Ralph talks to Democratic Congressman, Jamie Raskin, about what issues the Dems have to run on to take over the House. And editor of Ballot Access News, Richard Winger, explains how the two major parties conspire to keep third parties off the ballot. Plus, listener questions!
5 Comments
America is like the sinking Titanic. The oligarch entrenched system maintained by KOCH etc. cannot be taken out by US elections. All 535 members need to be fired if Congress is to free itself from influence by money.
Born in 1954 in Hartford, Conn, already knowing about Ralph Nader’s good work sitting in our 4th grade class, by 1972 my only desire was to leave the US.
Short of successful armed revolt, democracy is lost in North America except for Canada. However, rather than resort to violence, America’s vast population of democracy starved people will simply fade into the sunset, one generation after another.
At some point social democracy outside US boarders will abandon associations with the American inverted totalitarian monster and leave it to pronounced isolation.
Sadly – America is like the Titanic sinking . The entrenched oligarch system of well over 50 years cannot be taken out by US elections no matter how many voters in the two-party system go to the ballot box. All 535 members need to be fired and replaced if Congress is to free itself from influence by corrupt money infusions by a mafia style ruling elite.
True, President Eisenhower first gave us a warning of what was to come. Nobody took it to heart.
In my view, short of successful armed revolt, social democracy is a lost cause in North America except for Canada. However, rather than resort to violence, America’s vast population of social democracy starved people will simply fade into the sunset, one generation after another, throwing their hands up in the air out of despair because ballot box efforts failed.
At some point social democracy outside US boarders will abandon its association with the American inverted totalitarian experiment and leave the US to pronounced isolation. But this will still take time. At best the US gets a gratuitous birthday card greeting from outside its boarders.
The fight is not to plant social democracy in the leftover settler society of America built on slavery, genocide and mainstream violence – the US is too far gone for that effort – but to prevent the corrupt near psychopathic US oligarch system from depriving Europeans of social democracy or any other part of the world that chooses social democracy over American inverted totalitarian influence i.e. rule by the corporate state.
Instant Runoff Voting (what Richard Winger imprecisely calls “ranked choice voting”) in fact DOES NOT SOLVE the “spoiler problem”. At issue is that IRV is essentially still plurality voting–it just has an automated runoff system. Not only does it still have plenty of spoiler problems, but it actually invents some new counter-intuitive tactical voting scenarios that have the end effect that, in spite of IRV being slightly superior to basic plurality voting, it still has enough tactical voting that it is incapable of empowering third or fourth parties on its own. Maine is going to find this out the hard way after several years.
In all the municipalities and countries that have adopted IRV without proportional representation, including Ireland, Australia, and Malta for instance, third parties have completely failed to get meaningful electoral representation. Australia has used IRV for single-winner election districts in its House elections for over 70 years now and it is still completely dominated by two parties. If you ever pay attention to Australian House elections, the parties and candidates often try to give people very complicated strategic voting flyers in order to maximize their candidate’s chances of winning (and the strategic voting isn’t “just order your preferences honestly”).
There are superior alternative voting systems to IRV that have less tactical voting and are expressive enough that they ACTUALLY DO empower more than two parties when in use, without the need for proportional representation. Proportional representation is a very difficult reform to get on a national level due to the way our constitution describes. Changing the voting system should be the first priority, and unfortunately IRV is not the stepping stone to proportional representation that some people might like to believe because it can’t break through the two-party system. Please look into Approval Voting and Score Voting. Overcoming the systemic problems that give us Duverger’s Law is an incredibly important issue for every third party advocate and it’s up to us who push for voting reform to responsibly educate ourselves on which solutions are best and which may be inadequate.
And socialism is not “when the government does stuff”. Good grief it’s 2018, you don’t have the Red Scare preventing you from getting educated anymore.
Hi Ralph,
Thank you for the wonderful show.
I liked Richard Winger; more on PR would be a wonderful ongoing series.
Also, WWF Living Planet Report is a vital work on the extinction rates; may be a good show too.
Take care,
Ken
Ken
What’s needed more than a 3rd Party is a 0th Party, like that which won the last populist revolution at the state level, namely the Non-Partisan League, as described in detail at my website.