Maine Democrats vote to bind superdelegates to results of statewide vote from 2020 - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;50286807]You're attributing Clinton's perceived massive lead to the Superdelegates themselves when it's in fact attributed to the media's portrayal of them.[/QUOTE] Sure, do you want me to make laws that force the media to portray the lead fairly or what? I mean, what's your point?

[QUOTE=gman003-main;50286855]The problem is deeper than that. A two-party system is pretty much an inevitable consequence of a first-past-the-post, indirect-voting electoral system. The only times we've gotten a new party has come from the complete collapse of an existing party - there can never be more than two viable political parties with our current electoral system. If you want third parties to be at all viable, we need the presidential election to be single transferable vote (or at bare minimum, simple national plurality), and we need congressional elections (for at least one house) to be some form of proportional voting.[/QUOTE] I wonder if the best route to take in eliminating FPTP is to have a state or two change their state-level election laws to eliminate it then show it as an effective example for the whole country.

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;50286898]I wonder if the best route to take in eliminating FPTP is to have a state or two change their state-level election laws to eliminate it then show it as an effective example for the whole country.[/QUOTE] What you more likely end up having is the "new" group run against the encumbants and if the new guys win they change the party, look how the tea party basically killed every Republican moderate

[QUOTE=Sableye;50287006]What you more likely end up having is the "new" group run against the encumbants and if the new guys win they change the party, look how the tea party basically killed every Republican moderate[/QUOTE] And I attribute that in part to the GOP having no mechanism for reigning in itself and its members. Not to mention that the GOP and the Dems are essentially 'party coalitions' in the US when compared to other multi-party states. The Dems are the socialists, social democrats, greens, labor, etc while the GOP are the wealthy, the religious, and the nationalists. For a while, in the GOP, the wealthy-religious factions dominated, but the Tea Party is the rise of the nationalist faction within it which is now seen as the most radical. Of course this is a very broad generalization of both parties, but I think it's fairly accurate none the less.

[QUOTE=gman003-main;50286855]The problem is deeper than that. A two-party system is pretty much an inevitable consequence of a first-past-the-post, indirect-voting electoral system. The only times we've gotten a new party has come from the complete collapse of an existing party - there can never be more than two viable political parties with our current electoral system. If you want third parties to be at all viable, we need the presidential election to be single transferable vote (or at bare minimum, simple national plurality), and we need congressional elections (for at least one house) to be some form of proportional voting.[/QUOTE] You misunderstand. You want to change the system? You have to make the current two parties seen as one and come against a new one. Instead of making it red vs blue (GOP vs Democrats) you make it Purple vs orange. You re realigning the battle lines. This how change will be forced and society made better

[QUOTE=Emperor Scorpious II;50286898]I wonder if the best route to take in eliminating FPTP is to have a state or two change their state-level election laws to eliminate it then show it as an effective example for the whole country.[/QUOTE] [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Interstate_Compact]There's a law[/url] being passed by several states that's basically "our electoral college delegates will vote according to the national popular vote, once more than half the electoral college delegates are from states that have passed this law". That at least gets us to direct FPTP. Having some major states switch to PR for their state elections would probably go a long way towards making it accepted in the US. California seems like the obvious choice, between their large population, their fairly progressive culture and their willingness to disregard the rest of the country when writing their own laws. [QUOTE=Dayzofwinter;50287194]You misunderstand. You want to change the system? You have to make the current two parties seen as one and come against a new one. Instead of making it red vs blue (GOP vs Democrats) you make it Purple vs orange. You re realigning the battle lines. This how change will be forced and society made better[/QUOTE] And you're misunderstanding my point, which is that [I]the game theory of the current electoral system makes it nearly impossible to unseat an existing party unless that party suffers internal collapse[/I]. You can replace one party only when it falls apart on its own, like the Whigs did - there are just too many intrinsic advantages to being an established major party. You can't recontextualize the battle "Democrats+Republicans vs New Party" because it is [I]effectively impossible[/I] to overthrow both parties at once. We need to change how elections actually work if there's to be any long-term viability of more than three parties.

[QUOTE=Sableye;50281408]Ironically, this election has proven that you do need supers. The Democrats have the establishment candidate with them while the Republicans hate theirs because they didn't have any[/QUOTE] Shouldn't the people's choice be your concern? Not what the party elites want?

if your argument for superdelegates is 'look at what happened to the republican party, we need people to deal with hoi polloi politics' then you have a bigger problem than getting a whacko candidate - that a sizable chunk of your population are [I]calling[/I] for a whacko candidate

[QUOTE]And you're misunderstanding my point, which is that the game theory of the current electoral system makes it nearly impossible to unseat an existing party unless that party suffers internal collapse. You can replace one party only when it falls apart on its own, like the Whigs did - there are just too many intrinsic advantages to being an established major party. You can't recontextualize the battle "Democrats+Republicans vs New Party" because it is effectively impossible to overthrow both parties at once. We need to change how elections actually work if there's to be any long-term viability of more than three parties.[/QUOTE] I see it in the view of how Judaism ended up replacing polytheism. How Christianity ended up subverting the entire Roman empire. How Marxism ended up shaping and subverting a lot of governments , creating change. A new idea con influence and create change on it is own. Even if you disagree, the system and current players are making a mess of things. They want to keep things inert and as the status quo. Which I believe a lot of people who are not part of the "in crowd" would agree this is not leading America (or the world for that part) to a better future. With my suggestion, at least the common person (like you and I) can attempt to collaborate and attempt to make new ideas. That is within our power. There a lot of smart people on face punch who are pioneers within their fields. Why not be a pioneer in new ideas within politics as well?

[QUOTE=Dayzofwinter;50294497]I see it in the view of how Judaism ended up replacing polytheism. How Christianity ended up subverting the entire Roman empire. How Marxism ended up shaping and subverting a lot of governments , creating change. A new idea con influence and create change on it is own.[/QUOTE] Religions are not governments - there are no rules around which one is in power. With political parties, there are rules (unless you're proposing violent revolution, in which case we're clearly talking about two different things). The inevitable result of a FPTP, single-winner system is a two-party state, with the two parties about equally distant from the center, by less than one standard deviation (as much as simple math like that makes sense for such a complex metric). The root cause is particularly visible in this election: the spoiler effect. An independent liberal candidate would hand the election to Republicans even if the majority of the country would prefer a liberal (eg. Republican 40% Democrat 35% Ultra-Democrat 25%), and vice-versa for an independent conservative candidate. So running as a third party overall hurts your cause, and voting for a third party [U]ultimately makes your political enemies stronger[/U]. I've done it myself to try to send a message of "fuck this shit", but at the end of the day, unless a given third-party candidate is guaranteed to get the vast majority of the votes their closest main party candidate would have gotten, [I]and[/I] they're both far stronger than their mutual opponent, it doesn't work. You're blaming this on the political parties not wanting things to change. You're right only so far as the established parties [I]have a vested interest in not changing the rules that give them stability[/I], but there is no way to displace them without core changes to how voting is done in this country.

[QUOTE=Cloak Raider;50291801]if your argument for superdelegates is 'look at what happened to the republican party, we need people to deal with hoi polloi politics' then you have a bigger problem than getting a whacko candidate - that a sizable chunk of your population are [I]calling[/I] for a whacko candidate[/QUOTE] Well the Republicans sort of asked for it, they've been dancing around religious, white nutjobs for 30 years. Donald Trump's supporters are not new, this is what people have been saying about the Republican party for years but the media and the party has written off as baloney, they've had prominent members talking about how science is liberal conspiracies, how women diserve to be raped, or how there's some grand liberal conspiracy to destroy this country, but now we have someone who embodies all of this simultaneously and the Republicans have lost control of the crazy train.

[QUOTE]You're blaming this on the political parties not wanting things to change. You're right only so far as the established parties have a vested interest in not changing the rules that give them stability, but there is no way to displace them without core changes to how voting is done in this country. [/QUOTE] I did not say religion. As for core changes, the only way to change that is change the behavior of the voters. Which can be done through ideologies. Destroy the current world views that prop up the current two parties and replace them with some new, and behavior will change.