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this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Carlin isn't wrong on the crucial parts.
The system is broken and cannot be fixed by voting. It must be dismantled and replaced.
But while we get started on the dismantling and replacing, maybe vote so that the current system doesn't deteriorate, break down and gets replaced by something worse before you have the chance to bring about meaningful and positive change.
Carlin is fundamentally wrong here, because he starts with the premise that national politics spring out of nothingness. That's simply not true. In almost all cases, people that are successful at national politics start at a local level. So when you want to change things, you must start locally. That means getting good candidates elected to local offices, and them moving them up to state office, and eventually to national.
Okay, yes, I see what you mean and can agree. Still I believe that this can only bring about meaningful change if it's part of an activist push for election reform.
The local level is important and easier to manage, because the power brokers, the keys to power are not that much more powerful than you are. But at a certain point the keys to power become way too influential. To reach the top in any party, you have to play by the parties rules and neither one will let you lessen their individual members influence. You would need wide ranging political agreement and cooperation (and good luck with that) or you have to change the game by redistributing power away from big players and back to the people. And that can imho. not be achieved in a highly partisan two-party system.
Or, maybe it can be, but the odds are incredibly stacked against you.
That's still tied to the grass-roots level. The party largely can't get candidates for higher office without them coming up through the system in some way. That means that the people at a local level can greatly influence state-level politics, which in turn influences national politics. But the problem you'll run into is that there are a lot of competing interests within a state, and as a single person starts to represent the views of more and more people, they need to reflect the average of those views--or be an exceptionally charismatic leader that can pull people along in their wake. It's not that the party isn't "letting" you play if you don't do things their way, it's that you simply won't have the votes.
Yes, there's a lot of money involved, and it's true that you either need to have a really strong grass-roots funding game, or else you're gonna end up owing rich people and corporations favors. So your issue is that you need to get enough people to give a shit locally, and when you do, they end up playing by your rules. Or, more correctly, the rules of the people you represent.
This is precisely how Trump won, BTW, and how he's come to own the Republican party. That's how populism works. He gave a voice--a hateful voice--to about 1/6 of the American population (about 1/3 of the Republican party), and despite traditional Republican interests being heavily stacked against him, he managed to entirely take over the party.
The problem being that a fledgling political organization has to then expend the energy to endorse a candidate outside their party and vote in support of one enemy over another enemy.
Any fledgling political organization that participates in the system in a traditional way is either
a) stupid or b) delusional or c) sacrificing vulnerable peoples actual needs in favor of ideology or d) a false-flag operation designed to weaken the side they are ostensibly closer to
Any meaningful change can only occur outside the standardized channels. Inside the existing structure the math simply demands a two-party-system that will always favor the side that can both form the biggest coalition and dissuade the opposed voters from voting. Both parties have had problems with the coalition forming for a long time, so they try everything to dissuade opposed voters.
If you want meaningful change in the US, find a way to invest your activism not into who people vote for, but into changing how voting works.
First: The "National Popular Vote Interstate Compact" is a band-aid that might help with warding against the worst excesses of far-right ideology, with it in place, it should be easier to ward against the white nationalist power grab and protect vulnerable people.
Second: Electoral reform in favor of ranked choice voting. With this in place, your goal to create viable alternative candidates will be basically met. Suddenly you don't HAVE to vote for the lesser evil. The math suddenly doesn't favor a two-party-system anymore.
Third: Implementing the Fair Representation Act to bring about ranked choice voting in then multi member districts. This counteracts gerrymandering and will make the representation much closer match the voters. No more taxation without representation for the plurality of citizens.
Fourth: Some form of true proportional representation. Open or closed list proportional representation would both help with SO many problems the US faces right now, it's absolutely bonkers.
P.S.: But in the meantime... all these goals are may be more or less opposed by most democrats, but they will never be implemented when the republicans further erode american democracy. So vote democrat if you want to have any chance of bettering circumstances, at all.