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Too bad she wasnât born here, cause she seems awesome.
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Credible to whom? What would you credit as making for a viable left?
Getting actual national level candidates elected ever (outside of the individual spoiler) and getting a regular slate at state levels.
Credible for getting people into positions of power. Otherwise, it is just talk.
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What do you think inspires leftists to not vote for viable candidates? Isnât this the voterâs responsibility as much as the systemâs? The cooptation of the Democrat party seems rather obvious, but many leftists seem to âsettleâ anyway.
A two party system with winner take all voting in which neither party is friendly to the left.
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Iâd be more likely to vote for her if she still wore pants like that.
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I know, this much seems obvious. But this seems like the equivalent of not voting for real leftists simply because somebody told you not to. Itâs not like you canât just do it anyway. How can this actually stymie hundreds of millions of people?
Vote for the Democrats because even really crappy corporatist ones are better than the Republican alternative.
Itâs no different for the right either. Get into line and vote for someone you donât like because the alternative is worse? (I donât think that many Ron Paul voters thought a lot of Mitt Romney, but I bet they voted for him).
Yay for two party first past the post systems.
The reality is that (like Sawant demonstrates), at a local level you can get candidates in, so thatâs where you need to focus. The large parties will follow where they perceive the consensus to me. Just happens that in the US that consensus is well to the right of most other countries.
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I dunno. Why do 60% or more of eligible voters not bother to vote. Maybe because they donât see a single candidate that they want and the two parties have played all sorts of games to lock themselves into the system? Vote for your third party Green presidential candidate all you want. He or she wonât win and youâll likely be helping the GOP get elected as well.
This is why lots of folks throw their hands up, say âFuck it,â and donât bother. It isnât clear to lots of people that their vote matters a damn bit so why bother?
The Democrats know anyone even vaguely left will vote for them out of lack of other viable choices so they donât even have to change their stance on anything. It is them or the Republicans and they know if people are lefty at all, they wonât vote GOP.
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It seems like simple a Catch-22. The reason other parties donât win is because people donât vote for their candidates. The fix sounds obvious.
I can understand why Democrats and Republicans felt motivated to entrench themselves. What I donât understand is why the average voter would care about any of this, and not just choose something else.
If you donât choose them, then they canât be viable. People complain about a two party system, but refuse the other options and exacerbate their own problem. Which did you have with your dinner? Coke or Pepsi? Didnât they tell you that those were your only choices? My understanding of human motivations is such that I think that most social decisions by far are made against anybodyâs best interests. But most of the problems seem quite simple.
Then you really arenât thinking about it in depth or donât know much about how our political system actually functions as far as laws and regulations.
No one is refusing other options. The other options donât exist in the United States and the two parties in power actively conspire to keep things the way they are. Since they control the legal system and the passage of laws, they can block reform. They gerrymander the districts to make sure they win, for example, along with many other games.
Donât try this bullshit âpeople just arenât trying hard enoughâ if you donât bother to understand how the system actually functions.
Itâs important to remember that, three decades of massive congressional abdication of responsibility notwithstanding, weâre not talking about voting for King/Queen here. Even in a hypothetically pluralistic system youâd expect a major, nationwide figure to tilt severely towards the center.
Actually moving politics in one direction or another is designed to happen, should happen, and does happen in Congress. Iâd like to believe that there are legions of sad, disillusioned lefties out there waiting for the perfect candidate, but Iâm old enough to know that isnât true. What Iâm also old enough to have seen is that in the political field just below national politics, lefties and progressives have a remarkable capacity for self destruction. Wherever it seems like actual political progress might occur on a local level, on cue everyone starts holding ideological purity trials and waging ego wars until the machine candidate is running against two dozen smoldering ash piles.
Or people just walk away at the first bump in the road. Matt Gonzalez in SF, running as a Green Party candidate right at the height of Nader-hatred, and spending 4% of what Gavin Newsom dumped into what was at the time the most expensive mayoral election in history, still managed to get within 10% of him. In fact, Gonzalez won the votes on the day of the election, he simply didnât have the sophisticated early voter campaign that Newsom did. Meanwhile, Newsom was coasting on a âfuck the homelessâ initiative that was simply not going to pan out, and would have been easy to attack as a failure in four years, even if you didnât know that Newsom was boning the wife of his campaign manager (and the only brains in his outfit). Gonzalez, meanwhile, was president of an increasingly powerful Board of Supervisors.
Gonzalez response? Drop out of politics in a huff. Unless you count running as VP for the Green Party years later as âbeing in politicsâ.
Honestly, if it wasnât for the fact that about a third of Republican candidates just happen to be serial child abusers or the like, there probably wouldnât even be a Democratic partyâŚ
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Which laws and regulations are you referring to?
I donât bother to understand? I said, I understand how the system is broken. What I donât understand is the voterâs reaction to it. Itâs like 300,000,000 people who all canât be convinced to leave an abusive relationship, no matter how bad it gets. âIâm not dead yet, so it could be worse with somebody elseâŚâ Meanwhile, the masses can game their system by voting for somebody else anyway. Why demand miracles while leaving the obvious untried?
Bad analogy. You can individually decide what to have with dinner and get it, whether it be Coke, Pepsi, RC, mineral water, beer, whatever. Your beverage is not subject to millions of other dinersâ opinions. If it were, you would indeed be stuck with Coke or Pepsi â youâre sure as hell not getting any Moxie.
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I know it was a bad analogy. But my point was that itâs at least a choice, compared to settling for a blue leech rather than a red leech. Did I mention that the blue leech feels badly about being a leech? Thatâs good to know. Maybe most people are simply far more gullible and/or masochistic than I understand.
It really isnât. The reality in the States is that the right has been disciplined and focused for decades at taking over state governments. Itâs like nobody on the left ever noticed that the state house gets to gerrymander the districts, which can give their party the US Congress forever.
Statistical simulations show that, due to gerrymandering, Democrats have to win over 60% of the popular vote to take over the Congress. The right has worked very patiently on a long-term strategy, and itâs paying off horribly.
Thatâs why I disagree that the âconsensusâ is to the right of anything at all. Americans overwhelmingly espouse liberal values, and when politicians like Warren run on those values they win. When Democrats run to the center, they end up looking weak on values, like the Clintons.
That being said, weâre a long way from democratic socialism. Iâd settle for a decent minimum wage and basic equality, myself.
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Fuck minimum wage. I want Basic Income.
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