…Yet it seems safe to say that the world no longer trusts U.S. promises, and perhaps no longer fears U.S. threats, the way it used to. The problem, however, isn’t Biden; it’s the party that reflexively attacks him for anything that goes wrong.
Right now America is a superpower without a fully functioning government. Specifically, the House of Representatives has no speaker, so it can’t pass legislation, including bills funding the government and providing aid to U.S. allies. The House is paralyzed because Republican extremists, who have refused to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy and promoted chaos rather than participating in governance, have turned these tactics on their own party. At this point it’s hard to see how anyone can become speaker without Democratic votes — but even less extreme Republicans refuse to reach across the aisle.
And even if Republicans do somehow manage to elect a speaker, it seems all too likely that whoever gets the job will have to promise the hard right that he will betray Ukraine.
Given this political reality, how much can any nation trust U.S. assurances of support? How can we expect foreign enemies of democracy to fear America when they know that there are powerful forces here that share their disdain?
The dysfunction of our the current political system is certainly to blame for a lot of the trust that America has lost. Regarding the two party system, I’m a big advocate for supporting the Forward party as a potential way out of our mess. One of its main policy positions is pushing ranked choice voting. This hopefully allows people to break out of the myth that any vote not for a major party is a wasted vote.
They are starting by focusing locally on the state level as that is where the election laws are decided. It’s certainly not a perfect organization but it makes more sense than expecting the parties to fix the flawed system they benefit from.
Fun fact, under First Past the Post voting, supporting a third party is the absolute worst thing you can do.
It’s called the spoiler effect, and it often results in the absolute worst candidate winning an election.
If you support a third party that is loosely aligned with one of the major parties, you can end up in a situation where candidate A gets 40%, and your third party candidate, whose platform is closest to A, gets an astounding 15%, and they both lose to Candidate B, the most hated of both A voters and Third Party voters because B got 45%.
The classic example is the 1992 presidential election, where Clinton won with 43% of the vote.
The 2000 election is another example where Bush won* with 307 votes, far less than the 97488 votes that Ralph Nader got,
*the recount was stopped early so that Bush would win.
The point being, you cannot have a third party until you change the voting system to actually support third parties. And that means a cardinal voting system, such as STAR (my current favorite)
Sorry, but that is simply false. There are 50+ third parties that have run candidates under their name in recent years Wikipedia. Ultimately who succeeds is up to who people vote for and when you categorically state you can’t have third parties you are trying to tell others who they should vote for. Support who you want to support. By all means if you want the status quo to never change continue doing what everyone else does. But by supporting alternative voting systems you are already saying you think our system needs to change.
It is pretty naive to think that the existing parties will change the existing FPTP voting system that explicitly benefits them. It’s like expecting a company to advocate for more paying more taxes. It’s pretty unlikely to happen on a wide scale.
I am aware of how the current system, which is why I advocate for supporting a party and people who are actually advocating for changing the existing system. As my above comment mentioned, they are starting by focusing locally on the state level as that is where the election laws are decide. Just like STAR voting did in Eugene OR.
If people want to vote for a third party they can. It helps no one for you to attack people for expressing their rights in the way they choose. It is not their fault the system is rigged against third parties. By supporting a third party like Forward, they are at least expressing support for changing how the system is rigged instead of tacitly accepting that the system is rigged.
Ultimately, STAR is just another of way of reforming the FPTP system that can work if it is supported locally. That is same goal as the policy positions of Forward which includes a similar way via Ranked Choice Voting. If you support one, you should be supportive of the other since they are very similar ways of achieving the same goal. Quibbling over the details is largely counterproductive. Perfect is the enemy of good in this case. Both are good improvements to the current system.
Okay, you’re not understanding the simple fact that third parties are actually harmful under First Past the Post.
You are giving people bad advice.
This is an older video that explains it quite well.
The concept talked about is Duverger’s Law
Here’s a scholarly article about it.
As to passing voting reform, it does happen. RCV is gaining (and losing) ground, and Approval has been used in a few elections now. STAR is just better. It’s newer, so doesn’t have as much of a push behind it, but there are plenty of advocates. Want to make a real difference? Advocate for voting reform.
Who do they harm?
Please specify
I understand the concepts but reject the idea that existing leaders will support something that will harm their party.
I am. The average American (wrongly) thinks of politics as a team sport. I am advocating for a team that supports voter reform.
I’ve explained the spoiler effect of Durvurger’s Law and linked to great resources, but again, under First Past the Post, a vote for a third party is almost indistinguishable from a vote for the ideologically opposite main party candidate.
In 1992, Ross Perot ran the single most successful third party campaign in US history. If he had not run, George H. W. Bush would have likely been reelected.
In 2000, Ralph Nader ran an average performing campaign and scored just over 1% of the vote in Florida, and that alone made sure that George W. Bush was elected.
Because under First Past the Post, a vote for a third party candidate is a not just a wasted vote, it actually helps your least liked candidate win. Because if you had held your nose and voted for the lesser of two evils, the lesser would have won.
Again, if you want actual change, it’s only possible through electoral reform. Hell, even the stupid Forward Party that you linked to is pushing for electoral reform, because that’s the only chance Yang has of being elected to anything outside of maybe a mayoral race.
I personally recommend this group. The Equal Vote Coalition.
Their site explains the spoiler effect in pictures. (calling it vote-splitting)
You answered none of the clarifications I asked for. You just repeated the same things you already said. Since your answer doesn’t address the questions I asked you in a clear way, I will.
Third parties and Voting Reform both harm the existing parties by promoting more competition. That is good for the American people and democracy.
You are trying to claim third parties are bad because they split the vote. Splitting the vote is otherwise known as people voting for what they believe in. That is in no way a bad thing. It is how democracy is supposed to work. No party or person is entitled to your vote they have to earn it. It is not bad advice to support a political party or candidates that supports changing the FPTP system. In fact it is exactly what you are arguing for doing.
Third parties on a presidential scale is entirely beside the point to both changing the voting system and the Forward party. If you read through my replies you would see that Forward is starting by focusing locally on the state level so the anecdotes about third party presidential candidates are irrelevant.
There are hundreds of thousands of elected positions in the US and the majority are uncontested. That is what is bad for America. Restricting peoples choices down to at most 2 viewpoints is the problem. And the solution is electing politicians who will work to prioritize voting reform like Forward candidates.
I have no idea why you are calling a group that is pushing for the similar policies you are stupid. Seems pretty counterintuitive to me.
Their supporters. You’ve not been reading.
And vote splitting is fucking horrible. A vote for a third party under First Past the Post is a vote against your own interests. Even at the local level. If the election features more than two candidates, the majority will often get screwed over by FPtP.
That’s why it’s so important to change the voting system to one that doesn’t actively punish you for supporting who you want. STAR is great for that. It’s the best voting system designed to date. It’s also supported by the Forward Party on the front page of the site.
The other options are still better than the horrible option of FPtP. That said, I’m not a fan of RCV (Ranked Choice, aka, Instant Runnoff). RCV shares many of the same problems as FPtP while not actually fixing the vote splitting issue. It also introduces some other wrinkles that are just bad.
Did you not read that the majority of local elections are uncontested? How is having another choice other than the default party bad?
They are not screwed over by FPTP but by the parties and people who benefit and refuse to change the existing system.
That assumes that the major parties have your best interest at heart. They have their donors best interests at heart. You are just someone they have to pretend to please to get you to choose them over the other team.
I never said anything against STAR voting or argued against vote splitting. I simply challenged your assumption that vote splitting is harmful.
Vote splitting is just a way of describing the phenomenon where it is harder to start a third party in a FPTP system.
I reject the idea that vote splitting should have any effect on how you cast your vote. That is essentially censoring your own vote and your own voice.
What utter nonsense.
I believe you aren’t understanding that third parties are necessary to bring about significant change in a duopolistic system.
Ahhh… the “law” that theorizes not that “third parties are actually harmful”, but rather that “plurality would act to delay the emergence of new political forces and would accelerate the elimination of weakening ones, whereas proportional representation would have the opposite effect”.
An attempt to provide evidence for a “law” after-the-fact? Interesting order of operations, there.
Did you have any citation from that article, or was this just an attempt to drop a pay-walled article and move on?
No form of voting reform will be allowed by either establishment party; the only way this will come about is through introduction of a third party - any third party - which can be used to force the establishment parties away from simply maintaining power.
Oh?
I note you predicate this theory on the flawed assumption that a third party … is loosely aligned with one of the major parties.
Which third parties in the United States would you say are loosely aligned with either the Democrats or the Republicans? Beyond the DSA, there’s… nada, and even the DSA is a stretch.
Oh? So the fault of this is on the voter for choosing to support a candidate in alignment with their values - one who represents their interests - in an honest use of the vote, rather than the candidate failing to win over the voters?
Do you believe there’s nothing a given candidate could do to, say, win over a given set of voters? No reflection and analysis to be done on why voters are voting a specific way - say, what policies are repelling them, what policies might attract them, etc? The voter is the only one able to act differently?
You seem to entirely invert responsibility.
This is an outright lie; a third party can be supported by simply attaining votes. There is no real mechanism or barrier beyond the lies and propaganda you’re sharing here which discourages people from voting honestly.