Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
I support ranked choice btw, or more precisely ranked pairs. I don't know about Libertarian voters deciding anything (except maybe Georgia or Arizona, and almost certainly the Ossof-Perdue runoff ramp), because in this election they constituted only 1% of the national vote. That is to say, as expected the third party vote share collapsed to its usual level in high-salience elections, meaning that most of the people voting Libertarian now are not poached Republicans but the hard core of the third party vote. On the other hand, I'm perfectly fine with the Republican Party going to war with the Libertarians.

Tangentially, if there's ever going to be an electoral structure for third parties in this country, they have to stop being joke organizations that seemingly only exist to grift followers or troll/hinder the major parties. At least, say, the Working Families party has some local existence in the Northeast, in contrast to the Greens or Libertarians.
Wouldn't you like it if it was okay for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to run as independents or lead one of the many progressive/socialist parties in existence without it gleaning votes away from the primary Democrat running? I think one of the reasons the third parties are jokes is exactly because they to grift followers and hinder major parties. A the local levels is where they can make a difference before taking things nationally.
That's why the new Republican tactic of running a third party candidate with a simliar last name to glean off votes from the competition is dangerous, will likely be repeated elsewhere and only a ranked voting system could totally mitigate.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/pol...247132821.html
NO-PARTY CANDIDATE IS A FACTOR
Much mystery remains around the network of unknown candidates with no party affiliation (NPA) who ran in three competitive Senate districts, most notably in Senate District 37, where the third-party candidate netted more than 6,300 votes and likely influenced the outcome.

Voters in Senate Districts 9, 37 and 39 were targeted by similar-looking political mail ads funded by a mystery donor that aimed to confuse voters in an apparent effort to shave votes from Democratic candidates.
Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
One thing I will push back against is the idea that even more gridlock in Congress would somehow produce compromise and good governance. It never has in history; meanwhile our backlog of crippling problems is just accumulating. I believe this country would have a clarifying experience, and be much better off, with a cycle under each party of total majoritarian control. Well, not under Republicans, simply because there is a serious chance of them implementing a single-party dictatorship. But if that impulse could be contained I would relish the opportunity for, say, a Democratic government to implement Medicare for All, only for a subsequent Republican government to abolish it and Social Security.

Constant incremental change may even be preferable to violent upheaval, but violent upheaval only becomes available/necessary because reform was lacking or absent! When there is a revolutionary regime change, sometimes one is sad to see the new regime. One is never sad to see the old one go.

The divergent and self-contained environment of the Georgia runoffs will be an interesting comparison point and testing ground. IMO Democrats should strive to make it very explicitly clear that Biden's ability to act as President is limited by control of the Senate. I would go so far as to promise that, if Republicans retain control their state will go bankrupt and schools will close, whereas if Democrats win then the country (and Georgia) will get bailouts and stimulus checks. Put everything else on the backburner for 2 months besides the immediate material consequences for Georgia and Georgians of this election.
I don't want more gridlock but as each party becomes more extreme it means that daring to work with the opposition loses you your own re-election against a competitor from your own party. The idea of making medicare for all and then it being repealed a few years later is dangerous to fabric of the nation. I'd prefer that we edge the ACA toward that option, creating a public option would be a step in that direction, after people see that it's not the end of the world then take another step.

I agree on the Georgia runoffs, will be very interesting testing ground.