I find it amusing that USians complain constantly about only having two party choices, but whenever someone makes a move to a third party, they complain about that even more.
Come to France. We’ve got five major parties and something like two dozen lesser parties. It’s a glorious mess. When we lived in Belgium, the government was composed of 17 member parties, favoring three different languages.
I will leave detailed analysis to more educated sorts, but it seems the problem lies in how does one get from a deeply entrenched 2-party system to a multiparty one? I could see rank choice voting as a necessary but not sufficient step, so one could vote for a third/fourth/etc party without de facto supporting the fascists. But to create a viable third party that is not a cult of personality (see Perot, Nader, etc) seems to be trickier.
Glad you can laugh at us from up on high, I guess… 
In this case, Sinema is not making a principled move to make our political system more diverse - it’s a cynical ploy to avoid getting primaried and keep the corporate funds flowing into her pockets… Acting like us criticizing her is hypocritical is missing the larger problem with her actions here…
Not all of us can just pull up stakes and become an ex-pat, for a variety of reasons. Good that you could, but that’s most certainly not open to many of the most vulnerable in our society. Nor do we have much ability to radically transform the entire, deeply entrenched political system overnight. And “complaining” is a big part of how things get changed anyways.
I find it amusing that you murdered all the aristocracy but then fucked up democracy so hard but there you go.
But seriously, if you can’t tell the difference between legitimate criticism of a cynical and self-aggrandizing maneuver and a genuine move to a serious 3rd party, then you might as well be farting in a windstorm.
This. Sinema was a candidate in the Green party before she joined the Democrats but lurched right in the Senate, becoming one of four Democrats who voted against the New Green Deal. Her only consistent position seems to be doing things to benefit Krysten Sinema, which is not an ideology that deserves political support.
France only has a populatio of 68 million. I assume they’d have a tough time taking in as many again, if they even wanted that many foreigners. What happens to everyone else?
Well, they should have been born in the right place… or maybe magically fix the country with a snap of their fingers! /s
Say what you will, but European democratic socialism works.
You just said it didn’t.
Anyone would think you weren’t taking this seriously.
Which literally has jack shit to do about what we’re talking about. And Europe has it’s OWN struggles with right wingers right… 41% of French voters, voted for an out and out fascist in your last presidential election… And why is that? Because a large number of Europeans fear POC fleeing the effects of European colonialism and the impostion of capitalism on the planet by Europeans and Americans…
Huh? Either I misspoke or you read something into my words that wasn’t there.
We have PR-STV, and while we do have multiple parties the shit show is just as bad with a hegemonic duopoly consistently dominating. Only now they have to form coalitions with each other rather than taking turns to form coalitions.
There is of course no chance the duopoly will change the system because it seems that it is a sufficient step to break a duopoly. NI votes for Westminster in a FPTP system and for its delegated assembly and Europe in PR-STV (I think). This had the effect of breaking through sectarian voting to issue voting and it has spread to their FPTP elections now.
So I think a change in voting system is important to get some things done. Progressive social change in Ireland would have been significantly stalled if left wing coalition partners hadn’t been required, but the price for that has always been supporting neoliberal policies. And I think it will change duopoly politics. I just think that neoliberal hegemony would most likely survive it in the US as here. But you would most likely get a public health system I think given its centrist appeal.
Maybe “glorious mess” doesn’t mean what you think it means?
But I thought that European parliaments were perfectly functioning socialist paradises! /s
Pot, kettle?
Mostly due to the massive influx of middle eastern Islamic immigrants. The feeling here is that the Islamic countries need to step up and help, but they’re relying on the EU to handle them. Which we have been for some time, but people are tired of it. Nationalism is not a purely American concept.
It’s a good system as far as it goes, but right now things have gone past that. There are fascists mobilizing to hurt people all over, and as Mindy points out France has been far from immune. We are all suffering the effects of a pandemic no matter how sensible our particular regions were, because others insisted on making themselves Petri dishes for it. The global environment we depend on is being killed.
For people right in the line of fire, like trans people, I entirely understand looking for a safe place. For anyone else, though, they need to stop thinking about what works for themselves and start thinking about what works for everyone. Because things are really bad and we can’t fix anything otherwise.
There won’t be a shire, Pippin.
What do you think it means? I like our system here. As far as our last election, I’m not a huge Macron fan, but like you, when it gets down to the final election we don’t get much say in picking our presidential candidates. I do like the fact that our parliamentary government manages to get thing done even with all the political parties involved.
Only if you ignore every single post @anon61221983 has ever made on the BBS. which, as of this moment, is over 64,000.
