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