@benroyce @ReggieHere @jawarajabbi I suppose we in the UK tend to think that the two houses in the US are roughly equivalent to the houses of commons (elected members of parliament) and Lords (unelected permanent appointees of different governments). But the process of selection is very different. We don’t have primaries and each political party has its own method of choosing representatives.
@seb321 @ReggieHere @jawarajabbi
and in the usa it's just all or nothing
the problem is we have an ancient antiquated crude form of democracy, and we never adjusted
more modern forms of democracy like in the uk: it's simply more sophisticated, more robust, better thought out forms of democracy
you drifted away from monarchy. we drift towards it
which is all very ironic considering the drama when we split from the uk, and our rhetoric at the time
Edited 20d ago
@seb321 @ReggieHere @jawarajabbi @benroyce
Your point about Parliament is well made, discussions about FPTP in the U.S. and UK often miss that the process is being used in different ways. We don't elect Prime Ministers, leaders are elected by party members and if enough MPs of any party go along with it they become PM. Otherwise the US Houses could operate in the same way as Parliament but for the other important difference: the unlimited scale of political spending. The scale of the resource required to elect even one third-party member of a House makes it unviable. The only route for a third party is to take over one of the big two. In the old Gilded Age corporate interests hedged their bets and took over both. In this new age the Tea Party took over the GOP and MAGA swallowed them whole.
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@seb321 @ReggieHere @jawarajabbi @benroyce
…These differences in the way FPTP works demands different approaches:
In the UK model third parties can prosper and tactical voting at a Parliamentary Election can give them a place in Parliament and potentially a finger on the balance of power. The key thing is for enough people to turn up and vote at the Parliamentary Election.
In the US model third parties can't prosper and the tactical voting in a vote to a House isn't going to deliver. However, as we've seen in New York just as much as we've seen in the rise of Trump, if enough people vote in a given direction at the primary they can put up an effectively third-party candidate then enough need to vote for them. It's twice the effort but a more secure outcome.
The irony is that in the UK we theoretically vote for people not parties but have to vote tactically for parties while in the U.S. the vote is for parties not people but you have to vote tactically for people.
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