politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
That is why the system needs to be transformed into a multi-party system. From now on, both parties will become more and more extreme.
Guess which party is trying to outlaw other RCV & already has in Florida?
I've been voting in elections since the 90s and it's always been this way at least since my dad was voting in the late 60s.
Breaking away from two parties is great talk, but there seems to be a lot of pushback from folks that are, for over reason or another, married to FPTP voting. We aren't ever going to move past the two party system until FPTP is thrown in the trash heap and private monetary political donations are banned outright.
Also, no idea why anyone down voted you.
Did you like the chaos of not having a House Speaker as a small faction turned against the majority and held the entire chamber hostage?
If so, then you would love coalition politics because that's a regular occurrence. If you consider the Freedom Caucus as a separate party in coalition with the GOP, then their antics will be familiar to anyone living under a multiparty system.
Multiparty systems don't solve the problem of extremism, they normalize it. In Italy, Israel, and now the House, leaders must appease extremist factions to stay in power.
We need to get away from American politics and look at how coalition governments work elsewhere in the world. Yes, they can be messy, but it forces the parties to sit down and TALK to each other and make some concessions to make it work.
Just like marriage. Both people are no longer single. They are now living together, they have to make concessions and agree on a common set of rules, norms, etc. The same thing happens in a coalition government, the parties make concessions to make it work and agree on a middle way. That cannot happen in a two-party system.
Right. Coalition governments tend to have a few crazies around the fringes. The difference is that they stay at the fringes, because more reasonable heads are collaborating to form a majority. You don't have the current situation where the loons are dictating everything while being made up of about one half of the majority party.
Loons dictating everything while being barely a fraction of majority is exactly what you have in Italy and Israel, which are among the purest examples of multi-party democracy.
Italy's leader is now a literal fascist, and Israel is run by a right-wing nutjob bending the knee to nutjobs who are even more right-wing than he is.
What you're seeing are outliers. Take a look at this list of coalition governments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_coalition_governments
There are plenty of functioning European countries (since we're talking about the US) that have functioning and "normal" coalition governments.
It also depends on the parties that won and the system used to elect these officials. For example, if the most left-wing party came first, but the other two centrist parties came second and third, if the most left-wing party wants to govern, it will have no choice but to make some concessions in order to govern and put policies on the table that all parties will agree to.
Yes, you can add Hungary and Turkey to the list of fascist-enabled coalitions. And more where open fascists are elected to parliament, like the Dutch PVV and the Austrian FPO. These serve to normalize fascism even if they remain outside of the ruling coalition.
Meanwhile, two-party governments have basically no elected representatives from openly fascist parties. If third parties were viable, David Duke would be in Congress.
If you want to look at how coalition governments work elsewhere, you need to look at Italy and Israel. Those are among the purest multi-party systems.
In both countries, it is true that some parties sat down and "made concessions". But in both countries, the parties were the mainstream right and one or more fringe fascist or outright racist parties. As the price of staying in power, the mainstream right "conceded" that open fascists and racists have a legitimate place in a ruling coalition.
In a two-party system, I am at least thankful that extremists tend to paralyze government, not empower it.
The failure of the two party system, unfortunately, is the fact that one party is always the leader. In the case of the US, it's the GOP. The GOP has successfully taken control and shifted the Overton Window in the country further and further to the right since 1945. It will never reset back to an equilibrium with the structure that we have currently. Electing a Democrat only loosens the noose, it doesn't remove it.
Disagree. The GOP candidate won the national popular vote only once in the last eight presidential elections. They have not passed any significant national legislation in that time. Meanwhile Democrats have enacted health care reform, climate investment, and now pro-choice laws.
The GOP can only hold on to power via voter suppression / electoral tricks, and that strategy won't work forever.
I respectfully disagree. I think the GOP will keep marching towards the far right, but that will cause the Democrats to move to the center
There's nothing extreme about the Democratic party. Get some fucking perspective.