Election 2018

[Eric the Green]

(11-09-2018, 09:03 AM)Bill the Piper Wrote: What amuses me is the robustness of the American two party system. Obama discredited the Demoncrats, Trump discredited the Rapepublicans, and still no third party achieves anything. What would have to happen to break the duopoly?

Although Obama did not discredit the Democrats, the fact that he was half black and reasonably progressive put the reactionary right-wing of America into a tizzy fit. They feel entitled to rule the USA. They were able to persuade so-called moderates that Obama was attacking the free market and going socialist just because he got a Republican health-care bill passed that the people had wanted, and now want again. Obama was an honorable, moderate and graceful man, and his administration was scandal free, but with young people not voting, and older people stuck on deceptive ideologies (free market economics, religious right, xenophobia, gun-nuttery and militarism, etc), he wasn't able to get the support he needed after less than a year in real power. America discredited ITSELF by not supporting him while in office, just like they didn't support and raged against the even-less challenging, less progressive Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Trump is a total disgrace; he can't be compared to Obama. Like Nixon, Reagan and Bush before him, his administration is loaded with corruption and scandal, and many have fallen into indictments. More will come in a steady stream, because it all emanates from the top. His background of scams (his university, his fake foundation used for his own desires, his ripping off of employees, his sexual deviance and abuse, his money-laundering with foreign governments, his paying off of prostitutes, his discrimination against ethnic groups, his tax evasion, and so much more) should have set off alarms. Only a reactionary country with a broken outdated system could have coughed up this tyrant who censors the press, focuses everything on his own ego, lies all the time, can't work with others, favors only his wealthy class, creates enormous debt to fund an unnecessary military build-up, creates a tax scam, destroys health care, allows more pollution, encourages violent racism, obstructs justice, encourages and perhaps colludes with the Russians to interfere with our elections, appoints the worst possible judges, opposes our tradition of asylum for refugees and immigrants and separates them from families, opposes native american rights, threatens social security and other social programs, destroyed the Iran deal which may lead to an arms race, fails to support gun control and climate action despite ongoing disaster...............

I mean, what HASN'T he done wrong? Even his supposed success in taming Kim Jung Un has resulted in nothing, and his quick defeat of the IS, while good in itself, came at the cost of enormous suffering and thousands of lives lost that would not have died if the Obama strategy in the war had been continued, and could lead to more trouble. His reckless tariff wars are dangerous to many businesses in America without producing change abroad so far.

But, the duopoly has left us with two political parties dominating government, neither of which has the ability or willingness to create progress. Although the real problem is the power of the right wing to obstruct progress, through deception and fear-mongering ideologies which Americans fall for or don't rise up against, the duopoly does not allow enough change to break through. Both parties seem to be more interested in their own power preservation, and thus fear to go against the status quo with bold progressive programs. A parliamentary system is favored in most democracies, rather than the American model. Proportional representation and ranked choice voting, or top tier voting, might be good strategies for breaking up the duopoly and allowing more parties. The people vote for the two parties, because they feel they must, and yet independents are a growing segment of the electorate. The duopoly is not popular.

Our system favors conservatives, which means it cannot answer the peoples' needs. Rural people usually tend to be provincial and parochial in outlook. Our senate gives them far more power, and the electoral college allows them to elect presidents whom the people as a whole did not vote for. Our Republican supreme court enshrines money as free speech, which means our political campaigns are mostly lies and negative attacks. The constant barrage of ads turns off the voters, and makes politicians too dependent on money and spend too much time raising it. Our gerrymandering systems are slowly getting reformed, but for too long politicians have chosen their voters rather than vice versa. Suppression of non-white voters had been a tradition in America before 1965, and now it's back in force, with voter ID laws, purging of voter rolls, closing polling places in poor neighborhoods, and so on. A secretary of state in Georgia can use his position to make himself governor. Republican governors in Florida can make themselves senator or make their brother president. A new progressive era is needed in the 2020s, and I hope it comes as I predicted, even despite the inevitable resistance from the powerful American right-wing that is making this era into a 4th turning crisis.