The ONLY chance the US had for a third party was back when Teddy Roosevelt ran in the Bull Moose party. He was already a president with a major party and wanted another run but the party didn’t like his socialist agenda. (I’m simplifying)
If he would have won, we probably would still have a 2 party system. 1 of the parties would have adapted to the Bull Moose party.
We need to elect people that will support the change to RCV. Dems seem more favorable to this.
The problem is that you’re relying on “vote blue and hope they give us electoral reform out of the kindness of their hearts.” It’s not a real strategy. Dems have a clear incentive to not enact voting reform, because they survive off of being the lesser evil and effectively coercing people into voting for them. And if you say that we should vote for Dems conditionally to them (genuinely) supporting RCV, that’s one thing, but if you’re just supporting them regardless then any ideas you have about RCV are meaningless because in practice those ideas aren’t affecting your actions in any way.
It’s like seeing that your car won’t to start and thinking the solution is to drive it to the mechanic. The whole problem is that you can’t drive it anywhere. In the same way, the whole reason we need electoral reform is the same thing that prevents it from happening, that we don’t have any mechanism for advancing policy goals in the current system. You can’t rely on a broken system to fix itself.
What we need is to realize that the current system is FUBAR and organize non-electoral strategies (for example, strikes and demonstrations) to advance policy positions, and we need a dedicated party that’s focused on that strategy and able to lay out a clear platform to that end.
…are you trying to say that it’s mathematically impossible for a third party to be viable?
Because wow, the entire western world outside the US would like to have a word.
The ONLY chance the US had for a third party was back when Teddy Roosevelt ran in the Bull Moose party. He was already a president with a major party and wanted another run but the party didn’t like his socialist agenda. (I’m simplifying)
If he would have won, we probably would still have a 2 party system. 1 of the parties would have adapted to the Bull Moose party.
We need to elect people that will support the change to RCV. Dems seem more favorable to this.
The problem is that you’re relying on “vote blue and hope they give us electoral reform out of the kindness of their hearts.” It’s not a real strategy. Dems have a clear incentive to not enact voting reform, because they survive off of being the lesser evil and effectively coercing people into voting for them. And if you say that we should vote for Dems conditionally to them (genuinely) supporting RCV, that’s one thing, but if you’re just supporting them regardless then any ideas you have about RCV are meaningless because in practice those ideas aren’t affecting your actions in any way.
It’s like seeing that your car won’t to start and thinking the solution is to drive it to the mechanic. The whole problem is that you can’t drive it anywhere. In the same way, the whole reason we need electoral reform is the same thing that prevents it from happening, that we don’t have any mechanism for advancing policy goals in the current system. You can’t rely on a broken system to fix itself.
What we need is to realize that the current system is FUBAR and organize non-electoral strategies (for example, strikes and demonstrations) to advance policy positions, and we need a dedicated party that’s focused on that strategy and able to lay out a clear platform to that end.
You mean where they have ranked choice and a completely different voting system which changes the math?