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Yes even Bernie
The two-party system is not fake, it's a very real inevitability of FPtP voting.
For example: This 60-second animation shows how divided Congress has become over the last 60 years
Ignoring that also turns everything to the right (if not through actual voting, through lower turnout).
This 60-second animation shows how divided Congress has become over the last 60 years
Of course it worsened visibly with Reagan.
Incidentally, I mildly disagree with OP's analogy. Yes, the wheel is turning further to the right, yes, the democrats aren't doing enough to stop or even wheel it back, but there's no spring coil in the wheel, it wouldn't snap back by itself if you removed the blue from the picture. That's bullshit.
It worsened visibly with the dixiecrat switch, because they are a single issue voting bloc (racism).
They actually tried to run as a third party, but the dixiecrat party lost in 48, having failed to spoil truman. Thurmond's speeches here are quite profound.
The problem is that we have a voting bloc that literally wants only one thing, and it's concrete, not a vague notion of Healthcare and reducing income inequality with no concrete steps and massive, united opposing interests.
Maybe get minorities to appreciate how many dixiecrats vote the way they do only because they see non-whites as animals?
Doubtful. I didn't believe it myself till I lived there, the level of hate is just impossible to fathom.
Considering almost every single group of people supports progressive policies, and the fact that the policies that are most important to the median citizen are completely ignored by congress means that yes, if a leftist party was allowed to take power the wheel would snap back very far to the left.
The two party system is inevitable under FPTP, true. But that does not mean change is impossible. The Tea Party managed to take over the Republican Party from the inside out.
We need a Guillotine Party to do the same thing to the Democratic Party.
I'm not seeking to defend FPTP, butf the two party system is inevitable, how come the UK has 393 political parties? It's true that one of two parties usually wins, but against that backdrop, the SNP was able to flourish in Scotland. In America you literally have Republican, Democratic parties and Independents. It is not inevitable but it certainly isn't a good system for the modern age.
Those policital parties include the Monster Raving Loony party and the Pastafarians. We have Count Binface or is it Lord Buckethead running for seats. Minority parties rarely get more than a handful of votes, they don't get any seats.
We have FPTP here too, traditionally it's a race between Labour vs Conservative. A few areas tend to vote Lib Dem, and one consitutiency has been Green for a very long time. But generally it's Labour vs Tories. Now with the UK MAGA (the grifter Nigel Farridge, yes I spelt his name like that on purpose) is gaining popularity on the back of the rise of the hard right. The Tories went full hard right in 2019 when Johnson purged the party of any moderates, so only the loons who worshipped at the altar of brexit were allowed to stay. They continued this trajectory which means they're almost defunct, since anyone who's hard/far right will move to Reform (bunch of racist thugs) and the more moderate Tory voters will switch to Lib Dem or just sit it out. Although Labour seems to still be stuck in 2016 and pandering to the Brexiteers, even though polls show a majority for rejoin or at least closer relations with the EU (eg single market/customs union). So it seems if things continue, it'll be Labour vs Reform. They did well in the popular vote, as much as I hate FPTP, I'm glad it kept them from getting more than 4 seats. Interestingly enough, the media really really pushes Reform. They get tons of airtime, so much promotion. The libdems in comparison get barely any, despite having more seats. The Greens have 4 seats and barely get a look in in the media. The media (inc the BBC, Laura Kuensberg especially) is definitely favouring the hard right.
The current leader of the opposition, Kemi Badenoch, is a joke. Just your daily reminder that this woman thinks asylum seekers shouldn't be allowed here because they didn't earn their right to live here.
She only has British citizenship at all because her parents came here from Nigeria just before her mum was due to give birth, booked a private hospital for the birth, then bogged off straight back to Nigeria. That's how she got her British passport. That's how she "earned" her right to be here. Hypocrite POS.
The TLDR channel on YouTube explains a lot of British politics in a quick way for anyone who wants to know more.
I don't care to defend that point. The point I am focused on is Guillotine Party.
Whether we eliminate FPTP or not; whether we develop a third party or not, the leadership and ~~Billionaire~~ Problem Class needs to be removed from all parties.
The SNP flourished in Scotland because the Scottish parliament has a proportional representation system (ironically chosen to keep the SNP out of power). Their success in the Scottish Parliament helped get them when contesting FPTP in Westminster.
I don't know much about UK elections, but from what I see on Wikipedia it deploys different voting systems and even fptp is really a fptp system + party list so not exactly the same.
In US there truly is just a single election where you give a single vote for the candidate and whomever gets more votes wins.
Yes, there are primary elections too, but those aren't real elections, they are elections run by the parties to pick up their candidate. They actually could not hold election and just pick up the candidate themselves and that's what they often do for a second term.
The way it works with FPTP in US is that it naturally forces two parties, as you generally are forced to vote against someone and not for someone. This is because of there are two good candidates and one bad, the vote splits and the bad candidate wins due to spoiler effect. So people try to predict which candidates will likely win and vote for the lesser evil.
So no one in 3rd party has any chance, and generally most of the times the people who are running 3rd party are just pathetic.
Sometimes when a serious candidate runs in 3rd party it generally spoils for the candidate with similar views. That's how Bill Clinton won against HW Bush
For UK general elections (what we call elections to Parliament, our national legislature), the UK is divided into 650 constituencies, each of which elect one MP by FPTP. There is no party-list component.
The situation is different for other elections:
AMS is what we call MMP. Assemblies elected by AMS are composed of some single-member seats elected by FPTP which are then grouped into larger regions, each of which are allocated a certain number of seats to be used for the proportional component. These also use closed party lists, and is probably where the idea that our FPTP system is FPTP + party lists. It's not: FPTP is exactly the same in the UK as it is in the US. If there's any component on top of that, we call it AMS.
I would guess it's because the size and complexity of the country, coupled with both sides cracking down hard on ballot access to third parties does that.
Some parts of those governments do have proportional representation (like Scottish Parliment where the SNP has the most representation).
Other than that, I would guess there are a lot of small reasons... like differences in structure/operation/rules, that recall elections are a thing, larger gov't bodies, and election frequency. From the outside, I'd also guess that some of these parties do/have held power for a while until they mess things up and the voters switch it out.
Also a lot of the issue here is with US presidency, and the electoral college cements it even further. That is where it is the biggest inevitability as it's a big race that largely decides the next 4 years (also a partisan senate and house can enable or stall legislature, also how the right stacked the supreme court).
This is also a long-term imbalance (as shown by the video I linked) that intensifies over time. Other systems having different factors may be what prevented it from being a huge issue there, and it probably helps that they are older/more-stable (and less individualistic) countries.
Plenty of awful capitalist controlled democracys have different voting systems and multiple parties and are still following America's lead into Fascism.
This was maybe a thing to care about a decade or two ago.
Its possible for both to be true. Id much prefer a ranked choice voting system.
What's also important would be to 1) unionize businesses over a certain size 2) convert those businesses to worker Cooperatives
A worker cooperative is a business that is owned collectively by all the employees and decisions are made through democracy (structure depending on application).
Some countries have had programs where unions can buy shares of the company they represent and the government will match it. Then either the union eventually owns the majority shares and it effectively becomes a worker cooperative or the state and the union own majority shares.
The SPD effect.
Is this meme intentionally ignoring the massive progress on lgbt rights in the last decades or no? It's an overly simplistic representation of a very complicated issue
Democrats understand that being gay doesn't restrict their power. Republicans hate gays because they are religiously indoctrinated to hate them.
You can be gay under Democrats, but you're sure as shit gonna stay a slave.
Democrats aren't doing anything to try and stop the dismantling and reversing of said progress on lgbt rights in the last decades.
They are targeting all things lgbt and won't stop until officially lgbt never existed and it's a thing to be stopped by all means.
That's how i took it, this is the current situation.
Agreed.
It resonates with people because in recent years we've seen an uptick in conservative politics.
The reality is that progressive vs conservative policies exist in a homeostatic relationship and there's an ebb and flow as societal norms and the overton window wander around.
The US electoral system is not representative. Wealthy donors have too much control. There are valid criticisms to be made of the Dems ...
... but ultimately it's an absurdity to suggest that the democrats block movement back to the left. In the US if you want progressive policies implemented you need to vote Democrat. That's it.
In the US if you want progressive policies implemented you need to vote Democrat. That's it.
Hell no what the shit? This thinking is why the US is going fascist. Voting democrat as a vehicle for change has been demonstrated to be a failed proposition.
Sorry, I'm not going to engage with this argument.
It was repeated ad-nauseum in the lead up to November 6.
All points have been made and re-iterated.
America has gotten further left, and we seem to have recovered from the Republican-lite era of the '90s. But the Republicans keep gaining power and moderates keep voting for them despite agreeing with Dems.
But that's extremely damaging to the narrative, so we're just gonna... ignore it.
Civil rights are liberal, not left specifically.
Imagine being this ignorant of recent history.
Name one left wing policy Democrats have executed in the past 20 years.
They actively block unions when we should be setting up matching programs so that unions can buy up their companies and convert them to worker cooperatives
We should be building high speed rail and getting rid of cars in favor of walkable cities and public transport.
We should be building infrastructure from renewable energy to water delivery systems.
We need a massive increase on corporate taxes and taxes on the rich. I'm even down for a wealth cap at $5 million.
We can't even get basic center-right policies like banning politicians from trading stocks or making sure politicians have frozen assets while in office to prevent them from using their position for their own gain.
To be left wing you have to side with workers rights over property rights, People over employers. That is why the left starts at anti-capitalism.
They actively block unions
We should be building high speed rail and getting rid of cars in favor of walkable cities and public transport.
Holy fucking shit.
Do you not remember the Obama administration's funding? Do you not remember the fights over public rail?
We should be building infrastructure from renewable energy to water delivery systems.
Do you not remember the Biden administration passing the biggest infrastructure bill in the past century, which focused heavily on renewables and included 31 billion for drinking water infrastructure
We need a massive increase on corporate taxes and taxes on the rich.
Would you like to remind me of the tax policy the past [checks notes] twenty years of Democratic presidential candidates have ran on?
this is ridiculous and completely incorrect.
pretty colors, vapid content.
Bernie, AOC, Abrams and others are fighting for the expansion and protection of civil rights.
trump is taking away and devaluing civil rights.
Bernie is a centrist at best. Things like civil rights are bare minimum, I'm talking about fundamental workers rights like the right to unionize, repealing Taft-Hartley, setting up matching programs with unions so that they can buy up their companies and become worker cooperatives, etc.
I believe Bernie is more based than centrism in his real views, but his public views are centrist at best.
He exists to deal with the revolutionary energy that is building and make people feel like their voices are being heard under the current establishment. But the reality is that you need corporate backing to win an election in the US by design. It is a corporate oligarchy, not a democracy
"Bernie is a centrist at best."
Plainly incorrect:
Bernie fights for universal healthcare, universal education, strong unions, higher taxes for the wealthy.
These are radically progressive positions in the US and most other countries.
"I believe Bernie is more based than centrism in his real views"
Your belief has no basis in reality, while his political track record is filled with the introduction of legislation and his public advocacy for the causes above and many more.
"you need corporate backing to win an election in the US by design."
this is also incorrect, the design was for anyone to be able to enter politics in the US. At a local level, this is still largely possible.
Corporate backing determining higher-level political outcome is a recent consequence of Citizens United, the ruling by the US Supreme Court that allowed unlimited political funding by the wealthy. That ruling is a corruption of the US political process, not "by design".
Bernie has also proposed legislation repealing CU and regularly advocates for repealing CU so that the "design" of political entry in the US can be reestablished.
Those are all great in the context of US politics. But things like universal healthcare shouldn't even be part of the debate, they should just be the standard expectation.
yup, I was speaking to the US context of the post.
aa for the "standard expectation", maybe in a perfect world, but unfortunately not in this one.
universal healthcare, education, housing, and the protection and maintenance of fundamental civil rights must be "part of the debate" because they are not guaranteed in most, and arguably all, countries.
To be clear, I'm not dunking on Bernie or AOC. Their intentions might be in the right place.
I'm saying the system will only allow so much muckraking. The ruling class ultimately determines who is on your ballot in the first place.
Then you have the list of other problems like first past the post voting, voter ID laws (poll tax), gerrymandering, the electoral college, and the fact that electorates are not legally required to vote the way their representatives vote in the election.
"To be clear, I’m not dunking on Bernie or AOC."
Not for lack of trying. You failed in mischaracterizing and insulting Sanders because I proved how baseless each of your accusations and assumptions are here: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35914985/17933545
"Their intentions might be in the right place."
There's no "might" about it, as I pointed out in the same comment.
"I’m saying the system will only allow so much muckraking."
And rivers are only so wide. Profound.
"The ruling class ultimately determines who is on your ballot in the first place."
Realizing your earlier error("...by design"), you are now just less accurately paraphrasing my prior comment:
"the design was for anyone to be able to enter politics in the US. At a local level, this is still largely possible.
Corporate backing determining higher-level political outcome is a recent consequence of Citizens United, the ruling by the US Supreme Court that allowed unlimited political funding by the wealthy. That ruling is a corruption of the US political process, not “by design”."
Thanks for backtracking, but pretending you were saying something different than you were before is disingenuous and irritating.
You were wrong about the US electoral process, or charitably, you misunderstood and mischaracterized it.
Your diagram is simplistic and fundamentally flawed.
You made up blatantly false and consistently vague accusations about Sanders and the US electoral system at large.
I corrected you on these points in earlier comments.
That's that.
And the party's leaders are actively trying to stop them.
Also all of these people were silent or supported the Gaza genocide.
your comment is
explicitly incorrect since Sanders forced multiple votes on blocking US arms to israel,
implicitly incorrect since neither of your comments negate the fact that the diagram is incorrect.
Omgord love it this is so flipping true, let's not forget the Imperial Boomerang.
Sometimes I wish this community would require authors to explain the meme. Where is the funny part?
I don't think it has to be funny? That said I find the ratchet analogy entirely incorrect:
Yes, the wheel is turning further to the right, yes, the democrats aren’t doing enough to stop or even wheel it back, but there’s no spring coil in the wheel, it wouldn’t snap back by itself if you removed the blue from the picture. That’s bullshit.