…Yet it seems safe to say that the world no longer trusts U.S. promises, and perhaps no longer fears U.S. threats, the way it used to. The problem, however, isn’t Biden; it’s the party that reflexively attacks him for anything that goes wrong.
Right now America is a superpower without a fully functioning government. Specifically, the House of Representatives has no speaker, so it can’t pass legislation, including bills funding the government and providing aid to U.S. allies. The House is paralyzed because Republican extremists, who have refused to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy and promoted chaos rather than participating in governance, have turned these tactics on their own party. At this point it’s hard to see how anyone can become speaker without Democratic votes — but even less extreme Republicans refuse to reach across the aisle.
And even if Republicans do somehow manage to elect a speaker, it seems all too likely that whoever gets the job will have to promise the hard right that he will betray Ukraine.
Given this political reality, how much can any nation trust U.S. assurances of support? How can we expect foreign enemies of democracy to fear America when they know that there are powerful forces here that share their disdain?
Their supporters. You’ve not been reading.
And vote splitting is fucking horrible. A vote for a third party under First Past the Post is a vote against your own interests. Even at the local level. If the election features more than two candidates, the majority will often get screwed over by FPtP.
That’s why it’s so important to change the voting system to one that doesn’t actively punish you for supporting who you want. STAR is great for that. It’s the best voting system designed to date. It’s also supported by the Forward Party on the front page of the site.
The other options are still better than the horrible option of FPtP. That said, I’m not a fan of RCV (Ranked Choice, aka, Instant Runnoff). RCV shares many of the same problems as FPtP while not actually fixing the vote splitting issue. It also introduces some other wrinkles that are just bad.
Did you not read that the majority of local elections are uncontested? How is having another choice other than the default party bad?
They are not screwed over by FPTP but by the parties and people who benefit and refuse to change the existing system.
That assumes that the major parties have your best interest at heart. They have their donors best interests at heart. You are just someone they have to pretend to please to get you to choose them over the other team.
I never said anything against STAR voting or argued against vote splitting. I simply challenged your assumption that vote splitting is harmful.
Vote splitting is just a way of describing the phenomenon where it is harder to start a third party in a FPTP system.
I reject the idea that vote splitting should have any effect on how you cast your vote. That is essentially censoring your own vote and your own voice.
You misspelled impossible. See Durvurger’s Law.
See video, after video, after video.
And a load of different sites.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Duvergers-law
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/ps-political-science-and-politics/article/why-just-two-parties-a-voting-game-to-illustrate-duvergers-law/31740530FD6AE83819083E3AF956BFFC
https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199207800.001.0001/acref-9780199207800-e-382
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-0-387-09720-6_5
We can then divert into Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem, but that’s a bit outside this conversation.
The point being, Durvurger laid this all out. Plurality voting will strongly preference two-party dominance.
As to local politics. Again, you run into the two party system. I will admit that it’s not impossible to win as an independent in local races, but the fact that we as a species are very team orientated makes it harder.
No you are misrepresenting it.
From the first sentence of wikipedia
Tend does not mean impossible.
Heck, you even contradicted yourself. First you say its impossible. Next, you say it will strongly preference two party dominance. It can’t be both.
You are also conveniently ignoring that most local races only have one candidate. That makes said ‘law’ irrelevant.
All you are doing is repeating the same thing over and over again even if it is in no way relevant to the discussion. You are clearly just arguing for the sake of arguing. Therefore, I will disengage.
It’s interesting that you continuously link-drop with no ability to speak to the subject beyond “just trust me bro, watch this video, it says it all”.
It’s the behavior I’d expect of the flat earthers and QAnon folk.
As a side-note, you are aware those videos do nothing but restate the same baseless nonsense in different ways, right?
I explained it several times, then linked to videos, and websites, and scholarly articles that all explain it better because the guy I’m arguing with doesn’t seem to want to understand.
Hell, his own preferred third party makes voting reform a priority, because otherwise they cannot win.