“American democracy simply cannot function without two equally healthy and equally strong political parties,” J Michael Luttig told CNN on Wednesday. “So today, in my view, there is no Republican party to counter the Democratic party in the country.
“And for that reason, American democracy is in grave peril.”
For that reason?
That’s the reason?
I think the real reason is that the people in power keep touting this idea of only two distinct parties. Having only two parties means you have only two directions to go. Which is destined for extremism.
The FPTP voting system reinforces that. Any third party is just going to be a spoiler for one of the majors without voting system reform.
This is the correct answer. Third parties are rarely viable in first-past-the-post systems. More info on Duverger’s Law here.
If we had more viable parties it would be much harder to do regulatory capture and corrupt every party, and even if that happened new viable ones could spring up at any time. We might actually get candidates that represent diverse political opinions. With more parties one party would be unlikely to have a majority or supermajority, and our representatives would have to work together and form coalitions to get anything done. Politics wouldn’t be a team sport about defeating the other side, it would be about shared goals and constructive legislation. Candidates would want to appeal to voters who they might be the second or third choice for, meaning scapegoating, vilifying and othering segments of society would be a losing strategy. Ranked choice voting has few downsides for anyone but those who want a corrupt system they can capture and a society they can divide.
Except the two party system pits two opposing sides against each other, inevitably leading to them pointing fingers at each other to rile their base and get votes. The extremism comes from frustration, yes, but it is stoked by the “us vs them” mentality that politicians abuse to trick their constituents into voting for them instead of “the other guy”.
Thankfully we got the greatest president the country has ever seen instead.
I hope not. FDR did a lot of great things, but he was also a racist who didn’t give the same benefits to non-white people as white people and, of course, was responsible for the shameful Japanese-American concentration camps.
If that’s the greatest president, we have never had any hope.
Both the democratic and republican party are several smaller parties tied together into two disgusting rat king. If one of them disappear today there will be an instant split of the surviving party into two new rat kings. The collapse isn’t what they fear. They fear that the Overton window would move left.
I think it’s very clear that the republicans in government are moving far right, but the electorate in general is steadily moving left.
Every year, about 4 million Americans turn 18 and gain the right to vote. In the eight years between the 2016 and 2024 elections, that’s 32 million new eligible voters.
Also every year, 2½ million older Americans die. So in the same eight years, that’s as many as 20 million fewer older voters.
Which means that between Trump’s election in 2016 and the 2024 election, the number of Gen Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2010s) voters will have advanced by a net 52 million against older people. That’s about 20 percent of the total 2020 eligible electorate of 258 million Americans.
And unlike previous generations, Gen Z votes. Comparing the four federal elections since 2015 (when the first members of Gen Z turned 18) with the preceding nine (1998 to 2014), average turnout by young voters (defined here as voters under 30) in the Trump and post-Trump years has been 25 percent higher than that of older generations at the same age before Trump — 8 percent higher in presidential years and a whopping 46 percent higher in midterms.
And according to voter data. Gen z is very progressive especially on policy:
https://www.aei.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/The-Exit-Polls.pdf?x91208
In 15-20 years nearly half of all boomers will be dead. The current gop can’t win a single national popular vote. Without half these boomers, they will collapse or move left. And the Overton window will shift considerably left. And with Europe moving right in a lot of counties, I’d say it wouldn’t be surprising to see the US as left as Europe in a shot time.
Also: Europe is not as left leaning as people tend to think. Aside from trains and healthcare they’re not all the left wing. And it is moving right. I’m an Italian citizen and I see it happening in Italy, and many other counties.
I think the electoral college is a good thing . The problem is you should be voting for the electors, who then get together in a room for a week go decide on a president. Well they can take up to a month, but we pay only for a week and they have to cover all expenses out of that so if they need more than two weeks they sleep outside and only get water, no food. (That is they are not allowed any money other than their one week pay no matter how rich they are)
Voting for someone because they win a popularity contest is wrong .
All voting is a popularity contest, so I guess you don’t like voting or democracy?
He’s got a point. The Republican party is fundamentally not healthy at all.
Yes, but the framing of it reads like the Democratic party being too powerful is the worst possible outcome, rather than the Republican party destroying society.
Ding ding ding
It’s honestly impressive how accurate and succinct that part of his analysis is. I actually do agree that the long-term viability of the establishment GOP could be in serious trouble, and that the outcome a few years hence, of the Democrats as the only viable political party in Washington, would be a big problem for several different reasons. And, I think this is literally the first time I’ve heard that fairly serious topic being raised anywhere in the media.
But, our democracy is facing another slightly more pressing and short-term problem at the moment…
For now. What will the Democratic party look like in ten years without a decent opposition party?
Any one party becoming too powerful is the worst possible outcome, especially in what is effectively a two party system.
Sure it might start off good, but as soon as they’re comfortable with the fact that people will vote them in regardless, they will eventually stop following the will of the people.
Bullshit. Institutionalized racism, misogyny, homophobia, and white Christian separatism as party platform. No matter how “conservative” Republicans claimed to be, The Southern Strategy was the core value and singular driving force for the past 60 years. MAGA isn’t a symptom, it’s result
Nah motherfucker, all republicans own this shit. Suck it up, traitors. Worthless fucking filth.
As an old guy, I’d have to agree, though as a leftist turned anarchist, I don’t give much of a fuck.
I think back though on the Republicans of my youth, and it really was a notably different party.
It’s sort of weird to phrase it like this, but they were assholes with principles. I mean - they were shallow, bigoted assholes then too, but it was more common then for them to still be like the old '50s All-American cliche - patriotic, proud, moral, hard-working, honest… conservative in the old sense of the word. I didn’t agree with them at all but at least they had a relatively coherent, if shallow and ignorant, ideology that they generally actually lived by.
Somehow though, especially over the last 20 years or so, they’ve morphed into this bizarre and startlingly toxic mix of psychopaths, hypocrites and grifters. They have no principles at all really - just things and people that they hate - and it’s not even vaguely about trying to accomplish things that they sincerely (if mistakenly) think will make the world a better place, but just about fucking over everyone else. And even themselves, if they can colorably believe that by doing so they’ll manage to fuck someone else over even more.
I sincerely believe it’s a sort of collective mental illness, and truth be told, I think it can only lead to the collapse of western civilization, and the US in particular. There’s nothing really that can stop it. It’s effectively a closed loop in which greedy psychopaths fuck things up for their own profit and privilege, ignorant psychopaths look for someone to blame for the fact that things are fucked up, power-hungry psychopaths point them at some vulnerable fringe group and tell them that it’s all their fault, then while everyone’s distracted, the greedy psychopaths fuck things up even more. And 'round and 'round it goes, like a turd circling a toilet bowl. And there’s only one way that can end.
There’s nothing really that can stop it.
Things that can stop it:
- The passage of time, Republicans skew older*
- The death of religion, the irreligious are unlikely to vote Republican* and Americans are moving away from religion
- Education, those with degrees tend to vote Democratic*
- Election reform that doesn’t give outsized power to rural states
- Legal consequences for lying to the public in the guise of news
- Ranked choice voting that allows for viable political competition from other parties both on the right and left
What does the opposite of stopping it:
- Fatalism that makes the good people who outnumber the bad not show up to vote
- Fatalism that makes the good people who outnumber the bad not show up to vote
It’s the same as the “all politicians are the same” moan.
No, they’re not. It’s the crooked ones that want you to believe that they’re all the same, because that’s what keeps the crooked ones from being voted out.
It should be noted that the last three of those things require the exercise of authority to enact, and that authority is vested in people and institutions that flatly will not exercise it in pursuit of things that will in any way undermine their privilege or that of their wealthy cronies and patrons, and all of those things would do just that.
This is where it becomes relevant that the Democrats are only relatively less corrupt than the Republicans. They feed at the same corporate trough as the Republicans - they just have to, and do, play a somewhat different game to stay in office and maintain their privilege.
The Democrats have already demonstrated that when they have uncontested power - the presidency and congressional majorities - they will still find a way to fail to actually deliver. That’s not just supposition - it’s established fact. It’s what they’ve already done. There’s certainly no reason to believe that they’re going to do any differently in the future.
Now that’s not to say or imply that I disagree with you fundamentally. The first half of your list would at least slow the decline and putting Democrats in office would be broadly better than putting Republicans in office.
But the Democrat establishment, and the DNC in particular, is too corrupt and too compromised to provide more than token opposition to the oligarchy.
Elsewhere in this thread, a poster wrote of the possibility of the Republicans self-destructing snd the Democrats fragmenting. I don’t think that’s particularly likely, but it is attractive, since it would serve not only to eliminate the most overtly corrupt and destructive party but to provide a rallying point for those who call for genuine reform - the handful of actually decent politicians of the AOC/Sanders type could potentially have some real influence instead of just being lone voices made ineffectual by their subservience to a well-established and thoroughly corrupt party hierarchy.
Again though, I don’t think it’s at all likely.
Election reform that doesn’t give outsized power to rural states
I completely agree with you about voter apathy, but this one in particular I don’t know how you get past. You need 2/3rds just to get an amendment for it up for a vote that you then need 3/4 of each state to pass. As long as a quarter or more of states are rural we’re kind of screwed on that one. I don’t see it happening in my lifetime at least.
The rest are spot on. Also, Jack Fucking Smith. It’s not just the news that needs consequences.
Well… maybe so. This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes and all his imprecise talk about “new politics” and “honesty in government,” is one of the few men who’ve run for President of the United States in this century who really understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose, as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. Jesus! Where will it end?
-Hunter Thompson, “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72”
I think it’s the way a lot of empires end. Everything gets easy, and without the survival element to keep people honest, over generations the people just lose touch with reality. They think migrant caravans are coming. They think all they need to do is half-ass their way through college and they deserve to get out make six figures still half-assing it. they think Trump is a genius, they think their adult kids are off the pills. The adult kids don’t really grasp what the pills are really going to do to them and everyone around them, because everything’s been mostly fine so far. Et cetera.
Speaking as another old guy, I wish I could disagree with you on your conclusion. 🥲
Yeah - it is more or less the way that old and previously healthy civilizations generally die. The details differ, but the overall dynsmic is fairly consistent.
As a civilization ages, the broad focus shifts from working to contribute to its well-being to living comfortably off of its established well-being to scrambling to grab as much of its diminishing well-being as possible as quickly as possible. And the US is well into that last phase.
There are only a few ways it can play out from there. The common people can force the civilization into a sort of reset, as the French did in the late 18th century, or the civilization can just go into a long, slow decline like Egypt did or it can collapse under some combination of rebellion from within and attack from without, as Rome did.
The third scenario is far and away the most likely for the US.
I love the saying : “Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.” because it is true.
I have a theory that societies can go into a circular loop and pivot into 3 different states, any which can serve as the starting point.
At one point you have a society that collectively take care of the issues, and being selfish is frowned upon. In this environment everyone sort of make small sacrifices for the greater good, and everyone is better for it. The problem though, is that the more honest everyone is, and the more you can gain by being devious and two-faced. Eventually some assholes will game the honest system, and more assholes will follow.
This lead to being dishonest and selfish being the norm, as if you’re not you will simply have nothing since people will be taking advantage of you. The meta is changed and society is now two-faced.
This lead to the last possible state, where the mask has completely fallen off and people are being genuine dick to each others. There is no honour and everything you can get away with openly, you do. Being two-faced is shunned and seen as weak, you also don’t have to worry about the appearance so you can go full selfish mode. This lead to a miserable existence for everyone, and suddenly people might wonder what’s the point.
To close the loop, people starts to realize what they have lost. Some people will make themselves vulnerable and show integrity, to try and make things better. Nobody trusts.nobody anymore, and making yourself vulnerable is the only way to gain influence, since nothing else can be trusted. After the big era of con men, selflessness is trending and respectable again, and those without are shunned.
To put in simply, in 1 state being honourable get you further in life, in another one being two-faced gets you farther, and in the last one being openly selfish and hostile will get your farther.
I think we might be somewhere in the peak(hopefully) of the openly hostile state, where you’re better off min/maxing society without pretending to be a good person. I think it might turn as the younger generation gets older and people get tired of the division and realize they can have a lot of success by doing what is right.
Anyway, this is just a theory. To me it make sense in game theory sort of way.
It absolutely makes sense and yes - game theory specifically addresses it and explains it.
At this point, the American political and corporate systems are effectively rewarding and thus selecting for psychopathy. The gloves are off, and success goes to those who are willing and able to do absolutely whatever it takes to succeed, no matter how much harm it does. Those who are constrained by morals, principles and empathy are at a disadvantage.
Trump and Musk and DeSantis and the like aren’t aberrations - they’re simply the leading edge of a broad dynamic - the most obvious extreme examples of the personality most suited to success in this corrupted era.
Unfortunately.
A political party is a collection and assemblage of individuals who share a set of beliefs and principles and policy views about the United States of America.
Remember when the Republican party simply didn’t put out a party platform running up to the 2020 election? They released a one page document that just said “We stand for whatever Donald Trump wants.” That was weird, huh?
That was the point where the Republicans ceased even pretending to be a normal political party and embraced their new identity as a fascist death cult. They don’t even have a platform. They literally stand for nothing.
