were against the idea of political parties.

They feared that they could overwhelm individuals, politically weak, and minor players. They were correct to that extent.

I suspect that they would view the current morass that is the US House with horror and amazement.

When a small group of insane anti-government types take hostage over government, I think it raises serious questions on the viability of our system, the vitality of political parties, and the future of our nation. We have faced many a crisis before, and somehow, our system seems to self correct. Except for that tiny, meaningless spat between the states, I do not recall one group within the walls of government so intent on bringing down the whole structure.

OK, it wasn't so tiny, nor meaningless. Interestingly, the biggest argument that the South had was the biblical support of slavery. Much like many of the Tea Party today, and their view of society and change.

I view them as a clear and present danger to our nation.

It's pretty natural for people of reasonably like mind to band together for the common good. People will naturally form such alliances, and in any parties WILL form, either formally or informally.

This site is predicated on the idea that we need to work together to elect Democrats. You don;t have to support that idea, but then I wonder why you would participate in a site that has that as its mission.

not Democrats still participate on this site. And some of us would love to support the party if the party supported workers, the middle class, the working poor, the disabled, and the elderly. Give me the Democratic Party that Bobby Kennedy fought alongside and I will be right there supporting the party.

And I don't object to those who want to pull the party left. I do think that they have to be relaistic about state of American politics today, however. And ai think that someone who rejects the idea of political parties and rejects working to advance our party is just plain wrong. And out of synch with one of the main purposes of this site: to elect Democrats.

Is that vast numbers of potential voters never bother, because neither party represents their needs. You want to elect Democrats? Start representing them, which will pull them to the polls to vote. They're a far larger untapped pool of votes than Dems will ever get by 'triangulating' to try and win over existing right-leaning voters.

appealing to those who don't vote than by trying to please right leaning voters.

The members of congress shifted from pro-administration to anti-administration several times; many during the same presidency

Pierce Butler-SC was both pro and anti-administration during the time of Washington's presidency
Benjamin Hawkins - NC, (Washington's Presidency)
Richard Bassett - DE. Was both pro and anti during his first term (Washington's presidency)
John Langdon - NH (Washington's Presidency)

Quite frankly, I prefer this method, where they shift based on issues of the time then what we have today
But, I recognize that 1) We have moved past that stage and barring the rise of other parties will never go back; 2) Issues today may too different for it to be viable.
Some would likely argue what we have today is more efficient. I disagree, largely because everything has become about party affiliation and not the issue itself

But it is what we have. And within that system, working to advance the party, and therefore your party's ability to advance its platform is vital. As you point out, we have to live within the reality of the world.

i.e. White property owning men, it was a whole lot easier to go without parties.

Doesn't make the founding fathers correct.

Proportional representation would be a much better system in Congress, and instant runoff voting would also to a lesser extent encourage smaller parties.

But single office races in a first past the post system inherently tends toward a two party system.

That's how a Reganesque Democrat can win.

the polar opposite happened a good while back. And now their most contemporary model the T-DWS2000 is online and is in full dismemberment mode; glitchy and virus-prone as this model goes, is fully intent on achieving it's goal

Who thinks Trump and Carson are idiots the same thing.

Trump may not be a traditional mainstream Republican, but he's a lot more acceptable to their tea-party xenophobic base than Hillary would ever be.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

The electorate and give us an illusion of choice. Both parties work for the same master.

Bernie's political revolution is based on class warfare not on political parties.

The problem is not that your choices are an illusion. The problem is that you don't like your choices. And that is not because of the "system" or because of "parties", but simply because your political point of view is dramatically out of step with the majority of the country.

Bernie's political "revolution" is failing because Americans aren't interested in class warfare. They're interested in solutions and less grandstanding. That's the totality of it.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

of being elected president compared to Hillary's? Honestly.

bernie crushes him

but who cares about reality




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/h-a-goodman/bernie-sanders-defeats-trump-by-a-wider-margin_b_8345156.html

same world, no alternate

why would you behave differently?

The system we have now allows the two major parties to choke out rival movements. It would feel great to hear that a Green Party person had been elected.

But it is NOT the system that will be in place in the US for the 2016 election.

So its merits are beside the point for 2016.

If we don't get a Dem in the WH and as many Dems in Congress as we can in 2016, we can kiss the idea good-bye, whatever its merits are.

Oh no wait, he didn't. He grew a movement and fought to change the current sucky setup.


'We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven'

my point was we have to deal with stuff today, as they are today; while we work to change tomorrow.

But I think MLK would have typed on the internet too, if it had existed back when he was around. Now wouldn't there have been an interesting twitter feed?

If Twitter had existed, that would have been an interesting feed.

I see one problem with PR by states. How to deal with single representative states. Or even those with two. For that reason I

favor a nation wide pr system. That would reflect the political thinking of the American people every two years. Of course pr does

not cover offices which CAN have only one winner (Senate,President.) For those I would favor Ranked Voting. But that's

a whole other discussion.

And it would open up opportunities for more parties to jump in the mix.

that I find this OP rather simplistic and condescending. I know I risk censure because Skinner owns this site, but I disagree with him in that I find that the majority of DUers are well versed about our system of government.

That said, in reading many of recent OPs about this election, I think DUers might agree that our "party system" is "not representative of our electorate." We might also agree that, regardless of whether or not we "support" him, Senator Sanders is moving our national dialogue in a direction that many of us want it to go.

But as a 3rd Rock From the Sun fan, I prefer the leader be called The Big Giant Head

Most of my life, I lived below the poverty line. I was homeless for a miserable six months, living in a car or a tent with a wife and infant. Now I am comfortably middle class.

It is not in my interests to vote Republican.

It is not in my interests to elect a Republican government.
IMHO, primaries is where we decide who will best face the republican. The General is where we want to have Republicans or Democrats run the government.

Note: I did not use Liberal or Conservative because they are relative terms and many her do not define them as I do. By my definition, there are no conservatives on the race for the Democratic Party nomination. Opinions may vary.

Revolution that points out how both parties have been corrupted.

And third parties don't have a chance without instant runoff voting.

of the nation, I'll back the candidate who is first and foremost for the people and who is not beholden to the plutocracy.

These days revolution is mostly what people post on the internet.

Electing a democrat or a republican, you haven't been listening.

140 characters at a time

It may not account for steadfast naysayers who say I won't vote for either one of them and stay home. This phenomenon has been considered in the mathematics of poll-dynamics models. Usually, there are equal number of naysayers on both sides of the spectrum and whether they stay home or vote for the other candidate, the results remain the same. Eventually, the naysayers see the light of accepting 95% of what they want rather than 0% and end up on one or the other side.

It is irreparably broken.

citizens got lazy. Garbage in, garbage out. If you don't show up at the polls, if you don't participate in the selection of candidates and officeholders or help decide on party platforms..then you reap the results. How many people can't be bothered to participate in local committee activities? How many can't be bothered to show up at local or state elections or even learn about who is running for those? How many can even name their own representative? Or be conversant in the responsibilities of the branches of government, federal or state, let alone be able to tell you how laws are made? How many stood up to keep civics and government as part of school curriculum rather than astroturf the footballfield? The system does not serve when the people do not serve.

After which the Democratic party believed it was politically expedient to start drifting to the right. Initially it was called, 'triangulation'. Over time it evolved into 'Centrism' and was adopted by the Democratic party apparatus, and pushed by a think talk calling itself 'The Third Way®'.

The poly sci term for it is, 'creeping fascism'.

further and further away from you?

We only have one tool to stop that: make them actually work for our vote.

And "we" can be pragmatic and pool your votes into victory.

We are expected to believe it and endorse a political orientation that uses this Stockholm syndrome based reasoning to keep us domesticated.

And, really, isn't it rather better to be turned into leg of lamb in a slaughter house having been led there by sheep dogs, than to be eaten in the wild by coyotes? Yes, much much better they argue. Because, you see, that gives sheep dogs a job, and after all the slaughter house uses humane methods that make them and the rancher profits and gives us reason to exist...as...well, leg of lamb.

Now see here, the rancher produces thousands of lambs and cares for them. That's GREAT for sheep. Without such ranchers there'd be no sheep. So endorse your sheepleness, it gives you a few months to sniff the grass.

Don't be too critical, this system is what keeps the sheep dogs well fed and makes fortunes for ranchers.

The candidates are NOT the same. If you can't see the corruption and corrosive influence of corporate lobbying and money on the Democratic Party then I don't know what to tell you. It completely undermines everything.

Thank you.

That Marianne realized that Hannah ' s platform was basically identical to her own. That's like the lie that states Hillary and Bernie aren't all that different because of similar voting records...it's a truth that masks some VERY big differences on fundamental issues.

The text makes clear that they do not share all the same views.

The whole point of the post is that parties are coalitions of people who do not all share the same views on all the issues. Some hold identical views, some only share a few of the same views, yet they still have an incentive to join forces.

That plus the whole "No, really, I'm totes a democrat, look how liberal I suddenly am, tee hee!" thing.

Reps' spend about a third of their entire time in office actually raising money. This is not an exaggeration. Lobbying is actually very strictly regulated to the point that you can't even sit down for coffee with a lobbyist without it being extremely well documented. The lobbyist can't even pay for the meal.

(I'll note though that lobbyists do ghost write the legislation and aids are often the ones who are talking to lobbyists, that needs to end, but it's only a small part of the issue.)

Source: I jokingly applied to be a lobbyist and it was a nightmare of regulatory crap.

Do you have a lobbyist? I don't. GE has an army of them. Who are you going to listen to? Public opinion or the army of GE lobbyists using their strictly - regulated coffee dates to tell you they'll be burying you unless you vote their way?

We end up with cheese.

rats

Mice follow the cheese, then you have to get cats, but they eat the cheese too. Then dogs. On and on until elephants, then back to mice.

we've been watching this for a long time (many of us anyway). I've voted in every presidential election since 1984. It's the reason I volunteered for Obama's campaign - I knew the "other" candidate couldn't beat the republicans. We got him in, and still I watched the gap grow between rich and poor. As a socialist I can't take much more of this kind of sticking together. We are getting screwed. And by "we" I mean most average people in America. I am actually not doing that bad personally. But I am only where I'm at because of programs the politicians now want to cut (Pell Grants and GI Bill). Without those particular programs I wouldn't have had the opportunity to go to my excellent state university and rise out of my "station" so to speak. I would've been working in factories like my parents, and now even those factories have been moved overseas. In those rural areas folks (like many of my family members) are working at big box stores and fast food for a brilliant $7.25/hr.

Sorry. I will probably need to leave for a while next year or greatly limit my posting. I won't get in your way but I also will not actively support any more pro-corporate, free-trade candidates.

Sometimes you just get tired of what the corporations are feeding you.

Great article today in Socialist Worker called "How I got redder and redder"

can sell you drugs and 'healthcare'.

If they were just feeding us bland, ok, but they're feeding us poison.

Capitalism is winning and will continue to win until Marx is proven correct.

Marx will be proven correct in about a decade or two.

Therefore I simply have to sit back and watch.

There are necessary policy implications of things like self-driving cars and automation that bring us to Marx's view (though I have disagreements with Marx he became to realize the real implications later in life; I refer specifically to "productive forces&quot .

And when I say "necessary" we're talking the threat of a great depression if the governments of the world don't act. Therefore Marx (or for me, Proudhon) is correct.

So why not make it happen sooner by keeping the party in power that is most likely to do something about it?

My guess is that there will be a lot more people voting Green or Libertarian this time around than in 2012 (the likely nominee is simply unlikeable for many reasons; and yes as a Sanders supporter I still know he's a long shot but it's still worth trying because the likely nominee can still falter, 5 more debates, it can happen). But I myself will be voting for the nominee because I think another Bush-esque nightmare would set back the real policy implications that technology will usher in whether the capitalists or wall streeters like it or not. This is the last generation of the rich. It really is. A Bush-esque Presidency would probably set us back a decade or more. That's a lot of dead people, that's a lot of suffering that can be prevented by going with the policy wonks that know what they're doing. (I should admit if we had a Huntsman running on the GOP side I couldn't see much change but currently the clown car is a bunch of Bush-esque idiots.)

Hillary is the presumptive nominee and rallying should be now. I reject that. This is the only time we have to put up alternatives and push them. If we don't the only comment later will be "you had your chance in the primaries". So, we are running our guy, we are giving him cash, we are promoting him. Yesterday I was motivated enough to get my old twitter account reactivated and also joined Reddit.

"This is the last generation of the rich" --> It ain't gonna stop on it's own joshcryer. And technology is not going to do it for us - it's only as good as it's users (at least anonymous is a step in the right direction). But, bottom-line, we need to stop it. We don't do that by running a corporate candidate.

OP is simply saying it's "OK" to back the nominee, whoever it is. Yes, we know Skinner believes Hillary will be the nominee. Hell, it's likely given the polls and the overall political landscape as it is. That's OK.

And I think you're wholly wrong about tech here. Autos (automated cars) are going to put a good 3 million people out of work, overnight (taxi drivers only). One can argue 10 million people overall in a decade or two (the whole automated industry is not just taxi drivers). Apple, Google, Tesla, Ford, GM, they're all looking at this. And it's just gonna happen. That's a massive number of people removed from the workforce. And it will only get worse.

Watch this amazing CGP Grey video:

the purity card in our party make jobs like mine even HARDER - a reality not lost on the vote-suppressing Republicans here.

either of the two major parties, so you're forced to go Independent or write-in a vote.

Keep giving us slop and more and more people will migrate away.

there is a we and we're truly like-minded. Take a look around. Sharing a common enemy, the republicans, doesn't cut it anymore. We are divided.

Play on people's fears to keep everyone in line.

Nicely articulated.

I can tell who hasn't bothered to read the TOS here by some of the comments in reply to your essay!

What will happen--as it always does--is that some of the loudest, rudest, most insulting posters will POOOOOOOOOF--disappear without a trace, never to be seen again until the next election cycle, where they pop up once again, determined to sow hate and discontent.

No one has to tell those types to leave--they do it on their own.

but by the powerful interests that finance them. These interests - essentially, corporations and private capital - use the parties differently: Republican Admininistrations are used to aggressively push agendas favorable to corporations and private capital, and Democrats are used to maintain the status quo in between Republican Administrations.

It's like a metaphorical ratchet:

Figure 1: A ratchet featuring gear (1) and pawl (2) mounted on base (3).

Last edited Tue Oct 27, 2015, 02:39 PM - Edit history (1)

but I can't remember whose. My apologies to the original author.

ON EDIT: I found it here: http://stopmebeforeivoteagain.org/stopme/chapter02.html

Last edited Tue Oct 27, 2015, 03:26 PM - Edit history (1)

For example: "Give us subpoena power" during the 2006 midterms turned immediately to "Impeachment is off the table" after the election secured the House.

Also, Obama's continuance and expansion of the warrantless surveillance programs initiated by Bush. And pretty much the entirety of our belligerent foreign policy.

Message: "we won't dare move this party left." Per your example above.

in our collective political consciousness:

1. "Liberal" is a bad word
2. The United States is a conservative country

Neither is true, but the Democrats internalized both - note how Obama called himself a 'moderate' "Reagan Republican," and how Hillary talks up her 'moderate' credentials.

The Party is comprised of people who are afraid, and therefore the Party is not playing to win, but instead is playing not to lose. They are acting out of fear of the phantom "conservative electorate" that won't elect liberals.

I, for one, would rather our Party be bold and fight to win. That's why I'm voting for Bernie.

Bernie Sanders is brilliant, caring and has my vote too.

but I saw #1 in action on this site yesterday. In service of Hillary's campaign. And if DU is willing to tolerate that idea. Well, you can figure it out.

The poster even trotted out "tax and spend" although I believe it was more coyly phrased.

Well said.

Too many are afraid of risking their status quo comfort to help those of the 99% that need help. They really know better than to believe the propaganda spewed forth by the 1%, but just afraid.

Enoch Powell spoke of the 'ratchet of nationalisation' in a speech to the City of London Young Conservatives in April 1966. Keith Joseph, Margaret Thatcher's mentor, talked of "the Labour ratchet" in a 1975 speech. This became a significant talking point of his - type in 'keith joseph rat' to Google and it will offer 'ratchet effect' as auto-completion.

And that shows that such an effect can be reversed.

the voters are not ALL sheep.

Money is not EVERYTHING.

The voters, in increasing numbers, do not vote for "their" candidate.

"No turning back, now the wheel has turned". We just keep losing ground. If they can't manage to pry more money out of us,
they just print more to devalue ours. The automatic computer trading just creates big bubbles. Derivatives? Imaginary future
profits speculation trading. Now they're just making shit up. Losses insured, paid with real $$ from we the people.
Profits not taxed, and off shore.

I like what Bill C. said about $$. To paraphrase: Money is like bullshit, you gotta spread it around for it to do any good.
If you leave it in a big pile it doesn't do any good. If you spread it around it'll fertilize new crops.