Rec…? Recre…?? Recreation? Is that like fun or something
Probably when you’re supposed to be “hustling” or “grinding,” or whatever the nomenclature is now for trying to make survival sound cool.
When, I think of “socialism,” I think of modern day Scandinavian health care, not Soviet-era Russia. Who do these pants -wetting idiots think they’re scaring?
Ah yes scandinavian healthcare where I can’t get my doctor to give a fuck about my back pain because people under 30 don’t have back pain obviously
Some more about why the Nordic model isn’t socialism:
Scandinavian healthcare isn’t socialism though, that’s part of the problem.
Who do these pants -wetting idiots think they’re scaring?
The boomers who grew up during the Cold War and who continue to have better voter turnout rates than Millennials, even as the latter generation sneaks up on their 40s.
Like…I don’t agree with their policies, but their tactics are objectively effective.
This isn’t an endorsement of conservative fear mongering but rather calling out my fellow Millennials, who’ve recently surpassed boomers as the most populous generation in the US.
Show up and vote, god dammit.
Well, considering the election results in Europe and the US, they are scaring a whole lot of people.
tell that to m’uricah, oh wait cant because two party system
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Yay a spoiler candidate
How is she a spoiler? She’s the only major leftist candidate, who is she pulling from?
In America you either one of the 2 main or a spoiler. Y’all really need ranked voting.
Alternative voting systems haven’t proven to be even the slightest obstacle to capitalist rule. Japan and Australia have alternative voting systems, and they’re still on the same far right path, still evict indigenous peoples, and still act as US military bases.
It’s not supposed to counter capitalism or any one political ideology. It’s supposed to create more proportional representation. If everyone in a city is a conservative, then ranked voting will still skew conservative.
Its impossible to have a government that represents the people, if capital stands above the political system.
Actually, it’s very possible. Capital, despite being a tool of oppression, is also a tool that pays for roads, schools, hospitals, and everything else that the government funds. Capitalism is definitely not the best system, but it’s the one that’s currently available, and despite the common narrative here on lemmy, there are people that work at the Federal level that aren’t being actively lobbied that do indeed pass good legislation. The way to improve the system is by implementing ranked voting, which increases the equity of representation in DC. Voters in Wyoming shouldn’t have the same say in politics as voters in New York or other more densely populated congressional districts.
The way to improve the system is by implementing ranked voting
Then do it. Try to test your ideas against reality. You’ll find that RCV
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Will only be allowed in small amounts as a show of feasibility, without affecting major change
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Will be gutted if it ever does get implemented and stands chance of changing anything.
The path forward is revolution, not a giant prayer for RCV to be implemented magically.
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You fix that by seizing the means of production, generally with unions.
You protect union rights by both voting for candidates that will protect unions, and also fighting to unionize your own workplace.
But then you would be more likely to have counties voting for other parties. The electoral college would actually make more sense with ranked voting.
The electoral college doesn’t need to exist period. It’s just bureaucratic nonsense. People vote, those votes are counted, then whomever got the most votes in that district is the winner. It doesn’t need to go to another un-elected party who doesn’t have to vote for the party of the person who actually won the district.
That’s because Australia is using the seat system, which is like a supercharged electoral college. Australia needs proportional representation.
Can’t get ranked choice voting with either establishment party, and I don’t consider the only major leftist candidate to be a spoiler for 2 right parties.
Democrats have instituted ranked choice voting in some states.
Republicans have also made moves on ranked choice voting. They banned it in Florida.
It’s a carrot that will never be implemented in any meaningful capacity, it’s kabuki theatre. Even if it got implemented nationally, the moment it risked changing the status quo it would either be defanged or gone entirely.
There is no implemented nationally. States run their own voting systems. You do this state by state or you don’t.
Exactly, hence why it doesn’t stand a chance of impacting anything.
Hilarious. Let me think about who I’d vote for if I was US-American. The Fascist or the at least slightly socially progressive neoliberals? It’s anyone’s guess really. NO. Of course the Dems, fucking obviously.
So if I was US-American and also hit in the head enough to consider voting for third party in a country with a first-past-the-post voting system, I’d not vote for the Dems as a result.
This is called the spoiler effect. This makes her a spoiler candidate, no matter her intention.
I fucking hate this rhetoric.
Voting for a third party is not “taking a vote away” from anyone.
You’re arguing with someone who would in all likelihood JUST NOT VOTE if not for an alternative option. If you want assurances that fascism doesn’t get voted in, how about you direct that passion towards getting people to vote for someone, anyone, instead of staying at home? That is the only certain way of getting not-the-GOP-candidate elected time and time again. Republicans always come out to vote in about the same numbers every election. Just get more people voting, and not only do the Dem numbers go up, but the viability of a third party goes up astronomically as well.
Just VOTE. For anyone!
You can hate it all you want. It isn’t rhetoric. It’s basically math. Every registered vote that votes 3rd party is a wasted vote. There isn’t enough support in the US for any 3rd party thanks to the First Past The Post electoral system.
Since it’s so basic, then surely we can stop giving candidates the benefit of the doubt when they refuse to support its reform.
You’re arguing with someone who would in all likelihood JUST NOT VOTE if not for an alternative option
Just because the big silly in this conversation is a big silly, doesn’t mean all the sillies are. There’s lots of sillies who are silly enough to vote third party but not silly enough to abstain.
The Fascist or the at least slightly socially progressive neoliberals
Neither are acceptable, both are genocidal regimes that are working towards WW3, Climate Collapse, and genocide. The only peaceful solution is voting third party, otherwise revolution is necessary. Taking the miniscule chance of a peaceful solution is morally correct, especially if we believe revolution to be necessary.
Meanwhile you “peacefully” increase the probability that the guy who destroyed women’s reproductive rights gets voted in again.
I say you should help punish the Republicans for MAGA and once they try a moderate candidate again you can vote third party. But don’t ignore the consequences of your actions.
Meanwhile you “peacefully” increase the probability that the guy who destroyed women’s reproductive rights gets voted in again.
Meanwhile you “peacefully” increase the probability that genocide continues, climate change continues to be ignored, and World War 3 kills us all.
I say you should help punish the Republicans for MAGA and once they try a moderate candidate again you can vote third party. But don’t ignore the consequences of your actions.
What do you think fascism is? Why do you think MAGA is just a random event and not a systemic problem? Fascism is Capitalism in decline, there will be no “moderate” candidates because Capitalism is still in decline. The conditions for fascism persist, so fascism persists, and the Dems get closer to fascism.
Drag is happy that you get to feel like you’re being peaceful, but sad that you’ve convinced yourself the way to do so is through apathy and inaction. Drag wonders if you’d feel the same way if you understood that choosing not to do a good thing is still choosing to do a bad thing.
Drag should not assume I am saying electoralism is the end all, be all of political action. I am advocating for organizing outside the electoral system as the primary role of leftists, and refusing to give the electoral system legitimacy. Voting Dem is not a “good thing,” because the Dems are unacceptable and will lead to genocide, world war 3, and failed climate action.
Explodicle wonders if talking like this is going to catch on.
So I don’t have a hat in this race because I can not vote. I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding about how a government is formed in the United States. The odds of stopping a Democrat or Republican from not winning the 2024 presidential election are futile. If I could vote, but I can’t, if I voted third party I would be putting my effort into what I know is a futile effort. That seems morally the same as ignoring it because I know the results would be identical. The only moral option I would then have is to choose the least bad option. The most moral option would be off the table for me.
Actually the president used to be less important than they seemed. The United States Supreme Court decision that president’s are practically kings changes a lot.
The other side of this is that the president doesn’t really matter. The president really only executes the will of Congress.It seems to me that if you really wanted to do the moral thing, it would be changing the roots of the problem. Not a single branch. It’s the hearts and minds of grass roots organizationa you want to change long before anyone walks up to a polling booth.Just saying, as someone who can’t vote.
First off, I understand how the electoral system works. The odds are incredibly slim that a third party will win. I disagree that a Democrat victory is acceptable, because the Democrats will only push for more genocide, failed climate action, and world war 3. It isn’t a matter of being “better or worse,” both result in the doom of humanity. Either we push to end that electorally, or via revolution.
Organizing is also good, Claudia De La Crúz represents PSL, a party that does that more than try to win the presidency. They serve to highlight the sham of the election and gain recognition.
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The Democrats. In a 2 party system, voting for a 3rd party makes it more likely that the guy you REALLY don’t want to be elected, gets elected.
Leftists REALLY don’t want Democrats either. If you are in a room where the water is rising to 10 feet above you, and the Republicans build a 2 foot platform from the bottom and the Dems build a 3 foot platform, you still die either way.
You gotta love the old “why vote for better oppression” argument, used despite their admission that one is in fact, considerably better. In this instance, we can literally quantify it as being 33% better.
Bad faith framing of the issue. Donald Trump literally wants to turn America into Gilead and Harris wants to enrich herself while also marginally improving living conditions for working class Americans. If you want to have the revolution today, all the power to you, but until then, voting for the lesser of two evils is the only ethical choice.
It isn’t “bad-faith,” I am entirely serious when I say that the lesser evil is to delegitimize the electoral system and push for leftists to abandon the Democrats, who have proven their unshakeable interests. Revolution may be 99.9% more likely than reform, but that .1% chance is worth taking. Even if that .1% chance fails, it aids in deligitimizing the electoral system and prevents Democrats from being able to get away with literal genocide.
So, your plan for fixing everything is for the left to stop voting so that the right can win and make voting illegal.
Because that’s how it works.
This election in particular has democracy itself on the ballot.
It may be a flawed democracy, but the only other option is a fascist dictatorship.
There are no other options because of First Past the Post voting. Literally. The math does not lie.
Agree with the philosophy, but stupid that she’s running for president. Until/unless we change FPTP voting the only the Democrat and Republican running even matter and if you don’t explicitly vote for the one then your are implicitly voting for the other.
Unless, and hear me out here, it is possible to change.
Why?
Other countries with FPTP have fringe candidates that almost definitely won’t win elections, but influence politics considerably.
Arguably, Nigel Farage is the most influential politician in the last decade of the UK for his role in pushing Brexit, all while being in no less than three different political parties. He only recently won election as a MP on his seventh attempt, but media backing and taking disenfranchised votes from idiots basically allowed him to dictate internal policy for both main parties.
There are 650 MPs in the UK, and unlike ind the US it isn’t winner-takes-all; if you win one of the 650 seats you get to be an MP
In the US presidential election, there are 50 states for a bigger population and even then winning one while losing the others achieves nothing
In the senate and house elections, which are more analogous to the UK, independent candidates are viable, right? There’s at least a few. But it’s not comparable to the Presidential elections
FPTP is fucked, but it’s only one element of why the USA is deadlocked into the two major parties being the only contenders. The electoral college, the winner-takes-all nature… all sorts
That’s all well and good, but it doesn’t answer the primary point. An unelected politician was able to drive change without even being elected as an MP because he had public and media support. Tell me why that isn’t possible in the United States, even if it means as a fringe candidate in a primary party?
I see your point but again I’d say it’s because of the US’s winner-take-all system, as well as 50 states vs 650 seats
Farage posed enough of a perceived risk to the Tories that they moved in his direction to avoid losing votes to UKIP. UKIP never would have won more than a handful of seats, let alone a majority, but by splitting the right vote Labour could have beat the Tories in swing seats
And yes, that could be broadly true of a ‘spoiler’ candidate in the US presidential election, except that:
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Only 50 states, and therefore a tiny amount of swing seats compared to the UK
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more population per state than per British seat. By a whole huge margin. So its not enough to potentially appeal to 8,000 people to ‘spoil’ a seat
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The above leads to funding issues. Not only is there more money generally in the US elections, but because you have to flip a big state not a small constituency, you have to spend way way more to make an impact. You can’t focus a small budget on one tiny area and win a seat
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Winner-takes-all means that as long as a campaign thinks it will win a state, and then a presidency, who cares if some counties went to a spoiler candidate?
I’d love to be wrong, and I do think that there’s probably also a cultural/historical element to the US’s two party dominance. But that said, its just a different system, different processes, different outcomes, different challenges than in the UK
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I don’t begrudge her campaign. Making noise on the national level is a good way to elevate the message and slowly undo the demonization of socialism. It’s her supporters acting like Harris is the same as Trump that chap my ass.
Consider it from the point of view of the millions of under educated working poor.
they live in a state of precarity and they are being told trump is bad apparently because of ‘project 2025’ or some other nebulous concept.
Thats not gonna land with them. They don’t have the luxury of considering the dangers of “dismantling the administration “ under trump. They need to pay the rent and buy groceries and care for their sick, before they can weigh the relative morality of the candidates.
They wake up, they see rich people getting richer and their life getting harder 24/7/365 and they see no one doing anything about it .
This is why the Dems never get it .
Working people are too hard up to worry about a power struggle between the super rich and the ultra wealthy.
I mean aren’t these also the people who say free healthcare is communism and less taxes for corporations and lower minimal wage is better because then companies can employ more people
Respectfully, Trump didn’t just appear this year. There are endless CONCRETE examples of his garbage character and policy ideas. Plenty of people in precarious situations are not so stupid as to somehow believe that Trump is only a danger recently because of project 2025. You would literally have to have just regained consciousness from a 10 year coma to not have been exposed to his shittiness at this point. Anyone who supports him or is undecided about him is wholly ignorant of reality.
And yet he was elected to highest office in the land and went very close again 4 years later and will likely go close again.
So there are plenty of “stupid” people who are “ignorant of reality” and they have vote same as you.
I recently saw someone in the comment section on another social media site (video of Jan 6th) legitimately have their mind blown that January 6th was not peaceful. They had multiple comments of them coming to the realization that it was anything other than peaceful. I think we often underestimate how uninformed (or willfully ignorant) the general public is.
It’s very difficult to view things from another perspective, although it’s phrase we throw around a lot .
I never imagined fast food delivery would take off, because restaurants have drive throughs. My bias is that of a car owner and I was wildly wrong.
As you point out, there is a ton of hard evidence about people’s limited political understanding.
The problem with that is “the media” treats anyone other than D, R, and occasionally Jill Stein as non existent. She isn’t making noise on the national level because that requires the media to “amplify” you and all we hear from them about her right now is
I didn’t forget to finish the sentence.
Lenin argued that communists should take part in bourgeois elections because this will get them tribune to loudly proclaim their program, though this should be the least they do, not the most and the main effort should be outside of electorial politics and on organising working class.
Now thing is, when Lenin wrote this, he meant the tsarist duma, which was even fakier democracy than the current American one, with 3 tiers of electors, censuses, workers and peasants barely getting few % of representation and rest going to landowners and their pets, okhrana secret police arresting socialists and peasant activists and closing their newspapers (there was a case where huge participation of workers put iirc 15 worker representatives in duma, and tsar just fucking imprisoned them). But they were still heard.
Now, nearly 120 years later, bourgeosie don’t even have to be so heavy handed, they just drown the communist message in a media flood, and even cases like removing third party candidate from ballot and deplatforming them cause no big response from the so called “liberty” advocates.
@Asafum @themeatbridge I think they do that as they might as well be non-existant considering the current winner take all method of assigning Electoral College votes in over forty states. Frankly, you might as well not bother to vote if’n you’re going to vote third party. Frankly I won’t take any third party seriously until they start caring about down ballot elections where they can make a difference, show people why they should be elected, and change the laws that keep them from being elected.
Fptp is never leaving, and the US will continue with ts rightward slide until balkanization finally separates the incompatible parts of this country they from each other by force. That being said some want to have hope things can get better, and doing the same thing that failed to work for the last 100 years seems to not be the way to do that.
RCV is starting to get some traction in places. What we have to do is continue supporting that and not let the detractors shit on it.
Even if it passes, i wouldn’t be very hopeful. Look at Europe, all those countries have better and more democratic election system than USA, but there are fascists on the rise in each of them and shit like in France and Poland happen more and more. Also what’s the use of having more parties if they still all represent the same influence groups (for example in Poland we currently have 17 parties and 42 independents on 460 seats in sejm, but you won’t find anyone outside of neoliberal status quo).
FPTP Britain says Good Morning 👋
Yeah i’m pretty torn on how democratic is UK, not only they do have FPTP but it’s also A FUCKING MONARCHY.
Way out is realisation that they spent last centuries or at least decades on trying to stop being Europe in every sense. If they could they would probably do it even geographically, rowing their island to physically join USA.
Right!
It’s also been outlawed in certain states. Many of those same states have outlawed voter led initiatives, meaning they have no recourse to change to rcv without changing the majority of their states legislators with people that support it and will pass it. You’re talking over a lifetime of change necessary to undo that damage. That still is hoping that dems will actually vote against their own best interests once in majority control…
Still more likely than a socialist being elected though :(
The socialist threat forces Democrats to support RCV.
In order to pass rcv nationally you need to convince either party that it’s in their best interest, and it’s simply not. By definition it takes away power from both main parties in the US without giving either one an advantage.
Like all meaningful change, you have to convince enough people to get involved and to do so more often and consistently than every four years at the Presidential general election. It’s this belief that the change is going to come from the parties that is the core problem. Everyone complains about having to vote for the lesser of two evils, but then they do it and go back to sleep for another four years. At best, they just gripe about the government never acknowledging that they are responsible.
Ah, one big prayer will get us RCV now? That’s a new one. If the parties don’t want it, you’re not getting it.
That’s nice, we’re doing that. The people going to sleep for four years don’t want change, they don’t want things to improve, they want to complain so it seems like they’re worse off than they really are. You’re not going to convince them until their lives are ruined.
It’s also not like local or even state level RCV would realistically be sufficient for these whole sets of overarching problems that the US struggles with. You’re not locally voting for RCV and then gaining the ability to vote for a party that will actually give you healthcare, will connect your city with others via rail to help rework infrastructure, will solve your housing problems and your homelessness, and they probably won’t be solving unemployment. You can maybe vaguely hope that the existence of such a party would put pressure on the federal government to ask “why can’t you do this”, but that would only happen at the state level with one of the states that actually matter, like california or new york or texas, and good luck getting any of those places to go in for RCV considering how strangleheld they are.
The most you could hope RCV to improve is maybe to make it so you can get someone that’s willing to make your ISP give you free shit, or establish a free ISP, and also maybe to give your town a bunch of roundabouts, and maybe approve some missing middle housing which will probably skyrocket housing prices in the surrounding areas since it won’t really be doing anything to solve the problem at a national level. Which isn’t nothing, right, but that’s kinda boof.
Then we vote them out
How? They pick who runs, and if you suggest or even hint that voting third party is the only solution to that problem then you get in circular arguments with conservatives from either party that claim you’re voting for whoever the opposite of their genocidal fascist happens to be.
I’m certain the dems and Republicans will vote to end their strangle hold on us politics in just 1 more election cycle!!! Our maybe the next… or maybe the next…
that’s my president(ial candidate) :)
Mine too.
