mathematically rigged to make it pretty much impossible to succeed in a candidate from a 3rd party being elected as president - the level of difficulty is that of getting over 100 million people to switch their vote in a single election (you can try it over multiple election cycles, but what happens is that after years of trying and failing, most people give up, so it has to happen quickly or it won’t work).
As I see it, for a 3rd party to grow in the US it has to start by winning local elections since the number of people who need to change their vote to it is much less and then build on such victories to win seats in Congress, then build on that for the Senate, and only then for the President.
Anyways, my original post was about what can be done and how things should looked at “in the context of how the election system is in the US” (as fucked up as it is) and what it is realistically possible in it, rather than what it should be.
That doesn’t alter the fact that the entire electoral system in the US is Mathematically rigged to make it pretty much impossible to succeed in a candidate from a 3rd party being elected as president
If democrats aren’t going to be a second party, we should select a different party to be our second party.
Vote blue no matter who hasn’t worked. Even when a democrat wins, it’s some genocidal shitlib like biden. And when democrats lose, they blame the left they refuse to listen to and move to the right because they want to and pretend that they’re chasing the votes of republicans, even though they know that’s not going to happen and even though they know no one’s actually buying the pretense.
Not an American, but as I see it, the only chance for a big change is to build things from the ground up block by block starting at the local elections level.
Another option is to bypass traditional politics as much as possible by using the power of civil society groups which are independent of political parties, such as Unions and politically independent single subject groups (for example, groups of people formed to combat setting up a data center in a specific region) - as shown in Europe a couple of General Strikes tend to focus politicians back into actually working for the interests of voters, at least temporarilly.
Yet another option, though weaker and much more indirect, is to consider that the vote in one electoral cycle affects which candidates are fielded in the next cycle, which is my main counterpoint to the OP’s point of view since such a perspective justifies not voting for the lesser evil to send a message to Democrats that they need to field better candidates.
That said, personally I think Americans are seriously fucked and I doubt any change will happen before things properly break in terms of quality of life (I’m thinking proper dystopia with widespread starvation and homelessness) and people rebel and even then the reaction of the powerful will probably be to turn the place into and overt Autocracy rather than the current Oligarchy with some Theatre of Democracy.
which is my main counterpoint to the OP’s point of view since such a perspective justifies not voting for the lesser evil to send a message to Democrats that they need to field better candidates.
I don’t think this is effective. I consider the centrist messaging that progressives stayed home to “teach democrats a lesson” to be how centrists frame their unwillingness to appeal to an electorate they want to rule instead of serve.
This assumes honest primaries. Or primaries at all.
We get what party leadership decides.
Oh yeah, as I mentioned there is a lot of closed-doors choosing going on before the Primaries.
Then the Primaries are rigged (with things like super-voters in Democratic Primaries).
All, of course, all assuming there are Primaries.
This does not add up to Democracy, IMHO, it’s just slightly better than only having a 2-choices Vote with no Primaries at all.
I think that at the very first hint of fuckery, everyone should vote in the green party’s primaries and write in the progressive candidate that the party is exerting influence to block. Democrats don’t deserve voters ever again if they’re not going to listen to them.
We can just walk in and take over the green party. They’re tiny and have tiny primaries.
That doesn’t alter the fact that the entire electoral system in the US is Mathematically rigged to make it pretty much impossible to succeed in a candidate from a 3rd party being elected as president - the level of difficulty is that of getting over 100 million people to switch their vote in a single election (you can try it over multiple election cycles, but what happens is that after years of trying and failing, most people give up, so it has to happen quickly or it won’t work).
As I see it, for a 3rd party to grow in the US it has to start by winning local elections since the number of people who need to change their vote to it is much less and then build on such victories to win seats in Congress, then build on that for the Senate, and only then for the President.
Anyways, my original post was about what can be done and how things should looked at “in the context of how the election system is in the US” (as fucked up as it is) and what it is realistically possible in it, rather than what it should be.
If democrats aren’t going to be a second party, we should select a different party to be our second party.
Agree.
Just pointing out that the entire system is designed to make that almost impossible.
So how can this nightmare cycle be broken?
Vote blue no matter who hasn’t worked. Even when a democrat wins, it’s some genocidal shitlib like biden. And when democrats lose, they blame the left they refuse to listen to and move to the right because they want to and pretend that they’re chasing the votes of republicans, even though they know that’s not going to happen and even though they know no one’s actually buying the pretense.
Not an American, but as I see it, the only chance for a big change is to build things from the ground up block by block starting at the local elections level.
Another option is to bypass traditional politics as much as possible by using the power of civil society groups which are independent of political parties, such as Unions and politically independent single subject groups (for example, groups of people formed to combat setting up a data center in a specific region) - as shown in Europe a couple of General Strikes tend to focus politicians back into actually working for the interests of voters, at least temporarilly.
Yet another option, though weaker and much more indirect, is to consider that the vote in one electoral cycle affects which candidates are fielded in the next cycle, which is my main counterpoint to the OP’s point of view since such a perspective justifies not voting for the lesser evil to send a message to Democrats that they need to field better candidates.
That said, personally I think Americans are seriously fucked and I doubt any change will happen before things properly break in terms of quality of life (I’m thinking proper dystopia with widespread starvation and homelessness) and people rebel and even then the reaction of the powerful will probably be to turn the place into and overt Autocracy rather than the current Oligarchy with some Theatre of Democracy.
I don’t think this is effective. I consider the centrist messaging that progressives stayed home to “teach democrats a lesson” to be how centrists frame their unwillingness to appeal to an electorate they want to rule instead of serve.