Have Elections Become Meaningless In America Re: Real Political Change

Politics & Elections
41

I don’t see anything in that that addresses your original complaint. It’s true that most parliamentary systems don’t have the prolonged and extremely expensive campaigns that the U.S. has but that is also irrelevant to the influence of the rich and powerful. You’ve switched goalposts. What country does not have a political system that is inherently dominated by the economic interests you dislike, and how did it achieve it?

This is beyond words. “Too big to fail” was the catchword of 2008, during the Bush administration. There is no - zero - evidence that the Republicans would allow a system in which the Wall Streeters that Evil Captor is so het up about go bankrupt in the numbers that a strict system would require. We lived through it; we saw it; you cannot rewrite history to say that it would have been done differently if the Republicans were in power. They were. Limiting the size of global financial institutions to make them too small to kill the economy if they go under is an interesting proposition but almost certainly unworkable, since that would also make them too small to be the global players they need to be. We live in a “too big to fail” global economy and to the extent that Evil Captor reflects reality neither party can possibly take the steps needed to correct that. A Republican philosophy to let banks fail flatly does not exist; it’s ideological delusion.

Proportional voting and parliamentary systems are in the same boat. They have some interesting theoretical advantages, but also have boatloads of unintended consequences. There’s no good transition plan that anyone has put forward to get from here to there either. The process will be hugely disruptive under the best possible plan; a less than optimal one is disaster in the making.

42

The party system is already institutionalized. The problem is that it is not institutionalized enough.

Yes, exactly. Then when you voted, you would have a better idea of what you were voting for. The juvenile fiction that you “vote for the person, not the party,” helps obscure accountability.

43

A larger-than-usual number of people fell for this argument in 2000 and the results were absolutely awful for almost everyone. But yes, sure, maybe this time it’s really true and it doesn’t matter who wins. Sounds like a worthwhile gamble to me!

44

If a person votes for Senator Ben Nelson and thinks he’s getting Representative Barney Frank because they are both members of the same party, that person it politically illiterate and there’s no change to the electoral system that can fix that. Our elections are all about candidates, not the parties. Shoot, almost every state also has primary elections to choose the person that gets to appear on the general election ballot for whatever party he’s a member of. If the electorate gets to choose who gets to run for the party, and then which person gets to win the election for which party, of course the election is about the person and not the party.

Except for that weird comment about popular votes being end of federalism (WTF?), I agree with everything else you’ve said here. Dude, I don’t think we’re allowed to agree on anything. Dogs and cats, sleeping together…

45

I’d like to point out that, back during the 2000 elections, a lot of people were saying that there was basically no difference between the two parties, and were talkling about voting for Ralph Nader in order to “send a message”. Even Michael Moore was talking about “sending a message” in this way.

We got George W. Bush* and saw that there was, nonetheless, a difference between the parties. We heard less about “sending a message” by voting for third party candidates in 2004. Even now in 2012 I see scare areticles directed at Democrats about whsat a Romney/Ryan presidency might bring.

So elections aren’t completely meaningless, although I grant that anyone who’s made it through the nomination process is guaranteed to be so homogenized that you aren’t going to get radical change that way.

*Please don’t go off on a tangent about how Bush was elected. The essemntyial point here is that there certainly was a palpable difference because of the outcome of the election.

46

That’s an interesting strawman, but not one I have any affiliation with.

My point is that it’s pointless to vote on the basis of individual characteristics in a system that distributes power to groups. We should be voting for the group.

47

The party system in DC primarily pertains to money, not policy. Political parties have much less influence on actual policies than do the various advocacy and lobbying organizations, from the NRA to AARP, and bankers to environmentalists. The bottom line is that individuals win elections, not groups.

48

But under your plan, all the elected officials would be Democrats and Republicans - they’re the only two parties which pass your five percent hurdle.

That’s the point I was making when I mentioned Canada and the United Kingdom - those countries have real third parties. If the United States had something similar - a party that was regularly getting ten or twenty percent of the votes but never reaching a majority - I would be open to a change in the system to reflect that party’s widespread support among the people. But no such party exists in this country.

49

I see claims that legislators don’t vote the way their constituents would like. I rather think the problem is often just the opposite. The concept of representative democracy is that we choose representatives smarter than ourselves. These days the Dunning–Kruger effect dominates America; Congressmen have to pretend to be stupid just to get votes.

It’s true, of course, that much legislation is aimed at helping corporations and rich people, rather than a majority of Americans, but much anti-populist legislation is wise. Protectionism is one big issue where public sentiment is opposite that of legislators, but most economists and even many liberal Dopers would agree that free trade, even when unpopular, is generally good. Similarly, bailouts for banks and businesses made sense; the problem was corruption and failure to re-regulate.

I don’t know that Congress election procedures and such are the problem. The American political system seemed to function OK until the Gingrich phenomenon about 20 years ago. It may be hard to put a finger on what went wrong, but I’d opt for Ignorant voters having too much power before voter powerlessness.

Are you serious? I don’t have any specific arrests to recommend, but that’s partly because I wasn’t paying attention. :cool: I was more interested in the Bubble 13 years ago. Out of curiosity, John, would you agree with me that several fund managers and Wall St. analysts should have been imprisoned for abuses then? If so, can you point to reforms during the GWB era that made fraud then less likely?

I nominate this statement for Most Ignorant in Thread.

I nominate this one for Most Confused and Conflational.

Yes. The Democratic Party is imperfect, but “ignorant” is too gentle a word for anyone pretending the two Parties present no choice.

50

That would change rather quickly if we implemented a new voting system. In Mass the threashold is 3% and the Green-Rainbow party has had more than that until recently when they dropped below. If you change the system to support 3rd parties, they will quickly develop.

51

I think you are oversimplifying my message. I have already said I will vote for Obama in this election cycle. The reason is that outside of the interests of Wall Street, in areas like foreign policy and civil liberties, the Dems ARE better than the Repubs. But in NO way do the Democrats represent progressive values, aside from a few outliers like Bernie Saunders, and they ARE beholden to Wall Street on economic issues.

The only way to get any kind of progress on progressive issues will be to work to develop a viable progressive movement in the US. All progressives will ever get from Democrats is the back of their hands, unless they are perceived as a threat to electing Democrats to office. We need to develop state and federal candidates all over the country. We need to develop a coherent platform that will appeal to the middle class who are finally starting to feel the pinch of all the looting the one percent has been doing of the American economy. And we need to give the Democrats the back of our hand when they try to co-opt us … cause they will, if we succeed.

52

Given that progressive is by definition very liberal, I don’t think you’re going to get a lot of argument there. But that’s lightyears away from “the parties are the same and elections are meaningless.” Blurring those two is a terrible idea.

Bernie Sanders isn’t a Democrat. He’s an independent and an outspoken socialist who caucuses with the Democrats, which kind of says it all about “are the parties the same?” and also undercuts what you go on to say here:

If you value ideological purity over getting stuff done, it’s easy enough to pick ideological purity. But you have nobody else to blame when nobody listens to you.

53

Isn’t that exactly what Nader supporters argued in 2000?

54

Your exact words, Nemo:

That hyperbole. PR does not mean that a Green Party that gets 1% of votes gets 30% of seats. It just doesn’t.

As for small groups swinging votes their way by pushing large groups around, that’s probably a bigger problem in a system of permanent huge coalitions like our two-party system. A modern Republican is expected to be consistently anti-tax, and for balanced budgets, and a hawk who will never cut defense spending. Those three things cannot be reconciled, making GOP governance impossible.

Add to that that he must be anti-birth control, believe global warming is a hoax, vote for a not only smaller but flattened tax base, be against open borders to immigration, and prevent gay marriage, and you have interest groups who hold vetoes on even getting a seat in much of the country. And even if you tick all these boxes, those who control advocacy organizations can slander you and misrepresent your position if they have a personal beef with you or are paid to do so. So the GOP don’t represent half the country; they represent the tiny fraction of the country that hold the “right” position on eight different things. Or worse, to those who have paid the appropriate bribes to the eight different keepers of public opinion they have to suck up to to get the big party nomination. Better to lower the threshold of support so a pol doesn’t have to bribe and lie to all those different interest groups.

Parties cut off members who don’t toe the party line now. Ever hear of being “primaried”? As for forcing votes, it happens now, and is all the worse for a politician if his party has a majority. The Democrats did it before 1994, the GOP do it today.

You aren’t stopping these things now.

Greece has a system like this. Ask them how that’s working out. A majority of the people voted to default on the debts a previous government had taken out in their name from German banks. The plurality party, getting bonus seats, was an anti-default party. They had to try to form a coalition, and the bonus seats created an anti-default majority, against the intent of the majority of the populace. It’s getting ugly.

A plurality is not a majority; don’t treat it as one.

Your opinion is wrong.

If my first choice pulls out before the primary, my new first choice is probably my old second choice. If my ideal choice never even ran (stood, whatever) for the office, then I’m choosing from the available choices. It’s not that different. really.

55

Or heck, let’s do it your way, Feldon. Fine. My votes for Democratic candidates should count less because my ideal choice is really a Green or a Social Democrat or something. That’s brilliant!

56

What happens when we get a war criminal and a mobster up against each other, and no developed third party to credibly challenge them?

Yeah, most voters don’t realize how powerful a caucus can be–the party caucus within the chamber, which makes and breaks careers–particularly post-Gingrich.

I don’t think this would be perceptibly less true under a multi-party régime.

Not so much. They did what most of the posers do; they latched onto a celebrity to run a vanity campaign for President. Building a real party takes local groundwork as well, over a long period of time. Since 2000, most of the left has been a bit angry and paranoid about Greens, making that much harder.

57

Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.

58

You’re missing the fact this was part of an ongoing exchange.

We were talking about means by which third parties would get an equal share to the Democrats and Republicans. An equal share in this situation would be a third, which I rounded off to thirty percent. Neither harmonicamoon nor Ascenray disputed that point.

So I was pointing out that any method which gave thirty percent of the power to a party that only received one percent of the votes would be undemocratic.

59

So far as I could tell, this was not based on anything I said. It looked like either hyperbole or non sequitur. I had no idea that it was something I was responsible for disputing.

I think the safe assumption is that when someone says “proportional representation,” he or she is referring to “representation” that is “proportional.” KnowwhatI’msayin?

Well, then, you’ve been out in the fields having lots of fun with a party of strawmen. Is it rockin’?

60

How much is this estimated to raise tax revenues?