Probably not getting a minimum wage hike.

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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This is the core of the problem with American politics. "Y is bad, but X is WORSE!!!"
Pretty much, yes. The problem goes far deeper than the Democrats. If the Democratic Party were deleted tomorrow, the new party that would emerge to replace it would be functionally indistinguishable. There's only room for two parties. If the Democrats splinter, the Republicans carry all the elections until there's only one successor party left to oppose them. The Democratic replacement party will be dominated by all the interest groups that don't like Republican stances. And all those non-Republican interest groups already currently constitute the Democratic Party of today. The king is dead, long live the king.

How many seats are really competitive in the House of Representatives and the Senate? Disturbingly few. 10%? There's potentially not been a single election seat swing larger during the lifespan of most of this forum's users. The fundamental problem of a system with only two parties and near-guaranteed seats is colossal political complacency and easy capture by vested interests outside public will.

This is without dwelling much on the media, lobbyists, etc. Complaining about the Democratic Party is like complaining about the pain in your stomach rather than man who keeps punching you in the abdomen every morning.
 

Avnger

Trash Goblin
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This is the core of the problem with American politics. "Y is bad, but X is WORSE!!!" We've spent decades settling for terrible politicians over and over to the point where even as our only 2 options get worse and worse we not only don't just drop both and go for an independent or stop voting entirely, but our justification for picking whatever boil down to "It's not as bad as the other guy." To the point we're voting in guys who actually belong to the other party but claims they aren't just because voting for the guy that claims they actually are the other party is just slightly worse.

I wouldn't be surprised if in a couple decades at the most we would have our politicians openly murdering people on the Senate floor on the regular and STILL getting voted into office, because that one only killed 20 people today and the other guy killed 22.
So what's your realistic solution then? Complaining on the internet won't accomplish anything. Voting 3rd party won't fix anything as Agema described above. Not voting won't fix anything by default; it simply supports the status quo. Armed revolution? Good luck 1. convincing a plurality of Americans to support you 2. actually winning 3. making substantial lasting changes before the revolution is inevitably coopted by the power-hungry or counter-revolutioned.
 

immortalfrieza

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So what's your realistic solution then?
What's yours? Let's face it, nobody here has any intention of actually DOING anything about American politics in any capacity whatsoever. We're just here to whine and moan and accomplish precisely jack to take out our frustrations about this whole utterly broken system because we all know that jack is all we can actually do. Even if we weren't willing to admit that.

Not voting is the most significantly thing anyone can do. At least you're not contributing to and supporting the very same broken system. Voting is doing nothing and acting like you are, not voting is doing nothing and at least RECOGNIZING that you are. You say not voting supports the status quo, but voting also supports the status quo. With the former if enough people do the same thing the whole system eventually comes crashing down, continuing to vote just allows the system to exist. Blind Patriotism is much like a drug, and like all drugs the first step to recovery is recognizing that you have a problem.

Armed revolution might have worked a century ago, or even a few decades ago when those in power didn't have the ability to push a button or make an order and obliterate entire cities and kill millions of people in about 5 minutes. If Biden believed even for a moment that they had enough support among the government and military to throw out the Constitution tomorrow they would do it in a second and "We The People" couldn't do a thing about it. It would be the military and the rest of the government that would stop them, not us, and they would only bother to try to do so if they didn't think they could get something out of it.
 

Dirty Hipsters

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You know, for how much we Americans hate our politicians and how many guns Americans own, it's kind of incredible that more of our politicians don't get assassinated.

I think it shows a lot of maturity and restraint on our part.
 

Kwak

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So what's your realistic solution then? Complaining on the internet won't accomplish anything. Voting 3rd party won't fix anything as Agema described above. Not voting won't fix anything by default; it simply supports the status quo. Armed revolution? Good luck 1. convincing a plurality of Americans to support you 2. actually winning 3. making substantial lasting changes before the revolution is inevitably coopted by the power-hungry or counter-revolutioned.
If the voter base was larger - compulsory and easy for everyone to do - other parties could be supported. I suspect it's kept this way on purpose, in a collusion of both sides of the one coin.
 
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Thaluikhain

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You know, for how much we Americans hate our politicians and how many guns Americans own, it's kind of incredible that more of our politicians don't get assassinated.

I think it shows a lot of maturity and restraint on our part.
Yeah, weird. Also that, say, the Westboro Baptist Church didn't end excitingly.
 

Agema

You have no authority here, Jackie Weaver
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What's yours? Let's face it, nobody here has any intention of actually DOING anything about American politics in any capacity whatsoever. We're just here to whine and moan and accomplish precisely jack to take out our frustrations about this whole utterly broken system because we all know that jack is all we can actually do. Even if we weren't willing to admit that.

Not voting is the most significantly thing anyone can do...
Not voting is literally the most useless thing anyone can do. If the turnout were 5%, all those politicians would rock up to DC and carry on doing their thing all the same. Sure, some would be bemoaning lack of democratic engagement, but it wouldn't stop them doing stuff. Increased political engagement will not necessarily work, because if one party's increased political engagement is countered by the other, it still ends up a split somewhere around 50-50 and nothing changes. But less political engagement absolutely guarantees nothing changes.

You are however right about the fact that bringing about change is immensely difficult. Particularly with respect to the USA, the US Constitution is deliberately designed to make change hard, and that's without factoring in lobbyists, etc. Imagine trying to ban massive lobbying, PACs and limiting political donations. This probably doesn't require a Constitutional change. But it's going to run race first into the thing it's trying to prevent: massive amounts of money from the rich, who will use that to pressure politicians to allow them to donate freely - that's not just direct campaign donations and nods and winks behind closed doors, it's think tanks, media, etc. to sway public opinion and attack policy.

Really, the USA does need a revolution, albeit not necessarily an armed one. It needs a party to take so much control that they cannot be resisted: like, two-thirds of the seats in both houses of Congress and the presidency. I might backtrack from what I said previously, and one of the major parties splintering could cause a realignment that might achieve this in the long term, by eating up the remaining major party rather than each other. So for instance, you could imagine if the Democrats split, there might be a moderate, liberal wing that decided to move right and grab the moderate, liberal-ish Republicans, and a populist leftist wing that could make inroads in the anti-establishment, working class Republicans. Or, simply, a proper crisis.