Political Memes

Can’t believe I’m again spending time to give citations and actual arguments when you retort with snark and vibes, peak pigeon rhetoric.

You have to prove you’re right, as you made the ridiculous unsupportable claim. I’ve already proven it, you refuse to admit it. Let’s move on.

1. I make a point about electoral reform and that the duopoly is not a requirement
2. You refute that point
3. I point out how weak your links are, and offer more substantive details that your argument is circular

4. I say that a cursory search showed them, and if I were to fuck with enshittified google enough l'd find many more examples.

Still waiting boss. Or are you going to hang your hat on the big bad tech overlords and your low effort initial retort?

If we applied anti-trust scrutiny to the parties, there would be forced breakups and structural barriers to them entrenching their grip.

Uh, sure. Or we could apply RuPaul’s Drag Race scrutiny to the parties and put tape on their doors to make sure they’re not sneaking out. They’re not businesses with products and markets. There’s a fundamental reason we don’t treat them like businesses (although the analogies are admittedly obvious).

So uhhh, which is it? My anti-trust argument is tortured and worthy of derision without dissection, or you agree that the business analogy works?

It’s because your scrappy, revolutionary Pokémon Go party deserves to meet, advocate, advertise, and run for office without being audited by the Shithole State Assessor and OSHA.

What is the FEC and the various thresholds for matching funding, campaigning restrictions, funding disclosure, etc etc before we even get to state level laws? What are ballot access laws and hostile legislation that protects the two-party system:

“The Republican Party seemed to have a "lock" on the presidency after the Civil War; it won eleven presidential elections 1860-1908, whereas it lost only two. It was precisely the "factionalism" of 1912 (ex-Republican Theodore Roosevelt bolting that party and forming the Progressive Party) which gave the Democrats a chance to win the White House”

So yeah. Not a great defense of an entrenched two-party system if you actually want change.

The resulting duopoly - a foregone conclusion - means boo Democrats bad? What’s your point.

• A structural barrier exists.
• Group R benefits from it and messages against reform, holding the line internally for decades under big-tent conservatism, but can’t stop the leakage - sometimes co-opting it, but now resulting in multiple internal palace and mob coups when the group and their support structures don’t reflect the voters they claim.
• Group D also benefits from it, but kinda sorta doesn’t like it. But Group D definitely doesn’t want to dealmake internally (because that’s work and means compromise), and so doesn’t really do shit about the structural barriers.
• Group D leadership is mute, but permits criticism of the structural barriers whilst not expending meaningful or sustained effort to change said structural barriers.

EC is mandated duopoly. Let’s get rid of it and whatever your point might be can be rendered mercifully moot.

So again. Am I dumb and wrong, or do you actually agree?

I’m not jazzed about the coalitions only because I think it’s another porkbarrel trap and I don’t have a good sense of how it would work, but, yes.

Politics under our brand of capitalism is transactional, from donors, voters, senators, and intra-party life.

• “Vote for me and I’ll bring jobs”
• “Donate to me to and I’ll fight green legislation”
• “Support my bill and then I’ll vote for your pet project in committee, and get it a first reading in the House”

Why wouldn’t you want more diverse representation? I’m not advocating for Tammany Hall style spoils system, but you cannot deny how the political wings and minority voter blocs get forgotten or taken for granted - see the generational divide between black voters. Those who lived during the civil rights era and saw a concerted fight for their dignity, overwhelmingly vote Dem. The younger ones who grew up in the lore, but watching Dem disunity during Ferguson/BLM/Floyd/etc whilst Dem pollsters clutched to the suburban voter - instead of fighting for better - are abandoning the party.

I’m OOTL since Nov. so not sure what this [bipartisan consensus on foreign policy] is in reference to, but if existing officeholders can hold trump to anything I’m not necessarily against it.

Obama is a great example of this. A DC outsider, campaigning on change, economic recovery, and criticism of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. But then empowers Hillary as SecDef whilst cranking up drone strikes and cross-border/foreign raids.

Yes, you can’t unwind the hundreds of US military bases and installations in a four year term - there’s security treaties, realpolitik to deal with, and state/non-state actors to be concerned with as the global police, but there’s always a place for empowering and relying on locals to fulfill their own security concerns. But then, we’re the global superpower with UN veto and economic muscle, so we play by a different rule book. Apparently.

And it was a huge win we wouldn’t have otherwise had. Clinton spent all his first term capital on H4A and the rest of his initiatives were bought-and-paid for with more cops and less welfare or some other political extortion. Obama got it done. It’s better. It’s not possible from any other party, period. Some good. You’re welcome. Thanks for hating the people who did the good.

What’s the fucking point of having supermajority power if you’re not going to wield it to make long lasting change that would benefit the country, not just reelection funds? And I’m not even talking M4A, even just having a genuine government healthcare option to compete with private insurance would have done so much, in non-competitive markets where people are mono-sourced either by employers or providers, providing a “baseline but decent” care option for the poor and vulnerable so you aren’t bankrupted for daring to get cancer or need long term care, or stronger restrictions on vertical integration of providers and insurers, or…

You’re cool with “better” and want me to be thankful? We just saw a vigilante murder the UHC CEO, and the bipartisan response is “meh” to”fuckem” due to decades of common discontent - but you’re happy with the status quo?

Yeah the [abortion] protection was honored by all branches so let’s definitely lose the 80’s & 90’s to conservatives by repeatedly running on that.

1. No it wasn’t honored in the legislature, we’ve had ‘trigger laws’ on the books in deeply Republican states for decades. They’re at the “find out” stage after giving the religious right that performative act.

2. No it wasn’t honored in the courts, Casey nibbled away the ‘strict scrutiny’ protection which opened the door to a patchwork of state level fuckery, and Webster which let a fence grow around state provision and funding, making Planned Parenthood a key provider in some states. Even Anthony Scalia openly talked about how he felt Roe was wrongly decided, and it needed primary legislation to avoid judicial re-interpretation and instability.

3. The religious fruitcakes who scream the loudest do not represent the country. Like I said: baseline protection. The GOP is lowkey fighting a political insurgency trying to intra-message this one after Dobbs because some level of protected access enjoys supermajority support, and the polling for a 100% ban has never peaked above 22% since Roe. Your revisionist history is filtered through chickenshit leadership who failed to stand tall and do something.