Political Memes

Do these articles NOT show you Dems “agitating” to change those structures? Including the VP nom? I say that a cursory search showed them, and if I were to fuck with enshittified google enough I’d find many more examples.

Establishment Democrats forcefully pushing no, not really. Dick Durbin meets that bar as the Senate whip but I can’t find a text of their proposal to see who/how many cosponsors they have - or if it even exists beyond a press release. Waltz is a DC outsider plucked from the Midwest to play the role of VP - be everything the president is not. And like your own linked article quoted, the campaign cut his feet out beneath him immediately and repeatedly.

Would you admit you were wrong then? Perhaps mistaken? Doubt.

You have to convince me I’m wrong, not get huffy and claim superiority in an attempt to bully complicity. Your retort is lacking in convincing argument, but is oozing condescension and assumption that I’m bad-faith greeenie/russian bot/.ml tankie spoiler position.

Defend it with what. Are they preventing third parties from forming? The 53 that are said to exist today must have thwarted them, then. Defending it in seekrit underground caves, hand-in-hand with “christian” nationalists, chanting in latin or lovecraftian? Is there even a NY Post article about it?

“We have a robust free market, look see? There’s dozens of competitors who all fight for the bottom 5% of the total” what a libertarian ass argument. If we applied anti-trust scrutiny to the parties, there would be forced breakups and structural barriers to them entrenching their grip. There used to be more than two parties that got EC votes in the US, evolving going through schisms and mergers as they react to electoral realities. As a natural reaction to FPTP though, those who failed to combine into an 800lb gorilla, get mauled by the one that did.

Did they refuse to let a russian stooge share the debate stage to continue her bad-faith campaign to throw the election to trump? Yeah they did, and so they should - fuck that bullshit.

Speaking of defending, what about your vaunted third party advocates stating plainly and openly their determination to throw the election to trump? Need a cite for that?

Stein is controlled opposition, yes. But you’re swinging at ghosts - I want STV/ranked choice/etc and third party coalitions in Congress, not a token protest vote without a meaningful platform or experience.

You can falsely categorize the Dems as status-quo mongers but (a) that’s false

• DoMA was quashed by a legal challenge, not Democrat led legislation
• ”Bipartisan consensus on foreign policy” despite being generally unpopular, enough that even Trump got to lie and run on “no more wars”
• ACA largely being a gift to entrench private insurers, the primary gain for us is the end of denials for preexisting conditions but failed to offer a robust government option, meekly offering repackaged private insurance under slightly better terms
• Abortion not receiving robust protection from legal challenge in the last 50 years, relying on a (correct but) legally tortured right to privacy instead of a baseline agreeable standard via federal law or amendment
• And now the chatter is about ditching LGBTQ+ to court Hispanic and ‘moderates’ after the 2024 general…

(b) some good is better than all bad, (c} you can affect change by participating with them, and

AOC just got blocked by Pelosi herself from the exact kind of ‘change from within’ you argue for.

Voters (and spoilers) organized and ran a massive protest and advocacy campaign over Palestine and routinely got told to shove it, from the DNC stage, abandoned support on campuses, shunned and removed from rallies, and generally shunned.

Unless you’re a donor or regular attendee at $3k-$500k per head fundraiser, or are one of the vanishing small intersectional group of voters who get microadvertised to death with focus tested messaging, you don’t matter to them. Your vote is already counted in, because what other option is there? Ooooops.

(d) third-parties have got nothing, and in four years everyone gets to trip over themselves to have this exact same russian argument again.

Name one third party that has any shot at being elected to national office in four years. Cite your sources, less than a thousand words, papers under your desk, #2 only.

Circular reasoning. After Citizens United money is what runs elections, and the Democrats insist on looming over the left wing political landscape and beating minority challengers, reinforcing the “losing prospect” narrative for third parties. Europeans manage to build actual coalitions all the time and govern effectively, listening to coalition parties (and thus voters who elected that strand of politician) whilst still managing to run an effective government.

America can legitimately be better, but you have to dare to hope for it, not resign yourself to the lesser evil every cycle, and then shout down everyone else who isn’t. Massively cut election donations and establish universal FEC funding, and ditch winner takes all voting. Otherwise we will continue to see the ratchet click rightward, while the lesser evil just slows the metastasizing fascism - are you okay with that future?