Kbin/Mbin (and possibly others?) definitely have the edge here since those platforms make votes public (only admins can see them on Lemmy). So, if you want to confirm what I’m saying here, go view some of these posts from Kbin/Mbin.
Every time one of the “usual suspects” says stuff like this in the comments, there will later be posts detailing how Biden is doing (or at least earnestly trying to do) exactly the things they’re saying he needs to be doing (oR ElSe i WiLl noT voTE anD NEithER ShoULD yoU!!!11!!). 100% of the time, those posts are downvoted by these same “usual suspect” accounts.
What gives? They have very strong opinions about how he should run his administration, so you’d think they’d appreciate him doing what they’ve been so helpfully suggesting. Unless…it was never about the issues at all.
That thin veneer of concern they’re hiding behind is not as thick as they think it is and is quite easy to see through. Now you know where to look.
Edit: Please don’t name and shame any specific users. That may violate the community or LW rules. We all know who most of the “usual suspects” are.
Prior to 1993, Canadian politics was dominated by two parties: The Liberals, and the Progressive Conservatives.
In the federal election of 1993, the government of the Progressive Conservatives (who had been in power for 9 years) was so unpopular that their vote collapsed and they won only 2 seats in parliament. The Progressive Conservatives were never again a political force in Canada.
In the same election, the votes for minor parties like the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Alliance surged, with the Bloc Quebecois becoming the new official opposition party with 54 seats in parliament.
Is it wrong for me to hope something similar will happen in the US elections?
It’s not at all unreasonable to hope for it, but you need to see sufficiently low support for the party in question. That does not look even slightly plausible in the upcoming US election. It might happen in the upcoming UK one, and you can see clearly the difference in polling and reporting
No, but it is foolish to think that it begins at the Presidency. Historically, new parties have emerged from grassroots movements, beginning with local offices like school boards and city councils. Otherwise, they have been splintered from existing parties.
So do those things down-ballot instead.
Yeah we can limp along with a major party and a minor party for a couple decades. We have before.
There will never be more than 2 for more than 1 election cycle. Ross Perot couldn’t do it. Pat Buchanan couldn’t do it. George Wallace couldn’t do it.
Teddy Big Brass Balls Roosevelt couldn’t do it with with his Bull Moose Party as a two term ex president. If he couldn’t do it, nobody can.
There’s a variety of problems with the concept (including the issue of political dynasties), but I sometimes wish a blend of Teddy Roosevelt and FDR would show up and whip our government back into something at least vaguely respectable.
Yeah, people talking about proportional representation seem to turn a blind and eye to the Senate, which has had principled socialists and libertarians in its seats. It’s not a healthy state of affairs, but if you wanted to send a message to the Democrats theres a proven way to do it in house and Senate races, trying to make big swings at the presidential level is just idiotic and betrays bad faith.
Wrong? No. But I would warn, as a fellow Canadian myself, that it didn’t totally fix the problem.
Pierre Polievre (current right wing leader who walked with the Trucker convoy) is probably going to win at least a minority, and the more right wing parts of my family can’t hide their hope he “finally helps the majority, rather then all these minorities getting help.”
If he wins a minority he has to partner with another party to form government.
He’s been shit talking them all so they probably are going to tell him to fuck his hat.
Or the liberals will join up with him and they’ll just make sure no one hurts the corporations they were paid by.
Let’s keep this grounded in reality, okay?
No, that’s not how it works in Canada. By convention, whichever party has the most seats in parliament forms government, even they don’t have a majority.
In theory, the other parties could form a coalition (giving them a majority of seats), but Canada has no tradition of that and the last time a group of parties proposed doing that, it led to a constitutional crisis.
That’s not entirely correct, you have to be able to get a majority of votes during Matters of Confidence and if you don’t you have to call a general election.
Yes, but by convention, MPs will give a vote of confidence to the leader of whichever party gets the most seats.
That’s why I said “by convention”.
By convention they partner. But usually there is a bit of respect between them and Pierre is pissing everyone off.
So if no one else with partner with him he can not form government.
There is no such convention.
Sometimes they can make a deal with minor parties to ensure they have confidence and can pass supply bills (a confidence-and-supply agreement, like Trudeau and Jagmeet have now), but they usually don’t. And that’s why minority governments usually don’t last long in Canada. (Typically no longer than two years.)
Stephen Harper’s minority government didn’t have a confidence-and-supply deal. They stayed in power because the Liberals would abstain on confidence motions (until they didn’t).
It has before. We no longer see the Whig Party on the ballot. I’m also hoping we can do it again.
I get what you’re saying, but the Reform Party was a far-right Christian nationalist party that was against gay marriage, any immigration that would alter the “ethnic makeup” of Canada, and had a problem of attracting openly racist supporters. Not the greatest example of a small party seeing a surge in support!
And they morphed into today’s Conservative Party.
By merging with yesterday’s Conservative party.
US parties are much less locally run than Canadian parties are.
In the US you’re basically just voting for a face on your preferred platform, and that platform is homogeneous across state lines.
The only place in the US that even has different parties is Puerto Rico and that’s more about their specific debate about their status within the US.
The national platform is homogenous. The state platforms vary wildly. Arizona Democrats are nothing like California Democrats. (Arizona Democrats are arguably far more progressive actually)
Yea. Sorry, the conditions are MASSIVELY different. In every conceivable way. Populations, demographics, broken government systems, corruption, info wars being waged by forgien interests, literal trillions of dollars at stake.
Canada is awesome… but it’s a Podunk backwater with barely the population of a single state and a much much much more homogeneous population (especially in the 90s)
Everyone (large governments) on the planet is fighting over control of America. If Trump wins, the global fascist agenda kicks off and the whole planet goes with it. This is a historical inflection point.
The PCs loosing just meant they created new parties and came back a few years later. They all stayed rich and white.
I wouldn’t say that. There’s a pretty big linguistic and cultural split in Canada that doesn’t exist in the USA. French Canada and English Canada sometimes feel like different worlds.
It doesn’t feel homogeneous at all.
Just FYI, Canada came very close to splitting into two different countries in 1995. The vote was 50.58% to 49.42%.
It was a national crisis and the culmination of decades of national tensions.
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No, Canada does not have proportional representation. Canada uses FPTP, just like the US.