Mitt Romney not running again.

[ajax18]

My suspicion is that the two-party system really just reflects the will of the electorate, which collectively chooses to sustain the two-party system. You don't need better parties: you need better voters. You can't get better parties without better voters, and with better voters the parties will work fine as they are.

I think you're so right on this one. I'd like to see separate smaller nations to give people the freedom to associate with those of similar beliefs, values, and to be held accountable for the results of those choices.

[Doctor Steuss]

[...] You seem like maybe caught in a similar place as the Democrat party keeps moving leftward.
[...]

I recently watched some of the Bush v. Reagan debates. I was really shocked by just how much of what each of them said would be popular amongst the 2023 Democrat Party.

It was an eye-opening reminder of just how far the Overton Window has shifted.

If a group of status-quo neoliberals look like they are moving further and further leftward, that should be cause for introspection on one's own shifting perspective.

[Doctor Steuss]

[...]

My suspicion is that the two-party system really just reflects the will of the electorate, which collectively chooses to sustain the two-party system. You don't need better parties: you need better voters. You can't get better parties without better voters, and with better voters the parties will work fine as they are.

[...]

As long as we have a first-past-the-post system, having only two major parties is an unfortunate inevitability, regardless of will.

[Moksha]

I'd like to see separate smaller nations to give people the freedom to associate with those of similar beliefs, values, and to be held accountable for the results of those choices.

The Confederate States of Dixieland and The Kingdom of Deseret breaking off from the United States. The freedom to tote guns, reinstitute slavery, and conduct drumhead trials with lynchings.

[Kishkumen]

The complaints are usually along the lines that some good policy X would surely be endorsed by a majority of voters, if only one or the other of the two parties would propose policy X to the voters, instead of both parties conspiring to bury the good policy. My puzzle is that if policy X is so sure to command a majority among the entire voting population, then why hasn't it been able to command a majority among one half of the voting population, and get itself into the platform of one of the parties?

My suspicion is that the two-party system really just reflects the will of the electorate, which collectively chooses to sustain the two-party system. You don't need better parties: you need better voters. You can't get better parties without better voters, and with better voters the parties will work fine as they are.

I'm not political science guy, though. So I'm also prepared to believe that there's a lot I don't know about how parties work to select and shape their voting blocs, and don't simply reflect the will of the people. What I mostly think is just that the merits or flaws of the two-party system must be considerably subtler than a lot of discussion suggests, because a lot of discussion doesn't even seem to get into what exactly parties are and what exactly they do.

I can see what you are saying, and I see you have already raised the appropriate caveats. First of all, our major parties are not really run by a truly democratic process within their own ranks. Much of what they do is determined by money and the internal power and social structures of the party. Exhibit A: Democrats abandoned labor to seek corporate money in the 1980s so they could compete with Republicans. Exhibit B: Bernie Sanders was bulldozed by the corporate "left's" media empire and the powerful people within the Democratic Party. Had the Democrats not been so blind, stubborn, and stupid regarding Bernie, there would be no Trump.

So when we talk of the will of the people, I have to ask, "which people"? The big donors? The party elites? I don't see the will of many people manifesting itself particularly well by the time it has run the gauntlet through the elites of the parties.

[huckelberry]

My suspicion is that the two-party system really just reflects the will of the electorate, which collectively chooses to sustain the two-party system. You don't need better parties: you need better voters. You can't get better parties without better voters, and with better voters the parties will work fine as they are.

I think you're so right on this one. I'd like to see separate smaller nations to give people the freedom to associate with those of similar beliefs, values, and to be held accountable for the results of those choices.

Ajax, being surrounded by people you agree with is a comfortable idea. If people separated to accomplish that and got through the displacement of moving and having population move away would it last? How long would it be before different views would arise causing divisions. Who would determine which variation had to move where? Like Baptist churches there would be a danger of dividing and dividing. The resulting little countries would loose so much power that order would probable be maintained (if maintained at all) by transnational corporations.

Perhaps such a mess might encourage people to head back to Mexico.

[ajax18]

I'd like to see separate smaller nations to give people the freedom to associate with those of similar beliefs, values, and to be held accountable for the results of those choices.

The Confederate States of Dixieland and The Kingdom of Deseret breaking off from the United States. The freedom to tote guns, reinstitute slavery, and conduct drumhead trials with lynchings.

All were asking for is to kick those unwilling to work out of the country. Get back in your welfare line and cool it with the idiotic hyperbole. Reinstate slavery? Do you realize that the Mormons had an extermination order against them just for being under suspicion of being abolitionists?

[ajax18]

I think you're so right on this one. I'd like to see separate smaller nations to give people the freedom to associate with those of similar beliefs, values, and to be held accountable for the results of those choices.

Ajax, being surrounded by people you agree with is a comfortable idea. If people separated to accomplish that and got through the displacement of moving and having population move away would it last? How long would it be before different views would arise causing divisions. Who would determine which variation had to move where? Like Baptist churches there would be a danger of dividing and dividing. The resulting little countries would loose so much power that order would probable be maintained (if maintained at all) by transnational corporations.

Perhaps such a mess might encourage people to head back to Mexico.

The original idea of soverign states was basically like having allies in times of war. What if the allies don't want to pay or help? That happens now. Most law enforcement is done at the state level already. In fact I think states could enforce their own borders better than the federal government. I could see small county factions forming as they do now. We have country police. What happens when one country wants to economically rape another? That happens now. I'd like to see a system where local governments have the freedom to protect their property and the fruits of their labors by force if necessary.

ETA: How exactly would a transnational company rule everything? Like the town of Lago in Clint Eastwood's immortal "High Plains Drifter?" Don't 9 or 10 globalist oligarchs already control much of the world when it comes to free speech, whether slave labor is acceptable, environmental regulations, whether borders are enforced, or property rights are respected etc., content of children's movies (Disney)?

[Moksha]

All were asking for is to kick those unwilling to work out of the country. Get back in your welfare line and cool it with the idiotic hyperbole.

The Confederate States of Dixieland will give you a chance to associate with those of similar beliefs.