…Yet it seems safe to say that the world no longer trusts U.S. promises, and perhaps no longer fears U.S. threats, the way it used to. The problem, however, isn’t Biden; it’s the party that reflexively attacks him for anything that goes wrong.
Right now America is a superpower without a fully functioning government. Specifically, the House of Representatives has no speaker, so it can’t pass legislation, including bills funding the government and providing aid to U.S. allies. The House is paralyzed because Republican extremists, who have refused to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy and promoted chaos rather than participating in governance, have turned these tactics on their own party. At this point it’s hard to see how anyone can become speaker without Democratic votes — but even less extreme Republicans refuse to reach across the aisle.
And even if Republicans do somehow manage to elect a speaker, it seems all too likely that whoever gets the job will have to promise the hard right that he will betray Ukraine.
Given this political reality, how much can any nation trust U.S. assurances of support? How can we expect foreign enemies of democracy to fear America when they know that there are powerful forces here that share their disdain?
It’s not addition, it’s division . If you divide a finite pool of votes among more candidates, the effect is that candidates similar to each other will draw from the same pool of voters, while not drawing votes from the candidate most-ideologically opposed to them. Imagine, if you will, the scenario with a green and blue candidates B and C, where a third (let’s call him “A”, and place him close to the greens) gets in to the race.
A is third-party, center-green
B is green
C is blue
In this scenario, there are two candidates dividing the pool of green/center-voters between them. A and B probably aren’t appealing to any of C’s supporters. Let’s say that A and B got 25% and 35% respectively, you’ve got a green-blue split of 60-40 that awards the blue candidate victory because it got the remaining 40% and A and B split a green-majority’s votes enough to lose. A entering this race divided (or diluted) the greens’ available votes.
Because splitting up a majority of votes can hand victory to an undivided minority party, there is very much an incentive for voters that don’t want their side to lose to coordinate voting to vote on the one that “can win”. This involves betting on how other voters will vote, in order to avoid splitting their majority. That in turn transforms voting from an exercise in selecting your preference into an exercise in voting where you think other voters on your side of the spectrum will vote.
A ranked-choice voting system (which allows the voter to signal their choices in ranked order) does not require them to vote in the way they imagine most of their ideological allies will vote- it allows them to send their preferences as discrete signals instead.
If you don’t understand this, you don’t understand it, and you would do well not to finger-wag about basic math
The first and most egregious flaw to your illustration is that “A” is somehow close to either “B” or “C”. Which establishment parties would you say are thematically close to any third party? Are you under the impression the socialists are somehow aligned with liberalism, or that libertarians are somehow compatible with socially-conservative authoritarianism? Your scenario seems completely detached from the realities of US politics.
The second flaw to your illustration is that the a finite pool of votes will be divided among the candidates; that there is no option to abstain. The reality is nearly 1/3 the population abstained in the last major election - enough votes went some route other than the candidates presented that, were they a party, they’d have matched the establishment.
The third flaw to your illustration is that the only agency present is in that of the voter; that there is nothing a candidate can do to influence those voters to, say, support a given candidate - that, say, your “green” candidate is utterly incapable of adapting so as to win over those voting for the “center-green” candidate. There is no potential to learn why voters are rejecting “green” in favor of “center-green”, no potential to learn what “center-green” voters want to such a degree as to actively choose them over “green”, etc. - a thing I think we’d both agree is laughably absurd given the extent to which given establishment candidates continuously pivot to dunk on each-other in a given election cycle.
The entirety of your reasoning is built on faulty premises.
This is further elaboration upon the first and most egregious flaw.
This is strongly related to the second flaw; your illustration depends upon the existence of some mythical obligation to lie using one’s vote to support a candidate a voter doesn’t actually believe suitably represents them - that such a thing is entirely set in stone and that voters will never vote outside the “strong” candidates or simply abstain, a thing summarily disproved by the mere existence of parties outside the establishment as well as the overwhelming rate of nonparticipating/abstaining voters.
Interestingly enough, the current voting system presents no such mythical obligation to vote how one believes one’s peers would vote - that only exists in your fantasy and propaganda. This same system allows any given voter to indicate their chosen candidate - their preference.
The only lack of understanding seems to be yours given the myriad faulty assumptions and pieces of broken logic you seem to depend on.