Would kill the Left in our winner-take-all system.
Split GOP into pre-2008 duders, libertarians, and tea party maniacs
more parties the merrier also give us ranked choice
all seats are winner-take-all. third parties are fucked.
ranked choice is awful if you want third parties.
Honestly the best we can really hope for in regards to third parties is an increased presence in congress. In the near future I really doubt we'll see more than two, or possibly three if someone really manages to capture public attention, unless both the Republicans and Democrats explode at around roughly the same time.
DSA turned out to be what Our Revolution was supposed to be
representatives require a majority of the votes. This is called first past the post. If 3 candidates run for president and you get something like this:
Candidate A - 40%
Candidate B - 30%
Candidate C - 30%
Then nobody has won, and congress gets to decide who becomes president. You might think the honorable thing would be to select the candidate with the plurality, but this happened in 1824 and Congress elected John Quincy Adams, the 2nd runner up
This basically means that politics tend towards 2 parties in America; if you're a leftist and you vote for a socialist party in America, you're essentially taking votes away from the Democrats and for the Republicans. It's a wasted vote
no. our party system, the rules of congress and our election system all encourage min maxing and sorting into a majority and a minority party
At the moment, there is no left wing party
Presidents require a majority of electoral college votes, which themselves are mostly awarded to the candidate with a plurality in each state. So it depends how the vote is distributed - independent candidate Ross Perot won 18.9% of the vote in 1992 but didn't get a single electoral vote, so Bill Clinton still easily won the electoral college.
The EC is just ridiculous. In 1960 JFK had only 112,000 more votes than Nixon, but 84 more electoral votes. Would have been 98 more if 14 faithless electors from Mississippi and Alabama refused to support
JFK for being pro civil rights.
Not even counting 1876, 2000, and 2016. The Electoral College is retarded.
yeah, that's why the system is garbage and it should be changed. Ranked choice voting should be the standard.
idk if ranked choice would fix it. additionally, I don't know if a system of multiple parties would really make things all that better
@proboardslol if you think that the dems are left wing I have some bad news for you. They're only left wing in comparison to the GOP
The electoral college was almost abolished by constitutional amendment in 1970, it passed the House overwhelmingly and had majority support in the Senate and among the states but it was filibustered to death 😞
Ok lol. Are you the arbiter of Left wing politics?
Just like that recent climate change thing, also with universal healthcare during Nixon, history is littered with times change almost happened, but didn't. And the south hasn't changed in 150 years
No but you guys are further to the right than the global left would be.
The canadian conservative party is less right wing than the democrats.
You're not at all arguing for a leftist mindset.
Maybe not what a European or Canadian would call a leftist mindset, but what the fuck do I care if your left is more left than my left? It's not a left-leaning dick measuring contest.
No it isn't a dick measuring contest at all and framing it in that way shows how you're viewing it
No one else is thinking about it that way, but no one really believes the democrats want comparable things to what the Liberals in Canada want, or various Euro parties want.
You guys can't agree on healthcare, you can't agree on drugs, you can't agree on civil liberties in a rational way, and where you guys do land on agreements, you find yourself far more republican than you'd be willing to admit.
The democratic party of the last 30 years is a neo-liberal corporate establishment that doesn't, and never has, given a rat fuck about the "People". They serve special interest groups, lobbyists, and corporations. Many of the "Pro-corporatist" movements come out of the neo-liberal left in america, all the while parading around a slogan of "no they're the corporate cronies".
It isn't a dick measuring contest, but to compare the two is to acknowledge that American "liberalism" is really a whole different type of liberal than what anyone else refers to.
No, but you're a tool and a pet to moderate Dems.
At least it isn't like the early 20th century when the GOP actively kicked out the progressive wing and the Dems were the racist crazies.
No such thing as a wasted vote, you stopped your train of thought before the conclusion.
What happens when exit polling shows 20% of voters went for the hypothetical third option? The next time around, the larger party will align their platform towards the platform of the third party, in an attempt to gain votes.
It's been effectively used in places with other shitty voting systems, like the UK, where the conservatives move immigration up the agenda when people vote UKIP.
Alright, well maybe the disconnect is that I'd probably be considered a conservative in most of Europe. I'm okay with that, though. I'm not a democratic socialist (or social democrat) like many people on this forum are; I believe that capitalism is the best economic system, I think that taxes should be kept low so long as we can provide a safety net for the poorest Americans. We should probably have a single payer healthcare system, and if the Republicans won't play ball then we should drastically overhaul the insurance industry to lower the costs of healthcare. Hillary Clinton proposed a 20 year debt forgiveness program for college students which is one reason I vote for her and the democratic platform is starting to embrace free community college. Socially, I'm a lot more liberal than most of the centrists in the Democratic party; I'm for legalization of marijuana, I'm against private prisons, and I think that trans people should have whatever recognition they need (though I'm not really up enough on the issue to know exactly what that is, bathroom access and government IDs and such).
I'm fine with being a conservative by European standards but it's not really productive to say that democrats aren't REAL liberals when they're the most liberal mainstream party that we've got.
And also mentioned constitutionalists (Constitution Party) since they win some local seats.
Maybe you keep attacking Left-wing side of party but still defending the so-called "Real leftists or Moderates" ever since 2016 election was over.
Did I ever call anyone I support a "real leftist"?
I attack the left side of the party just like how the left side of the party attacks the centrists/right side. How is what I'm doing any different from what you're doing?
:thinking:
At least it isn't the early 21st century when the Dems actively kicked out the progressive wing and the GOP were the racist crazies
Oh, how times change (and somehow manage to stay the exact fucking same)
Black people are equal citizens and women aren't property. How are things the exact fucking same?
"Exactly the same" is hyperbole, but there are still some parallels. Then again, you can find parallels with any point in history, despite changing circumstance. The main parallel I see here is that we might be having another Bull Moose situation going on right now unless the Dems can get their shit together and follow Crowley's lead to be gracious in defeat and call for unification regardless of where their party members lie on the spectrum.
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