If you could count on the entire electorate working with you, there wouldn’t be a need to strike. From the charts and links given here, you’d agree that Republicans are a bit worse than the Democrats, right? So then the approach would be simple:
- Nobody ever votes for the Republicans again.
- Third party candidates can flourish because people can vote for them without worrying about giving the election to the Republicans.
- People who are better than the Democrats get in, and a better second party emerges.
- Nobody ever votes for the Democrats again.
- Repeat.
This is an oversimplification because the individual people do matter as well as the party - there might be the odd place where this is reversed - but that’s not why we’re not climbing this ladder. The reason is because despite the higher debts and lower jobs and greater belligerence and so on, we still haven’t tried step one. That’s what’s anchoring American politics in place right now.
I know you say we need to stop dividing ourselves by our politics, but you don’t make a realistic plan by ignoring what people believe. I have seen more than one defense for Citizens United as a proper expression of free speech. If your plan depends on concerted action before everyone even objects to the flow of corporate money into politics, let alone who cares, it will get caught on the same anchor.
And again, in the mean time you’re asking everyone to give up their say in things like debts and social programs and wars against Iran. It might be about the short term, but the short term isn’t always such a trivial affair when you have to live through it.
The truth is a democracy really does give the majority, if not what they want, the things they will accept. What is really needed is for more people to believe in policies that promote things like social security, equality, labor rights, and research rather than debts, wealth inequality, superfluous wars, and corporate influence. That, and I suspect that alone, is what will determine whether you get them in the long term.
