What is Reddit's opinion of Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

You may enjoy this book if you haven't read it. It gets into a lot of the details of why people feel like the parties only cater to the rich and why nothing will change until the voting system is changed to allow more than two parties.

The Two Party Doom Loop is a must-read. It's much bigger than ranked choice itself, but in a good way. It's about the fundamental problems with politics today and how ranked choice, among other reforms, is necessary to fix the state of affairs.

The Two Party Doom Loop is a must-read. It's much bigger than ranked choice itself, but in a good way. It's about the fundamental problems with politics today and how ranked choice, among other reforms, is necessary to fix the state of affairs.

Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop

Collective Decisions and Voting

This is something that Lee Drutman explicitly discusses in his book <u>Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop</u>, and changing how Representatives are elected would not require constitutional change, but it would require a change in federal law (and then changes in state law).

How PR would work in practice: experts usually recommend open-list PR, which for a voter would be pretty similar to what we do now. You have one vote, and you vote for whatever candidate you think is best. One stark difference on the ballot would be that there are many more candidates to choose from, not just two or three. For a 5-seat district in a state with say 4 parties competing, you might have 20-30 candidates to choose from. Otherwise, the complicated stuff is behind the scenes (but in a transparent way if you know the votes for each candidate) in how seats are allocated to each party based on the vote totals they received.

One thing I'd mention is that there is a lot of weird advice out there in terms of how to reform the US electoral system, by people who don't seem to be very familiar with other democracies and how various systems have or have not worked out. This includes algorithmic district drawing to "solve" gerrymandering, approval voting, jungle primaries, top five primaries, non-partisan elections etc.

If you look at what experts on electoral system and comparative democracy recommend, it's multi-seat districts with 3-5 seats per district, and open-list PR (or maybe ranked choice voting). That should make it possible to have something like 3-5 seat-winning, viable parties, instead of the current 2. Here is a plea to this effect by one of the leading experts on this electoral and party systems, Matt Shugart.

> hat I mean is that anytime a politician breaks off from their party and votes differently on something we crucify them for it and say "he's a Democrat he shouldn't have voted that way, we should vote him out next term".

Sure, so it seems the problem here is with voters, not with parties. Voters often have hypocritical or unreasonable expectations. That's one reason parties are helpful, because it helps direct voter expectations in a reasonable and actionable way. Of course that's not perfect, nothing is, but its an improvement over the alternative.

>This means that we're choosing to label ourselves even though we're not these things. Scientifically, what point do I label myself a Democrat instead of a Republican? When 51% of my views align with democrats? What if I weigh certain beliefs higher than others? What if 51% of my beliefs align with Democrats but I value the other 49% as more important.

You're really concerned with labels. The thing is, it's your choice what you value, and no one says that you're forced to have some slave-like obedience to policy. If the 49% is more important to you, then you should vote for that party. This isn't supposed to be a scientific thing. People shift and change and if you're truly split down the middle, then either choice is "right" for you. It just depends, as I said, on what you personally find important. This isn't supposed to be a fixed decision, a marriage for all time.

For example. I'm not much of a partisan. But for this election, I'm hard committed to Biden. That's because I value democratic institutions and norms very much, more so than individual policy positions. I also value those who have demonstrated compromise, as Biden has. So he has my vote. That doesn't mean I'm team Dems forever, though if the Reps continue with Trumpism beyond Trump, then that's kinda likely. As far as policies go, I think moving towards more social democratic measures has been proven to be effective, but I think gradual, incremental change is necessary as our system may not endure a huge shock to the system after all the damage it's taken. There are things I don't like about Biden, but the things I don't like about Trump are bigger, and for all Biden's weaknesses, he's got some stuff I genuinely like. That's all I can reasonably ask for.

>Most of the people on both sides don't fall into any of the categories we put them in.

Yes, toxic partisanship is bad. That doesn't mean partisans overall are bad (in fact democracy depends on them). And while you may have a case that our 2 party system can't really function in today's world without toxic partisanship, just because there's toxicity in our system doesn't mean the system is without value. You can still vote in a system that has toxic elements and feel good about it, even if you should feel better about it.

Also, for what it's worth, these things aren't equal. Yes, there might be some hyberbole in the Dem claims...but Trumpism really is a bunch of extremists and they're literally getting endorsements from KKK folks. I get what you're saying, but at a certain point it's important to realize that the Dems have largely controlled their extremism, preventing it from taking over the party, while the Reps have instead embraced it to the point of expelling the moderates.

I fully agree that the leadership of a party does not necessarily reflect the voter base. My family are a bunch of Reps too, and they're not what I'm saying Reps have become. But voters do take their cues from leadership (just read 538 and you'll see that constantly) and I've seen folks who have changed as the Reps have become Trumpier. It does matter, because even if the Reps you know aren't a perfect reflection of Trumpism, they have undoubtedly become influenced by it. Not everything is equal.

>The election is not until 8 months after the primary for NC. That's a long time that Joe could stick his foot in his mouth or for some news to come out that paints him as bad as trump.

Sure, but it's also a long time for Trump to mess up and do something stupid...like using federal troops to clear the way for a Bible photo op, or say troops who died in war are "losers" or "suckers" or use federal troops to incite violence at protests, or something else. This is a sword that cuts both ways, and so far it's helped Biden more than hurt him.

I'm really not sure I get what you're saying here. The whole point of having an extensive primary process is to vet candidates for these kinds of problems. Biden was facing lots and lots of pressure from his own side, and he was able to emerge from that as the best candidate. Even if he does make a mistake...like express frustration at a radio host and imply he's taking the black vote for granted...the primary process proved that Biden enough of an edge over every other candidate that 1) he can lose a bit and still be the best guy for the job and 2) even when he loses a bit he can probably gain it right back. Both of these things have been true for him.

Could we elongate the primary even more and be extra special sure we nominated the right guy? I suppose. But at a certain point you're never going to be sure, and Biden passed every test and it wasn't really close. Our process was good. So far, the outcomes have been good (Biden is crushing Trump right now). Why are you so dissatisfied? You like both parties. Biden is well liked by his party and his party is currently sitting at 50% of the vote in polls. That's about as good a process and outcome as you could ask for at this point.

>My only intention is that people have more of a say in the laws and policies that are put into place. Marijuana is a perfect example for my state. Majority of voters are for legalization to the point where its decriminalized but still against the law. That should be the end of the story right there. An honest democracy says majority rules.

So this hits on where our system is weak: even with a majority, it's really, really hard to govern. On top of that, our government is particularly good at determining what is actually the majority. There are a few reasons for this--term limits in the executive serve to prevent good, popular presidents but not bad, unpopular ones, differing election calendars for different governing roles dilute the popular will's translation into seats, division of powers and federalism weakens political capital and governing majorities, and more. This is where I absolutely agree with you. But as I'm pointing out, this has absolutely nothing to do with the parties or their nominating process. That's just a scapegoat because it's easy to get mad about that. The real source of concern here is for structural institutions of our system. Not instead having to wait until a majority of representatives are for it. Not instead having to wait until a majority of representatives are for it.

Reform is absolutely necessary. But our party organizations are an organic result of trying to organize political power to best obtain valuable results, and putting the hand of God into that to tweak it will only further break our system. What we need is to change the structures that contribute to this problem, which will cause the parties to organically shift into a more equitable and desirable format.

For example, in a Westminster parliament, it's impossible to have a parliament that doesn't reflect the popular will on top priority issues. When it does, the parliament is dissolved. And because there aren't multiple different stakeholders on different schedules, there's never any waiting for representatives to change. I totally agree that's a problem. But tweaking the parties or not voting won't make that change. What will make that change is active political participation and discussions of genuine reform among highly invested partisans equally committed to making a more perfect union.

>I'm not trying to sound like a douche if I'm coming across that way. I would never try to say that my beliefs are anything more credible than opinion. I honestly want my mind changed if I'm wrong, I'm just not seeing it.

It's all good. You should argue for what you believe in. That's what makes democracy work. Our system thrives on competition and is not weakened by it. You should take a look at Lee Drutman's new book, Breaking the Two Party Doom Loop. I'm reading it now, and so far it's been excellent. He can make the argument I'm making better than I ever could in a Reddit comment. I can guarantee you'll find something useful out of it.

https://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Two-Party-Doom-Loop-Multiparty/dp/0190913851