Interesting read, somewhat enlightening.

But IMO, from the point of view of interoperability, it was bad enough having competing corporate social networks. We don’t want to replace that with competing open meta-networks. And yet ActivityPub and ATProto seem to use completely different paradigms, which would make bridging them pretty hard. Frustrating.

Yes, someone else made that point and I conceded it. Unfortunately the constructive bit of this discussion got drowned out by a couple of activist types who preferred to sling mud and ad hominen insults.

Throwing around insults doesn’t get you to win the argument.

Did you join one of those parties and try to do something to fix this problem, or is it always someone else’s fault?

The “democratic choices of the party base” is precisely why you’ve got Trump on the ballot. Democracy is a good thing but you can have too much of a good thing. America’s founders understood this. They thought the electoral college would be the filter to prevent authoritarian populists getting into power. In the end it was the parties that ended up serving this purpose, until the Republican party broke. So, yes, I absolutely do think you would be better off as a country if your political system had an elitist mechanism to stop would-be dictators getting their hands on power.

Yes, good point. Effectively, what I argued only applies to swing states. Completely agree that people should always vote anyway, for the reasons you outline.

The electoral college does not invalidate my argument about third parties. To vote for a third party in the US electoral system is effectively to surrender one’s vote to other voters.

Trump became the GOP nominee in 2016 because the Clinton campaign claimed colluded to elevate him to the nomination

This is conspiracism. Sure, it was convenient for the Democrats, but Trump did not get where he is “because” of Democrats. Trump became the nominee because the Republicans were a hollowed out party with nobody in charge and a voter base that become radicalized and completely unmoored from the official free-market ideology. The Democrats had nothing to do with that.

As for interfering in Republican campaigns since then, yeah sure, and it’s even a strategy that worked somewhat. I agree it’s cynical and risky and generally a bad idea.

I’m beginning to understand why people clamor for better blocking features. I am just expressing a viewpoint and I have never so much as downvoted anyone else here, you included.

With your hysteria and insults and false accusations you are poisoning this discussion. I’m done here. Others will judge for themselves.

Please stop insulting me and accusing me of things I didn’t say. Thank you.

Chill. Your arguments would be more persuasive that way.

So at what point does low turnout become a problem, and how would you propose to fix that? The system we have depends on people voting and running for election. For every additional person who opts out, the legitimacy of the elected politicians falls, the scope of what they can get done is narrowed, and the relative voice of those who do vote becomes louder - these people typically being richer and more powerful already. It’s a problem. Forcing citizens to take responsibility is one solution.

I did mention it, “majoritarian” means FPTP.

My point is that this system is not necessarily undemocratic, and indeed that it can even be too democratic. It all depends on the internal setup of the two parties. The Republican party is definitely a “sham of a democracy” in that it has too much of it. In Sweden no Trump figure can take over the government because the parties will stop him. In the USA in the past, the Republican party would have served the same purpose.

This is where is gets more complicated. To pol-sci specialists of authoritarian breakdown, American parties are in fact too democratic. The smoke-filled-room elitism of super delegates, and so on, has historically been a very good way to stop demagogues gaming the system. The essential reason you guys are having to suffer Trump is that the Republican party couldn’t stop him. The party had become an empty shell, a brand waiting to be taken over by whatever unscrupulous demagogue could win its primary. The Democrats, with their supposedly undemocratic super-delegates, are at this point America’s only genuine political party. It’s not a bug that the DNC leadership can assert a direction as you suggest, it’s a feature.

Outside America, many of us really wish you guys would just stop and consider the importance of your election beyond this single issue of the Middle East. Seriously. There’s only so much the USA can do about that, anyway.

Much, much more important is the signal you would send by re-electing an obvious wannabe dictator who has already tried to steal an election. Like it or not, for two centuries America has been the world’s model for openness, democracy, freedom. In the last decade those things have taken a serious hit around the world, and the connection is obvious with Trump’s first election. Democracy and its associated blessings - rule of law, unpoliticized civil service and institutions, press freedom etc - are really fragile. If America gives up on them it’s permission for everyone else to do so, and that’s going to lead the world to some very bad places. The Gaza issue is a complete sideshow by comparison.

It would require a separate nominative register for the blank votes, sure. But the whiners complain that they are unheard. This solves that. If you want your “no preference” added up and counted, then sure, but you have to be ready to be elected yourself. Seems fair to me. Democracy does not work without participation. People who opt out are effectively voting against democracy and they should own that fact.

Voting for a third party in a majoritarian electoral system is functionally the same as abstaining. A majoritarian system is intended to produce a binary choice. And this situation is not “undemocratic” if the two parties are internally democratic, with factions and primaries and so on.

Here in Europe we have mostly PR systems with lots of parties in the final round - and we still have voters who whine that nothing’s good enough for them. Here they sometimes campaign for official recognition of blank votes, as if that would solve anything.

Personally I’m in favor of the proposition by which, if you abstain or vote blank, your name gets put onto a special lottery ballot and you risk finding yourself personally elected. Seems appropriate. After all, apparently these people think they can do better than everyone else.

This is the most succinct answer.

Not for comments.

Once, as a teenager in the 90s, I walked into the Capitol building and, seeing a scrum of VIPs and reporters, barged my way through and shook hands with Bob Dole (the Republican beaten by Bill Clinton in 1996). I was a tourist, I’m not even American.

The openness of America’s political system is special. You should protect it.

Depends if you like their politics, obviously.

It’s a shame that things became this way. In a properly functioning democracy we would respect elected leaders, if only because we respect the office that they temporarily hold.