You saw it too in the last presidential election, where people rallied behind either giant douche or turd sandwich because they would never vote against their team.
You're right that the types of things being done by each party, when in power, are different, but the shared mentality amongst the party members, of both parties, is the same: our team must win at all costs.
That's not 'being distracted,' that's 'paying attention.' The mentality of the people voting for representatives is totally irrelevant when, once in power, those representatives behave extremely differently depending on party affiliation.
At some point you have to draw a line connecting the two groups, right?
Otherwise, if these groups differ significantly, then they'd be voted out. On the contrary, polls show overwhelming support from within that party.
>but the shared mentality amongst the party members, of both parties, is the same: our team must win at all costs.
Sorry. That's simply not true. Look at the House Russia investigation and the behavior of people like Nunes.
You'd be hard-pressed to find an equivalent dereliction from the other side in a matter as significant as that implied by the allegations and evidence to-date. Think of it: there was more emphasis on HRC's emails.
We can say it's a matter of opinion, but at some point we must converge on reason. There is no equivalence here.
It even works for uncontested races. The office goes empty until an acceptable candidate can be found to fill it.
2. I'm not sure that option is actually a good idea, since the effective result is that either the incumbent continues longer - which means the none-of-the-above vote is a vote for the incumbent, so it's still rational to vote for the "other party" - or the office is empty. That's good if your goal is a small and weak government, which is a totally reasonable thing to want, but probably not one that reflects the will of the majority of Americans.
And I explicitly said the office would remain empty. If an incumbent runs unopposed, the new option would be the way to force their party to pick someone else, since obviously no one had the moxie or political capital to challenge in the primary.
If it is important that the office be filled, it is important that the parties run candidates qualified to fill it. In light of recent events, I'd rather have no elected official or a temporary placeholder than a bad official. It would seem that our government has a limited capacity to operate rationally even when the person nominally in charge is incompetent or non compos mentis. It certainly happened in the later years of the Reagan administration. It might be happening now.
Europe has proved that short election cycles are possible. We could survive six weeks of vacancy in most offices while cranking out a mulligan election. And where it really counts, existing succession plans apply. We could certainly run one mulligan between November and January, and if another one is required, Congress still has time to pick their Speaker of the House before inauguration day, who would then have to take the office until an election finally succeeds in naming a full-term replacement.
The sheer panic, expense, and inconvenience of the first time would likely encourage the parties to not run crap candidates in the future.
I said "(Unless you have a realistic way of introducing good)" - I meant that the way of introducing it must be realistic, not simply that the good must be realistic. (Let me know if I could have phrased that more clearly!)
Any one of those might work.
But you don't always have unlimited attempts, so it's still worth considering the amount of resistance a sound, sensible, rational solution to a real, obvious problem that affects every constituent might face in the typical congressperson, especially when the problem at hand is the prevalence of congresspersons stubbornly obstructing bills that would benefit the whole population at their expense.
It's a natural side effect of a first-past-the-post voting system[1].
Like HRC purging hundreds of thousands of voters in Brooklyn for no reason the day before the primary?
This. What-aboutism is rampant these days, but frequently involves conflating things of such vastly different degree as to be of an altogether distinct quality.
The strange thing about the supposed "insurgent" party invoking it so frequently is that they are justifying their own behavior by equating it to that of those they so vehemently oppose and demand to be repudiated.
I see that as more of a failing of the democratic process than people being tribal. Simply put, if you opposed Trump (or Clinton) your only sensible option was to vote Clinton (or Trump). The sooner we escape this two-party hell the better, but it won't happen any time soon.
PS: When you try to game the system, the system owns your ass.
Oh, certainly. But very few people dislike both candidates equally. I didn't think Clinton was a particularly good candidate, but I was extremely concerned about the prospect of Trump being President. In that situation, my most sensible path is to vote for Clinton, despite my reservations. A vote for a third party would be a waste unless the system was changed in a way that would make it meaningful. All that said, I live in New York, so my vote doesn't make a damn difference anyway.
> Oh, certainly.
but then you said:
> A vote for a third party would be a waste
So, which is it?
Just my opinion, of course, and one that is heavily biased as a result of the 2016 election.
Why did the democratic process fail? Because people are being tribal. No one seriouly considered whether there might be other, better, candidates in other parties besides the big two.
Given that we've done absolutely nothing to 'fix' the democratic process, I suspect we'll get to relive this again and again, and again.
I think it's more of a vicious circle. The system encourages people to be tribal, so they act tribally, which further reinforces the system. Politicians with the power to change the system have zero incentive to do so.
> No one seriouly considered whether there might be other, better, candidates in other parties besides the big two.
Given that Bernie Sanders wasn't even a member of the Democratic party until 2016, I'd say he is a good example of a third party candidate who people would seriously consider, if the system allowed it. But it doesn't, so he won't be.
I think those are two separate things - having your team win at all costs, and opposing the other team regardless of what they do. The latter can be a rational response to an opposing team who is willing to win at all costs (and I would currently agree that this is justified). The Democrats have determined that the Republicans are untrustworthy, insisting on rules when they help and suspending them when they don't, pushing all of the gerrymandering they can get away with, etc. The Democrats themselves do not engage in this behavior - they just want the behavior to end. And in turn they get accused of organized voter fraud and all sorts of other allegations that have no basis in reality.
I would actually say that one of the persistent problems with the Democrats is continuing to extend the presumption of good faith to their Republican colleagues who have shown a history of acting in bad faith. The right response is to oppose everything Republicans do, simply because they are Republicans, until they show themselves willing to work in good faith. You can absolutely believe certain things and disagree with your political opponents and still act in good faith.
(As someone who believes in Christian morality and disagrees with a lot of policies of Democrats, notably their warlike tendencies, this situation combined with the two-party system is a problem for me, because it is now the case that I simply cannot vote for any Republican in good conscience, whether or not I think their Democratic opponent is reasonable.)
No it isn't.
Your comment is a perfect example of someone ignoring the other person and trying to win an argument at all costs. You completely restated what I wrote into an unrecognizable and false statement. That is commonly called a strawman logical fallacy.
Are you aware that both parties gerrymander their districts?
Yes, and I agree with you.
> Your comment is a perfect example of someone ignoring the other person and trying to win an argument at all costs
Oh yea, gotta win all those fake internet points. /s
As the 1,001st visitor, you have just won the entire Internet!