There isn’t only 2 options. It’s insane that you keep voting for the same 2 corrupt useless parties when you have several others to choose from. And if everyone keeps saying “but they’ll never make it” they actually won’t. Only if you start voting for them the 2 party system can be abolished.
As a staunch Bernie supporter, I’ve accepted that America is currently too broken to consider alternatives. We are on the brink of full collapse of our entire democratic system and have already been through an insurrection that a large percentage of the population is perfectly okay with. We’re heading toward full blow autocracy with another greedy Putin / Xi at the helm which will threaten the entire world so cut us some slack if we need to be pragmatic for the time being.
My only hope in the US right now as a socialist, is that the current neoliberal death spiral between the two consenting parties will eventually lead to people saying enough is enough in a meaningful political way, that combined with labor organizing. Every use of the word “realistic” to bolster the current arrangement of the parties is evidence they’re still comfortable with it in some manner and believe in it, that they still consent to this “reality.” The continued erosion of the social contract will change this over time, then they’ll either turn their dissatisfaction towards an internalized “other,” or they will choose the solidarity option and throw the bosses of their backs.
Accepting things are bad and displaying how this affects you to others is the bare minimum to even begin to organize against this system. Any time a Democrat supporter tries to do the “realistic” or “clearly better but not good” thing they’re rationalizing and regulating what should be a display of revulsion.
It is insane, but again, we have to be realistic about how things work. The system is literally slanted to emphasize two parties. If we had something like ranked choice voting then at least we could start to support third options. But the way it works now, unfortunately, a vote for a third party is as good as a vote for the candidate you hate the most.
To win the presidential election, you need to win a majority of the vote in enough states to win a majority of electoral college votes.
If no-one gets 270 electoral votes, then the House of Representatives meets. Each state delegation gets 1 vote. Right now, that means that the Republican wins, due to e.g. Wyoming and Alaska getting just as much of a vote as NY and California, and Republican gerrymandering of swing states.
There’s literally no way for third party candidates to be elected president. The best that a third party has ever done was in 1860, a 4 way race between a Democrat, Republican, Southern Democrat, and Constitutional Unionist.
Lincoln, the Republican, got 39.8% of the vote but won 18 states and 180 electoral votes. The Democrat, Douglass, got 29.5% of the vote but only won a single state. Breckenridge got only 18.1% of the vote but carried most of the southern states. And Bell got 12.6% of the vote and carried 3 states - Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
So Douglas ended up with more than twice as many actual votes as Bell, but got over 3x the electoral vote. And Breckenridge only got less than half as many electoral college votes that he’d need to win, and could realistically have only picked up Bell’s.
The last time a third party candidate won a single electoral college vote was in 1968, when George Wallace won Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. He was the former governor of Alabama, and had left the Democratic party after the 1964 civil rights law and 1965 voting rights law were passed by Johnson.
The Democrats are also more of a big tent than most parties in counties using party list PR would be. In Italy, AOC and Manchin wouldn’t be in the same party, while in the US they basically have to be to win.
The two party system exists for structural reasons. Plurality only works well in two candidate elections; third parties only do well in districts where they functionally replace a major party. Getting rid of the two party system is possible by changing the structure - switching to e.g. STAR voting in the senate and presidency and using e.g. MMP or STV in the House. But burying your head in the sand to pretend the structural issues don’t exist just doesn’t work.
There isn’t only 2 options. It’s insane that you keep voting for the same 2 corrupt useless parties when you have several others to choose from. And if everyone keeps saying “but they’ll never make it” they actually won’t. Only if you start voting for them the 2 party system can be abolished.
As a staunch Bernie supporter, I’ve accepted that America is currently too broken to consider alternatives. We are on the brink of full collapse of our entire democratic system and have already been through an insurrection that a large percentage of the population is perfectly okay with. We’re heading toward full blow autocracy with another greedy Putin / Xi at the helm which will threaten the entire world so cut us some slack if we need to be pragmatic for the time being.
My only hope in the US right now as a socialist, is that the current neoliberal death spiral between the two consenting parties will eventually lead to people saying enough is enough in a meaningful political way, that combined with labor organizing. Every use of the word “realistic” to bolster the current arrangement of the parties is evidence they’re still comfortable with it in some manner and believe in it, that they still consent to this “reality.” The continued erosion of the social contract will change this over time, then they’ll either turn their dissatisfaction towards an internalized “other,” or they will choose the solidarity option and throw the bosses of their backs.
Accepting things are bad and displaying how this affects you to others is the bare minimum to even begin to organize against this system. Any time a Democrat supporter tries to do the “realistic” or “clearly better but not good” thing they’re rationalizing and regulating what should be a display of revulsion.
It is insane, but again, we have to be realistic about how things work. The system is literally slanted to emphasize two parties. If we had something like ranked choice voting then at least we could start to support third options. But the way it works now, unfortunately, a vote for a third party is as good as a vote for the candidate you hate the most.
The problem is mathematical.
To win the presidential election, you need to win a majority of the vote in enough states to win a majority of electoral college votes.
If no-one gets 270 electoral votes, then the House of Representatives meets. Each state delegation gets 1 vote. Right now, that means that the Republican wins, due to e.g. Wyoming and Alaska getting just as much of a vote as NY and California, and Republican gerrymandering of swing states.
There’s literally no way for third party candidates to be elected president. The best that a third party has ever done was in 1860, a 4 way race between a Democrat, Republican, Southern Democrat, and Constitutional Unionist.
Lincoln, the Republican, got 39.8% of the vote but won 18 states and 180 electoral votes. The Democrat, Douglass, got 29.5% of the vote but only won a single state. Breckenridge got only 18.1% of the vote but carried most of the southern states. And Bell got 12.6% of the vote and carried 3 states - Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
So Douglas ended up with more than twice as many actual votes as Bell, but got over 3x the electoral vote. And Breckenridge only got less than half as many electoral college votes that he’d need to win, and could realistically have only picked up Bell’s.
The last time a third party candidate won a single electoral college vote was in 1968, when George Wallace won Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. He was the former governor of Alabama, and had left the Democratic party after the 1964 civil rights law and 1965 voting rights law were passed by Johnson.
The Democrats are also more of a big tent than most parties in counties using party list PR would be. In Italy, AOC and Manchin wouldn’t be in the same party, while in the US they basically have to be to win.
The two party system exists for structural reasons. Plurality only works well in two candidate elections; third parties only do well in districts where they functionally replace a major party. Getting rid of the two party system is possible by changing the structure - switching to e.g. STAR voting in the senate and presidency and using e.g. MMP or STV in the House. But burying your head in the sand to pretend the structural issues don’t exist just doesn’t work.
Thanks for taking the time to write this comment. It is a pleasure to read informed and educational comments.