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Comment by komali2 | Hacker News Reader

This is what I don't like about the current zeitgeist. Things are either black or white. You are either Red or Blue. Conservative or Liberal. Democrat or Republican. Right or Left. There is no room in this political system for a pro-life atheist, or a pro-gun liberal, or an anti-war economic conservative. There's no room on the internet for a third party voter, or someone who both believes cops lives matter AND civilian lives matter, or any other middle ground. You're either a 4chan user or a Tumbler user, you're either a Hillarybot or a Trumpbot.

Reasons for this I believe include upvote/downvote trains on the internet, clickbait headlines, and networks streamlining content to cater to certain audiences. People who watch Fox news don't want to hear about Trump rape allegations, they want to watch news casters talk about Evil Hillary. It's the reverse for CNN. Remember in the Bush era how blatantly Fox news was a Republican news-horn, and how the case is the same now for CNN and Clinton?

Euck. Can't stand it. No room for moderates, your voice won't get heard if you aren't making someone stamp their feet.

Ninjaedit: I mean honestly how is it possible that of the 300 million people spread across one of the largest (geographical) countries in the world and one of the most diverse populations on the world, exactly half want one person to represent them, and exactly half want one other person to represent them. It doesn't make sense.

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> I mean honestly how is it possible that of the 300 million people spread across one of the largest (geographical) countries in the world and one of the most diverse populations on the world, exactly half want one person to represent them, and exactly half want one other person to represent them.

They don't; just like the article says, it's an effect of the first-past-the-post election model. Two strong parties emerge out of that.

Not sure why some people consider the Democratic party "extreme". They most definitely seem like a moderate party. The Republican party, well, they're just incredibly laser focused on cutting taxes on the rich.

> Not sure why some people consider the Democratic party "extreme". They most definitely seem like a moderate party. The Republican party, well, they're just incredibly laser focused on cutting taxes on the rich.

And Republicans would say the opposite. This is why we never get anywhere.

I don't think we can so easily simply paint both parties as mirror images of each other. The Republican party seems obviously broken.

Again, you must recognize that the other side will and does say the exact same thing.

That doesn't make them right, or me wrong.

To _you_ the GOP seems broken. To millions of other people the GOP is fine. To millions of others the Democratic party is broken.

If you can't recognize faults in both _you_ are the problem. Nothing in politics--especially subjective issues like this--are black and white.

This is equivocation which will allow you to dismiss anything.

I'm not sure how you can some to an objective conclusion on such a subjective issue.

I'm not going to dispute that both parties have their problems, but the GOP's leadership is actively at odds with the people they purport to represent. That seems pretty broken.

The Democrats have, for the most part, at least rallied behind their candidate.

It seems like it's you who have painted me in black and white. Who says I can't recognize flaws in the democrats? But it seems obvious that the flaws in the Republican party are much, much worse.

Both parties have plenty of faults, but lately the Republicans have refused to even do their job in governing the US, and have promised to undermine the Supreme Court with their misguided power games.

As an EX democrat, I'd say the Democrat party is broken too, the amount of election fraud, and corruption in the party makes it look like the Mafia. The whole system is broken and we need to pass the anti-corruption bill asap, if we're to have a chance to take back our country from wall street.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhe286ky-9A

EDIT: I say ex loosely.. I voted mostly dem. down the line, but wrote in Bernie Sanders, I'm not fond of Jill Stein something about her doesn't seem right. But I couldn't in good conscience do a protest vote for Trump, and I can never support Clinton, the most corrupt politician of the past 40 years.

I voted for Jill Stein though she is (recently, apparently) anti-nuclear energy, and before that said some silly things about vaccinations and WiFi.

There is no perfect candidate other than perhaps yourself. When it comes to third party, you can safely consider your vote a vote for the party values themselves, rather than the candidate in particular. A vote for Jill Stein is really a vote for the major political parties to work on more green legislation.

I feel that Jill's not that intelligent she's lacking in a lot of areas. Bernie is just brilliant all around. I figured I'll at least pick someone that I can feel confident about supporting, in the end I kind of hope Trump gets it for no other reason than to show the DNC they picked the wrong duck.

I actually led the charge on my site PivotAmerica.com to encourage people to go green/vote for Jill, but I don't really think it's possible to break up the two party monopolies anytime soon, and her opinions on vaccines, and nuclear energy are disconcerting.

A nuclear power plant is NOT the same thing as a weapon of mass destruction. And you can't just print money like she wants to do for the education plan - Bernie's plan of raising taxes on speculation makes way more sense. But I did throw my vote to down-candidate dems. But Hillary ran the shadiest campaign I've ever seen, and is one of the most corrupt people in the world. I'd say she's worst than Bush / Cheney imho, or at least not far removed in policy. (THey both supported the Iraq war after all).

From Trump's plan for his first 100 days in office (https://www.donaldjtrump.com/press-releases/trump-pledges-to...):

>First: I am going to institute a 5-year ban on all executive branch officials lobbying the government after they leave government service.

>Second: I am going to ask Congress to institute its own 5-year ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and their staffs.

>Third: I am going to expand the definition of lobbyist so we close all the loopholes that former government officials use by labeling themselves consultants and advisors when we all know they are lobbyists.

>Fourth: I am going to issue a lifetime ban against senior executive branch officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.

>Fifth: I am going to ask Congress to pass a campaign finance reform that prevents registered foreign lobbyists from raising money in American elections.

>There is another major announcement I am going to make today as part of our pledge to drain the swamp in Washington. If I am elected President, I will push for a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.

>Decades of failure in Washington, and decades of special interest dealing, must come to an end. We have to break the cycle of corruption, and we have to give new voices a chance to go into government service. The time for Congressional term limits has arrived.

If you wanted to actually do something about corruption in Washington instead of just talking about it, you should have voted Trump.

Even the shallowest dive into Trump's business dealings would show you that he is no stranger to corruption.

I personally do not believe that he would enact a single one of those campaign pledges.

I hope trump wins because he'll be out in 2020 and maybe we get a better Pres. sooner than later. But he won't get any of his promises passed, they won't even make it to the congress floor. He'll be a lame duck president, and nothing more. I don't even see him wanting to run for re-election, as I feel this is a stunt to get more publicity for his reality TV empire.

I've heard that argument before, and it kind of amuses me. It's as if to say, yes, Hillary is awful, but if she's elected she'll probably do a good enough job that she will win re-election in four years time.

Those two things don't seem to go together well to me.

He can't enact them. The presidency isn't a dictatorship.

I don't know why people keep acting like it is - Trump isn't going to ride into Washington on a white horse and pass a Constitutional amendment or fund a massive immigrant detainment and deportation program or convince Mexico to pay for a wall through sheer willpower.

At best, he'll try, and either have to compromise significantly to get anything passed at all, or else fail entirely.

While reducing the influence of lobbyists is a laudable goal, it's hard to imagine how anyone could honestly see Trump as a fighter against corruption. His own business has been far too riddled with corruption and scams.

If you're referring to this election specifically I actually envy the Republicans. Trump was able to cut through the party and rally a huge base basically by himself. Even if he loses it's an amazing opportunity for the party to reinvent itself.

Meanwhile the Dems double-down on the status quo year after year.

Obama was the status quo? Bill Clinton was the status quo? Carter was the status quo? JFK was the status quo?

How many times were Reagan and Nixon going to run before they got the nod? McCain? Romney? W's singular skill was being the son of a former President.

Yeah, Hillary is running for Obama's third term. But otherwise Dems don't double down year after year. That'd be the Republicans. Trump's bull in a china shop approach doesn't change this.

> Hillary is running for Obama's third term

Yes. And I consider them both neocons as was the George W. administration. That's what I'm referring to as the status quo.

As a lifelong democrat I'm very excited to see what happens to the GOP in the next few years. I don't expect the DNC to change in a significant way.

As a lifelong Republican I'm not. It's going to be a bitter fight as the GOP either decides to shed its alt-right folk or embrace them and the GOP is going to come out rough either way.

There's a definite divide between the moderate GOP and the new, hard right GOP that far surpasses the small, somewhat positive divide when the tea party movement came to be ca 2009.

You do realize that the alt-right, the KKK, and the Nazis stand for genocide, right?

I'm not entirely convinced that the alt-right isn't a boogeyman. Not sure what the KKK or the Nazis have to do with anything.

Trump has courted the white supremacist vote.

In fact, he was just officially endorsed by the KKK's official newspaper... his whopping 2nd newspaper endorsement!

Not really interested in why the KKK supports Trump, very interested in why almost half of voters do.

They might be related...

Why the KKK supports Trump is rather telling about what Trump stands for, as is the fact that he has retweeted numerous white supremacists. It's not exactly that it's a one-way street where he can't help that they vote for him; he likes them, courts, them, retweets them, and has never distanced himself from them.

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-election-day/kkk-paper...

His campaign immediately distanced themselves.

Trump? Or his campaign? Some people in his campaign have a tendency of denying everything he says. If it's Trump, it would be a first. He tends to waffle around it and give non-answers, because he doesn't want to drop his allies, but doesn't want to be seen supporting either.

Drumpf is supported by David Duke, the KKK and legions of neo-Nazis.

They are very real. Check out the Daily Stormer if you don't believe me.

From what I heard so far, Hillary was helped/favored ovet Sanders in a very obvious but secret way by leaderahip of Democrat. Isn't that a sign of broken Dem?

That depends on your point of view. Clearly the party has a lot of control over who they nominate, unlike the Republicans, who lost complete control over their nomination process.

Perhaps parties shouldn't have such tight control over things; I certainly would have strongly preferred Sanders as the Democratic nominee. Still, it's a party. Technically it is up to the party to decide who they nominate. That they use primaries to make this decision is certainly nice and democratic of them, but it's not a legal requirement, and it wasn't always like that.

The thing that's really broken is the entire political system that only offers these two parties as realistic options. But the Republican party has also become really dysfunctional over the past decade or so, where representatives and senators basically refuse to do their job and work to undermine the country by their political gamesmanship.

To an outside observer (i.e myself) both thed Democrats and Republicans (moreso) might seem very right wing.

> cops lives matter AND civilian lives matter

This isn't an issue that needs a middle ground. Black Lives Matter never said that cop lives don't. It didn't need to be said that cop lives matter because cops were already treated as though their lives mattered. When a cop gets killed nobody says "Well, he probably had it coming".

BLM should really have been called Black Lives Matter Too

That would certainly have cleared up this confusion where some people seem to read it as "Only Black Lives Matter". Nobody ever said that, but opponents seem to be arguing that that's what BLM means.

>Well he probably had it coming

I've witnessed people saying exactly that. You can't argue that anti-cop violence is any less real of a problem than anti-black violence. What about the shooting in Dallas?

" People who watch Fox news don't want to hear about Trump rape allegations, they want to watch news casters talk about Evil Hillary. It's the reverse for CNN."

I think you are falling into your own "black or white" trap here.

Sean Hannity is singular in the way he is a sycophant for Trump. I struggle to think of a similar personality for Hillary on any other news network. I mean, CNN made a point to hire Trump's former campaign manager, and he seems to be on the air around half the time I randomly turn on their channel.

"cops lives matter AND civilian lives matter" Who says otherwise, seriously?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

Regarding your link:

But the middle ground often is the best solution in politics (not necessarily exactly in the middle, but definitely not on the extremes).

Some examples: The best government is between Authoritarianism and Anarchy, rather than one or the other.

Likewise the best government has an economy that is somewhere between completely free-market and absolutely government controlled and regulated. Both extremes have issues.

The best legal government is somewhere between ultra-capitalist and ultra-communist: We don't want only two classes, super-rich and super-poor, but we don't need to make everyone exactly the same either.

Likewise, private investment is definitely a good thing, and we want incentives, but we also don't want CEOs or boards being completely blameless when things go wrong, and we want good pay and good rights for the employees. Most people are ok with CEOs getting paid more that most employees, but most would prefer they not be paid anywhere near as much as they are.

On and on it goes. Generally, the best position is a moderate one. The extremes are where the failure comes from. (There are always exceptions, so that is why I say generally).

Yes, but sometimes the middle ground is pretty bad too. Consider college tuition.

If you take a completely leftist approach then college tuition would be covered by the government. Many people would have college degrees, which would devalue them somewhat, but at least students wouldn't go into a decade of debt for it. It's an okay solution.

If you take a completely rightist approach then the government would have nothing to do with paying for college. Either your family can afford to send you (or have good enough credit to get a private loan), or you just don't get to go. Fewer people would go to college, which would make degrees very valuable. In other words, it's hard to get a degree, but worth it. The people who can't get them shouldn't be forced out of the work force, because most people wouldn't have degrees. This is also an acceptable approach.

The combination of the two is what we have now. We want everyone to go to college, so we make it easy to get huge unsecured loans that are almost impossible to get rid of. The loans are easy to get, so everyone does. Now degrees are expensive, but not worth much, because every other applicant also has one.

There are other examples (like housing and health insurance) where the same thing plays out. Sometimes you just have to pick a side, or you get the worst of both worlds.

I am not so sure that what we have right now for tuition is as bad as it seems.

Because people are paying for it, we are getting much higher quality than we would if it was completely government funded. Also, it's still being paid by people who want it rather than it just being a tax.

Because it's expected a lot of people are getting an education that wouldn't be educated otherwise. This is improving our overall productivity.

The rising cost of an education right now is an issue, and we can do a combination of letting it self-correct (many businesses and students are realizing they really don't need a BS to do a good job) as well as adding public schools so more people can get the AS to get a good education.

I don't see any reason to expect that this solution is less optimal than any of the other ones you have mentioned, and it seems much cheaper than revamping the entire system.

To me the root cause of rising health insurance costs is the rising cost of all the lawsuits that doctors and hospitals deal with. When we were just paying for the doctor's education it was a little expensive, but nothing like what we are paying now. You're really just padding the budget to deal with legal fees. A more moderate court system (that awards smaller payouts) would knock this out easily.

I am not familiar with the housing issue, I would have to learn more about it to make a comment.

But I really do think the issues you bring up are best solved with a moderate solution.

It's bad. College loan payments are a stone around the neck of far, far too many people in an entire generation, and it leaves far too many of them crippled financially for a decade after they graduate. When you're already paying 40-60% of your income on housing, tacking on another 20% to service student loans for a degree that doesn't earn you any more money than if you didn't fall for the scam doesn't leave much left over for anything but survival. Far too many people are in that boat, because student loans are too easy to get, and they've had it pounded into them relentlessly that the only way to get ahead and live a good life is to go to college. The people telling them this, by the way, are usually Boomers that went to school when public universities were fully funded, and costs hadn't spiraled out of control by an order of magnitude or worse.

Assuming you stuck to federal loans, the minimum payment on the standard repayment plan is $50/month, with a 6 month grace period after graduating before you have to start making payments, and the monthly payments can go lower on an income-based plan if your finances are such that that would be necessary. Even if you couldn't get any job but fast food after graduating, this should be manageable.

https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/

I really don't get all the hyperbole around this. As long as you didn't make arrangements with private loan sharks, you should be fine after college.

What if instead we as a society choose to do better than picking sides, and properly investigate what will benefit us in the grand scheme of things.

> We want everyone to go to college?

Do you think college is the only solution to a more educated and fiscally responsible society? Is there no other solutions to the situation than College? What about education prior to College, is there room for improvement there so we can specialize College and reduce costs in some fashion? Could we streamline education for those who know what they want to be and provide the proper framework for those who do not?

Sometimes it's not about sides, but about asking the proper questions, and questioning the system that exists.

I agree that generally the best position is a moderate one, but I think we achieve that by having two extremes scream at eachother until they're hoarse and fall exhausted into the middle of the aisle.

Nobody (credible) says so outright, but by dismissing the concerns of either group who says one or the other, it is said implicitly. I felt that Michael Jordan, of all people, issued one of the more competent statements on the matter. He highlighted both the distrust that black people have of police due to some of the recent violent incidents, as well as the tremendous service that officers provide by literally risking their lives, and spoke about those who do so with integrity in a respectful manner.

Because this is the only real solution. We have to acknowledge the arguments and feelings of both sides, not shout one another down.

"Pigs in a blanket, fry 'em like bacon!"

"What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!"

Here are sources for both of these quotes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xet3BnwLtek

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj4ARsxrZh8

I've always been under the impression that the two party system exists in an equilibrium and it naturally goes to about a 50/50 split. Both parties are fighting for support so if one party gets more than 50% of the vote there is a huge incentive to shift your positions to get back to equilibrium. Imagine if there were policies that would get Republicans reliably 70% of the vote, in this situation Democrats would want to adopt very similar policies and restore the balance. I think you'll see this happen with gay marriage in the next decade or so where both parties are for it.

I came up with a voting strategy that I call single issue tactical voting. The idea is that you pick what you think is the single most underrated issue, and announce you will either vote for your major candidate, or third party, depending on whether the major candidate agrees to support your issue. This works around Arrow's impossibility theorem and doesn't require any changes to the voting system. The goal is not to change the outcome of the election (if everyone is rational the outcome will be the same), but to influence the candidate's specific policies.

I was partly inspired by this application of game theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coWgbmlvRTU

I've been meaning to do a full writeup but hesitant in the current election climate... :)

If you're going to do a writeup, you might as well just add your research to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-issue_politics

AFAIK Wikipedia only approves of third-hand or more distant accounts being used in its articles. Something has to be done, then talked about, then Wiki talks about the talking about it.

That's basically what Sanders did with Clinton. He supports her in exchange for her embracing many of his issues.

You're confusing how someone votes with what their ranked preferences are. I suspect that many people vote for someone who is not their most preferred candidate (particularly in this election, where the two major party candidates are extremely unpopular). And that makes sense, given that only one person can be President at a time and the USA uses first-past-the-post voting for presidential elections. This tends to lead to only two dominant parties (Duverger's law).

I really wish that a party that gets a certain amount of votes would get representation in Congress without having to win districts. That's an incredibly high bar for a new party.

One or two more parties in Congress would make the current obstruction tactics much more difficult.

Changing to a parliamentary system would require a huge constitutional amendment. Remember that the innocuous Equal Rights Amendment has still not passed: the chance of a sweeping reform on that scale is probably very similar to the chance of having a successful revolt.

So, in short, if you really want a parliamentary democracy, you'll need to move to one.

I have no illusions that the US system will change any time soon. But I think it's important to throw out ideas from time to time.

In a pluralistic, democratic society you don't get to have everything go your way. You have to compromise with your fellow citizens to adopt the policies least-objectionable to the most people.

A fifth or sixth major candidate in the election with exactly your political views is almost exactly as superfluous as three hundred million candidates, so each of us gets a candidate with exactly our views and we don't have to compromise at all when voting.

Figure out which of your beliefs and views are most important and which you're willing to compromise on. Or get used to being a very bitter member of a pluralistic democratic society.

It's very well established that the U.S. federal electoral system is game-theoretically "rigged", to use Trump's words.

I want proportional representation, not this phoney pluralism. I'm talking about something beyond "ranked choice". I want serious mathematical, scientific rigor to be applied in developing a new voting system that is humane and practically secure from gaming in the 21st century.

To be perfectly frank, my internal reaction to your comment was infuriation. Don't take it personally, just know that I'm "triggered" by this kind of patronizing political attitude that has marginalized me out of the conversation since before I even became eligible to vote. I know I'm not alone in that.

There are thousands of representatives local and federal levels. It's not unreasonable for people like me to be asking for a less "compromising" process.

I'm from Minnesota, and I remember when I was 17 and Paul Wellstone was killed, very possibly assassinated, before the Iraq war vote. Meanwhile, many of my classmates, children of politically established Minnesotans, told me that a vote for Ralph Nader was just short of treason. I'm writing this comment right now to say that I reject these kinds of attitudes entirely.

On the contrary, people falling in behind these busted-ass mainstream parties should be grateful that, given the state of U.S. politics, we even have political participation from marginalized positions at all. This election is an indictment on this split populism of the establishment 2-party.

The U.S. political process needs to evolve in a serious way or it's going to result in social/political/spiritual upheaval... for better or worse.

I know it might sound irrational to you, but I'm getting ready to vote for Jill Stein right now. I am not "a liberal". I see no good reason, at this point, to vote for either of the "two choices". Seeing as how I'm not in a swing state, it strikes almost me as duty to vote against the two parties. Maybe if I lived in Florida, I'd vote for Clinton.

But right now my "strategic vote" is to send a strong warning to the DFL establishment that they need to take voting reform very seriously.

I'm not using pluralism does not refer to the voting system but to the population. The United States has a population with a diverse range of beliefs, with no strong homogeneous majority. Some people like thin crust pizza, some people like thick crust pizza. Some people think the sauce goes on top of the cheese, some people think you can make a pizza without any cheese or sauce, some people think pineapple is an acceptable pizza topping.

The problem isn't the voting system, the problem is naively thinking that a significant number of your countrymen agree with you in every significant way, regardless of whether you fall on the left, right or middle.

So the political system should reflect that diversity and leverage it as a strength, not as a way to divide people against one another.

Right now, the voting system is mechanically dividing the country against itself into two groups that don't really exist. Meanwhile, various corporate, media and political interests are capitalizing on this machinery in less than honorable ways.

This is enabled by the voting system on a foundational level. The other stuff, campaign finance law, media cultivation of ignorance, lobbying, etc... it's all very important, but it's all underpinned by the voting system itself.

Pining for a new voting system is just pushing the hard work of coalition-building to after an election instead of before, and pretending that the coalition building isn't important to boot.

You could certainly rework the voting system so that a wider mix of parties are elected to Congress (and every other level of government), but then what? At the end of the day, parties aren't important, policy is important, and enacting policy still requires some sort of majority. A majority, when you don't have a homogeneous population with largely similar views on everything, still requires some sort of coalition. And the coalitions you build affect the policies you can enact.

So how will changing the voting system, either to your current favorite or to some hypothetical, not-yet-invented voting system affect coalition building and the sort of policy that will be enacted?

What you're calling "coalition building", I think of as "consensus building". And not only do I think of it as important, I think that it is literally the job of elected officials, especially after they've been elected.

Right now I don't even see coalitions being built by major political parties. I see political organization being transmogrified into factions and enemies.

I recognize that there are millions of dedicated activists and organizers who are building coalitions, building consensus, reworking political narratives.

For all that human effort to be channeled through the grimey distorting lens of left and right... Its wasteful at best.

I absolutely agree that issues are what's important. Unhooking the issues from the gridlock of corrupt political establishments would give elected officials the freedom to build consensus beyond the coersion of corrupted political parties.

Voting for the third party candidate when it doesn't matter, (since you are not in a swing state), is not a strong message at all. Come back when you have some skin in the game.

Everyone looks at the president as some kind of be-all, end-all, but it isn't. Informed voting on candidates in lower level of government who has opinions that are more in line of your own, can then go on to shape the political landscape further on in their career.

Damned if I do, damned if I don't.

For people wondering, Paul Wellstone died in a plane crash. No evidence of it being anything other than an accident.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Wellstone#Death

> pro-life atheist, or a pro-gun liberal,

I am both. And understand the pain of being a square peg.

You sound like a fun person to have drinks with and discuss ideas :)

Not sure about it...

I'm all for America having multiple parties. But remember, for any execution to happen, for the Government to function, pass laws and stay adaptable, the multiple parties will have to align and agree. To not go to war, the anti-war economic conservative and the Code Pink socialists would have to agree to come together on the issue. The way America is divided, I don't see how this happens easily.

It is difficult even in politically stable countries (see: Liberals and NDP in Canada). However, it is by and large the primary mode of operation for most democratic countries. The largest democracy, India, has 10's (100's?) of federal parties that organically align and dis-align to gain power on wedge issues.

I don't get why we don't just have a moderate party that represents the majority. Despite what the news would seem to have us believe most people are moderate, rather than one extreme or the other.

First, the two major parties are so incredibly established that third parties barely exist. So, starting a third party that can compete with the other two is near impossible.

Second, since radio and television (media) started catering towards individual interests (echo chamber) people get so wrapped up in "Hillary/Trump/Somebody is so evil!" that they _don't_ want to experiment because it could cause the person they dislike to win.

Third, nobody cares about politics. We get ~40% turnout in midterm elections, ~60% for presidential. That's pitiful. Those who vote are those who _really_ like voting--those who are engaged.

To break the stranglehold you'd need:

- people to stop consuming sound bite media (Now This, Twitter) and tailored media (talk radio, some major news stations)

- better civic engagement at the local level (this is _the_ most important bit)

- better civic knowledge (the previous bullet point is predicated on this one)

- people willing to run for office as a third party _and_ not be a fringe weirdo

  people willing to run for office as a third party _and_ not be a fringe weirdo

I genuinely believe Bernie could have won if he stayed independent. The two political parties are owned and operated as Corporations. They can choose whoever they want to represent them. There are no laws governing their inter-party behavior. This is why non-party candidates need to be taken seriously.

I voted for Bernie, but how could he win independent if he couldn't win the Democratic primary?

Because the primary/caucus process disenfranchises the majority of the electorate.

I believe this is why the GOP produces such poor candidates in the last 20 years or so; they must pander to the hard core of the party to become a candidate, and the people that pass that test are almost always too far removed from the electorate to win the general.

This is also why we're devolving to a system of ruling families. Clinton was never the best candidate. She was the presumed candidate and the candidate preferred by the party core, so nobody was willing to challenge - except Sanders who could seriously run on ideology.

In theory they can choose whoever they want, however in practice if the small percentage of the electorate who actually vote pick e.g. Trump, the party is stuck with them

I have a feeling this is slowly changing.

It would probably also help a lot if we split up voting issues over multiple much smaller elections so that people could actually discuss the issues without it all being overshadowed.

In California, for example, I'm supposed to cast votes for over 40 positions and issues this election between choices for the president, federal and state representatives of various sorts, local positions, and dozens upon dozens of propositions and measures. There are over 500 total pages in the official voter guides, and the mail-in ballot is supposedly so heavy this election that regular postage isn't enough! It's crazy!

During the primary, we had the first senatorial election without an incumbent in decades and damned near no one was talking about it! (Barbara Boxer is not running for re-election.) It was completely overshadowed by the presidential election. I don't know if it was because the voter guide was so over-packed with propositions or what, but they didn't even print the senatorial candidates' statements during the primary and I had to go online instead to see them!

And people wonder why this country is so fucked up...

Because the moderate party would lose every election in a landslide. What would its policies even be? People tend to be extreme on individual issues that they care about and apathetic on the rest. The more extreme parties could, for example, just come out for or against abortion and steal a huge percentage of your voters. Same with many other issues.

Abortion and other black and white issues would definitely be a weakness for a moderate party.

I would think their strengths for better economic policies, better military policies, better domestic policies and on and on would outweigh the black-and-white single issues but I am afraid you might be right.

People would rather have simple dogma on single issues. It's just easier to understand a single point of view on a binary issue.

Personally, on a related tangent: I find that the weakest part of most discussions is the tendency to try to make every discussion into 2 opposing viewpoints, rather than seeing the billions of permutations possible on nearly any issue. But it happens all the time.

It's so common that I believe it must be something somewhat hardwired into the way our brains work.

How about the moderate party being a democratically governed one, where it's members have an app that identifies them so they can only get one vote. Then whenever the candidate they choose votes on issues, the people decide via the app, how that senator will vote.

If he doesn't go w/ the people he is banned from the party. in this way the moderate party would cater to the demographic of the area... where one member might vote for gay marriage in NY, another in Alabama would not, but still be part of the same party, but only answer to their local constituents.

Now I'm wondering if there are any good existing examples of that sort of Democratic Populism finding support. (Not sure what else to call it)

I'd call it a new TYPE of party altogether one built on top of technology... even the Technology party would be a cool name.

Start it and then convince sama to run as a presidential candidate circa 2020.

That's happened before (look at articles on the "era of good feelings").

What happens is that factions develop along a new politically-important axis which have different answers for a new pressing problem, and the moderate party bifurcates into two.

Because artificially making the 'other side' look evil is an effective way to win elections. If you can find some way to make the other side look bad (no matter how artificial, see Hillary on the Cubs/Yankees issue), then you win.

Huge incentive to find any division.

Read up about "wedge issues".

What do you find extreme about the parties we have now?

The Democratic Party and the pre-Trump GOP were, once you looked past the social signals each sent to pander to certain vocal minorities, practically identical. It's no coincidence that the Bushes endorsed Hillary after Jeb! dropped out.

I don't expect anyone here to believe it, but ironically Trump's GOP is pretty close to being a real moderate party. Dispensing with the astroturfed tribal warfare by supporting gays, not making abortion into a big-ticket issue, reaching out to minorities, and so on, he has drawn in record numbers of supporters from across the line. "We're all Americans" and "America first" are the creeds of him and his supporters. An openly gay man spoke at the RNC to genuine applause, as did Trump holding a rainbow "LGBTQs for Trump" flag at a rally. The barriers once thought concrete are rapidly deteriorating for the ordinary citizens that have successfully pried their eyes away from the propaganda machine.

The problem is people are taught from an early age that it's good to be an activist which means to focus on convincing people of a certain policy or viewpoint, instead of stating one's own reasoning. You'll often see "10 reasons to support X" which is unlikely to be intellectually honest since usually people will support X for 1 or 2 reasons, and might agree with certain arguments against X.

E.g. I support something like basic income, but I notice two contradictory arguments are used. The first says that basic income increases the incentive to work for the poor. The second says that basic income releases the poor from being forced into low pay work, and allows them to use their free time on positive things. These are contradictory, but you never see basic income advocates arguing this point among themselves.

Instead of encouraging people to be activists, we should be encouraging them to be intellectually honest. Very few issues are so important that they justify using marketing techniques that ultimately corrode the effectiveness of public debate.

Hey, apparently now you can fire them both! Saw this earlier today on HN, don't have a link to the post handy. The site is easy to remember though: http://www.youarefired.com The guy/gal who posted was trying to figure out what to do after the elections.

To your point, Maybe allow for more than two points of view? :)

In my experience (including my experience on HN), people who are in the middle get slashed from both sides. Qui non nobiscum, adversus nos est.

The first part of your post is the answer to the part after "ninjaedit".

If the political spectrum had more than one-bit resolution, you'd see all sorts of colours. Here, is only black or white. From afar, it looks grey, hence the apparent 50-50 split. Everyone falls into one of two buckets, and chances are roughly equal.

I don't like the current system because it has lots of side issues where parties claim to differentiate yet none of these effect the ruling classes.

Where is the choice on land value tax, on money creation as debt? Nowhere, because they only want us to have a choice on issues that might actually challenge the roots of the system.

Call me crazy, but I feel like there has to be a full blown conspiracy between the two parties (not necessarily the individual candidates), to keep us fighting over petty social issues which have no bearing on the social order.

We fight over issues like gay marriage and abortion which make no difference to the establishment, while the cable companies strategically raise rates while reducing service and avoiding competition. The medical industry extorts us so the insurers' can get a 20% cut off a larger pie. Police departments around the nation use civil forfeiture to pay their bills and buy margarita machines.

As long as elections can be won on bullshit tired issues like abortion, we'll never see any political progress - and that's just how the robber barons want it.

100% agreed. The establishment use liberal issues like a sand pit at the bottom of a hill. Slows true reform to a halt.

Call me crazy, but the ability to chose who to marry or whether or not its permissible to end a life seems slightly more important than Comcast raising their prices again.

Your other issues are quite valid, but I thought that was a very poor lead example.

It's an example of something the establishment can concede having pretended they care, that has no effect on them. If you care they love it as you will fight harder and longer which keeps you away from things they know will destroy them, like land value tax and questioning how money works.

So it's the ideal example.

I completely agree with you dude. I don't mean to imply that these issues are irrelevant. What I'm getting at is these issues are so aggrivatingly clear cut from a personal liberties perspective that they should have been resolved decades ago. Allowing people to marry who they want to, and giving people full autonomy over their bodies doesn't hurt anyone.

Yet we let these issues continue to decide our elections. For the top hat wearing monopolist, it's great because politicians/pundits are so busy campaigning for/against abortion that nobody points a finger at the soul sucking corporations who run this country.

This is one reason why https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem

> pro-life atheist, or a pro-gun liberal, or an anti-war economic conservative

You just described Libertarianism

anti-war economic conservative : Gary Johnson

I always enjoy a leppo after a good workout!

You are watching too much TV. read the article, first reason : media !!!!

I agree completely with this. The spoiler effect has never been so real.

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