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[NYCmetsfan]

We're all victims of the repercussions of a two-party system!

Just because you're willing to compromise your vote, it doesn't mean that you're not negatively affected by it. It would be in the best interest of the people to minimize that impact as much as possible, and we can't do that unless the people have better representation in the general election. Two choices selected by private parties is not enough. We don't need a perfect candidate, but you're less likely to pick a horrible candidate if you have a wider selection to choose from.

What you've done is simply create a false dichotomy where people have to make a choice between perfect options and shitty options, but protestors of the two-party system aren't necessarily looking for a perfect candidate.

No we're not. The only way your argument makes sense is if your going to go full benji and start talking about the NAP.

Its not that I'm willing to compromise my vote. Its the acknowledgement we live in a society with divergent views.

Lets take it from the beginning. People organize a society of 300 million people and need to fill one seat. Coalitions start forming among like minded people on candidates to fill those seats. Obviously we have coalitions that are similar and share values and opposition to other groups of coalitions. These form into parties and they hash it out who they want their party nominee to be because you know, we believe in democracy and they have to get a plurality to its only good to put up one dude/gal. Hence we get two parties.

What you're protestors are are people are one of those original coalitions who never formed up because people didn't accept everything or the one thing they find most important. They're selfish and discount the fact that, other people matter too and their opinions count. Instead of helping people who share everything but one or two things.

And of course they're looking for a perfect candidate. That's why they're not supporting the one who shares 91% of their views.

And I don't know what you mean by more choices. More parties just either, disenfranchses the vast majority of people who voted (say we elect someone who gets 20% of the vote, 80% never voted for the person) or we end up with the same kinda of interparty thing leading to the same two choices we have now, a liberal vs conservative (and don't give me the "there' no real liberal choice" because that just leads to the above point of unrepresentation )

 

[ampere]

I mean did we seriously expect a bunch of Bernie protesters to eat beans and fart a lot at the DNC? A lot of that stuff is just internet yelling

 

[Diablos]

I can't find the thread that was talking about all the planned Bernie protests, but:

Hahaha

 

[thcsquad]

I'm sympathetic to arguments about the merits of other political systems (though all have their disadvantages). I'm just not sure what a vote for a presidential candidate who's going to get like 1% of the vote actually does to the end of reform. Especially when it's a candidate as unappealing as, say, Jill Stein.

It's hard to jump there from here, but in a system where voting for a third party wasn't throwing your vote away, the Greens and Libertarians wouldn't be so insane because the people who lean that way from the major parties but aren't 'true believers' would feel free to vote for them and their influence would be a normalizing one.

I think in a coalition government system, Bernie Sanders wouldn't have run as a Democrat. He would have run as a Green (or as a 'Workers Party' or something, maybe gotten a respectable 15-20% (of the national vote, not the Dem vote we're talking about), and then Hillary forms a coalition government with him. This coalition government would look and function almost exactly as the Democratic Party looks now, but there would be two names instead of one.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

It's hard to jump there from here, but in a system where voting for a third party wasn't throwing your vote away, the Greens and Libertarians wouldn't be so insane because the people who lean that way from the major parties but aren't 'true believers' would feel free to vote for them and their influence would be a normalizing one.

I think in a coalition government system, Bernie Sanders wouldn't have run as a Democrat. He would have run as a Green (or as a 'Workers Party' or something, maybe gotten a respectable 15-20% (of the national vote, not the Dem vote we're talking about), and then Hillary forms a coalition government with him. This coalition government would look and function almost exactly as the Democratic Party looks now, but there would be two names instead of one.

It does nothing but make me feel better because we've put a different name on it!

Not helping the point these people are just selfish-self-absorbed people who don't know what they're talking about or serious about change

We literally have proportional representation in the dem primary. We have a coalition! But one coalition (a small part of it only) is saying "I'm taking my ball and going home because we didn't get everything"

 

[Iolo]

Food trucks are lined up for the Berners who are still not here for the demonstrations that were supposed to be at 8 & 11.
#DemConvention 

Current protest is about 20 people.
Placards "Hillary for Prison 2016" & "Bern for President."
Permits were for 30k & 55k
#DemsInPhilly 

What a waste of resources. Emergency services and food services have both gotta be pissed.

 

[brainchild]

Suggest an amendment.

Maybe there should be a council of ten copresidents. And they each appoint their own Cabinet.

You accuse intellectual laziness when the nature of the system naturally leads to two major parties, something that isn't uncommon in other forms of government anyway.

And your response is... change it. Somehow. Who knows.

Jibber jabber.

- Every four years, do a mail-in survey of the American people similar to a census to gauge political leanings and categorize the equivalent of temporary parties accordingly. The number of parties for the election will be determined by the amount of overlap between categories on the issues.

- After party options have been categorized, citizens will be notified of their options (and will be sent results of which party they're most closely aligned with if they participated in the census)

- Have the electoral college accommodate for the amount of candidates that will run in the general election based on the amount of parties involved

- Distribute a level of power in the executive branch that reflects the amount of support each candidate received in the general election; all candidates will become executive officers and their votes will be weighted according to the support they received from their constituents

I'm not going to draft up a whole new constitution for you in this post, but a new constitution is what we would need in order to pull this off.

What we have now is not satisfactory and just because we have an option that is less shit than another option, it doesn't mean that not choosing either shitty option makes a citizen personally responsible for the shitty things that happen to this country.

 

[Brinbe]

Idiots. At the very least I'm glad that the bernie stans aren't as powerful a group as people may have thought. They're a laughable afterthought.

And one thing quickly gleaned from the 60 mins excerpt is that Kaine is already not afraid to be the pitbull that the VP needs to be. Dig in and go at Trump in a way that the candidate can't.

 

[Box of Kittens]

It's hard to jump there from here, but in a system where voting for a third party wasn't throwing your vote away, the Greens and Libertarians wouldn't be so insane because the people who lean that way from the major parties but aren't 'true believers' would feel free to vote for them and their influence would be a normalizing one.

I think in a coalition government system, Bernie Sanders wouldn't have run as a Democrat. He would have run as a Green (or as a 'Workers Party' or something, maybe gotten a respectable 15-20% (of the national vote, not the Dem vote we're talking about), and then Hillary forms a coalition government with him. This coalition government would look and function almost exactly as the Democratic Party looks now, but there would be two names instead of one.

I generally agree with this. If we had a different system, third parties would likely be a lot more normal. But, man, you look at the third parties in our current system and they're all out there.

 

[nature boy]

Kailani KoenigVerified account
‏@kailanikm
HRC and Tim Kaine will embark on a 3-day bus tour after the convention across PA and Ohio. #Decision2016

Good.

Josh Rogin ‏@joshrogin 27m27 minutes ago
Clinton campaign manager says the Russian government stole the DNC emails to help Trump. @CNNSotu

Good.

#InMookWeTrust

 

[BlastProcessing]

I disagree.

This is about having no options but bad options. The use of a seatbelt is not a bad option. And even if there were no seatbelt, you could probably create a makeshift one. With the two party system, you literally have no other viable options.



Then re-write the constitution to allow better representation of all of the government's constituents. Saying "this is just how it is" is simply pure intellectual laziness.

Responding to a critique with "then rewrite the Constitution" does not display a surplus of intellectual rigor.

The two party system, which was in many ways an unintended consequence, is the source of much of the stability and success of America's particular brand of democracy.

In a multi-party system, coalitions form after elections; as a voter, I am not always exactly sure of what government I am creating when I vote. In a two party system the coalitions are formed before the election so I get to see the broad picture of who my vote is a mandate for.

Rewriting the Constitution to fundamentally change the way our democracy works is not something that you can blithely enter into. The effects would be massive and unpredictable.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

- Every four years, do a mail-in survey of the American people similar to a census to gauge political leanings and categorize the equivalent of temporary parties accordingly. The number of parties for the election will be determined by the amount of overlap between categories on the issues.

- After party options have been categorized, citizens will be notified of their options (and will be sent results of which party they're most closely aligned with if they participated in the census)

- Have the electoral college accommodate for the amount of candidates that will run in the general election based on the amount of parties involved

- Distribute a level of power in the executive branch that reflects the amount of support each candidate received in the general election; all candidates will become executive officers and their votes will be weighted according to the support they received from their constituents

I'm not going to draft up a whole new constitution for you in this post, but a new constitution is what we would need in order to pull this off.

What we have now is not satisfactory and just because we have an option that is less shit than another option, it doesn't mean that not choosing either shitty option makes a citizen personally responsible for the shitty things that happen to this country.

Take some political science, history, sociology classes.

I mean that sincerely.

anybody endorsing anything like this is living a fantasy.

This is absurd.

This post also contains repudiation of republican (as in republic) and democratic (small d) values

 

[Makai]

- Every four years, do a mail-in survey of the American people similar to a census to gauge political leanings and categorize the equivalent of temporary parties accordingly. The number of parties for the election will be determined by the amount of overlap between categories on the issues.

- After party options have been categorized, citizens will be notified of their options (and will be sent results of which party they're most closely aligned with if they participated in the census)

- Have the electoral college accommodate for the amount of candidates that will run in the general election based on the amount of parties involved

- Distribute a level of power in the executive branch that reflects the amount of support each candidate received in the general election; all candidates will become executive officers and their votes will be weighted according to the support they received from their constituents

I'm not going to draft up a whole new constitution for you in this post, but a new constitution is what we would need in order to pull this off.

What we have now is not satisfactory and just because we have an option that is less shit than another option, it doesn't mean that not choosing either shitty option makes a citizen personally responsible for the shitty things that happen to this country.

We, the American Commision on Political Parties, determine that there are few enough political cleavages for one political party. Vote or face the consequences. Long live the eternal president.

 

[Hopfrog]

We, the American Commision on Political Parties, determine that there are few enough political cleavages for one political party. Vote or face the consequences. Long live the eternal president.

My thoughts as well. Who exactly is evaluating these mail-in petitions and determining the parties, because they would be the real government at that point. Too much passive voice - "will be determined", "have been categorized" - disguising the actor here is problematic when the people making those decisions would have immense power.

 

[NYCmetsfan]

We, the American Commision on Political Parties, determine that there are few enough political cleavages for one political party. Vote or face the consequences. Long live the eternal president.

 

[Iolo]

Plenty of fart-in supporters really showed up to the DNC, but the establishment is bleeping out the flatulence like they do when Blazing Saddles is on network TV. #freethefarts

 

[Box of Kittens]

- Every four years, do a mail-in survey of the American people similar to a census to gauge political leanings and categorize the equivalent of temporary parties accordingly. The number of parties for the election will be determined by the amount of overlap between categories on the issues.

- After party options have been categorized, citizens will be notified of their options (and will be sent results of which party they're most closely aligned with if they participated in the census)

- Have the electoral college accommodate for the amount of candidates that will run in the general election based on the amount of parties involved

- Distribute a level of power in the executive branch that reflects the amount of support each candidate received in the general election; all candidates will become executive officers and their votes will be weighted according to the support they received from their constituents

I'm not going to draft up a whole new constitution for you in this post, but a new constitution is what we would need in order to pull this off.

What we have now is not satisfactory and just because we have an option that is less shit than another option, it doesn't mean that not choosing either shitty option makes a citizen personally responsible for the shitty things that happen to this country.

It seems to me like you could get the intended effects more easily by going to a parliamentary system with proportional representation. If we're going to change the Constitution, it would be possible to eliminate the role (or make it more of a ceremonial head of state with the prime minister becoming head of government). No need to reinvent the wheel.

 

[brainchild]

I mean, saying Bernie Sanders is a good option is also inherently a subjective argument.

I think it's interesting when Bernie supporters take to complaining about the two party system. Because if Bernie had won no one would be saying a goddamn thing - except of course, for people who don't like Bernie or Trump. Maybe even people who preferred Clinton in the primaries! And what do you say to that person?

Like fundamentally I agree we should have more options in a democracy but it all comes off as sour grapes.

This has nothing to do with Bernie. I'd be making the same arguments if Bernie was the nominee, because not everyone believes that Bernie would be good for the country.

The alternative is even more undemocratic - a coalition emerges from the multiple parties in the legislature and they pick one of their own to be the leader.

Who says there has to be one leader? The constitution? Then let's change that!

This is a BS argument. there were literally 17 separate candidates running for the republican slot.

17!

and an additional 5 on the democratic side, though admittedly 2 of those were never viable.

an additional third party candidate or three would not have changed the outcome at all, nor would it have provided significantly more choice than already existed.

It's down to "two candidates" but those were selected by voters, not "private parties." eventually it will be down to "one candidate" selected by those voters, whether you start with 22 candidates or 100. given the nature of finding one man or woman to represent 330 million people or so, there are always going to be an asshurt minority complaining that their views werent adequately represented.

tough shit, that's called compromise.

It doesn't matter how many candidates you have if they're all running in the same party. The amount of candidates isn't the issue. Candidates represent a party, and two parties is not enough to represent 300 million people.

Are you just looking for a parliamentary 'coalition government' type system? I'd personally be fine with something like that; let's say Dems get 40% and some non-crazy version of the greens get 15%, and they form a coalition government to work together.

But this would require a hell of an amendment. And the end results of which would be similar to what we get now. You can express dissent within your party, and parties over time change because of this. The big tent system we have just means that people who are somewhat ideologically similar have to work together under the same name as opposed to under different names as part of a coalition government. People just need to get over the idea that the same party means ideological lockstep.

Essentially yes. It's not perfect, but it would be a better representative democracy, that's for sure.

 

[RustyNails]

So who's a good replacement for DWS? Bring Back Dean?

 

[Y2Kev]

Maybe we can have two CEOs like Blackberry did

 

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Plenty of fart-in supporters really showed up to the DNC, but the establishment is bleeping out the flatulence like they do when Blazing Saddles is on network TV. #freethefarts

"Who brought so many horses to the convention?"

 

[BlastProcessing]

Take some political science, history, sociology classes.

I mean that sincerely.

anybody endorsing anything like this is living a fantasy.

This is absurd.

This post also contains repudiation of republican (as in republic) and democratic (small d) values

Thank you for saying this more politely than I was going to.

 

[RustyNails]

how about TAYLOR SWIFT for DNC head?

~MY FIGHT SONG~
~TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG~

 

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Michael Bloomberg to endorse Clinton at DNC, per NY Times


I hope we get to hear his Spanish again!

 

[Bowdz]

So who's a good replacement for DWS? Bring Back Dean?

We should try to get David Plouffe if we could pry him away from Uber.

 

[thcsquad]

So who's a good replacement for DWS? Bring Back Dean?

I'm not sure what makes a good replacement, other than 'knows how to win elections'. So I'm just going to say Al Franken.

 

[Iolo]

"Who brought so many horses to the convention?"

Somebody's gotta go back and GoFundMe a shitload of dimes!

 

[Geg]

Why exactly was DWS bad as DNC chair? It's hard to tell what are the legitimate complaints and what are Berner conspiracy theories

 

[Cesare Borgia]

I wonder what position DWS will receive in Hillary's cabinet.

 

[FloydtheFathead]

how about TAYLOR SWIFT for DNC head?

~MY FIGHT SONG~
~TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG~

And then she gets caught up in a recording scandal with Kim and Kanye.

 

[Makai]

You've created an oligarchy, brainchild. We need political parties to be independent of government to prevent authoritarian rule and there's only two popular parties because of fundamental laws of political science. We can switch to a system that allows for more parties but we'd be giving up direct elections.

 

[kess]

Ho ho, fart-ins? That shit was stolen straight out of Abbie Hoffman's pissant yippie whingeing from the 70s.

 

[nature boy]

Gabriel Sherman ‏@gabrielsherman 3h3 hours ago
Terrifying: sources say that so far > 25 Fox News women have come forward to Paul, Weiss investigators to talk about being sexual harassed

Whoa.

 

[Diablos]

Bloomberg endorses Hillary.

 

[Y2Kev]

Bloomberg bought and paid for financial industry. No wonder he's endorsing Crooked Hillary! Bernie Fans know better! Sad!

 

[Diablos]

Lol.

Howard Dean freaking out over the Russians and the DNC emails.

 

[adamsappel]

This is the first I've heard of the "Fart-In." This is a thing, a real strategy for protest? To make yourself publicly reviled? This is what is meant when people say "Bernie Bro." I hope they all shart themselves. (Not that they'll actually do it, because those planned protests reveal them to be lazy cowards.)

 

[Gotchaye]

What we have now is not satisfactory and just because we have an option that is less shit than another option, it doesn't mean that not choosing either shitty option makes a citizen personally responsible for the shitty things that happen to this country.

This seems to depend on what you mean by "personally responsible", though it's arguably true regardless. Like, obviously people not voting for Clinton could play an important causal role in Trump becoming president. That's just how voting works. And so if what you're interested in is bringing about good outcomes, not voting for Clinton can be very stupid.

Moral responsibility is obviously a trickier question, and clearly there's a lot of blame to go around. Trump obviously deserves a lot of it. But like I said yesterday, I think the easy analogy here is to something like vaccine refusal. Is someone who believes that vaccination is wrong - because God hates it or whatever - morally responsible for the bad consequences of that? That's something we generally allow - afaik most states allow at least religious refusal. We only crack down on this kind of thing when we're talking about something that rises to the level of child abuse (like choosing faith healing instead of cancer treatment for a child). So I think probably someone could reasonably think that it's permissible not to vote for Clinton if you've got some quasi-religious view that it is wrong to vote for a too-shitty candidate even if that candidate is less shitty than the other. But, as the analogy suggests, I don't really see that other people have a reason to have much respect for the quasi-religious view that's doing the work here when ultimately it's about saying that it's very very wrong to tick a box in order to prevent a much much worse outcome. It's silly - to people on the outside this is going to look like choosing faith healing because chemotherapy is wrong.

 

[thefro]

Either these people on twitter pushing Bernie or Bust/Trump have no lives or there's a decent amount of astroturfers and bots (probably both).

 

[brainchild]

Responding to a critique with "then rewrite the Constitution" does not display a surplus of intellectual rigor.

The two party system, which was in many ways an unintended consequence, is the source of much of the stability and success of America's particular brand of democracy.

In a multi-party system, coalitions form after elections; as a voter, I am not always exactly sure of what government I am creating when I vote. In a two party system the coalitions are formed before the election so I get to see the broad picture of who my vote is a mandate for.

Rewriting the Constitution to fundamentally change the way our democracy works is not something that you can blithely enter into. The effects would be massive and unpredictable.

Well, the constitution hasn't always existed. At its inception, its effects were massive and unpredictable as well...

Take some political science, history, sociology classes.

I mean that sincerely.

anybody endorsing anything like this is living a fantasy.

This is absurd.

This post also contains repudiation of republican (as in republic) and democratic (small d) values

Thanks for the insult but I already know how unprecedented this would be compared to the history of our government.

Someone asked me to give an example of an alternative, so I did.

If you think that our current system is our only viable option, then maybe it is you who should take up some classes in sociology, political science and history.

We, the American Commision on Political Parties, determine that there are few enough political cleavages for one political party. Vote or face the consequences. Long live the eternal president.

My thoughts as well. Who exactly is evaluating these mail-in petitions and determining the parties, because they would be the real government at that point. Too much passive voice - "will be determined", "have been categorized" - disguising the actor here is problematic when the people making those decisions would have immense power.

The categorization would be completely transparent with data and graphs showing the divergence and convergence of data points on the issue. The voters would still decide their own affiliation, it's just that the electoral college would accommodate for it. Besides, under this system, there wouldn't be a president.

It seems to me like you could get the intended effects more easily by going to a parliamentary system with proportional representation. If we're going to change the Constitution, it would be possible to eliminate the role (or make it more of a ceremonial head of state with the prime minister becoming head of government). No need to reinvent the wheel.

Maybe, maybe not, but I believe some executive actions would be more efficient with a small council instead of relying on the parliamentary system as a whole.

 

[Iolo]

Whoa.

And Trump defended this in his interview with Chuck Todd, saying that it was sad the women were doing this because Ailes had helped them so much.

 

[kess]

 

[neurosisxeno]

how about TAYLOR SWIFT for DNC head?

~MY FIGHT SONG~
~TAKE BACK MY LIFE SONG~

I'm confused... that's not a Taylor Swift song... what am I missing...

 

[Joe Shlabotnik]

Somebody's gotta go back and GoFundMe a shitload of dimes!

DNC 2016 |OT| A Shitload of Dems

 

[pigeon]

- Every four years, do a mail-in survey of the American people similar to a census to gauge political leanings and categorize the equivalent of temporary parties accordingly. The number of parties for the election will be determined by the amount of overlap between categories on the issues.

- After party options have been categorized, citizens will be notified of their options (and will be sent results of which party they're most closely aligned with if they participated in the census)

- Have the electoral college accommodate for the amount of candidates that will run in the general election based on the amount of parties involved

- Distribute a level of power in the executive branch that reflects the amount of support each candidate received in the general election; all candidates will become executive officers and their votes will be weighted according to the support they received from their constituents

I'm not going to draft up a whole new constitution for you in this post, but a new constitution is what we would need in order to pull this off.

What we have now is not satisfactory and just because we have an option that is less shit than another option, it doesn't mean that not choosing either shitty option makes a citizen personally responsible for the shitty things that happen to this country.

* I'm not sure how it could possibly be more democratic than the current system to have political parties defined by the state. There's a reason political parties are private entities -- it allows people to create them on their own.
* Similarly, tools to tell you which party you align with more closely already exist and were created by private services.
* "Distribute a level of power in the executive branch" is very easy to write and fundamentally incoherent to talk about for even five minutes. I challenge anybody to even vaguely sketch out a system that could sustain n executive officers with varying degrees of power and authority, where n is movable. There is a reason you left this bullet point so general!

I think you might do better here to outline specific things you think are problematic about the system, because there may already be existing, tested systems that attempt to address those issues. It would be more profitable to make reference to those systems rather than to attempt to design your own.

 

[Spoiled Milk]

So who's a good replacement for DWS? Bring Back Dean?

HEEEEYAAAAAAAH!

*clears throat* I mean yes.

 

[Aaron Strife]

When they said 30-50k, they meant anywhere between 30 people and 50,000 people. Obviously they high balled themselves a little.

 

[thcsquad]

Why exactly was DWS bad as DNC chair? It's hard to tell what are the legitimate complaints and what are Berner conspiracy theories

She just hasn't been good at winning Congressional elections. Her strategies for coordinating resources, recruiting candidates, and messaging have not resulted in electoral success for the Democrats.

That's the only reason we need.

 

[Spoiled Milk]

You've created an oligarchy, brainchild. We need political parties to be independent of government to prevent authoritarian rule and there's only two popular parties because of fundamental laws of political science. We can switch to a system that allows for more parties but we'd be giving up direct elections.

What if I told you we already live in an oligarchy?

 

[Bowdz]

I want the next DNC head to be a data driven wonk who knows how to message and win. Their primary goal should be 2018 midterms and do everything possible to win.