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I’m really confused by this line of reasoning.

If someone had the power and popular and/or oligarchic support necessary to overturn the entire current system of government and transition to being some kind of emperor, couldn’t they just stage a military coup right now?

Why would they wait for an election to take place? And given that no coup has been executed, what is everyone so worried about? Why would that person even bother campaigning?

If they don’t have the necessary military support, then any coup attempt would just be put down by the military. Simply declaring oneself emperor does not make it so.

I feel like people have watched too many movies.

That person might want to become constitutional commander in chief and hope that the executive will follow their unconstitutional orders.

The answer is simple: US politicians excel at legalizing corruption. They follow the letter of the law but not the spirit of law and order. As such, there is no need for a coup at all for a one-party system to exist. To set the background, a one-party system is now gravely risked due to a partial judiciary, especially at the Supreme Court level. The first order of business can be to get the Supreme Court to remove the two term limit for President.

To list examples of legalized corruption, gerrymandering is done in clever ways to win states. Rights to vote are often unfairly denied to groups of people. Third-party candidates are cleverly added to take away votes where they matter, such as in Florida, etc.

As such, the military cannot come into the picture because everything remains neatly legalized.

Sure but the thing US politicians are good at doing is by definition the status quo. So we have backed down from "we are in danger of losing democracy" to "the status quo is bad". I don't disagree that the status quo is bad.

There is a lot of hysteria in the media right now about the court. It is doing a lot of things that were avoided for political reasons in the past, and the reasons it isn't avoiding them now are also political. But it's not like it's operating outside of the law. For example Roe v Wade was always on shaky ground legally, it just aligned with people's (and my own) sense of morality so they liked it. If there is massive popular support for nationwide abortion legalization, Congress is free to pass that amendment, the court can't stop them. I am personally pro abortion but also pro Roe v Wade overturn because I think the rule of law is more important than any individual right. I would support an amendment on abortion, but obviously that isn't going to happen because not enough people do.

> The first order of business can be to get the Supreme Court to remove the two term limit for President.

Erm, can you explain how? There is zero legal basis for this. Supreme Court bad?

> > The first order of business can be to get the Supreme Court to remove the two term limit for President.

> Erm, can you explain how? There is zero legal basis for this. Supreme Court bad?

It turns out that there is one potential exploitable loophole with a little cooperation from the Supreme Court. It is that after serving two terms, a President could still become Vice President, then the new President would step down, and the Vice President would effectively become President again, now for the third term, repeatable for life.

The problem is that there is no explicit term limit for Vice President. The 12th Amendment may grant some unclear protections, but enforcing it as such is up to the Supreme Court.

"But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice-President of the United States"

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

How is that unclear?

Here is the potential evil interpretation of a biased Supreme Court:

The constitutional ineligibility granted by the 22nd Amendment applies only to becoming President by an election. It doesn't apply to becoming President by non-elected means, such as if the Vice President steps down. As such, the applicability of the constitutional eligibility as referred to in the 12th Amendment is subject to interpretation.

I am not saying it's right, only that it is sufficient for a biased Supreme Court to exploit it.

> People of other countries aren't morally better, yet they are at a lesser risk of losing democracy than the US now is. Why is this? It's because the politicians there have to cooperate to form coalition governments.

Look at the mess in Israel at the moment. That's a coalition government in failure mode. Italy has coalition governments, but in recent years they seem to have coalesced into two main factions.

> Look at the mess in Israel at the moment. That's a coalition government in failure mode. Italy has coalition governments, but in recent years they seem to have coalesced into two main factions.

Coalition governments are intended to fail fast, then for new replacements to be wiser, to not repeat the old mistakes. Coalitions may make the government slightly more inefficient, but as soon as there is a hint of extremism, the coalition is bound to fail. It protects against real extremes. Factions can emerge, but they can't get carried away with instituting too many crazy ideas.

How do you explain the rise of Hitler with this theory?

The Weimar government was a semi-presidential system with multiple parties that required coalitions for the legislature to function.

The Nazi party won a plurality but never a majority of the vote in any election during the Weimar years. They formed a coalition with the right wing German National People's Party through which Hitler was able to rise to the position of Chancellor.

Of course, we know that the Nazis quickly seized power shortly after that and banned all political parties including, including the German National People's Party, were banned with a few months.

The German National People's Party was a radical anti-democratic party as well. Between the two parties, they received around 44% of the vote in 1932. If that many people in your country either openly or tacitly support the dissolution of democracy then your republic's days are numbered. The particular flavor of democracy that your government uses doesn't matter.

That's the situation the US is currently facing.

In theory, the coalition government could have not passed the Reichstag Fire Decree (followed by the Enabling Act), but they did get swayed and pass it. If such a mistake gets repeated, then yes, a coalition won't help. As such, a coalition is not foolproof.

Fortunately, to my knowledge, the US Constitution doesn't have a critical weakness like Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution which granted unusual emergency powers to the President.

In summary, it comes down to how many loopholes you can identify and patch before they get exploited. A proof solver might help.

Maybe the main difference with other democratic countries is that the US is currently losing the absolute domination they had on the world for the last few decades? The societal impact of this turnaround seems massive for the locals and apparently not easy to digest.

If democrats doesn't win next election and balance the supreme court there won't be another fair election in us for a long time.

That's certainly what the Democrats keep saying. As OP points out, though, they have an incredibly strong incentive to get you to vote for them, just as much as the Republicans do. They are not your friends, they are complicit in creating and maintaining the system that entrenches only two parties in power forever. It would behoove us to temper their apocalyptic rhetoric with a little bit of healthy skepticism.

I don't look forward to another four years of Trump and I am particularly nervous about what it will mean for geopolitics in general and the Ukraine war in particular, but based on my observations of the behavior of both parties I would be shocked if it's even 1/100 as catastrophic as internet rhetoric would lead you to believe. Watching both parties, I don't believe the Republicans have in mind anything approximating what the Democrats want you to believe, and I don't believe that the Democrats believe their own fearmongering.

> due to an impartial judiciary

Did you mean a partial judiciary?

Fixed. Thanks.

> the two main parties are too selfish to want this to happen

This is the thing that so many on HN don't get (as evidenced in the replies so far): neither party is your friend. Neither party actually wants solutions because both parties thrive when government is perpetually bad.

The Republicans can't actually accomplish their stated goal of completely dismantling government at the federal level because if they did then there would be no federal bogeyman to rally their base against. They can't actually close the border because then there would be no more immigrants to hate.

Likewise, the Democrats don't actually want Trump's popularity on the right to fade because then they'd lose the most effective rallying cry they've had in years. The policies they've chosen to focus on are unpopular outside of the far left and have cost them a lot of support from the moderate voters, so their only chance of success is to persuade the moderates that this will be the last fair election if Biden doesn't win.

Everyone in Washington knows that the supposed threat to democracy is nonsense. If they believed otherwise they'd have booted Biden out of the race for an electable candidate a year ago. But it's part of the game that they play to get your vote and stay in power.

So, to your point: I agree wholeheartedly. The two existing parties are corrupt to the core and there's nothing left to salvage. We need to dismantle the two-party system, and for that we need to fix the voting system. First past the post has to go.

I will never understand this take. Go look at a map of states implementing/banning ranked-choice voting[1], now go look at a map of states political affiliation[2]. Every state that bans RCV is Republican; every time it's passed it was done so by Democrats or a direct vote. If you want any chance at all of breaking the two party system, it's clear you must vote for Democrats.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked-choice_voting_in_the_...

2: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_party_strength_in_...

You're correct on the banning front, but Alaska is one of only three states that use RCV in any state-wide elections and Utah is one of only four states that offer it state-wide as an offical option for local elections. The blue-coded states use it in some local jurisdictions but don't encode it at all at the state level.

There's definitely a Democratic slant to the 7 states that have some sort of statewide policy approving RCV's use. But then again, Utah has more municipalities listed on that article as actually using it at the local level than all 5 Democratic states (Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, Maine, Hawaii) combined.

In other words, the issue isn't as cut-and-dry in your sources as you make it sound.

Alaska only has it because of a ballot measure[1], so I don't consider Alaska a win for Republicans. It looks as though Republicans are also trying to end the trial of RCV early in Utah[2]. So, of your examples of Republican states with RCV, it either happened in spite of them, or they're actively trying to get rid of it. Add in examples like Maine where the Republican loser tries to sue, claiming RCV is unconstitutional because it didn't work in his favor[3]; you start to see a pattern of Republicans resisting RCV, and Democrats championing alternative voting styles that don't force a two party system.

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Alaska_Measure_2

2: https://www.standard.net/news/government/2024/feb/15/utah-la...

3: https://bangordailynews.com/2018/11/15/news/judge-denies-pol...

You can't count Utah out until they actually do something to walk it back, representatives just talking about doing something is usually them just posturing for their base. And if we're excluding ballot measures then you also have to drop Maine [0].

If you drop Maine and Alaska as not representing entrenched party politics then you're left with 4/50 states that implemented a measure allowing RCV at the local (city) level and 1/50 states (Hawaii) that implemented a measure allowing it at the federal level (for special federal elections only). Of the four states that officially allowed RCV at the local level by an act of the legislature, Utah has more municipalities taking advantage of that than the rest of the states combined.

I'm not arguing that Republicans are champions of RCV, just that it's pretty obvious that Democrats aren't much better if at all. By your rules, 1/50 states voluntarily allowed RCV for any state or federal election (where party politics usually matter, unlike most local elections), and even that one state's law is only for rare special cases.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2016_Maine_Ques...

Except Maine shouldn't be ruled out because its congress passed RCV for presidential races (what I thought the conversation was always about, national level politics) along party lines in 2019[1].

You're also undervaluing that all of the ten states that have preeemptively banned RCV are Republican controlled. Sure there aren't a dozen Democratic states with RCV yet, that should change! We should push for that. But that's a far cry from preemptively banning it; there's no chance for change there.

That's my point, yeah Democrats aren't the best, or even great; but at least there's the chance for improvement. Republicans have overwhelmingly banned that chance.

1: https://www.pressherald.com/2019/08/26/maine-senate-passes-r...

> presidential races (what I thought the conversation was always about, national level politics) along party lines in 2019

In primaries, which poses no threat to the party structure if the general election is still first past the post. I'm not at all interested in election systems for primaries when the issue at hand is how many parties can exist.

> You're also undervaluing that all of the ten states that have preeemptively banned RCV are Republican controlled

I'm ignoring that because I think it's more part of the general Republican hysteria about voting integrity than it is a calculated move by Republican politicians specifically to ban RCV for preserving-the-two-party-system reasons.

The question at hand is whether both parties would really rather not see RCV, and I see no evidence that there's going to be any significant movement from the Democrats towards it for general statewide elections any time soon. The Democrats just don't feel the need to make a big deal about it like the Republicans do at the moment.

Maine has it for the general presidential election too. They were the first to use RCV in a general presidential election.

I don't care why Republicans did it, the effect is the same: It forces a two party system which benefits them in the states they've banned it. You can claim that there's no movement towards RCV in the Democratic party (there is in the progressive members), but you can't pretend like there's no movement to ban it in the Republican party, as is evidenced by their actions.

The future of the Republican party is clearly only more of the same, only the Democratic party is interested in trying something new; which we clearly desperately need.

> Maine has it for the general presidential election too. They were the first to use RCV in a general presidential election.

That was as a result of the referendum, though, which you don't want to count because that's the citizens doing it and not the established politicians. That's a reasonable position that I'm happy to make a ground rule for this discussion, but it needs to be applied evenly, not just used to exclude Alaska.

> but you can't pretend like there's no movement to ban it in the Republican party, as is evidenced by their actions.

No, but it doesn't matter if there was never any risk of it happening, which there isn't in the vast majority of the US. You don't need to ban something if your voters have never heard of it and wouldn't think to ask for it.

> only the Democratic party is interested in trying something new; which we clearly desperately need.

There's no evidence here in the sources you've cited that shows that the Democratic politicians are interested in trying something new in state and federal general elections (the ones that could actually challenge the two-party system). If you can count Maine then I can count Alaska, which again balances out to not be obviously one-sided.

You've now gotten the facts about Maine's RCV wrong multiple times, it's to the point I won't continue discussing this with somebody who can't even critically read and understand the sources I've provided.

The Maine legislature passed RCV for both the primary and general presidential election[1]. I don't really care if you don't think national primaries don't matter they obviously do; otherwise the Republican party in Maine wouldn't have fought tooth and nail to not have to do RCV for their primaries.

1. https://www.legislature.maine.gov/lawlibrary/ranked-choice-v...

> somebody who can't even critically read and understand the sources I've provided

I read the article you cited and just reread it. It was about the primaries. The only mention of the general election is referring to Congressional candidates, which was implemented by referendum.

I'm now doing my own research into additional sources and seeing that what you're saying is correct, but you sent me a source that said nothing of the sort. I suspect I read that source more carefully than you did, so it's a bit rich for you to berate me for not reading it critically enough.

Regardless, I'm not sold on the idea that this is something the Democratic party picked up on their own. Maine's ballot initiative came first and they had to overcome opposition from the legislature to get it through. Now that the people of Maine have spoken quite forcefully the Democrats are going along with it, but they didn't start this process on their own.

If it were a Democratic party thing, why are we not seeing this anywhere else?

Are you saying the two parties are equally to blame? It seems to me that one party is trying to turn the US into a dictatorship while the other is trying to prevent that to happen, and failing.

> Are you saying the two parties are equally to blame?

Even though I agree with the points in your second statement, the counterintuitive conclusion is that the Democrats are slightly more to blame because even after realizing that they're in a losing position, that democracy is at stake, that one-party rule is risked, they still fail to want to fix the voting system, preferring instead to risk losing everything forever.

I probably agree with you on many things but I feel the current party has also abandoned the people, to a lesser extent, for big money interest.

We live in an effective oligarchy and that’s the sad truth of things.

Both parties contributed to and maintained the status quo, because they both profit from it. Game theory works out and both try to balance their power roughly 50/50 and keep everybody else out of the game.

All topics are polarized to the extreme to fit into the 2 party divide. If a third party would emerge it would be slightly closer to one of the poles. Then it would immediately make that side lose even if more people voted for that position. That is because there is no percentage voting but a cascaded threshold voting. Thus, suppressing underdogs is in the interest of both.

Abstract example:

44% vote party A for X

10% vote party B for X

46% vote party C against X

44% + 10% = 54% for X, but 46% is the biggest party so they win

Question is why the Grand Old Party suddenly quit that century old cartel.

For the record, the equation you noted makes sense only in a first-past-the-post system such as what we have in the US. It does not behave as such in a more advanced voting system, e.g. a ranked-choice system. Also, in a coalition party system, the 54% win.

They're saying the two-party system is to blame. Although one could've hoped that the current situation would've pushed the Democratic Party to work to open it up.