[factotum]

False equivalency. Look more closely at the kinds of things being done by both parties and you will see a major effort to concentrate wealth, destroy government, and institute a more theocratic and plutocratic society on one side, while there are more relatively minor infractions on the other. The left, by and large, is the reasonable side at present. It has its problems, but at least they aren’t cancerous.

[craftyguy]

Sorry, but no, that's not what I'm talking about. You're being distracted by actions of those in power vs. the common mentality of the people voted them in.

You're right that the types of things being done by each party, when in power, are different, but the shared mentality amongst the party members, of both parties, is the same: our team must win at all costs.

[frgtpsswrdlame]

>You're being distracted by actions of those in power vs. the common mentality of the people voted them in.

That's not 'being distracted,' that's 'paying attention.' The mentality of the people voting for representatives is totally irrelevant when, once in power, those representatives behave extremely differently depending on party affiliation.

[unclebucknasty]

>You're being distracted by actions of those in power vs. the common mentality of the people voted them in.

At some point you have to draw a line connecting the two groups, right?

Otherwise, if these groups differ significantly, then they'd be voted out. On the contrary, polls show overwhelming support from within that party.

>but the shared mentality amongst the party members, of both parties, is the same: our team must win at all costs.

Sorry. That's simply not true. Look at the House Russia investigation and the behavior of people like Nunes.

You'd be hard-pressed to find an equivalent dereliction from the other side in a matter as significant as that implied by the allegations and evidence to-date. Think of it: there was more emphasis on HRC's emails.

We can say it's a matter of opinion, but at some point we must converge on reason. There is no equivalence here.

[factotum]

Sure, every team wants to win. But what utility does that observation have? What’s the alternative? To me, what’s important is what happens when a given team has power.

[pc86]

"We're bad but they're worse" is not the most comforting argument in the world.

[geofft]

It's not at all, but the rational thing to do is still to support bad and not worse. (Unless you have a realistic way of introducing good, but I don't see any of them that will work in the short term, and I think promoting bad and eliminating worse is probably the best way to get there.)

[logfromblammo]

Introduce an option, to be included in all races on all ballots: disqualify these candidates and start over from the primaries.

It even works for uncontested races. The office goes empty until an acceptable candidate can be found to fill it.

[geofft]

1. I see no realistic route to the introduction of that option - you would need to convince a fairly large political apparatus, most of whom has no interest in the option regardless of party affiliation, to support it, and you'd probably need to change many state constitutions.

2. I'm not sure that option is actually a good idea, since the effective result is that either the incumbent continues longer - which means the none-of-the-above vote is a vote for the incumbent, so it's still rational to vote for the "other party" - or the office is empty. That's good if your goal is a small and weak government, which is a totally reasonable thing to want, but probably not one that reflects the will of the majority of Americans.

[logfromblammo]

A realistic route to implementation was not one of the requirements. If it is, the only solution is pretty much to eject Washington DC from the planet, fill in the hole, and start over.

And I explicitly said the office would remain empty. If an incumbent runs unopposed, the new option would be the way to force their party to pick someone else, since obviously no one had the moxie or political capital to challenge in the primary.

If it is important that the office be filled, it is important that the parties run candidates qualified to fill it. In light of recent events, I'd rather have no elected official or a temporary placeholder than a bad official. It would seem that our government has a limited capacity to operate rationally even when the person nominally in charge is incompetent or non compos mentis. It certainly happened in the later years of the Reagan administration. It might be happening now.

Europe has proved that short election cycles are possible. We could survive six weeks of vacancy in most offices while cranking out a mulligan election. And where it really counts, existing succession plans apply. We could certainly run one mulligan between November and January, and if another one is required, Congress still has time to pick their Speaker of the House before inauguration day, who would then have to take the office until an election finally succeeds in naming a full-term replacement.

The sheer panic, expense, and inconvenience of the first time would likely encourage the parties to not run crap candidates in the future.

[geofft]

> A realistic route to implementation was not one of the requirements.

I said "(Unless you have a realistic way of introducing good)" - I meant that the way of introducing it must be realistic, not simply that the good must be realistic. (Let me know if I could have phrased that more clearly!)

[vec]

That ends up with the same fundamental issue as a third-party run. If I think the Purple Party's candidate kinda sucks but the Fuscia Party's candidate would be an absolute disaster, I'm incentivized to vote Purple instead of "wasting" my vote on an alternative that I don't think has a realistic chance of winning in order to avoid what I see as the worst case scenario.

It's a natural side effect of a first-past-the-post voting system[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

[delecti]

What about "we're not perfect, but they're dangerously totalitarian"?

[Alex3917]

> concentrate wealth, destroy government, and institute a more theocratic and plutocratic society on one side

Like HRC purging hundreds of thousands of voters in Brooklyn for no reason the day before the primary?

[unclebucknasty]

>false equivalency

This. What-aboutism is rampant these days, but frequently involves conflating things of such vastly different degree as to be of an altogether distinct quality.

The strange thing about the supposed "insurgent" party invoking it so frequently is that they are justifying their own behavior by equating it to that of those they so vehemently oppose and demand to be repudiated.

[UnpossibleJim]

Pointing fingers at "the other guy" helps us not fix ourselves. That way, if we use underhanded tactics "to compete", we can play it off as "it's only fair", because someone else does it as well. If anyone wants true change in the world, that change starts by changing ourselves. every truly great leader has regurgitated this, ad nauseam.

[craftyguy]

To play devil's advocate: what's the point in changing ourselves when 99.9% of the voting populace, with the help of every media outlet ever, views major elections like a major sporting event?

[UnpossibleJim]

Because leading by example woks better than putting the whip to someone else and screaming for them to change, while you stay the same. That only leads to revolution.