this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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We need to foster a much larger, and longer scale ambition: democratic reforms.
Ranked choice voting, an end to the electoral college, greater participation in local elections, and campaign finance reform are the primary avenues that come to mind.
I don't disagree that we should elect progressives to congress, but if the problem is structural, the solutions must be too. And they must be things that can overcome the current structural barriers. So obviously electing a third party candidate can't be a solution to the barriers to that prevent third party candidates, for instance.
But direct democracy ballot measures, for instance, can be used to institute ranked choice voting, and state legislatures can be used to compel more democratic measures on local elections, which can then foster the generation of politicians who built a populist base and are more likely to expand the franchise to the state level once they rise in their careers.
Don't forget: overturning Roe was believed impossible, but the people who wanted to do it spent 50 years building the tools to build the tools to build the tools to do the impossible.
Yeah, it will take structural change, and the way to pull that off is to elect people to state legislatures and to congress who will actually work to make it happen. It doesn't happen otherwise.
I don't get why this is downvoted? A grassroots new political party can't go from 0 to Congress/Whitehouse in any reasonable time. A coup is a worse idea that if failed would crush the entire movement. A revolution means the most powerful military by far to ever exist, and the worlds reserve currency has uncertain control and would destabilize the world.
I think I'll take pushing the DNC to get us where we need to be, thank you very much.