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The issues you mention are more or less valid, but I think you overestimate the extent to which those explain why Republicans get elected. Moreover, the proble

The issues you mention are more or less valid, but I think you overestimate the extent to which those explain why Republicans get elected. Moreover, the problem isn't so much "Republicans get elected" as "bad stuff happens". That stuff happens in large part because Republicans get elected after talking about doing the things that you mention, and then instead passing tax breaks and "deregulation" that largely favors the wealthy. But they also get elected in large part because of the highly unequal and unrepresentative system that they perpetuate, including a media system built on feeding people falsehoods utterly disconnected reality (which is another reason ~half of voters voted for them). It's true that to some extent both parties participate in propping up that system, but Republicans clearly do so far more. There are a lot of problems with the Democratic party as well, which is precisely why radical change is needed rather than just "pass some garden variety Democrat measures". I agree that there are important changes to be made that Democrats are lamentably unwilling to engage with, but I'm not talking about a world where Republicans need 51%. For most of the Republicans of national prominence, we should consider ourselves as a failure as a nation if they can even get 5%.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> That stuff happens in large part because Republicans get elected after talking about doing the things that you mention Which in turn works because, even if they don't solve those problems, the problems are real and people experience them. So if you would make the problems actually go away, they would lose the ability to run on them. > But they also get elected in large part because of the highly unequal and unrepresentative system that they perpetuate This is what I mean by 46% vs. 51%. There are way bigger problems than the electoral college or district lines, which would only change how and where both parties campaign rather than making anything obviously better. > including a media system built on feeding people falsehoods utterly disconnected reality (which is another reason ~half of voters voted for them). This was never great but the thing that really seemed to turn it into a tornado full of broken glass is the interaction between Trump and the traditional media. Major media outlets were used to politicians fearing them, and then Trump didn't, so the media got more aggressive and less cautious. Which was only effective for a minute until people started to realize what they were doing and that set the media's credibility on fire and made things dramatically worse. Meanwhile the right-leaning media outlets, which were traditionally more partisan but only a little, saw this and their conclusion was basically "oh, so we can just do whatever now?" > There are a lot of problems with the Democratic party as well, which is precisely why radical change is needed rather than just "pass some garden variety Democrat measures". The most significant thing you could actually do is replace first past the post with one of the cardinal voting systems (STAR, score, approval), because it would allow for more than two parties. Which in turn would upend the the entire partisan apparatus of both sides which has evolved in that environment and would be maladapted to defending itself and therefore vulnerable to positive change. But it's also a subtle enough change and distinct from any of the usual battle lines that all of the villains you'd be disrupting might not recognize the implications until it has already gone through.
- BrenBarn 2y ago
  > So if you would make the problems actually go away, they would lose the ability to run on them. But the fact that they run on them without solving them shows that it's possible to run on a vaporware platform and never do what you said you would. So they would just find some new nonsense to run on. Also to a non-negligible extent the "problems" they run on are already illusory or unrealistically exaggerated, like demonizing various groups, or capitalizing on people's lack of understanding of how regulations can amortize risk. I think we agree that structural reforms are necessary (like changing voting systems), but I think it's more than just that. There is a very real movement that is based in getting a large mass of non-wealthy people to reject reality in order to capture their votes to support the goals of a small number of wealthy people. Switching to STAR voting isn't going to fix it. That entire phenomenon has to be actively purged from society in the way that Nazism was purged in post-WWII Germany.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > But the fact that they run on them without solving them shows that it's possible to run on a vaporware platform and never do what you said you would. So they would just find some new nonsense to run on. People care about the things that are causing trouble for them. You can promise to fix their problem and then not fix it, but if there's nothing they need from you then there's nothing to promise them. > Also to a non-negligible extent the "problems" they run on are already illusory or unrealistically exaggerated, like demonizing various groups, or capitalizing on people's lack of understanding of how regulations can amortize risk. Nah, that's just confusing the problem with the rhetoric. Republicans hype immigration because the Democrats have an immigration problem: a) "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free". b) Generous social safety net. You can't have unlimited immigration of the world's poor and then give them all welfare; you have to pick one. But Democrats can't choose, so we end up with this nonsense where immigration which is formally illegal is still happening at scale and they're neither willing to formally legalize it nor enforce the law against it. Which means Republicans get to beat them over the head with it because the Democrats have no response to it when they're legitimately caught in an inconsistent position. To stop that from happening they need to pick which one of the two incompatible things they want. Likewise, the US really does have a lot of regulatory overhead, and many of the rules are needlessly complicated, inconsistent, blunt, poorly considered or obviously corrupt. The people who actually have to interact with them -- mostly small businesses -- are intimately familiar with it and find it infuriating. Now, some of the rules are net positive, but even those are often still needlessly complicated or in conflict with other, stupider rules. To fix it you would need large teams of smart people go through all the rules, throw out the bad ones (even if they're corrupt and someone wants them that way), simplify the needless complexity, do a cost/benefit analysis that includes the administrative cost of implementation and have the ability to actually modify them. Which requires fastidious people to do something expensive and boring at large scale. But until that happens -- which it hasn't -- there is still a problem. And in the meantime the Republicans get to say "regulations bad! less regulations!" and have a bunch of people cheer because they know how much the status quo sucks. > There is a very real movement that is based in getting a large mass of non-wealthy people to reject reality in order to capture their votes to support the goals of a small number of wealthy people. Eh. That's kind of one of the things a cardinal voting system does fix. You're defining the problem too narrowly. The general issue is, in a two party system, both of the parties are big tent parties. Which means that if your party wants both X and Y and you need a majority to get either, the people who want X can go drum up support from people who want Y so their party gets in and they get X, because by nature the other major party will support both not-X and not-Y, so more support for Y is more support for the party that wants X. If you have a voting system that supports arbitrarily many parties and your party supports both X and Y but X is stupid or unpopular, you can't win by getting more people to support Y because then some other party would come in and support Y but not X and then win because you've convinced people to want Y but not X and now that's actually one of the options on the ballot.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> That stuff happens in large part because Republicans get elected after talking about doing the things that you mention Which in turn works because, even if they don't solve those problems, the problems are real and people experience them. So if you would make the problems actually go away, they would lose the ability to run on them. > But they also get elected in large part because of the highly unequal and unrepresentative system that they perpetuate This is what I mean by 46% vs. 51%. There are way bigger problems than the electoral college or district lines, which would only change how and where both parties campaign rather than making anything obviously better. > including a media system built on feeding people falsehoods utterly disconnected reality (which is another reason ~half of voters voted for them). This was never great but the thing that really seemed to turn it into a tornado full of broken glass is the interaction between Trump and the traditional media. Major media outlets were used to politicians fearing them, and then Trump didn't, so the media got more aggressive and less cautious. Which was only effective for a minute until people started to realize what they were doing and that set the media's credibility on fire and made things dramatically worse. Meanwhile the right-leaning media outlets, which were traditionally more partisan but only a little, saw this and their conclusion was basically "oh, so we can just do whatever now?" > There are a lot of problems with the Democratic party as well, which is precisely why radical change is needed rather than just "pass some garden variety Democrat measures". The most significant thing you could actually do is replace first past the post with one of the cardinal voting systems (STAR, score, approval), because it would allow for more than two parties. Which in turn would upend the the entire partisan apparatus of both sides which has evolved in that environment and would be maladapted to defending itself and therefore vulnerable to positive change. But it's also a subtle enough change and distinct from any of the usual battle lines that all of the villains you'd be disrupting might not recognize the implications until it has already gone through.

BrenBarn 2y ago
> So if you would make the problems actually go away, they would lose the ability to run on them. But the fact that they run on them without solving them shows that it's possible to run on a vaporware platform and never do what you said you would. So they would just find some new nonsense to run on. Also to a non-negligible extent the "problems" they run on are already illusory or unrealistically exaggerated, like demonizing various groups, or capitalizing on people's lack of understanding of how regulations can amortize risk. I think we agree that structural reforms are necessary (like changing voting systems), but I think it's more than just that. There is a very real movement that is based in getting a large mass of non-wealthy people to reject reality in order to capture their votes to support the goals of a small number of wealthy people. Switching to STAR voting isn't going to fix it. That entire phenomenon has to be actively purged from society in the way that Nazism was purged in post-WWII Germany.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > But the fact that they run on them without solving them shows that it's possible to run on a vaporware platform and never do what you said you would. So they would just find some new nonsense to run on. People care about the things that are causing trouble for them. You can promise to fix their problem and then not fix it, but if there's nothing they need from you then there's nothing to promise them. > Also to a non-negligible extent the "problems" they run on are already illusory or unrealistically exaggerated, like demonizing various groups, or capitalizing on people's lack of understanding of how regulations can amortize risk. Nah, that's just confusing the problem with the rhetoric. Republicans hype immigration because the Democrats have an immigration problem: a) "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free". b) Generous social safety net. You can't have unlimited immigration of the world's poor and then give them all welfare; you have to pick one. But Democrats can't choose, so we end up with this nonsense where immigration which is formally illegal is still happening at scale and they're neither willing to formally legalize it nor enforce the law against it. Which means Republicans get to beat them over the head with it because the Democrats have no response to it when they're legitimately caught in an inconsistent position. To stop that from happening they need to pick which one of the two incompatible things they want. Likewise, the US really does have a lot of regulatory overhead, and many of the rules are needlessly complicated, inconsistent, blunt, poorly considered or obviously corrupt. The people who actually have to interact with them -- mostly small businesses -- are intimately familiar with it and find it infuriating. Now, some of the rules are net positive, but even those are often still needlessly complicated or in conflict with other, stupider rules. To fix it you would need large teams of smart people go through all the rules, throw out the bad ones (even if they're corrupt and someone wants them that way), simplify the needless complexity, do a cost/benefit analysis that includes the administrative cost of implementation and have the ability to actually modify them. Which requires fastidious people to do something expensive and boring at large scale. But until that happens -- which it hasn't -- there is still a problem. And in the meantime the Republicans get to say "regulations bad! less regulations!" and have a bunch of people cheer because they know how much the status quo sucks. > There is a very real movement that is based in getting a large mass of non-wealthy people to reject reality in order to capture their votes to support the goals of a small number of wealthy people. Eh. That's kind of one of the things a cardinal voting system does fix. You're defining the problem too narrowly. The general issue is, in a two party system, both of the parties are big tent parties. Which means that if your party wants both X and Y and you need a majority to get either, the people who want X can go drum up support from people who want Y so their party gets in and they get X, because by nature the other major party will support both not-X and not-Y, so more support for Y is more support for the party that wants X. If you have a voting system that supports arbitrarily many parties and your party supports both X and Y but X is stupid or unpopular, you can't win by getting more people to support Y because then some other party would come in and support Y but not X and then win because you've convinced people to want Y but not X and now that's actually one of the options on the ballot.