It Will Be an Election Unlike Any We’ve Lived Through. Are the Democrats Prepared?
The animating concept behind the Trump campaign will be chaos. This is what history shows us fascists do when given the chance to participate in democratic political campaigns: They create chaos. They do it because chaos works to their advantage. They revel in it, because they can see how profoundly chaos unnerves democratic-republicans—everyone, that is, whether liberal or conservative, who believes in the basic idea of a representative government that is built around neutral rules. Fascism exists to pulverize neutral rules.
So they campaign with explicit intention to instill a sense of chaos. And then comes the topper: They have the audacity to insist that the only solution to the chaos—that they themselves have either grossly exaggerated or in some cases created!—is to vote for them: “You see, there is nothing but chaos afoot, and only we can restore order!”
TIL you guys have been stuck with the same two political parties since the 1850s. No wonder they've gone a bit corrupt.
To be fair, the parties themselves have changed significantly since then.
To be fair, no two-party system is a healthy democracy, and the way our elections are designed it’ll stay that way.
Our election system is generally bad. Elections aren't controlled by the federal government, even for federal elections, they are run by counties (or whatever the locality calls a county - in Louisiana they are parishes) and each county runs their elections differently unless the state steps in and regulates it. Some states have mail in voting, some make you stand in line on election day. Some counties have FPTP voting, others might have STAR or RCV.
The only way I see things changing at all are two fold: publicly funded elections with no private money at all AND abandoning FPTP voting for a broader method with an added benefit of potentially eliminating primaries. I know parties would complain, but things would be much more democratic.
This is entirely correct. The only way to heal the nation is to take steps forward, not relying on an archaic system that ‘works’ and building out something that actually works.
We won't get rid of FPTP or gerrymandering so long as we elect our representatives from geographically defines districts. We should empanel state congressional delegations in statewide elections, rather than by districts.
In a state with 20 congressional seats, any party that wins at least 5% of the vote should have a seat. A party that wins 10% of the vote should have 2 seats.
Which means, get worse
Yep, as it has been since the 1850s
Yeahhh, you may find some people disagree with you on that one. I hear some stuff happened in 1861-1865 or something, for example.
America's founders biggest fear were political factions forming. But when they were concerned the voters were all landowning men, how could people with shared economic interests ever form factions?
That's what happens with a first past the post voting system. A ranked choice would open things up quite a bit, but that would require the people elected by the first past the post voting system to change it or mass revolution.
Someone call the French and let them know we actually do need them again.
It must be a proportional system. No other system produces viable 3rd parties.
American's lack of knowledge about Canada never ceases to amaze me.
Canada has effectively the same system as the UK, both being based on fptp, are you suggesting that fptp is fine in a preliminary system?
I've campaigned for an NDP candidate who was against fptp as many of us are, even our current PM ran on replacing fptp which never happened of course... however we have more than 2 "viable" parties despite not having proportional representation. You can apply definitions to "viable" at your will but they have won provinces quite recently and have many seats in federal and provincial government.
I looked over and the trend is away from two parties as well.
Americans are perfectly capable of manufacturing guillotines domestically.
Yeah, but the French guillotines have that certain je ne said quoi.