• mcv@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    Yeah, progressives need to take over the party. That, or start a new one without the baggage in order to really change the system, but that’s a lot harder. Not doing either of these is just giving up.

    • TacoSocks@infosec.pub
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      21 hours ago

      You can’t start a new party without rank choice voting otherwise you’ll just split the vote. You’ll be falling for the divide and conquer strategy. Vote for progressives in democratic primaries and support rank choice voting. Only once a vast majority of the country is solidly rank choice should talk of a new party even be mentioned.

      • mcv@lemm.ee
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        20 hours ago

        And you’re not going to get ranked choice voting without a new party.

        However, there are a lot of people who don’t vote, and a lot of people who are unhappy about both parties. There are Republican voters disappointed in Trump who still can’t bring themselves to vote Dem because of all the propaganda they’ve put in their heads. A jew party would be a fresh start.

        A bigger problem is making it an actually big party, getting media attention, getting money to campaign with, etc. US politics runs on money. Because yet another Green or Libertarian Party won’t be helping.

        • TacoSocks@infosec.pub
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          16 hours ago

          And you’re not going to get ranked choice voting without a new party.

          Not true, parts of the US have ranked choice. You have ignored the divide and conquer point. You cannot have a new party before ranked choice without splitting the vote.

          However, there are a lot of people who don’t vote, and a lot of people who are unhappy about both parties.

          Get those people to vote in democratic primaries. Green and Libertarian exist for people unhappy with both parties and they just help to split the vote and barely increase voter turnout. Republicans strategiests promote the Green party because it helps them win elections by splitting the vote.

          There are Republican voters disappointed in Trump who still can’t bring themselves to vote Dem because of all the propaganda they’ve put in their heads.

          A new party won’t break that propaganda, you have to break the propaganda machine. If a new party was a threat, they’d just spin up new propaganda and guess what, those people will fall in line and not vote for your new party.

          A bigger problem is making it an actually big party, getting media attention, getting money to campaign with, etc. US politics runs on money. Because yet another Green or Libertarian Party won’t be helping.

          You clearly understand the difficulty of a new party. That’s why democratic primaries are vastly easier. You need less money, you need fewer votes to win, you can operate entirely in a smaller market, you don’t need national media. Once you’ve won, you’ve already eliminated a candidate you’d have to run against and won’t be splitting the vote with.

          • mcv@lemm.ee
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            15 hours ago

            I totally agree that primaries are far easier. Orders of magnitude. But you hold on to a lot of baggage that way. There’s something attractive about a fresh start, and there are very successful independent candidates. Bernie has good reasons not to be part of the Democratic Party.

            And ranked choice isn’t the only thing you need; you need proportional representation in Congress. That’s the only way to actually represent all Americans. It’s always going to be hard to get one of the two parties in power to give up that power to share it with more parties.

            But as I said, such a big third party is incredibly hard. The system is rigged against it, and the financing and media even more so. You’d have to have a very broad popular movement, more than just a party. There’s nothing like that but there are candidates for primaries.

            That’s not going make me stop dreaming about a big third party, though.

    • barneypiccolo@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      A Progressive 3rd party only strengthens the MAGA Nazis. Preserve the structure, and just take over the party, the way the MAGAs took over the Republican party

      • mcv@lemm.ee
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        1 day ago

        I’m not so sure. There are a lot of people not voting at all, and there’s a lot of toxic hate towards the Dems. Unfair, based largely on lies, but that doesn’t change the fact that a lot of people vote against the Dems and their own interests because they believe the lies. A lot of Republicans are disappointed with Trump, but still unwilling to vote Dem.

        A clean slate might actually do a lot of good. I do think you’d have to position the party not so much as Progressive, but as “fixing the broken democracy, representing the people rather than the corporations, fixing the overpriced healthcare system”, etc. Present a fact-based, people representing center. Offer sane compromises for the culture war issues (abortion access for rape, medical problems and the first 12 weeks, no abortions of healthy fetuses in the last trimester). That gives conservative voters something that sounds totally reasonable and the GOP can’t point out that this still legalizes 90% of abortions without revealing they always lied about late term abortions. Do the same with every other culture war issue, while driving home on the issues that actually matter and everybody overwhelmingly wants: cheaper, better healthcare, no corporate money in politics, etc.

        I think if you do this big enough (but that’s the really hard part), then you might just knock one of the other parties out. Offer a better alternative to both of them, not a more extreme version of one of them.