Electoral Politics and Political Strategies

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Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Halloween Jack posted:

I don't think that this idea is bad per se, but it strikes me as a bizarre alternative to having real political parties where the voters are actually members and have a say in its internal organization and direction.

We do have this. GJB has been beating this drum regarding the DNC for years.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2024 23:04

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 12:49

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

You repeatedly insisting that democratic government is a religion does not actually make it so.

# ¿ Feb 26, 2024 11:20

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Bar Ran Dun posted:

To more explicitly talk about the myths that underlying democracy, to cut the question down to bone rather than wading around in more fat and muscle.

Dis I�ve got two questions for you when you get back:

1. If US elections are free and fair, and the public participates fully do you think they have good outcomes for society and better government?

2. If we have an educated and engaged public does that public make better �correct� choices in elections?

I am not going to re-explain the history and reasoning behind the entirety of democracy and republicanism from first principles because you want to ask stupid political philosophy 101 questions.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 08:30

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Qtotonibudinibudet posted:

drat yo this thread descended into some "is the US an empire" nonsense right quick which is pretty irrelevant to the topic since any "imperial subjects" (however you wanna square) can't really participate in electoral politics

i mean maybe posters were making some stealth arguments about the role of Guam and Puerto Rico and haven't yet disclosed their hand but ahaha no there was no chance they were going there

anyway to peg my pet issue where is the US going, or not going, on electoral reform, and why?

i have the luxury of living in URBAN CALIFORNIA, which in my particular district has the luxury of using ranked-choice voting... in some local elections, at least. the current (notoriously composed of slime extracted from the cogs of the Democratic Party machine) governor has vetoed broader statewide permission to use this system and, despite demonstrated success in a boring statistical sense, it faces challenges from local politicians (or rather, real estate lobby figureheads who lost with it in place) wishing to roll it back (because, idk, i guess you don't need to pay as much to sway a primary)

to what extent is there a chance for the US to adopt democratic reforms developed since the 1800s? is it instead hopelessly mired in an pale simulacrum of democracy that fails to actually involve the electorate but is easily manipulated by political insiders?

It is in fact possible for the US to adopt democratic reforms; there is no magic cutoff that makes the transitions or efforts involved impossible compared with, for instance, the 17th amendment, which took about 50 years of slowly increasing advocacy. These reforms and this history themselves reflect the profundity of the shifts that have occurred; the period before past representative and civil improvements is practically unrecognizable, especially the (agonizing, long) process of instilling the norms of a civil service.

Qtotonibudinibudet posted:

NOBODY loving shows up for this poo poo. i am peak voter that pays attention to every local election, even for the goddamn transit boards and whatnot, and even i cannot be arsed to deal with the machinations of the local Democrat party apparatus. Theoretical democracy doesn't work when half the elections on a ballot are single-person contests featuring the one person the local party managed to coerce into running for some unpaid elected in hope that it may boost their chances of working the party machine to submit them in a race that offers primo insider trading opportunities down the road with de facto zero competition

You are answering your own question here; you, personally, cannot be arsed. Involvement and lack of involvement is a choice.

# ¿ Feb 28, 2024 10:35

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Qtotonibudinibudet posted:

im asking less "is this legally possible" than "will political elites entertain this in the slightest" if it functionally reduces their ability to broker power. my cynical take is that people in higher political office see more utility in preserving broken systems if they can manipulate them towards power for their party. gerrymandering, and its validation by the judiciary, is probably the most prominent example

Again, there is not reason to think that this works differently than it has historically, and there is precedent for such reforms under circumstances where parties had far, far, far more control. If anything the current era is marked by a relative lack of party control, and the relatively incredible accessibility of both national and local party systems. The machines of today are way, way less powerful than they used to be; they've been breaking down all the time.

Qtotonibudinibudet posted:

i assure you more people on average participate in the vote for their federal representative than their local Democrat party who knows what the gently caress board (much less the internal party dealing between those board members). far more of the electorate participates in the former, but at least in my district the only viable candidate has been decided by the latter. democracy shouldn't need to be something you can only meaningfully participate in if you have time to do politics as a hobby. i (and the vast majority of people less interested in local politics than i) should not be obligated to delve into party minutiae to participate in our government

You're describing the basics of civic participation. This has always been how it functions; again, it's more accessible than it has been in the past, and voting is the de minimis element, as others have stated previously. To the degree that you're able to improve the outcomes, or further shift that representation and the associated underlying issues of representation and information involved, great.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:38 on Feb 29, 2024

# ¿ Feb 29, 2024 03:57

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Bar Ran Dun posted:

He�s not going to. The idea of Democracy as religion in the context of American politics was a Niebuhr piece title Democracy as religion published in Christianity in Crisis. It�s not some loving fringe concept.

DV just doesn�t want to talk about it and would like to pretend it�s not a viable or appropriate discussion.

You are citing a specialist newsletter editorial from 1947 as your source for a non-fringe definition of a concept, when you could look it up on wikipedia and see you have it exactly inverted, and that even in the nonsectarian American context, your definition still isn't relevant. If you have read the editorial you are citing as he basis, you are aware that Niebuhr spends only the first couple paragraphs on the idea of democracy as religion (not a civic religion), a notion he introduces entirely to criticize as something he heard in recent uncited commencement speeches, so he can talk up Christianity's needed role as civic religion.

Additionally, Niebuhr is not the source of the claim that democracy is the American religion; at a minimum Thomas Davidson was writing about it in 1899. He does so more cogently than Niebuhr does (admittedly a low bar), but the claim is itself such a fringe one that even from Davidson it bordered on thought experiment. You really, really need to read anything by literally anyone other than the midcentury Thomas Friedman.

If you had read any other author or source on the subject, or employed google, you would know that civic religion is the state incorporation of external religious elements. Participation in or belief in engagement with civic functions tied to the structure of the state is not considered a religious belief. It only made sense, even for Davidson, as a contrast with monarchic civic religion. To the degree that the argument is raised today by authoritarians and by Niebuhr in the 1940s, it is to argue for the moral degradation of society in the absence of traditional moral religious authority or to undermine the concept of liberal democracy by painting it as a subject of blind faith.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2024 03:42

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 12:49

Discendo Vox: Mar 21, 2013; We don't need to have that dialogue because it's obvious, trivial, and has already been had a thousand times.

Eiba posted:

It's a trolley problem where the four people are lying on the track before the fork. You can pull the switch to put it on an entirely empty track after that, preventing it from killing a fifth person, or you can chose not to interact with the death trolley at all because it makes you feel bad. I'm not sure how this absolves you from any responsibility for the fifth death if you clearly had an opportunity to tug the lever away from that path. The fact that your pull might not even move the lever does nothing to make keeping your hands off the lever any more moral.

It's a hosed up trolley, we all agree about that. But what does taking the moral high ground actually do?

It allows the repeated use of absolute rule moralist positions to sabotage descriptive discussion of causal outcomes. It also absolves the user from responsibility for those outcomes, or from engagement with the specifics of the causalities involved.

Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 21:34 on May 9, 2024

# ¿ May 9, 2024 21:30

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