Senate Going Postal: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election

... and in the UK, we just had a situation where an extremist minority party got a significant say in the government because the conservatives couldn't form a majority without them.
Just pointing that out - whether you feel that's a warning, or a blueprint for action, is your call.

 

You're not "wrong." It's just not different from Esmir's point. Replacing a major party is the same thing as taking it over. The more important issue is stimulating the underlying change in ideology and policy platform. Just shifting to a multi-party system or, even worse from a tactical standpoint, voting for third parties in a two party system, does nothing to address that.

 

This is what I'm engaging with, and I know exactly what you're trying to say. I'm not catering to bigots by saying it *could* be better for progressive politics if Biden doesn't become president than if he does. I don't think you understand the widespread dissatisfaction with Biden and how his elevation harms the Democrats' credibility. It would be hilarious to see you lecture a teenage protester torching a squad car, about the utility of voting for Biden to stop Trump.

 

I haven't said anything about Biden all day. I said that:

1) Voting with the goal of being a spoiler to defeat Democrats is a dumb strategy
2) You are not really addressing what a hypothetical McCain Presidency would have looked like

At best, though, your bigger argument is under-explained. You've simultaneously asserted

A) Obama brought about Trump by perpetuating neo-liberalism
B) McCain, Clinton, Romney are also neo-liberals who would have perpetuated neo-liberalism
C) However, only Obama would have resulted in Trump. Anyone else doing exactly the same thing would have produced a Hillary Clinton presidency

How does that work, exactly?

 

Biden sucks. It's extremely sad that this is what's on offer in America for the presidency. A slime ball and a slime ball. One slime ball that turns the world to **** in record time and one slime ball that turns the world to **** in slow Joe fashion.

Still, I understand those who vote for Biden. At least he won't do anything rash, which we'll all regret rather sooner than later.
I understand those who don't vote for Biden. Being able to unabashedly vote however you want is the essence of a working democracy. And the level of enduring dissatisfaction in the US is great enough to understand not wanting to give any of these parties your vote.

I don't understand Trump voters. Maybe they're so dumb or so devious that I can't get into their mindset.

But the real, sad problem is: there's just such a striking paucity of alternatives. Where is your socialist party? Your green party? Why are they all a bunch of amateurs and is the most prominent third party the goddamn Libertarian Party? These parties have potential platforms. But they never reach anyone, because the media will only talk about your damn Trump.

And that's what really sucks. No alternatives means chaos.

 

You joined a discussion about voting third party in order to get specific Democrats out of office, of which Biden is one. That's the crux of the debate, why are you hiding from that?

No, I'm not addressing what your hypothetical McCain presidency would look like, because I don't find your political insights insightful. I already laid out my hypothetical McCain/Obama scenario, and said it was dumb in order to point out the precarity in arguing a Biden presidency will be better for leftists than a second Trump. I can see now that was a bad idea because you would find it rich terrain for discussion.

 

I'm not hiding from it. It just doesn't interest me. I made a comment about the general strategic approach that applies to all circumstances. I wasn't trying to make a sideways commentary about one specific race on one particular year.

Fine. Address mine. How wasn't it reasonable to point out that McCain would have had a far smaller stimulus package and achieved less health insurance coverage?

 

Lol, I have no interest in gazing into your crystal ball.

 

In the American model the alternatives are within the parties in the form of primaries rather than among several parties, but overall the difference is not so big, practically.

Their situation is actually similar to Macron vs Le Pen in France. You have several options in the first round of voting, and then you end up with the ugly candidates who remain. Similarly, most of the people of this thread supported Sanders as long as he was viable, and then they will remain with the choice between Biden and Trump.
Whether you formally use several parties to represent different ideologies or you rather have inner struggles within the same party is not particularly relevant for the final outcome.

 

It sure is, because these two parties are both corrupt as hell.

 

Your whole scenario rests on "Maybe health insurance coverage would improve by historically unprecedented rates for absolutely no reason" but I'm the one with a crystal ball.

Alright then.

 

Parties are neither intrinsically corrupt nor honest. They are just abstract concepts. The people inside the party are corrupt. If you take those same corrupt people and partition them in 10 parties rather than 2, you'll end up with 10 corrupt parties. And this is not hyperbolic, it's the actual situation in my country.

In one way or the other, what citizens need to do is to vote for honest people. Whether you formally call them "Democrats" or any other name is secondary.

 

No, my scenario was bigger than that but I can see you only want to misrepresent my posts. Go on, tell me what I'm trying to say, like I care.

 

Also, I have a question.

What's a good website for up-to-date US news?

I'm embarrassed to admit that I first check CNN. Ever since 9-11. I always figured, they have the most coverage, they're the most up-to-date. But their website is so annoying. They need to show you a clip with every sentence they type, and they circumvent your adblocker with their endless list of weird links to weird offsite clickbait articles. Also, it's Trump-bashing 24/7. Is there a website that will just give me the low-down, without any interference or opinion?

 

Your assertion is that everything would be "about the same." In what sense would that be true if the recession was handled entirely different and if healthcare, the single major driver of impoverishment in the United States, was not addressed at all.

 

Reuters and the Associated Press are almost purely fact based.

 

Of course. Thanks.

 

An inevitable result of any political party - but political parties are, in of themselves, unfortunately inevitable.

 

I guess... But then that's exactly why you need a system that allows new parties to come in.

 

Absolutely - but that requires a governmental framework that is difficult to establish when strongly dominant parties want to keep their monopoly.
A ranked voting system isn't ideal, but I think would take at lot of the stigma of voting 'third party' away. It won't happen at the national level until enough states are on board, however.

 

I don't think Hillary's culpability for Trump's election can be entirely divorced from the fact that Obama made her Secretary of State and wouldn't endorse a better heir, like Bernie.

 

Trump isn’t the reason 3rd parties have never taken off in the US.

3rd parties haven’t taken off because both the Republicans and Democrats control the narrative so well that the only way to effectively get political change is to change the party and not get new parties

 

I'm pretty sure it's traditional for the party's incumbent to stay out of the primaries and I think that's a good thing. Obama wouldn't have endorsed Bernie either way, but HRC would have done a lot better with his endorsement (see: his meddling in 2020 "behind the scenes").