Thread:
The point of all this is simple: Win. In warfare, nothing else matters. If you cannot win clean, win dirty. But win. Our victories are ultimately in humanity’s interests, while our failures nourish monsters.
It seems tactically unwise to adopt a moral stance that you wouldn’t want your enemy to have. Especially if you’re trying to claim the moral high ground.
I hate this logic so much.
A valid criticism is that Bernie Sanders could have stayed in the Democratic Party to change it when he had the opportunity, but he chose to leave because he didn’t want to share fundraising efforts and be free to tour the country - arguably a move that only helps his effort to keep his senate seat.
A complete horseshit argument is that Democrat voters should drive the Democratic party when the goal is (or rather should be) gaining the support of the American citizenry and not just those loyal to the party (which in itself is stupid because Sanders was viewed favorably by a vast majority of the party even if he “only” won 45% of the primary vote). Democrats should not be acting in the interest of the party, ever. No party should, because the party is just a consolidation of like-minded people working together to push their positions. The Democratic Party’s lack of conviction is also a place they should never be, but that’s a whole different issue.
Exactly.
Political parties — especially when there are only two of them to realistically choose from — are the ultimate in “us vs. them” mentality. You get to blame anyone who supports the opposing party for the worst crimes of its members, while absolving yourself from the same.
Unfortunately, it’s hard to think of a good replacement. Direct democracy for every issue would lead to mob rule; disbanding parties and just electing the best representative would just lead to the formation of coalitions (parties by another name) to leverage the power of having similar opinions; a delegative democracy allows you to appoint someone familiar with the issue to vote for in your place, but still requires you to have enough knowledge in the subject to recognize someone generally knowledgeable, not to mention trustworthy.
Having more than two credible parties would help, but I don’t know if it would help enough.
In states with 2 or more representatives, you could hypothetically require multi-member districts, without approval voting, for N seats, if the top candidate gets 2x as many votes as the next candidate, they can name a 2nd, and the remaining seats go to next candidates with the next-most votes.
(It wouldn’t be gerrymander-proof, but it should be harder to gerrymander as much as the current system, and it should be easier to ensure more people have at least 1 rep among the elected reps. Using multi-member districts with approval voting enables 1-party rule. Using multi-member districts with conventional voting with conventional proportional rep makes control of the party lists too important.)
Old news, but some detail I wasn’t aware of.
At least the Spanish have a heart, even if the Italians don’t…