[O]ur system is stuck. It is stuck in part because polarization is getting worse than ever.... The key reform that is necessary to help unlock our system is a combination of Open Primaries and Ranked Choice Voting, which will give voters more genuine choice and our system more dynamism. It will also prevent the spoiler effect that so many Democrats are concerned about, which is a byproduct of a two party system with a binary contest and simple plurality voting.... I’m not very ideological. I’m practical. Making partisan arguments – particularly expressing what I often see as performative sentiment – is sometimes uncomfortable for me....
October 4, 2021
Andrew Yang announces he's now officially an independent and not a Democrat.
I know he's out and about pushing a new book that I can't believe anyone cares about reading, so the cynical part of me thinks he had to come up with something of interest. I'm still taking the bait. Let's see if he says anything useful on the subject of why he wants the only political affiliation I myself could put up with. Excerpt:
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The democrats have to be really sickening to drive a woman to vote independent.
If you want a smart politician, vote for an Asian man. (No to "hello kitty" presidencies.) Go with the odds.
If you want an entertaining politician, vote for Trump.
Yang needs a slogan to set his campaign on fire...
Tinkering is the solution!
"It will also prevent the spoiler effect that so many Democrats are concerned about..." He is uncomfortable with partisan arguments and then makes a Democrat partisan argument.
We have open primaries in California. Very rarely do Republicans make it to the ballot under our system. It has led to a single party state instead of a multiparty state.
I wouldn't vote for that agenda. Open primaries and ranked choice lock in majority parties and kill small parties. It also goes against the human desire to work with like minded people. A parliamentary system sounds like a better choice for what Andrew is aiming for, but it is a little late for that.
You can be registered as Democrat or Republican--the usual binary choice for most of us--and still vote independently. California has six statewide offices that show up at election time. I've been registered in one of the parties for almost sixty years now. And yet over the years (until the Republicans were essentially driven from the state) I tended to vote for 3 Republicans and 3 Democrats each year. I'd take a look at who was on offer for each office and choose the "best" candidate.
Now that California has "jungle primary" for those statewide offices Republican candidates on the general election ballot are going the way of unicorns.
He and Tulsi should get together. While they are far too left for my ideals, I do respect outsiders who are not part of the corrupt insider money whore trough.
Ranked Choice Voting?
No - what I know about it is that it's just one more way for leftists to muddy the elections waters to stay in power.
I’m not very ideological. I’m practical.
My first thought when I read that was that Trump could say the same thing. But of course Trump does subscribe to an ideology, everyone does. The question is, is the ideology practical?
Andrew just needs to create a network to stuff the ballot boxes. It's worked before...
It's not a parliamentary system because the executive is still separate from the legislature.
Let's tinker with it some more.
Nonpartisan city elections worked out so well.
Spoiler: they didn't.
Arrow's theorem says that you can't devise a fair election system. lessee, wiki says
In short, the theorem states that no rank-order electoral system can be designed that always satisfies these three "fairness" criteria:
If every voter prefers alternative X over alternative Y, then the group prefers X over Y.
If every voter's preference between X and Y remains unchanged, then the group's preference between X and Y will also remain unchanged (even if voters' preferences between other pairs like X and Z, Y and Z, or Z and W change).
There is no "dictator": no single voter possesses the power to always determine the group's preference.
Isn't Bernie an Independent as well??
A true Independent votes for candidates of both parties.
Does anyone think Yang would vote for a Republican?
[O]ur system is stuck. It is stuck in part because polarization is getting worse than ever....
Shorter Yang: The Progressives and the Communists have complete control of the government and still can't get along.
As a former chairman of an independent party in a large, wealthy, NY county, I can say with some factual basis that as sickening as partisan politics often is, there is no optimistic future for a "nonpartisan" candidate. Even assuming that such a candidate wins, there is no structural foundation for that candidate to succeed. One needs friends in government in order to be effective. Lots of friends.
It's no accident at all that so-called independents such as Bernie Sanders and Angus King align themselves with Democrats so that they will have friends.
One could argue that Trump was, in important ways, not particularly partisan, and, as a result, had legions of LLRs seeking to sabotage his presidency as he tried to drain the swamp of the swamp rats.
In spite of what anyone tries to say to the contrary, there are only evil, rapacious, power mad lefties who basically are nasty little shits at the core and decent, upright, hard-working conservatives. There is no other useful distinction. The rest is just a matter of degrees.
- Krumhorn
Like most voters, I give a lot of thought to my ranking of fourth and fifth choices among a broad array of candidates. I think that sharing these choices with my fellow citizens (and forcing the laggards to invest the same amount of thought to their choices) will lead directly to a more responsive democratic order.
Or, alternatively, to a growing preference for hereditary monarchs.
As a Floridian, I fully support my state's closed primary elections. Let the Democrats pick their candidates and let the Republicans pick their candidates. Independents are SOL in the primaries but can vote for anyone they want in the general election. There are too many opportunities for mischief in open primary elections. If they don't like that, they can register as a Democrat or a Republican prior to the primaries. Them's the cherces.
What the hell is “dynamism” anyway?! And is it something our system needs more of?
Ranked choice voting? LOL. This will be a disaster. Get rid of the election fraud, and then we can talk about 'Ranked choice voting'.
People who don't like the D's and the R's can never accept they are a minority and always will be. What's even worse is the many of the brightest of these people are social liberals and economic conservatives, which is disliked by more americans than any other position.
I seem to recall that Open Primaries and Ranked Choice Voting were high among voters' concerns in all the polls...Oh, wait. That never happened. This venture is going nowhere.
he also gives the game away when he expresses concerns about not wanting to play spoiler for Democrats as if third parties can't spoil things for Republicans. He wants to work outside the Dem establishment? That's good. He doesn't want to do so in a way that harms Democrats' electoral chances? What's the point?
"Ranked Choice Voting"
Fuck you.
is he embarrassed about his previous associations?
ember-assed =>>> red in the ass
Can Of Cheese for Hunter said...
Ranked Choice Voting?
----------
how about grading/ranking on curve? possible?? just curious
What's even worse is the many of the brightest of these people are social liberals and economic conservatives
Libertarians ain't that bright.
It is dishonest to say that America is divided and the blame lies on both sides. Careful analyses have shown that it is the Democrats that have moved progressively (sic) left in the past 30 years. Republicans are nowhere near as right wing radical as Democrats are near Marxist/Socialist/Communist radical. After all, we see daily calls from Democrats to shut down free speech which is a basic tenet of Marxism. If Yang was to be accurately placed in the left/right continuum, he would be out there on the radical left side but perhaps with more polite attitudes about the opposition, etc. After all, he's the one who has been pushing universal income, which cannot be done without MUCH higher taxes on the productive class. How is that different from Communism?
SPOILER ALERT: Yang doesn't say anything useful.
What a pile. Not one thing in that essay struck me as likely to “advance our society”. Sounds like a phrase that was workshopped, probably focus grouped, maybe polled, as Yang looked for an alternate way to say “change” after Obama made that word politically radioactive for many. But like “change”, “advance our society” stops in mid-sentence. Change/advance to what? And why would that be expected to be better? And how would you propose we get there? Chanting change/advance our society is just an attempt to get unthinking support for whatever is said next or proposed later. Not one thing in that article seems likely to “advance our society” or close any gaps in our politics.
Someone needs to do a fisking of that essay.
Example: "I’m not very ideological. I’m practical." Yet every name he drops in his essay is a Democrat - well, with the exception of Bernie the Independent Socialist. Apparently, Yang's not met anyone else he admires, can work with, wants to do the right thing, that isn't a high-profile Democrat. And some of those Democrats and the Socialist are championing the most polarizing of political positions.
UBI? Haven’t the UBI experiments and pandemic relief bills filled with free money already shown what a disaster UBI would be for the economy and for people? Restaurants, grocery stores, other small business can't find workers now and have cut hours. Imagine how much worse the economy and harder finding workers would be if businesses had to compete with a UBI.
Open primaries? Worse idea ever. Guarantees continued polarization, as crossovers vote for the most extreme candidate of the other party, hoping that candidate makes it easier for their party in the general. I think serious consideration needs to be given to going back in the other direction - let a party decide its candidate for the general, without a primary.
The whole essay seems like it could be summarized as Yang whinging about the lack of traction and power he and younger Democrats have within the Democrat party.
My choices at voting time always seem pretty rank.
Ranked choice voting is a horrible system because it transfers power from ordinary citizens, who don't care that much about politics and certainly not enough to research and rank a whole list of possible candidates, to activists who live only for such lists.
The proposed reforms, Open Primaries and Ranked Choice Voting, likely will result in a single surviving Party.
Hammond proposes decreasing the value of the prize. That is, reduce the Federal Government. Reduce the size, reduce the power, reduce the money available.
Something else that would loosen the electoral process: make ballot access easier for minority parties.
That said, why is it a problem if "our system is stuck?"
He's just Yanging our chain
It's a very weird article, which barely mentions Republicans.
#VoteForTheWorst
Sterling,
He is uncomfortable with partisan arguments and then makes a Democrat partisan argument.
Well, not exactly. He makes an argument generally made by people who might be perceived as "party-splitting." You get it as well, proactively, from Republicans looking to form third parties.
That said, neither open primaries nor ranked-choice voting will do squat to fix what Yang wants fixed. As someone already showed above, the main result of the first is that one party disappears altogether, and the second just makes the remaining party fissiparate. What he really wants (as someone also says above -- late to the party here) is a Parliamentary system. Which might indeed shaking some things up, but isn't in the cards in this, the oldest democratic country that has never had a Parliamentary system, and for practical purposes the only one.
Now, allowing independents to participate in closed primaries might actually do some good, because independents in a closed-primary system are locked out primaries altogether as it is.
One of the few good things about NY is third parties and cross endorsements. Years ago the NY Liberal Party didn’t get enough votes during a gubernatorial election to qualify for an automatic ballot line. Legislators were frightened that their replacement, the Working Families Party, would revolt and nominate and run insurgents against established DemoncRAT politicians so they changed the rules and they lost their automatic ballot line in the 2020 presidential election. Now there are 3 parties with automatic lines- Democrat, Republican, and Conservative. The Constitution Party, the Reform Party, and others, soon to include the WFP make it onto the ballot by petition, often with a cross endorsement of one of the two major party candidates. Unlawful in many states. And in WV IIRC if you lose a party primary you cannot appear on the ballot for that office.
Why do I like this? Politicians have to pay attention to those third party votes. In many districts if the Republican doesn’t get the Conservative Party endorsement, he loses. If a politician sees >20% of his votes coming from a third party, a liberal or conservative one, he’s not going to vote the other way to attract the non-existent middle. The calculation of losing more votes than he gains becomes easy.
I’m a registered Republican. I regularly vote a straight Republican ticket on the Conservative line. And I vote in the closed Republican primary. Open primaries are an abomination. I recall Democrats hating Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos which can only be effective in open primary states.
NY has 2 Democrat ballot initiatives to make their ongoing fraud easier. One- eliminating 10 day advanced voting registration. Two-authorizing no-excuse absentee voting, a step towards all mail in fraud. Also one on changing how redistributing is done.
Lets Go Brandon!
What's the opposite of a RHINO? A hog with tusks on his ass?
But of course Trump does subscribe to an ideology, everyone does. The question is, is the ideology practical?
It has always struck me that Trump is far more practical than ideological. That is why he has been politically assassinated.
Yang is a nice man who may be ahead of his time. However, the time is about fighting the authoritarianism of the elite and the fake democracy of corrupt Blue cities. In other words, The Democrat Party.
Will he stand for investigating voting and political corruption? If not, he is just another phony trying to make a name for himself.
Naray--- are you serious? Not even close to the same thing.
TED
It's actualy not bad. Met a girl. She's
a bagger.
JOHN
No way, that's awesome. We should double
date, you, me Lori and, what's her name?
TED
White trash name. Guess.
JOHN
Uh, Mandy?
TED
Nope.
JOHN
Madison?
TED
Nope.
JOHN
Britney, Tiffany, Candice?
TED
Nope.
JOHN
Don't fuck with me on this. I know this
shit.
TED
I know you do, and I am not fucking with
you.
JOHN
Okay, Brandi, Heather, Channing, Breanna,
Amber, Sabrina, Melody, Dakota, Sierra,
Bambi, Crystal, Samantha, Autumn, Ruby,
Taylor, Tara, Tamra, Tami, Lauren,
Charlene, Chantel, Courtney, Misty,
Jenna, Krista, Mindy, Noelle, Shelby,
Trina, Reba, Cassandra, Nikki, Kelsey,
Shawna, Jolene, Earline, Claudine,
Savannah, Kasey, Dolly, Kendra, Carla,
Chloe, Devon, Emmylou, Becky?
TED
Nope.
JOHN
Okay, was it any one of those names with
a Lynn after it?
TED
Yep.
JOHN
Okay. Brandi-Lynn, Heather-Lynn--
TED
Tami-Lynn.
JOHN
Fuck!
The key reform that is necessary to help unlock our system is a combination of Open Primaries and Ranked Choice Voting, which will give voters more genuine choice and our system more dynamism.
If "open primaries" means independents can vote in either primary, that's not a problem and most states have that now. If it means that there's only one "jungle primary" it's a bad idea, and tends to produce one-party rule. It reduces the chances or outsiders getting in.
Ranked choice voting means voters have to keep track of a lot of minor parties they don't really like and cast their second or third or fourth vote for them. I say, vote for who you find the least objectionable and don't bother with the games. Ranked choice voting means activists who know the angles prevail over ordinary votes. It also complicates the voting process allowing more time and confusion and corruption.
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