Sorry, SentientMeat. I hadn’t noted your location.
The fact remains, though, that in American politics, there are far more issues that are, essentially, settled. America is a free market system. The Constitution is our form of government, and our major political parties are both Constututional parties, embodying its ideals in various forms.
The Socialists, Fascists and Communists could never gain a toehold in the American political system not because the political system is closed to them but because, IMHO, the ideals expressed by these groups are completely alien to American ideals, American traditions, and the American way of life.
Now, we can open the political system up to third parties more. Certainly, there was less legal impediment to them in the past. However, American political life has been dominated by a two-party system for most of its history, except for a few transition periods. I believe this is a natural feature of American politics.
I don’t think the advantages to it can be completely overlooked, either. American politics has, in comparison to many nations, tended to be centrist and stable. I think this, too, is an expression of the national will. Most people are moderate in their manner as well as their politics, and value these traits in their leaders and their country.
Then why did half the voting population not vote at all in 2000? If the Democrats and the Republicans accurately reflected the traits people value in their leaders and their country, why aren’t more people voting for them?
More people don’t vote because they are too wrapped in themselves and are either incapable or unwilling to put in the time to educate themselves about local or national issues.
And that’s just fine with me. I don’t want someone in the voting booth that has no clue about what or who they are voting for. Let the clueless and apathetic stay at home.
Could a third party candidate mine these people for support? Perhaps. Especially if they appealed to the young. But good luck.
Please, Olentzero. The two-party system hardly causes voter apathy.
If you were to grab some of those apathetic voters and drag them to the voting booth, do you really think they’d vote for Socialists, Libertarians or Greens if given the chance?
I’d love to see some evidence that they would. Most of the apathetic non-voters that I know (and I’ve known quite a few) tend to be political moderates, just like most Americans are anyway.
The purpose behind my first statement was simply to point out that the melodramatic tone of many of your posts distracts from real argument. And I see that I was right, in that you felt the need to gloss over the real thrust of my post. If you think that I am ‘evil,’ ‘oppressing you,’ or ‘keeping you down,’ fine. I eat babies and trip old ladies in the street, too. I don’t care who you vote for. But purity of thought is something that only winners can afford, and even then, only in small amounts.
We’re discussing the system as it now stands- a two party, winner takes all system. In this system, any efforts that you make to enlarge the influence of a third party during election time only hurts the major party that matches your position the best. So the end result is counterintuitive. Do you want to argue this point, or can you concede that this is the case? If you want to argue that the long term political health of the nation is better served by it, fine.
If you want to change the system, we can talk. I don’t know that I’d agree with you, but I concede that reasonable people can disagree on the subject. But so many of these third parties are driven by personality rather than policy, and only pop up every 4 years to whine about how they’ve been ‘frozen out.’ Does anyone know what Nader really stands for? Hell, for all of the smoke he generated, what the heck did Perot want?
Precisely, which is why I said way back at the beginning that Nader voters exert a leftist influence on US politics overall. The same would be true of, say, Pat Buchanan voters on the far right. They cause the main parties to at least weigh up the consequences of shifting their policies, rather than allowing them to swing all over the place in search of the holy, sacred ‘centre’ without any electoral risk whatsoever.
There does appear to be an odd kind of reverence for this word “centre”, even though the centre clearly changes over time and throughout the world. It is as though the cart is coming before the horse; we are so used to hearing that “the centre ground is crucial for an election” that the word has started to be appropriated as vindicating a certain set of policies! (“It is best because it is centrist.” “Pray tell me, how can the centre, then, move??”)
None of which could have happened if Gore just won the state outright with some more votes, or took another state, etc. It was a close election. Stolen? Well, whatever.
Yes, the odds are stacked against third parties. But the odds were already stacked against them by the voting system, which tends towards two party systems.
They’re not. That has always and forever been my point in the various threads we’ve been in on this subject. Approval voting for presidential elections and party list proportional for Congress will make third parties easy contenders on the national front, or at least will make their issues something the rest of us have to consider with actual politics rather than underhanded means as you mention.
The gate is locked to third parties. I’ve accepted this some time ago. Voting for them in this system is not likely to garner anything but spoiled elections.
What does cause it, then? And why should it be acceptable?
No, probably not - but then I’m not looking to establish compulsory voting, either.
Then again, why are they apathetic? If the Democrats and the Republicans are the moderate parties naturally favored by the American electoral system (an assertion I just don’t buy, given the things I’ve found relating to requirements for third-party participation set up by the Republicans and the Democrats themselves), why aren’t the people whose values they match getting out and voting for them? If they’re not educated enough about the issues, as Evil One asserts, how can you say they’re moderate?
I honestly feel sorry for you - obviously dissatisfied with the way things are (re: your immediately preceding quote about approval voting), but unwilling to do anything about it.
I’ll not speak for erislover, but I can speak to my own experience. It is an unwillingness to sacrifice immediate, short term objectives that are in reach in favor of long term goals that will require a sea change in the American electorate to enact. Given that our government does not plan much beyond the 4 year election cycle, is it realistic for individual voters to do so?
There are a lot of reasons for voter apathy. Lots of people aren’t politically minded at all in America. There is a disinterest in it.
Again, as I mentioned, lots of things are essentially settled issues here. We don’t debate whether a free market is better - everyone agrees that it’s so. The people who don’t agree are a statistically insignificant force in American politics.
Taxation is another issue. Even the Democratic party can’t advocate European levels of taxation. They’d lose most of their base. Military spending must remain relatively high in this country because there’s a bipartisan commitment to it, national treaty obligations to be met, and military pork spread around Republican and Democratic districts both.
In this environment, it’s easy for someone to conclude that the country is chugging along pretty well, all things considered. The issues truly up for debate might not matter to someone, or he might be uneducated about those issues. He may feel that the parties are so close, because of these settled issues, that his vote won’t change much.
It is unlikely, though, that voter apathy is caused by someone being a Socialist, Communist, Libertarian or Green and there being no outlet for these feelings. There are way too many apathetic voters to account for this. Again, all of these fringe movements together don’t add up to much in American politics. And it stands to reason that an apathetic voter would reflect the greater population, which tends toward political moderation.
That the &%*$ing state of Illionois first ‘lost’ my voter registration for the 2000 election and then registered me an hour and a half from where I lived for the 2002 election.
This is one facet. Also consider that fracturing the left will only guarantee that the right controls the government. Similarly, fracturing the right (say, social versus fiscal conservatives) will only guarantee that the left takes control. This will not institute any change. Unless the far left and the far right (and other independents like libertarians) can find common ground and band together on a simple platform like voting reform, all fracturing one side will do is allow the other to win, and retain power through underhanded redistricting schemes and above-board tactics like, you know, getting people to vote for them. If they all split their sides but do not band together, nothing is accomplished but decreasing the number of votes it takes to win the election.
But the practical side is real: I recognize the problem, but in the meantime political forces still need to be aligned with or without me. Since the election will be between two people, if I have a preference between them it would seem improper for me not to state that preference.
But clearly it would take much, much more fracturing than we even theoretically have to pull elections away from either major party. In this sense, I’m with Mr Moto, and I pretty much take it for granted that most people are more or less centrist with various personal issues that will tilt them at various political windmills. Without more issue-based parties (i.e., without more parties) and a way to get them elected based on more accurate forms of representation, the big two will stay big enough to mangle the process at a presidential level, and maintain a near-stranglehold on Congress (though some seats might slip here or there).
Agreement on a subject doesn’t necessarily mean the idea agreed upon is true. And simply being in a minority doesn’t necessarily mean those who hold that opinion are wrong; conversely, being right doesn’t automatically come from being in a minority in the first place.
I’m not saying the 50% of the populace that didn’t vote are card-carrying party members of any stripe. I just see a disconnect between the assertion that their beliefs and values are matched by the politics presented by either the Republicans or the Democrats, and the fact that they don’t get out and vote.
Same thing for the assertion that both mainstream parties reflect the moderate beliefs of the American populace.
You’re assuming that the level of voter apathy would at least remain constant if the US political arena were opened up to three or more parties, an assertion for which there is no historical justification. I don’t know what the voter turnout in European multi-party countries has been over the last two decades or so, but I’d wager that percentagewise, it’s far higher than the US’ turnout over the same period of time. I’m convinced otherwise - the more parties competing for public office in a country, the higher the voter turnout. The only way we’d be able to prove this here is to open the gates to other parties, which the Democrats and the Republicans seem very loathe to do.
And yet you would rather continue voting for a party that seeks to maintain the status quo with which you are so dissatisfied. I really don’t get it.
I didn’t think we were discussing right and truth. We were discussing politics.
This is a democratic republic. Agreement on a subject means that it’s implemented. It doesn’t mean that it’s true, necessarily. It does mean that it reflects the values and beliefs of the country.
The alternative, of course, is for decisions that someone else decides are correct to be imposed on the people. This is an undemocratic process, by definition, and has been shown in practice to be usually less desirable.
And what voting systems do they use in European countries? For single seat elections, first-past-the-post and runoff voting are the most common throughout the world. But for the rest of the world, their legislators are voted in by other methods than first-past-the-post. This enables minority representation which is otherwise a pipe dream.
In general, if I could reshape American politics with a minimum of fuss, I’d make the HoR party-list voting and forget districts, the Senate can stay the same (f-p-t-p), and presidential elections should be approval or runoff voting (preferably the former). I think this would make a nice trade-off between strong leadership, multiple parties, and varied representation.
The symptom is a two party system. The disease is the voting system.
I can understand why you think that is the system, but it isn’t. What it is actually is a multi-party system in which two of the parties are rewarded with special legislative favor and qualifying exemptions.
Not best — better, if there are only two. And as I said already, if the only choice is between two evils, then evil is the only choice. There’s precious little difference between the Republicrats and Demublicans anyway. Both favor continued funding for the War on Americans I Mean Drugs. Both spend money like drunken sailors on leave. Both shove their noses into the business of peaceful honest people. And both have overseen the institutionalization of a Titanic manifold of bureaucracies and centralized, mush-headed planning. Damned if I’m going to vote for which I believe is better between the devil and the deep blue sea. With one we get Janet Reno, and with the other we get John Ashcroft. How the heck does a sane person decide which is closer to the ideal?
If I were Nader I would stay in the race until October, then drop out and endorse Kerry. Then if Kerry gets elected I could plausibly claim some credit for it, and he would owe me a favor. Of course, I’m not Nader. (But how can any of you be sure of that?)
It doesn’t matter whether we’re centrist compared to the rest of the industrialized world. No, this isn’t some veiled way of saying “USA, USA, we’re the best and everyone else sucks.” What matters is that they’re centrist according to American politics.
