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from the when-times-are-forced-to-change dept.
When trying to understand the two bad choices we have now, it can help to look into the past at where they came from. In this article, Matt Stoller at The Atlantic provides a deep dive into a transformation the Democratic party underwent in the late 1960s onward. In it we see how the Democrats morphed the anti-big-business politics that had powered it for over a century into the big-government politics that define the political conversation today.
Modern liberals tend to confuse a broad social-welfare state and redistribution of resources in the form of tax-and-spend policies with the New Deal. In fact, the central tenet of New Deal competition policy was not big or small government; it was distrust of concentrations of power and conflicts of interest in the economy. The New Deal divided power, pitting faction against other faction, a classic Jefferson-Madison approach to controlling power (think Federalist Paper No. 10). Competition policy meant preserving democracy within the commercial sphere, by keeping markets open. Again, for New Deal populists like Brandeis and Patman [ed: links mine], it was democracy or concentrated wealth—but not both.
[...] The story of why the Watergate Babies spurned populism is its own intellectual journey. It started with a generation of politicians who cut their teeth on college-campus politics. In their youth, they saw, up close, not the perils of robber barons, but the failure of the New Deal state, most profoundly through the war in Vietnam. "We were the '60s generation that didn't drop out," Bob Edgar, a U.S. representative from the class of 1975, told me. The war in Vietnam shaped their generation in two profound ways. First, it disillusioned them toward the New Deal. It was, after all, many New Dealers, including union insiders, who nominated Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and who supported a war that killed millions, including 50,000 Americans their age. And second, higher education—the province of the affluent—exempted one from military service, which was an explicit distinction among classes.
[...] By quietly cutting back the influence of unions, [Democratic strategist Fred] Dutton sought to eject the white working class from the Democratic Party, which he saw as "a major redoubt of traditional Americanism and of the antinegro, antiyouth vote." The future, he argued, lay in a coalition of African Americans, feminists, and affluent, young, college-educated whites.
[...] By 2008, the ideas that took hold in the 1970s had been Democratic orthodoxy for two generations. "Left-wing" meant opposing war, supporting social tolerance, advocating environmentalism, and accepting corporatism and big finance while also seeking redistribution via taxes.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by physicsmajor on Thursday November 03 2016, @03:28PM
It's actually mathematically provable - this was done a few years ago - that our electoral system will result in a two-party oligopoly. It is a literal inevitability.
The first and most important solution, now that we know this is a reality and not just unfortunate chance, is to break the system that creates and sustains it. By this I mean the electoral college must go, along with single-candidate voting. Every vote should be counted, and we should either have several votes or ranked voting of 3-5 candidates. Personally I also think Great Britain has it right in banning any reporting on the election or polls until all votes have been cast; this is particularly problematic with a "media" that amounts to a propaganda machine for a particular candidate.
We can discuss about the best changes to be made, but there is no discussion at all about if these changes are necessary. They are.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Marand on Thursday November 03 2016, @06:23PM
By this I mean the electoral college must go, along with single-candidate voting. Every vote should be counted, and we should either have several votes or ranked voting of 3-5 candidates.
Single-candidate voting specifically need to go. When you can only vote for one candidate people get caught in the trap of feeling like they need to vote for one of the big-two candidates, not because they like them, but because they feel obligated to vote defensively to stop the candidate they dislike. Being able to rank the candidates you want would let you vote for who you want while also allowing you to still vote defensively as well. I doubt it would result in an immediate, drastic change the voting landscape, but it would lead to a shift over time as people see that the non R/D candidates have some support and aren't just a joke.
We can discuss about the best changes to be made, but there is no discussion at all about if these changes are necessary. They are.
Completely agreed. Of course, the two parties that are in complete control of the US government are also the ones with nothing to gain from improving the system, so good luck getting any meaningful change there. They'd rather tell everyone that only the D|R candidates are valid and any other vote is "wasted". In fact, I haven't seen it myself but I've encountered a few people posting images of, or talking about receiving, this flyer [tumblr.com] (different picture [twimg.com]). I've heard news people parroting similar rubbish as well.
This is probably the best election in a long time for third party candidates to get attention, and we're getting damage control instead of any talk of improving the system.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Friday November 04 2016, @12:11AM
In fact, I haven't seen it myself but I've encountered a few people posting images of, or talking about receiving, this flyer (different picture).
What's funny is that they will often change their tune about you voting third party if you tell them you're going to vote for the major party candidate they hate the most if you don't vote third party. They have no principles and are only actually opposed to voting third party when they believe that someone not doing so could aid their favorite corrupt scumbag; they don't care one bit about "wasted" votes.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by el_oscuro on Saturday November 05 2016, @03:15AM
Single-candidate voting specifically need to go. When you can only vote for one candidate people get caught in the trap of feeling like they need to vote for one of the big-two candidates, not because they like them, but because they feel obligated to vote defensively to stop the candidate they dislike. Being able to rank the candidates you want would let you vote for who you want while also allowing you to still vote defensively as well. I doubt it would result in an immediate, drastic change the voting landscape, but it would lead to a shift over time as people see that the non R/D candidates have some support and aren't just a joke.
It is actually possible for this to happen now. All it takes is one state. According to the Constitution, each state is awarded one elector for each house representative, plus 2 for each senator. How the states implement this is up to them. Most take the "Winner takes all" of the popular vote, but Maine and Nebraska break it down by district. Why couldn't a state allocate electors based on ranked vote?
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 03 2016, @08:30PM
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @11:59PM
Step 1 will need to be a federal judge ruling that the Commission on Presidential Debates is an illegal anti-competitive anti-democracy monopoly and that their rules (which get more elastic as 3rd parties meet their already-ridiculous thresholds) are unconstitutional.
I don't think that anyone should hold his breath waiting for that to happen.
Some kind of recognition that the public airwaves are in fact PUBLIC and that those should be available to varying political opinions--and not at commercial rates (gratis??)--would be Step 2.
Again, don't hold your breath on Lamestream Media being returned to a pre-Reagan condition.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @09:27PM
Actually, no. the Electoral College is a genius hack. it is no more or less "democratic" than Congress.
If it needs a change, then perhaps a Constitutional amendment that coerces the States to only allow proportionate Electoral College 'votes'.
But that will not happen. Too many states derive their sense of ego from their historical place in things, "states rights", or Just Because.
3rd parties have come, and gone. There have been several that have achieved prominence in the past (Whig, No-Nothing party, etc). Both of the major parties today are in many ways mirror opposites from what they were when they began. And both have certainly changed more or less over the last 50 years, as well.
There's no need to fuck with it any further than the main parties do already, by fucking around with(in) themselves and each other.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:22AM
I don't even see the point of the electors. Give each state 100 (for example) "points", and then give each candidate a percentage of those points depending how what percentage of voters voted for them. There's no need to waste money hiring actual people to be electors.
There's no need to fuck with it any further than the main parties do already
Yes there is, because I want a representative republic where representatives are democratically elected, which we do not currently have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 03 2016, @11:47PM
It's actually mathematically provable - this was done a few years ago - that our electoral system will result in a two-party oligopoly. It is a literal inevitability.
The first and most important solution, now that we know this is a reality and not just unfortunate chance, is to break the system that creates and sustains it. By this I mean the electoral college must go, along with single-candidate voting. Every vote should be counted, and we should either have several votes or ranked voting of 3-5 candidates. Personally I also think Great Britain has it right in banning any reporting on the election or polls until all votes have been cast; this is particularly problematic with a "media" that amounts to a propaganda machine for a particular candidate.
We can discuss about the best changes to be made, but there is no discussion at all about if these changes are necessary. They are.
Your ideas sound plausible, but then I see things which are just wrong which make me question it all.
An electoral college is not what drives a 2 party system. Electoral college arguably disenfranchises people (arguable), but there it does not dissuade a 3rd party from. The thing which drives having at most 2 parties is the "winner take all" aspect of elections. This means that the best way to advance your cause is within, not from without.
For example, imagine all of Bernie Sanders voters thought Clinton was too conservative and wanted to vote for Jill Stein. All this would do would be to split the progressive vote, and cause Trump to win. (Likewise for Libertarians and Trump, causing Clinton to win.) The more aligned you are with a group, the more you advancing your separate cause hurts the mainstream representative, and thus weakens your side.
In places where there is less "winner take all," you see more 3rd party candidates being elected... for example, Congress vs the President. Or the UK as compared to the US. Or Germany as compared to the UK.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:26AM
All this would do would be to split the progressive vote, and cause Trump to win.
You claim that that's "all" it would do, but I believe that's wrong. Causing Trump to win could change the democratic party by causing them to be more like the Greens in order to win some more votes. But people are too shortsighted and apparently want the immediate gratification of having "their" candidate (who is a corrupt authoritarian scumbag) win; they don't think about the long-term damage that results from mindlessly voting for evil. Yes, some bad candidates will have to win, but it's a long-term strategy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @03:32AM
An electoral college is not what drives a 2 party system.
You're partly right, but the electoral college as currently implemented is heavily linked to the current voting system, and there's not an obvious way to make it work well under a reasonable voting system, such as approval or range/score voting.
Assuming the purpose the electoral college serves is still deemed desirable, the best way to implement it in a voting-system independent way is to simply weight ballots accordingly: I live in a state with a third the population of yours, so my vote counts for 120% of a vote, yours only counts for 105% of a vote. Of course, when you spell it out like that, a bunch of people will get all upset about "one person, one vote", but it is the most elegant and straightforward embodiment of the concept.
(The electoral college may or may not have been originally intended as a damper on popular stupidity, but they no longer serve any function except balancing power, per-capita vs. per-state.)
The thing which drives having at most 2 parties is the "winner take all" aspect of elections.
No. That is a thing that drives a 2-party system, but it is not the thing. Another important part of the problem (and IMO almost certainly a bigger part) is the voting method itself. Since this apparently isn't obvious to you, I hope an example will help.
Let's say, for convenience of math, that the current election is as close to 50% Trump, 50% Hillary as possible (i.e. equal chance the final count goes either way, but we know it's by a tiny margin). Let's further posit a mythic 3rd-party candidate A, who 40% of Trump voters prefer to Trump (and the remainder are T>A>H), and 40% of Hillary voters prefer to Hillary (and the remainder are H>A>T). I hope there's no argument that, if such a candidate could be found, the optimal outcome is for candidate A to win -- 40% of people would choose him as their first pick, vs. 30% for Trump or Hillary; and he's everyone else's second choice.
But in our current election, how will an A>H>T voter vote? (Keep in mind that the same arguments will hold for the corresponding A>T>H voter.) The only way you can express your preference for A is to not express your H>T preference -- and if you do that, suppose your corresponding A>T>H voter doesn't? Why, then Trump wins -- and that's your least favorable option. So you have to vote strategically, i.e for Hillary, in hopes of keeping the wrong lizard from winning.
Basically, it's the prisoners' dilemma: (x represents a "tie", really a toss-up)
| A | H
--+---+---
A | A | H
T | T | x
You start out neutral, absent cooperation; if you cooperate, but your "opponent" doesn't, you lose big. You only win if you both cooperate.
(You might start thinking of iterated prisoners' dilemma, and the tit-for-tat strategy. But AIUI that only works with two players -- here there's millions of players on each side. When half the other team cooperates, and half doesn't, what do you do?)
But if we use approval voting, the A>H>T voter can vote for both A and Hillary. If the A>T>H voters follow the same approach, A probably (see below) wins, and everyone's happy -- but if they vote for Trump only, then Hillary "ties" Trump (reality, 50% chance it goes either way) -- and you're no worse off for trying. Suddenly you both have an incentive to vote honestly, and the election actually chooses the favorite.
| A | H
--+---+---
A | A | x
T | x | x
(What about H>A>T (or T>A>H) voters? With these particular numbers, we need just 17% to vote for Hillary and A; the rest can vote for Hillary. If the Hillary (and Trump) camp keep iron control of all their voters, and persuade over 83% (of both camps combined) to vote strategically, they can keep the race a Trump/Hillary lock -- but in reality, most people would prefer to both a. vote honestly, and b. hedge against a Trump (or Hillary) win, so the 17% we need is incredibly likely.)
Note that this election is still winner-takes-all, yet the third party actually wins; this proves that winner-takes-all is not "the" reason third parties can't make it. All we had to do was eliminated the "spoiler effect" of voting for a third party, which is the principal means of 2-party lock-in, and is entirely a consequence of bad voting systems. (In fairness, the numbers I picked are not infeasible this year, because both parties did a horrible job selecting candidates this year -- it really would be easy for a baggage-free politician of almost any sort to swoop in and make off with the election, except for the voting system. In most years, without this artificially lowered bar of viability, third parties don't have a viable candidate to put forward, because a good candidate should have served some incubation period in congress or such -- this is where proportional representation would help immensely.)
For example, imagine all of Bernie Sanders voters thought Clinton was too conservative and wanted to vote for Jill Stein. All this would do would be to split the progressive vote, and cause Trump to win. (Likewise for Libertarians and Trump, causing Clinton to win.)
But that's not a consequence of winner-take-all. That's a consequence of a bad voting system. Again, go with approval voting for contrast: If you prefer J>C>T, vote for Jill and Hillary -- if you prefer G>T>H, vote for Gary and Trump. The spoiler effect only exists because our current voting system forces you to disavow all other candidates in order to express any preference for one candidate. Real people have opinions more complex than "that guy rocks, everyone else sucks", and real voting systems should allow them to express those opinions in a way that counts. (In truth, I prefer score/range voting -- I've been discussing approval voting because the same principles apply, and it's simpler to talk about.)
Now, to the extent that a 1-dimensional political spectrum is valid, and looks like J-H-T-G, neither J nor G can possibly win -- you don't win by going away from the middle. (Of course the 1d model is not right, but it's a common conception, and is not completely wrong, either.) The point is, a fair winner-takes-all system is likely to elect someone near the middle of the political space (however many dimensions it has), while a fair proportional representation system would be more likely to choose a few extremists from both (or more) directions. But even in winner-take-all elections, voting for an extreme candidate doesn't have to (and shouldn't!) throw the election to the farther of the mainstream candidates.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @05:57AM
So you have to vote strategically, i.e for Hillary, in hopes of keeping the wrong lizard from winning.
That's not strategic voting; that's mindless, short-sighted voting. Sure, you might help defeat your most hated major party bogeyman and delude yourself into believing you've prevented the end of the world, but you're only reducing (not eliminating) the amount of harm done in the short-term; in the long-term (assuming you keep voting this way), you've helped perpetuate a corrupt and authoritarian two-party system which does an astronomical amount of damage over long periods of time. Maybe some Really Bad Guys will have to win before we can beat the two parties into shape by using their fear of the spoiler effect as a weapon to guide them into adopting third party policies. We're not giving the two parties any incentives to change if people vote for them every single time, and this is indisputable. The real "disastrous possible" is our two-party system, not any individual bad candidate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 04 2016, @12:07AM
It's actually mathematically provable - this was done a few years ago - that our electoral system will result in a two-party oligopoly. It is a literal inevitability.
That is only partially related to mathematics, and is definitely not a mathematical certainty. It's more about how humans make decisions, and it's possible for people to make all the decisions necessary to create more than two parties, but it is simply extremely unlikely.
(Score: 2) by dry on Friday November 04 2016, @04:08AM
We have/had that in Canada. It's hard when your nation crosses multiple time zones. We always had the problem of American media leaking over the border but with the internet it is pretty well impossible to stop the reporting.
It still does help with the media, last election all the media was, as usual for the media, in favour of the right wing but the people wanted a change and got it. If Trump wins, it'll be in spite of the American media, who as usual are backing the right wing (in an economic sense) candidate. They're businesses and want a pro-business environment.
Some things that we have in Canada that help to have multiple parties in Parliament and the last election being a 3 way race. A non-partisan group running the elections, including fairly setting the ridings (districts), so no gerrymandering. Federal and Provincial elections are divorced, so the people can focus on one election. When I vote (excepting municipal), there is usually one choice. This allows new parties to start at the Provincial level and perhaps move to the Federal level. It also stops the straight ticket voting.