I’m sure it’s not a settled issue, but there is a case to be made that a rigid two-party system generally only moves in one direction. In other words, forcing people to continuously chose the lesser evil typically just expands the outer limits of “acceptable” evil.
Continuously voting in the lesser evil makes for lesser and lesser evil down the road as long as it’s done consistently. What do you get with lesser evil? Just that.
So, what are things that lesser evils do?
For one, lesser evils open the door to third parties and candidates by not suppressing the vote and using unethical gerrymandering, sleazy redistricting, etc. that you see much more rampantly with greater evil (Republicans). Republicans have a solid history of this that far outmatches the Democrats who, if anything, try to promote more voting.
Once again, tell me how flawed consistently voting in lesser evil is once we’ve actually tried it.
Continuously voting in the lesser evil makes for lesser and lesser evil down the road as long as it’s done consistently. What do you get with lesser evil? Just that.
Um, no. Going from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama and their subsequent policies do not support your theory in the slightest.
Once again, tell me how flawed consistently voting in lesser evil is once we’ve actually tried it.
Not a problem. Most Democrats that sit on the Hill are as concerned about their positions of office as their Republican counterpart. See, you’re also discounting how long the average Senator holds his seat. Voting for the Lesser is voting for the same thing again when voting for a senator. That’s changing nothing.
But perhaps most of all it’s simply the fact the voting for the lesser evil is a trumpeted call that started coming from those holding office on both sides to begin with. You’re just playing along with their game. Well sorry, I’ll vote my conscious thank you very much. You can stick with your speculations and theories and enjoy getting sucker-punched all the time…
Your problem is that both of your major parties no longer represent people in any meaningful way. They represent the money. They need tons of it to get elected or re-elected, and will do whatever they feel they must to get it. And if they don’t, their opponents will.
Until you take money out of your political system in a meaningful way, you will be screwed. Get a Republican president and a Dem Congress? No problem, they will have huge screaming matches over flag burning amendments and other petty nonsense, all the while agreeing on taking care of the plutocrats at the expense of everyone else. Ditto a Dem president and a Repub Congress. Or any combination really.
You guys are basically fucked. I hope you find a way out of it, but I am not optimistic for you. And then, by extension, for us poor Canadians who end up sinking with you.
Have you ever considered the corporatist game is promoting false equivelence so we bounce back and forth between two parties and never move ahead?
If you support a third party (whom you suspiciously haven’t mentioned yet), then you must not trust the mainstream media, correct? You should have noticed that the mainstream media continuously promotes false “balance” as I’ve already mentioned…
For example, if they report on Republicans disenfranchinsing voters (en masse), the media (in the name of bullshit “balance”) will promote false equivlence by saying Democrats induce voter fraud (by overrerporting only a few instances).
It’s YOU that’s falling for that game.
You’re the one playing right into their hands when you throw out critical thinking skills and don’t embrace facts (as I’ve shown you above) and instead embrace false equivalencies.
Throwing away your vote to usher in more Republicans is playing right into their hands. Congrats.
Um, no. Going from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton to Barack Obama and their subsequent policies do not support your theory in the slightest.
Except that’s not what happened.
You left out two terms of GW Bush with a mostly rubber stamp Republican congress and bluedog Democrats in tow and two terms of Ronald Reagan for fuck’s sake. And, um, HW Bush one term as well? Get real.
Once again, try knocking < blink >consistently< /blink > voting in lesser evil once we’ve actually tried it.
Your problem is that both of your major parties no longer represent people in any meaningful way.
Not equally. That’s a corporatist talking point and is not based on reality. The mainstream media promotes false equivalency in the name of “balance” (which is a crock of shit as I’ve explained in a previous post). The purpose is to get the American public to bounce back and forth between two parties who can keep blaming each other for their inaction and keep the vicious cycle (that benefits the rich only) going.
If Americans would ignore this equivalency falsehood and keep voting in lesser evil we wouldn’t be in this horrible position we’re in today. If you need more info, it’s here with facts and sources:
Until you take money out of your political system in a meaningful way, you will be screwed.
That’s never going to happen until we consistently vote in lesser evil for decades. Too much lasting damage has been done after two GW Bush terms with a mostly rubber stamp Congress.
And, please note that promoting false equivelence keeps us further away from that goal.
You guys are basically fucked
If we keep falling for the false equivalence myth and vote in greater evil instead of consistently voting in lesser evil, then you’re right.
us poor Canadians who end up sinking with you.
If you embrace false equivalence instead of critical thinking, then you’ll deserve it.
Well, if you can show me where I promoted a false equivalency I’d be impressed. If I were American I’d be voting Democrat every time, barring some monstrous blue dog jerk - at which point I don’t know what I would do. At least in Canada we have a couple of choices - though at present that split of choices has given us a version of Bush II with brains enough to hide the evil.
I actually think your best bet is an intra-party takeover. The model exists - the hardcore Xian right quite explicitly and deliberately sought to infiltrate and take over the Republicans, and were successful enough to drive the agenda. If you guys take over the Democratic Party you might have a chance - the Repubs are too far gone.
Right now you have politicians hopelessly enthralled with monied interests. That will take a long, hard fight to change (and probably a different Supreme Court), but it is possible. It won’t happen without a party takeover though. As long as the easy route to election is to pander to irrelevant ‘moral’ issues while taking cash from the powerful, it is going to be what happens. You need a reboot, but I don’t really know how to do that in your context, only in Canada (and we got one, then the Conservative party killed it).
If I were American I’d be voting Democrat every time, barring some monstrous blue dog jerk - at which point I don’t know what I would do.
Agreed.
Well, if you can show me where I promoted a false equivalency
This is you: " … both of your major parties no longer represent people in any meaningful way. "
You made no distinction between the two parties, I apologize if I misunderstood that for false equivalence.
Right now you have politicians hopelessly enthralled with monied interests.
Some more so than others.
Right now you have politicians hopelessly enthralled with monied interests. That will take a long, hard fight to change (and probably a different Supreme Court), but it is possible.
You need a reboot, but I don’t really know how to do that in your context
Down the road after voting in lesser evils it’ll be possible, but not now. The corporatists are more entrenched than ever and infest every level of government. Because of going so far backwards for so many years, it’s now going to take decades and a lot of work on the part of the citizenry to even just lessen the damage that’s done (see my links in posts above to see partial list of damage).
Here’s one of the best ways to fight along with many other actions Americans should take:
Sorry, I’m registered Independent at the moment. I have seriously considered registering Justice Party (see Rocky Anderson) but since he runs in the state of New Mexico as an Independent party I don’t have to register.
I’m really not sure why that’s suspicious behavior, considering the state of third parties at the moment. But I’ll explain it as ready to jump on to a candidate when I can. Rocky Anderson was a candidate I could really get behind…
"You left out two terms of GW Bush with a mostly rubber stamp Republican congress and bluedog Democrats in tow and two terms of Ronald Reagan for fuck’s sake. And, um, HW Bush one term as well? Get real.
Once again, try knocking < blink >consistently< /blink > voting in lesser evil once we’ve actually tried it."
You’re confusing me with this. I’m citing Democratic “lesser of evil” Presidents. Republicans never entered into it because we probably have agreed that none of them since perhaps Eisenhower were worth mentioning or voting for from the Progressive angle. Hell, I’d say you probably agree that Reagan and Bush were the greater evils anyway, so they don’t enter into it.
Here was my speculation; I watched candidate Obama with great interest. It was highly likely he’d get the nomination. So I watched what he would do with Telecom Immunity, a key to finding out who specifically in the Bush White House told the Telecoms they had to give up customers’ records and info. Senator Obama claimed promise that he would go so far as to filibuster any deal that gave the Telecoms immunity. When the bill came up, he not only refused to filibuster the bill but voted for it with no explanation as to why, considering the stink he had made before.
With that he lost my vote. It was too telling of how he would act as President; How Bush and Co. could look forward to no investigations and how nothing in the U.S. surveillance would change. He’s actually made things worse with his administration and Snowden really opened those floodgates of what’s happened at the very last on Obama’s watch.
I’m sorry but this issue is extremely important to me. If I can expect both major parties to act like this I cannot/will not support the current Senate or leadership. The changes they claim are mere promises, nothing more…
If I get the last word before the topic closes does that mean I win?
Seriously, I really hope the US is able to fix its system. Sadly, I think a system that benefits one group disproportionately over time will continue to function until it reaches an absolute breaking point. I think all systems operate in much the same way - the weaknesses grow until failure mode. Think of the current financial megafraud/austerity/state overreach factors as symptoms of malignancy in a system.
You need political chemotherapy (barring a violent plutocrat-ectomy). It won’t be fun, it will just barely keep your system alive while beating the problem, and it might not work. Also, they will try their best to come back.
