Hacker News Reader

Comment by Youden | Hacker News Reader

In defence of young people, it's "determined" by the people who actually go out and vote the same way a child "determines" what's for dinner when asked "would you like broccoli or brussels sprouts?"

American democracy is broken. Not in an abstract, hand-wavy feelings way but a hard, numerical, mathematical way. A two party system results in no real choice. First past the post results in a two party system. America uses first past the post. Therefore, Amercian democracy gives voters no real choice.

View on HN

Margins in recent elections have been thin enough that higher voter turnout among young generations could have easily changed the outcome.

Blaming broken democracy is just a cop out. Youth voter turnout for primary elections, where there are many candidates, is also low. More parties isn’t going to change anything.

You're missing the point. There were only two possible outcomes: Democrats or Republicans. Both were bad and unappealing. Both are too dependent on the status quo to serve as vehicles for real change (so primaries are pointless too).

"More parties", through elimination of first past the post, absolutely changes things. It allows you to vote for someone who truly represents you and your interests without "throwing away" your vote. That's impossible today.

Well we are getting some "real change" now, so I guess the monkey's paw works.

Dems didn't really get primaries in 2024, so that certainly didn't help.

>"More parties", through elimination of first past the post, absolutely changes things.

Indeed. But that's the one single thing D's and R's can agree on not doing. It'll need to be done state by state to get any real leverage.

> There were only two possible outcomes: Democrats or Republicans

This is the civic illiteracy a higher comment refers to. Beyond the primaries, there are numerous down-ballot initiatives that don't tend to cleanly sort along party lines.

There was a real choice in 2016, 2020 and 2024. Trumps opponent was every single time very different to him.

Democrats continue to offer up horrible candidates, and their idiotic primary system confirms those horrible candidates every 4 years. A slice of cheese could have beaten Trump, but somehow the DNC managed to offer up the most boring, milquetoast, unlikable, uncharismatic, centrist candidates they could find and beat him once out of three times. They're just kicking own-goals over and over, and they're not learning which direction to run down the field.

Biden was not centrist he was left. He was a good president I do not understand why Americans complain as if the choice between the two was so hard.

His policies were tempered, image-wise and often in substance, by his affinity for Joe Manchin alongside his disdain for Bernie Sanders. Balanced alongside the middle eastern foreign policy, he comes across as centrist despite the BBB.

Look up the build back better act that Biden proposed and tell me if you think that was centrist. It originally proposed extending the child tax credit (basically basic income for people with kids).

The Inflation Reduction Act, the negotiated paired down version was still the biggest climate bill in history.

He also attempted to cancel 10 to 20k each of student debt, a progressive priority. That was blocked by the Supreme court.

The list goes on.

If the electorate had given Biden a bigger majority in Congress he would have passed much more progressive legislation.

The self reinforcing prophecy of “somebody else’s job”.

It’s the job of politicians to pander to us, the good voter. Since they didn’t offer us something good, we didn’t vote, and that results in this current situation.

Politics is not my job, being aware of how politics works is not my job. My job is just to let them know they aren’t good enough. It’s because they aren’t good enough, that we landed up in this situation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com