[spiderfarmer]

As a European I already think there is not much democracy left in the USA. At a federal level it's moving towards an autocracy at a rapid pace, and a large part of the electorate seems keen to cheer it on.

At a local level money, gerrymandering and propaganda make it impossible to elect politicians who give a fair representation of people's interests. And with a two party system, it's more than likely that both of them fail to represent their policy preferences to begin with.

It frightens me that people are so easily manipulated and exploited.

[loudmax]

As an American, I don't disagree about the threat to democracy in the United States, but I caution against excessive cynicism. Autocrats and would-be autocrats rely on the populace losing interest in politics and tuning out entirely.

We need to realistically acknowledge the problems and work toward solutions. Not throw up our hands and give into injustice. The solution to democratic revival is citizen engagement, not despair and fatalism.

[spiderfarmer]

I’m European, it’s not like I can vote in your country.

[mamonster]

Its the exact same thing in the majority of European countries.

[r00fus]

It's moving slower in Europe, that's all.

[spiderfarmer]

Why do you think so?

[mamonster]

> Moving towards an autocracy at a rapid pace

Can be said for UK, France at least. Current UK prime minister is basically a guy who was parachuted in after the previous nominee was couped by her own party, France massively reformed the pension system last year by using a legal hack. Germany we'll see where it is in a year.

> Large part of electorate to cheer it on

When parties that are "far-right" (as labelled by mainstream media) are above 20% in most countries sure seems like we are getting there (given that most of these parties like RN, AfD, Vox, etc are branded as anti-democratic/autoritarian).

>Gerrymandering and propaganda

I mean in France 2 of the biggest TV stations (BFM/Cnews) are billionaire owned and run a certain line. Same can be said in UK(Skynews). Germany has dark money campaigns exactly like the US, only you don't hear about them(because all the money goes to CDU/CSU).

>Two party system

I guess this is the European innovation, but with the concept of Brandmauer/Cordon Sanitaire you effectively have that any opposition party can be frozen out of government by the "establishment" parties.. I don't care that CDU/CSU and SPD are 2 different parties when they basically switch between each other for the last 20 years. Same thing was the case with PS/LR in France.

I am not familiar with Nordic countries, they are probably fine, but in the heartland stuff is not going in the democratic direction. And I didn't even mention countries like Poland, Hungary, etc.

[spiderfarmer]

I agree with you on most points. But none of the countries have a candidate that publicly admires is yearning to please dictators, who says that "presidency for life" sounds "pretty great" and who talks about political opponents as "enemies", who "have to be dealt with". The simple fact that another violent upheaval at the next election would surprise no one, is a dead giveaway that the USA is on a very dangerous trajectory.

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/19/1220443867/trump-s-rhetoric-i...

[mamonster]

I understand your sentiment. I just don't think that thinking that we in Europe have it a lot better than the US simply because we did not yet get a person with Trump's BSing skills is very prudent, given that the directions that our systems are headed to seem to be very similar.

A politician with Trump's Reality Distortion Field is bound to arrive in Europe within the next decade or so, at which point it will be the same thing.

[spiderfarmer]

So it's not the exact same thing. Yet.

[rayiner]

> money, gerrymandering

Let’s take these two separately. As to money: the evidence shows money isn’t buying results. Wall Street and Silicon Valley strongly supported Clinton in 2016. She outspent Donald Trump by 70%: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/09/trump-and-cl... ($340m to $581m). But Clinton lost.

Within the Republican Party, billionaires billionaires wanted someone other than Trump: https://fortune.com/2024/02/26/ken-griffin-koch-brothers-rep.... But he’s going to win the primary.

More generally, the donor money in US politics supports globalization/free trade, and mass immigration (for cheap labor). The money is losing that battle not just in the US, but in Europe too.

The problem in U.S. politics right now is that Internet-based donor networks have eliminated the ability of large donors (and institutions) to control the candidates.

As to gerrymandering, what makes you think it has any real effect? Do you have a numerical estimatr in your head of what the party split would look like in Congress if there was no gerrymandering?

[spiderfarmer]

I am not only talking about elections. I'm saying money and gerrymandering result in politicians ignoring the policy preferences of a large part of their electorate, especially after they have been elected. If your interests are no longer represented, why bother voting at the next election?

  "Even without being able to gauge the actual political power of wealthy citizens, we can confidently reject the view that extensive political power by the wealthy would be of little practical importance anyway because their policy preferences are much the same as everyone else’s. On many important issues the preferences of the wealthy appear to differ markedly from those of the general public. Thus, if policy makers do weigh citizens’ policy preferences differentially based on their income or wealth, the result will not only significantly violate democratic ideals of political equality, but will also affect the substantive contours of American public policy."

https://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/jnd260/cab/CAB2012%20-...

  "Still, the researchers hold that gerrymandering harms our democracy. “Elections are a way to hold politicians accountable for what their constituency wants,” said Kosuke Imai, professor of government and of statistics as well as leader of the ALARM Project research team, which uses big data and computational algorithms to study redistricting. “But if many lawmakers are in safe seats, guaranteed to win by a relatively comfortable margin, there’s less incentive to respond to what voters want."

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/07/biggest-probl...

[mindcandy]

> the evidence shows money isn’t buying results.

There are different kinds of results.

There’s “Money spent on campaigns gets my favored politicians into office” which apparently isn’t working out too well.

There’s “Money spent on campaigns gets politicians to give me favors at the expense of their constituents” which unfortunately works very well.

And, there’s “Money being spent on campaigns gets politicians to favor laws that encourage donatory competition between big donators even if it is at great expense to everyone including their constituents” which is also going just swimmingly.

All of this is because politicians know that if they don’t play the asshole here, their competition will and they’ll end up with a large multiple of their campaign budget. And, that will put them out of office. A small difference like 2x might not work so well, but 10x certainly does.

[bhickey]

> As to gerrymandering, what makes you think it has any real effect?

Without gerrymandering the Republican party would have last controlled the House in 2007.

[rayiner]

Republicans won the Congressional Popular vote exactly half the time since then: 2010 (by almost 7 points), 2014 (by almost 6), 2016, and 2022.

As long as we are talking about counter-factual political systems: If the US had a parliamentary system like most democracies, Republicans would have controlled the presidency for 8 of the last 16 years. Given their coalition of disaffected minorities and recent immigrants, Democrats benefit tremendously from the quirks of the US Presidential system, which lends itself to nationwide machine politics.

[tptacek]

One of these complaints, that Republicans benefit from the structural tilt away from densely populated states, is objective. The other, your argument that Democrats reliance on immigrants enables machine politics, is subjective. They aren't directly comparable arguments; the latter argument feels like special pleading.

[rayiner]

I understand the “structural tilt away from densely populated states” to be a different thing than gerrymandering. Whichever party outperforms in sparely populated rural states (historically, it was democrats) has an advantage under the US system.

The point that directly elected executives give rise to different political dynamics is no less objective. Among those political dynamics is the feasibility of blasting a nationwide message that embodies the party in a person low information voters can relate to. That’s been a major enabler of Democratic machine politics aimed at immigrants. And these days, it’s an enabler of MAGA machine politics.

It’s quite different in Westminster style parliamentary statements, where people in different districts vote for different candidates.

[leereeves]

False. Republicans won the popular vote in 2022, 54M to 51M.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_United_States_House_of_Re...

[chabes]

> Without gerrymandering

Emphasis on this part

[rayiner]

Yes, that’s why OP cited the Congressional popular vote. What’s happening is that both parties gerrymander, so it largely cancels out. For example in Maryland, democrats won 65% of the 2022 Congressional popular vote, but hold 87.5% of the House seats. The 450,000 or so excess Republican votes—votes for republicans which didn’t contribute to a Republican house seat—cancels out some excess Democratic votes in Montana or Wyoming.

[chabes]

Indeed, but there are other factors at play, in regards to the influence of gerrymandering on voting in general

[psadauskas]

Take a look at Figure 1 in this study (about halfway down): https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...

Essentially, the likelihood of a particular bill being passed doesn't matter at all on how many average citizens want it to pass. It does matter greatly, almost 100%, on how much the economic elites want it to pass.

[felixgallo]

'wall street and silicon valley', as if there weren't hundreds of millions of dark money billionaire slush funds and the world's biggest and most effective propaganda network in play.

Gerrymandering absolutely has an effect, and this has been well documented. Here, for example: https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2024/01/analysis-of-pr...