Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08) and Congressman Don Beyer (VA-08) renewed their efforts to bring ranked choice voting to U.S. congressional elections, reintroducing their *Ranked Choice Voting Act *. Senator Peter Welch (D-VT) is introducing companion legislation in the Senate.
The legislation would require ranked choice voting (RCV) in all congressional primary and general elections starting in 2028, allowing voters to express support for multiple candidates for public office, with the candidate receiving the most votes declared the winner.
First thing, I think that the Republican Party is highly likely to face a crisis of identity after Trump so you’re correct there. A moderate cannot appeal to their voter base anymore so their only choice now is to find another populist and those aren’t super common. But also people are mostly ignoring that Trumps existence has raised the voter participation numbers. I think after his disappearance, republicans will face far less participation and excitement.
I only get to talk about these things rarely but it’s interesting to think about. See once the Republican Party realizes it can’t win with votes and it can’t just cheat its way upwards, we get interesting results. That’s when they must pivot on things that appeal to moderates. They’d have to drop their anti-LGBTQ stances. I can’t see a world currently where they aren’t forced to give up on abortion. Basically most of their social issues would have to go. The party would look very different.
But then that all will piss off their extremists and they can’t do that. So this is what I think splits the party.
We talk optics though and I’ve always criticized the left on its optics. They aren’t good. And that outward representation reflects inwards. Let me tell you right now that being in the middle of discourse, the right doesn’t argue with itself often. The left does.
My main example is this genocide situation with Biden and Gaza. Plenty of leftists and democrats are still prepared to waste their votes because of that situation despite the harm reduction argument. The right won’t do this.
It’s weird to say that the left is more cohesive as a base when the current MAGA people are basically in a cult and I don’t know what’s more cohesive than a cult. That’s at least half of their current party voters. So aside from them splitting, they value loyalty and nationalism, both of which create an alliance within them. They also aren’t sophisticated voters so they’re unlikely to break rank because they aren’t really thinking much about positions.
I agree that the right is on more shaky footing than people think but it’s due to their current position I assume. For instance, consider if they had a young populist in their ranks. Think about if Trump was 45. We’d all be scared and rightly so because that cultist behavior would prevail and unite the party.
Mark my words, the only thing saving the party from not splitting is a new populist and that would be very bad for everyone if they found one.
and this is why i think it’s going to fracture aggressively, they won’t find someone capable of replacing trump, and if they do, i will eat my pants. In return whoever they pick is going to appeal broadly to the maga hardliners, but only them, and it’s likely going to drop some of the extremist crowd, and most of the more moderate people who are going to toe off somewhere else.
this is actually a really good point, but it’s also important to remember that trump doesn’t just energize the democrat vote. If trump gets out of the running, that’s likely to kill a good chunk of the dem voter party, unless whoever they pick is moderately popular and has a decent chance of winning. On either side.
yup, it’s why i mostly focus on these kinds of things within politics, it’s what i find most interesting at the moment. Unfortunately, cheating upwards seems to be an incredibly viable strategy, which is probably less than ideal.
this is basically what i foresee in the more moderate camp, it’s either going to kill the republican party, or as some have suggested, kill the maga party entirely and it’s going to shift more moderately, but it’s hard to be sure. In basically every fascist leadership, once the leader dies or loses power, the party collapses. Everything becomes a free for all and all the real estate is free so to speak.
yeah, a big problem i haven’t yet considered, is that nazis and far right extremists may try to capitalize on this really heavily, and if they do that might be a big problem…
this is true, but i think the general benefit it provides in strength outweighs the negatives, as long as single issues voters like the israel palestine people for example, don’t become a significant number in the majority, it really shouldn’t matter all that much, and most of those people would rather vote dem anyway.
We pushed out biden, and now kamala is a really strong contender, and it seems like the trump camp is about to implode on itself any day now, but maybe i’m just not used to republican rhetoric lol.
We’re a lot more broadly cohesive, and while we might not be collectively cohesive, like the republican party, we generally don’t hold animosity towards anybody. I give the israel palestine people a lot of shit for what i consider to be “bad think” but at the end of the day. They’re still people, and they still have the right to hold an opinion and vote for the people and problems they want. We both agree on that aspect. That’s something that trumpers won’t agree on. Certainly not with dems, this is why RINO is a thing.
yeah, this is definitely a concern, but i honestly don’t think it’s all that many people, it seems to mostly be college students that care about it, as well as people just barely old enough to vote. And those who aren’t yet old enough to vote. I think a lot of them who do exist, will probably vote for kamala, since it’s the obvious choice, but those who don’t are probably more of a fringe than the far right extremists are. I’m just not convinced there’s enough of them out there to make a substantial difference. Something on the order of taylor swift endorsing kamala for example. I think is going to have much more push in that direction.
i think you’re probably conflating cohesiveness, and conformity here, cults value conformity almost exclusively. Cohesiveness is just the ability of a group to broadly stick together, fans of a certain sports team for instance, they have a certain cohesiveness. Linux users as well. ETC.
The maga people are kind of like a single ship in the middle of the ocean, everybody they like that conforms gets brought on and boosted, and the people they don’t get thrown off. The left is a lot more like a fleet of boats, all working towards the same general concept, just in different manners. It’s not that we aren’t collectively cohesive. It’s that we’re cooperatively cohesive.
that could very well be a real concern, but i don’t think any old populist would be able to replace him, trump holds an almost god like status, whoever replaces him will never satisfy that. It might pick up the remains of the base, but they haven’t yet won a single election in the popular vote, and they didn’t win the 2020 election. They’re only going to lose worse, unless some god fearing event happens at this rate.
i’ll consider it, but i think it would lead to an extremely turbulent period, and it would at best, be a complete rat race to the bottom. And at worst, dissolve within a few months. The only real alternative is literally trying a military coup i think.
man, this has been a wall of text lol, gotta love political analysis and theory though.
I don’t have much to add because I agree with you on almost all of this. If the summation is pretty much that the Democratic Party is more unified in a post-trump era and that a third party would only serve to hurt them less because of that reason, then I agree with that. Whereas if republicans win this election, the US has a very dark future that may unite extremists and the death of the party would be less of a mess and more of an uphill battle for the entire country. At that point a third party would almost be irrelevant under the threat of a fall of democracy.
However, the only parts I disagree with are the parts where you talk about how the left is more cohesive. I think the problem that I’ve long noted with the left is that they all have very different political bends which does cause infighting and I think you’re underestimated the infighting that’s present. I don’t think the republicans have anything quite as serious as the liberal vs leftist split that the dems have. They have extremists but I’d point out that the extreme right is just an extension or an exaggeration of most of their views.
For instance, most republicans support anti-immigration policy and a lot of them do it due to some variety of racism or xenophobia. So when an extremist comes along and says some racist things explicitly, they’ll have everyone else on board for 90% of the conversation despite the different intentions.
Whereas with the left, liberals and leftists have very different ideals. And while it’s usually fine to combat the anti-republican ideals together, aside from that we are very split. You see this when Kamala is supporting fracking live on stage despite the ecological impacts that most of her party claims to be worried about. More moderate people will be convinced by this, which is why she said it. But the divide between a moderate democrat and a serious liberal or leftist on that issue would be night and day and you won’t have much middle ground there. Just something to think about.
yeah, idk what would happen under a republican win, either this is going to be the most lame boring term ever, and then trump gets kicked out, cant do it ever again (according to ben shapiro of course) and the republican part has to figure out what to do after this. Or the entire governmental institution literally gets over thrown. And we end up in a civil war type scenario, in which case we probably know what to do lol.
i’m not sure honestly, i think something like fracking, while there would be a difference in opinion over it, i think federal legislation of fracking is bad, unless it’s done under something like the EPA, assuming they have any power anymore lol. Aside from that i think you would want to leave it to a state/city/county basis, since that’s going to be where the localized impacts are going to be at. I.E. Probably where the most effective legislation is going to happen.
oil is also one of those things that’s going to be consumed regardless of whether or not it’s good for the planet, so if we don’t frack, someone else is likely to frack anyway. Shit’s going to happen one way or another, but i guess in this case it’s probably just NIMBYism.
Obviously there’s going to be a difference, but i don’t think like we see with the political right that it’s going to heavily fracture the political party, both of those people are probably going to vote for kamala at the end of the day.