Poll of the Day > This lady's mouth looks like what I imagine my ass to look like

(+) Yeah! (+)

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Saw a video a minute ago where this talking anus was embracing Christian nationalism while claiming that's exactly what the founding fathers intended. Modern Republicans make me physically sick.

kind9 posted...

Saw a video a minute ago where this talking anus was embracing Christian nationalism while claiming that's exactly what the founding fathers intended. Modern Republicans make me physically sick.

Modern two-party voters make me mentally comatose.

Anyway, as I was saying, Republicans are shit. At least modern MAGA Republicans are.

Sensible, moderate Republicans are being browbeaten into ineffectual obscurity by the hard-right MAGA minority, and anyone with any semblance of a spine to speak out against it is leaving politics (Joe Walsh, Mitt Romney).

The Republicans current course of allowing an extremist minority to steer the ship is not sustainable long-term. There will be a reckoning. Barring the Democrats committing a massive failure of policy or governance, Republicans are going to see diminishing returns as more and more moderate voters turn away from the Trump experiment.

TheGuiltySpark posted...

Modern two-party voters make me mentally comatose.

As opposed to what, voting for a third party that has absolutely zero chance of winning?

Grendel_Prime posted...

Sensible, moderate Republicans are being browbeaten into ineffectual obscurity by the hard-right MAGA minority, and anyone with any semblance of a spine to speak out against it is leaving politics (Joe Walsh, Mitt Romney).

The Republicans current course of allowing an extremist minority to steer the ship is not sustainable long-term. There will be a reckoning. Barring the Democrats committing a massive failure of policy or governance, Republicans are going to see diminishing returns as more and more moderate voters turn away from the Trump experiment.

I'd like to think so, but as H.L. Mencken once said (possibly apocryphally), nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.

adjl posted...

As opposed to what, voting for a third party that has absolutely zero chance of winning?

They have zero chance of winning because everyone believes they have zero chance of winning. If people would actually get out of the mindset of "one or the other" then it wouldn't be a problem.

You should know, you are Canadian. You actually have the luxury of a choice when it comes time to vote.

Dikitain posted...

You should know, you are Canadian. You actually have the luxury of a choice when it comes time to vote.

On paper, sure, but it's no secret that the actual competition is between the Conservatives and the Liberals. Everyone else mostly just gets votes when the Liberals are in a comfortable enough position that losing the riding in question won't let the Conservatives win, and even that often doesn't amount to much because the NDP or Greens having a few seats doesn't translate into having enough power to actually enact any of their platforms (the PCC offered an option for the Conservatives to split their vote, but they failed to gain any meaningful traction and will probably do even worse in the next election because Polievre isn't as moderate as O'Toole was). Trust me, I'd love an NDP government (and, in fact, I've voted NDP in every federal election since I turned 18, though I've voted in historically-Liberal ridings that have stayed red), but it's not something that's going to happen under FPTP, and the platform of electoral reform that the Liberals ran in 2015 died within weeks of them getting into office and realizing that nobody was ever going to agree on how to change the system.

The problem isn't the mindset of "one or the other," it's that one party is popular enough to stand a real chance of winning and also has some horrible ideas for running the country that need to be stopped. That results in people gravitating toward whichever party stands the greatest chance of beating them (and in some cases, formally forming coalitions to prevent vote splitting). From the politicians' end, you stand a much higher chance of having your voice heard and being able to act on your ideals if you align with an existing party instead of splitting the vote. That's something inherent in the electoral system and how votes get counted: So long as whether or not a party wins is a binary matter, securing a partial victory for a different party will have no value.

ngl I'd let her give me an otphj at a musical theater while I hit my weed vape

I don't understand why people continue to call them "republicans" they're not. They're not the party of Lincoln.

Dikitain posted...

They have zero chance of winning because everyone believes they have zero chance of winning. If people would actually get out of the mindset of "one or the other" then it wouldn't be a problem.

It would, actually.

The problem with first-past-the-post voting systems, as adjl accurately observed, is that it favours two dominant parties. In virtually every country that elects its leaders via FPTP, there will be two - and only two - parties that trade power, and if there are any other parties they are small supporting players at best, never truly threatening to take power.

The reason for that is multiple parties on the same political spectrum dilute the vote, strengthening their ideological opponents. Canada is an excellent example of this. The country is notably left-wing, as in any given election approximately 60-75% of the country votes for centre-left or left-wing parties; however, the Conservative Party (and their predecessors, the Reform Party, the Canadian Alliance, and the Progressive Conservative Party) has spent its entire existence, dating back to the founding of the country, either as the governing party or the official opposition (i.e. the second-place party). This is because while there are typically 3-4 left-leaning parties large enough to attract significant numbers of voters, the Conservatives are the single party of appreciable size on the political right (the only time this wasn't true was when the Progressive Conservative Party split, with the more right-wing elements of the party breaking off and forming the Reform Party in the 90s; until they reunited in the early 2000s, this split gave the governing Liberals more or less an uncontested path to re-election, as the already small right-wing vote in Canada was split between the two parties).

Notably, although there are currently four left-leaning parties (the Liberals, the NDP, the Bloc Quebecois, and the Greens), only the Liberals have ever formed government or even come particularly close. The only time this wasn't the case was when the Liberals imploded around 15 years ago, and the NDP took their place as the dominant left-wing party (which lasted for precisely one election cycle, after which Justin Trudeau was elected as the Liberal leader and promptly won the next federal election and has led the country ever since).

Since FPTP punishes multiple ideologically-aligned parties, you will never see three or more "contenders" under that voting system. You will always only have a two-horse race, even when there are more parties in the running.

Okay but the Beetlejuice Musical is actually legit

darkknight109 posted...

The only time this wasn't the case was when the Liberals imploded around 15 years ago, and the NDP took their place as the dominant left-wing party

Jack Layton for PM.

BADoglick posted...

ngl I'd let her give me an otphj at a musical theater while I hit my weed vape

she would probably do very well in that weird subgenre of porn where it's just a person shit talking you while you whack it

adjl posted...

On paper, sure, but it's no secret that the actual competition is between the Conservatives and the Liberals. Everyone else mostly just gets votes when the Liberals are in a comfortable enough position that losing the riding in question won't let the Conservatives win, and even that often doesn't amount to much because the NDP or Greens having a few seats doesn't translate into having enough power to actually enact any of their platforms (the PCC offered an option for the Conservatives to split their vote, but they failed to gain any meaningful traction and will probably do even worse in the next election because Polievre isn't as moderate as O'Toole was). Trust me, I'd love an NDP government (and, in fact, I've voted NDP in every federal election since I turned 18, though I've voted in historically-Liberal ridings that have stayed red), but it's not something that's going to happen under FPTP, and the platform of electoral reform that the Liberals ran in 2015 died within weeks of them getting into office and realizing that nobody was ever going to agree on how to change the system.

The problem isn't the mindset of "one or the other," it's that one party is popular enough to stand a real chance of winning and also has some horrible ideas for running the country that need to be stopped. That results in people gravitating toward whichever party stands the greatest chance of beating them (and in some cases, formally forming coalitions to prevent vote splitting). From the politicians' end, you stand a much higher chance of having your voice heard and being able to act on your ideals if you align with an existing party instead of splitting the vote. That's something inherent in the electoral system and how votes get counted: So long as whether or not a party wins is a binary matter, securing a partial victory for a different party will have no value.

How about we just get rid of parties altogether and let individuals run based on their own politics? You know, like Washington did. He spoke out against parties in his farewell address but no one listened.

Muscles posted...

How about we just get rid of parties altogether and let individuals run based on their own politics?

While a good idea in theory, that would be virtually impossible to police and likely wouldn't work in practice.

Straight-up banning political parties would generally violate any free speech/freedom of association protections in any democratic country, and even if it didn't it would be easily circumvented. Instead of a candidate running as, say, a member of the Liberal Party, they would run as the candidate endorsed by the Liberal Political Association.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoqGubbsWWE