Still wouldn’t work. Think about it. Even with preference voting or approval voting, some states will go for the centrist and some for the dem and neither party will get an EV majority. You gotta get rid of the EC before any reform is possible.
Yes, I was never clamoring for such a thing, and frankly even if it was perfectly workable I don’t see how we could get there from here.
But if I awoke in a parallel universe where there was an established three party system I would be delighted to be part of a centrist party that was slightly socially progressive and fiscally conservative.
(My response was largely a thought experiment, but if the questions I posed could be answered without raising even more questions – it might not be a bad idea to consider if say a new republic was to pop-up on the globe somewhere. Or perhaps in a sci-fi setting.)
Hate to be the guy who quotes himself but following this thought experiment:
One thing about this that fascinates me is how alliances would be formed. The most likely scenario would certainly be where either the left or the right has a very popular very charismatic candidate and other side allies with whatever part of the center does not attach itself to the popular candidate. But imagine if the center has that popular, charismatic candidate and the far left and far right must unite to oppose him or her. (Or run two much less popular candidates and hand the election over.)
I believe in a system like this you are not likely to see three roughly equal candidates as much as you think. I think there would be much more fluidity and the electorate would be more dynamic. A popular candidate might attract the support of a good deal of its neighboring party in one cycle – then lose one hundred percent support for re-election in the next cycle.
The way I picture the three party system working is that it increases the swing voters in the middle from 5% of the electorate to about 25% of the electorate. That changes everything in a fundamental way. Every issue stops being a bi-polar switch that the voter is either for or against. There comes room for nuance, there comes room for actual debate and thought not – just positions and oppositions.
It seems to me a negotiated settlement between a 40% 20% 40% electorate will be much better than a solution between a 48% 3% 49% electorate. There might be some synthesis drawing from both sides but denying the most controversial aspects of an issue rather than the bullying that we have now. Compromise, true compromise, will lead to better solutions and it will be possible in that system.
The people will remain the same – but how they think of themselves, and how they think might be quite different. A few more may start to think for themselves rather than getting marching orders from their party, or church, or news station.
That’s pretty much the current mainstream Democratic Party. The progressive wing is particularly noisy at the moment but not remotely as influential as the centrist corporatist wing that Biden belongs to, and note that the last two Democratic administrations were marked by strong economic growth and significant cuts to the deficit. Even their social progressive stances have tended to be reactive rather than proactive; by the time they take a firm position on something there’s usually already substantial public support for it.
I have plenty of issues with the Democratic Party (which is why I’m not a member of it) but they are not the extreme leftists the Republicans like to call them.
The singular reason that the US doesn’t have a centralist party is that there aren’t sufficient votes there.
There are plenty of voters, sure.
But whether apathetic, disengaged or disenfranchised they don’t count at the count.
The notion that there could be three equal sized parties, likely giving “your” Centrists a near permanent lock on power, is simply naif.
So whilst the GOP/DEM can reliably win elections though an appeal to their base, the only places on the political spectrum that can sustain a national political party are to the extreme flanks of the existing parties.
In Illinois, you don’t have to declare your party affiliation until you are at the actual poling place. For the primaries, I wait to see which party has more elections where my voice may matter. 4 years ago, Hillary was going to win the Democratic nomination for President, so my vote wasn’t going to matter. For Senate this year, there was no chance of Durban loosing. But, if the lower races (which will have more effect on my day-to-day life) are competitive, I’m voting in the Republican primary so that my voice is heard locally.
In Michigan you can pick which primary to participate in as you sign in. You’re given one of two ballots depending on what you choose on your application to vote that you fill out on site. The only primaries I’ve voted in I’ve chosen the Republican ballot because there has been someone truly noxious that I don’t want to win the primary. Most of the time I don’t bother because they don’t have anything differentiating them in primaries.
Here in Colorado I’m registered as Libertarian (not that I am, but I get less crap than if I was registered as R or D), which means I get both the D and R sent to me to chose from. I can admittedly only submit one of them, but much like glowacks, it lets me see who’s who on both side, and choose if it’s better to vote for someone, or against someone. Since it’s all via mail, I can sit with both ballots in front of my computer and get a better idea of what is the most strategic option with a bit of research.
I can understand Republicans who vote for trump because of abortion, tax policy or judges.
What I don’t get are the ones who have orwellian beliefs about trump. people who think he is a great father, brave, devoted to America, a great businessman, someone who values rural America and the people who live there, intelligent, competent, great at leadership, honest, good for America’s reputation, etc.
all are not only the opposite of true but it is easy to disprove. it makes no sense. it’s worse then a cult.
Exactly!
The whole reason I started this thread was because of how insanely devoted some Trump supporters are, and how facts and logic have no impact upon their devotion to him. I have had very little success even getting any devoted Trump supporter to listen to points of opposition. Those are dismissed as liberal inspired fake news witch hunts.
It is exactly a cult - the right-wing narrative is that anything that contradicts the right-wing narrative is “fake news” (have a look at Bill O’Reilly’s twitter feed for an easy example), anyone outside the cult is evil and acting out of irrational hate, anyone who leaves the cult is corrupted and therefore must be condemned and shunned, and any story that reflects well on the group and its leader must be automatically accepted, no matter how obviously untrue.
Again, this isn’t true of every Republican - not even those supporting Trump - but there are a lot of Trump cultists out there (including in my own family) who act like this.
I fail to understand how anyone at all who is not a Trump cultist can support him even one iota.
It’s all about the judges.
You also know (better than most, perhaps) how actively, shrewdly, relentlessly, and cynically DJT has mined the “God said it. I believe it” crowd.
I fail to understand it also – but I witness it on a regular basis.
They just gleefully bound into the kitchen as I tell them “It is a cookbook!!”
Perhaps I should start asking them to prey for discernment instead of asking them to look at reality. (Discernment is a BIG deal to most of them.) But you are right, I can see how he takes them in with the most crude slight of hand.
Yes, the fact that the Trump administration will nominate good Bible believing conservative judges opposed to sinful abortion means he is God Almighty’s anointed choice to lead our exclusively Christian nation.
I wonder if they think of Stormy Daniels as Bathsheba?
I wonder what percentage of Republcians believe that extreme view that we will become like the Soviet Union? I think it is not very high but I would bet that at least half and probably more believe Biden/Harris are socialists like Bernie and are scared of “government run” healthcare and believe all government programs are horribly run. They get some of this from political flyers delivered by the USPS, one of the more reliable organizations in the world, some of them getting their Social security checks from them, and they, or their parents get Medicare and as one poster in a rally once said, “Keep your government hands off my Medicare”, while many get health care through the ACA and are glad that they don’t have Obamcare and millions are now getting unemployment benefits and received thier $1200 stimulus check. Some of them probably think about the horrors of the coming of socialism while driving on the interstate highways, or getting their electricity from the Hoover Dam. I like to picture some of them looking up at the moon and thinking of Neil Armstrong stepping down onto it, the moon landing being the greatest technological feat in human history, and complaining that he would have been there much sooner if the Apollo program had been a private enterprise.
Good typo; because they’re being preyed upon.
Damn!
I really did that, what a dumb mistake. Thank you for a clever correction.