More than 50 interviews with Democratic leaders revealed a party struggling to decide what it believes in, what issues to prioritize and how to confront an aggressive right-wing administration.

Democrats are self-critical of their inability to take positions distinct from their Republican colleagues without splintering off conservative support? Democrats must be right-wingers.

[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Its almost like First-past-the-post voting artificially limits the number of viable political parties to two and should be replaced immediately.

At the very least, you would think democracy advocates in the democratic party would be falling over each other to implement such a much needed reform of our voting systems in the blue states they control. Democrats themselves admit non stop that First-past-the-post voting is a huge problem every election when they screech about the small numbers of 3rd party voters. Democrars publicly admit they know the voting system is broken, yet FPTP remains in use in the vast majority of the country.

How can you be so upset about a recurring problem and then do nothing to resolve it? There is no excuse. The democrats want to hold your vote hostage and they are using the republican party to threaten you to do it. While they may not be exactly the same as the republicans, they are a part of the problem with our country.

The democratic party must lose its monopoly on resisting the republicans. We should have a free market of ideas competing with each other. We could have multiple chances to defeat the republicans every election We may one day be free to vote how we want.

Electoral Reform Videos

First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)

Videos on alternative electoral systems

Single Transferable Vote

Mixed Member Proportional representation

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

First-past-the-post voting artificially limits the number of viable political parties to two

Arguably limits viable parties to One. Quite a few states are functionally single party oligarchies, thanks to winner-take-all election results. States that split 55/45 by party affiliation will routinely have legislatures that are closer to 70/30 by representative. And control of statewide office typically means a single party veto even when the legislature is split.

How can you be so upset about a recurring problem and then do nothing to resolve it?

It's a big, systemic problem that requires a large coordinated professionalized opposition to change. And that means organized manpower, large amounts of money/resources, and an ideologically committed media apparatus to help coordinate the reform effort.

When we've got none of the above? And, even worse, an incumbent party system dedicated to resisting any kind of reform (often violently), building that kind of organization is incredibly difficult.

We should have a free market of ideas competing with each other.

I can't imagine how a more fractured and adversarial constellation of movements would benefit us.

We need a coalition that's collaborative, not a marketplace of minor opposition parties that's fighting for vote share.

The whole appeal of Ranked Choice is that candidates aren't competing with one another in a market for vote-share. They can collaborate - as Mamdani and Lander did - towards a commonly shared policy goal.