If you are a white leftist and you talk “both parties are the same they are both capitalist” you will loose most of your black audience. I think it ought to be obvious that this isn’t because blackfolks love Democrats (in most cases, there is always someone being simple in any group) —no. it’s because the difference between the parties is material and obvious and these are unstable times.
When I hear such talk I wonder if the speaker is working on voter suppression.
Voting brings me no joy — but I never miss an election out of a kind of stubborn spite. I’ve never heard anyone explain how having all the marginalized and left leaning people not vote would be more annoying to the Democrats and Republicans than if we all do vote— and for the Democrats especially in the primaries.
I also don’t think voting is real political engagement, but it’s kind of the bare minimum. Even if you do a write-in for every office.
@stib That would be interesting. But it would also mean we’d inevitably have an openly fascist “america first” party — Then there would be the coalitions needed to get anything done. I used to think breaking up the two party system would help but I no longer really think it would be any better and in some ways it would be worse.
If we really did universal suffrage we could get pretty far. And make up the difference in local politics.
@maco @futurebird @stib from a place which recently made the switch from one set of rules to the other: what changes isn't the competition between two poles, but who can leader the coalitions.
Before proportionality, it was much harder to have anyone but the more radical centrists (or those who managed to look like it) being considered to the prime positions, and this effectively ended marginalising the more radical-looking voices.
Now, charismatic leadership throws all those regularities away
@maco @futurebird @stib so I don't think the US after Trump would behave predicably if it changed its electoral rules: for starters, you already have an aberrantly extreme right in control of one of the coalitions, so giving more air to dissidents in that side could moderate them? or to help competing strongmen arise? There's no good way to know.
On the other side the potential effects are less unpredictable, but with that threat in front, any rearrangement would probably have to wait...
@maco @futurebird @stib in any case, most of this is quite moot, because what would need to happen to change those rules is really complicated and does require an almost impossible coordination between government and (at least most of the) opposition.
And the energy for such measures is being spent on the Trump trial mostly, because that's seen as the way to stop him and to avoid some form of recurrence.
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