They've obviously lost the thread and who could blame them? They've been locked up with conservatives for 50+ years. That would be enough to have me blow my brains out.

The point is the whole DNC is a rotten corpse. Maybe at one time the candidates had an ideology but now they've fought every fight they're willing to fight and just want to be old and not bothered. Except they don't want to give up their power. Which is frightening. From their perspective they've only made it this far by clenching tight to power for as long as they could and can't imagine a world where they just live at harmony with people around them. They lose all their clout. No one needs them anymore and they rot to nothing. That's the fear at least.

Everyday I'm more convinced the thing that got us where we are is American hyper competitive mentality. We have to work endlessly. We have to score the best grades. We have to make the most money.

Why can't we just take pride in living peacefully. This is what all the Trumpers are upset about, honestly. They want to be able to live in their podunk town. Doing their unimportant job. Liking the same things their mommy and daddy liked and be unbothered. Culturally that's fucked and we've seen why but idealistically it's fine. We need unimportant people to do unimportant things and be more or less just like the ones who came before. So why not reward it?

I'm rambling.

Evil is Evil. Lesser, greater, middling… Makes no difference. The degree is arbitary. The definition’s blurred. If I’m to choose between one evil and another… I’d rather not choose at all.

I'd sooner choose revolution than get caught up in justifying a bad choice presented by a broken and decaying system that's destroying the planet, people's lives regardless of political affiliation (ie healthcare), and shafting all but the rich.

Even if you accept the choice and choose and win with your lesser evil forever, in the end, you're leaving behind the cumulative total of shit on your children and their children. Yet people are content with that because you're reading Lemmy while shitting on the toilet, hopeless and desperate at the sad state of the world just trying to do what you can to soften the blow to your already chaotic life and the lives of your loved ones. What power do you have to raise a hand against your masters and force drastic change? And that's exactly the point of the choices and the divides.

How many people did you vote for that weren't Republican or Democrat in your local elections? If you didn't vote for them (3rd party, new party) there, don't expect them to ever exist as a presidential candidate. You can't even qualify to be on the ballot if you don't have the party established. You have to petition on all 50 states to be shown there and you will likely be denied on many.

If you don't like the Republican or Democrat party, a solution would be to get local candidates to run under a new party that fits your views better, still you would NEED to vote for whichever of the 2 parties fits your views best in the presidential vote to SLOW the movement right/left/up/down whatever... And establish that party in enough city's/counties/states to take seats that matter there. Once known... Then and only then would it be viable to split the vote, and you likely lose 4 years to a hard push into the directions you don't want... While the final negotiations and realizations of merging or replacing/allying with the lesser evil party.

Likely meaning a pledge that you would hold primaries that would endorse each other if the winner of a primary shows more people. But you cannot and will not win a presidential election if you split the vote and don't endorse each other

The argument is when there are more than 2 options a majority of people would not have selected the "winner" over any of the other individual losers. Therefore majority rule is an illusion, democracy is self-contradictory!!!

However, by reducing the options to just 2 you no longer have the same result and "democracy" is more "self-consistent". You can do this in a fair/Democratic way by "simulating" the pairwise interactions (IE ranked choice voting, pairwise majority rule, etc.) or by establishing a false dichotomy (2 party systems, left v right spectrum, etc.).

This is not 'not a thing' but it's a really old idea and is largely solved (ie. Distributed networks like the social media platform we are currently on, or stuff like this).

However, the claim isn't entirely misplaced as modern social institutions refuse to implement any of those methods because it would be against their best interests as those in power are deeply unpopular (yes, especially your favourites whoever that may be). So yes almost all "Democratic" systems you interact with on a daily basis are inherently self-contradictory on the most cursory of examinations, but they dont have to be.

I just wish those campaigning were required to provide policy ideas/plans for what they want to do, and where they want the money to come from. In an ideal world I would give the candidates 0 face time, possibly even no names to the public at first. (Would never work but would be interesting)

The options get a set of questions framed around current events, past events, and possible future events that they would give detailed responses to how they would have, would currently or would plan for those events. No party affiliations known.
Eliminate contenders from the list by most accepted answers from the lists bringing it from say 50 candidates to 25, then 10, then 5, the 3 then 1. The election period is 6 months. No prior rallys, no posturing, no ads, and no names tied to the responses so no one cares about popularity.

The President is whomever wins 1st, Vice President 2nd, and 3rd place is placed on stand-by but works directly with both members to stay informed. If at any time a person makes decisions as president that the other 2 do not believe coorelate with the responses they gave to the people, they call an emergency vote to veto that directive, and recall a ranked choice vote where the population votes for all 3, where the 1st takes the presidency, 2nd VP, 3rd taking the back seat.

Would be fucking crazy, but at least itd be more fun than what we have now...

Because it is creating a checks and balances for the president within the checks and balances of the current government. It would require such a constitutional change, it would require more actions than just a super majority as we believe it would.

Edit: sidebar. Each round of eliminations would present new questions, each candidate would submit. Some would be "illusion" of current or future events but were really past events. This prompting a past president or leader (Congress member, senator etc). To bring up and discuss what the false narrative was, showing what the realism had been. Then giving evaluation of how they responded at the time, and how it went right, wrong, and what could have gone better if done differently. Thus educating both the population and the candidates in doing so. Basically, the first reality TV program worth turning in for or watching brought to everyone via national TV/internet services for free.. and using the ad segments to pay for the costs associated with the applicants. Doing away with campaign fees.

Side bar 2: Yes that means if you serve the nation as a president/ congressperson/ senator / or ambassador you may be called upon to serve your country for a lecture... But that should be fair, as we pay the secret service to protect you for life. A lecture twice after you retire won't kill you. (Shit even Carter would have loved to do this 2 years ago because he wanted to believed in this country). And I would have called him to old.. but with cards and his choosing, I would have been greatful to hear him give peanuts to pinenuts

It's certainly an intriguing idea, but its not as good as the current system. It's a hyperreality of voting that would simply exaggerate flaws of the current system.

First off, good luck keeping anything anonymous. And, even if you could, candidate anonymity is a horrible idea, because you'd have even less accountability and more campaign dishonesty than you have now. Without anonymity, politicians have to at least try to fulfill campaign promises if they want to get reelected. But with anonymity, I can get elected and not follow through on campaign promises because when I run for reelection nobody knows which candidate is me and I can just lie again.

You'd probably also seriously exacerbate political capture. In the interest of putting forth the best policy proposals, people like presidential candidates would certainly outsource writing to powerful lobbies that have the top policy analysists and writers. And these lobbies or other groups would almost certainly only offer services in exchange for certain favors once the candidate is in office. It would lead to massive corruption, more than we're already seeing, because at least without anonymity we can put names to faces and prompt some honesty.

Plus, you'd cut out so many candidates. Not everyone excels at writing. Some candidates might articulate their plans best in real time and on a stage (like JFK, or Reagan, etc.). Demanding that everyone only write and publish policy proposals removes the ability to gauge how good they'd be in office, interacting with staff and other world leaders.

Combining anonymity with a bracketed system would also create an echo chamber, where candidates learn each other's messages every round and the survivors shift to mimic the most popular message to bolster their odds of making it into office. In the end, all 3 people will sound the same in a desperate bid to copycat the clear winner and steal votes. Which obviously creates issues for voting again, like the aforementioned Condorcet's paradox.

Also, voter engagement. We can barely get people to turnout when they are emotionally won-over by a given personality candidate, it would probably crater if voting were a purely rational process as @lifeinmultiplechoice suggests. If you take after John Adams or Rousseau, this isn't entirely problematic because you don't believe in carrying out the principle of "the will of the people" in a literal sense (not to say J.A. was Rousseauian, he obviously was not, but they overlap in this area of restricted voting). But if you are interested in accurately representing "the will of the people" in a non-gnostic sense, this is obviously an unsatisfactory system.

This isn't meant to dismiss @lifeinmultiplechoice out of hand, I admire the imagination. I think they're onto something when they point out that technology has sort of... swapped lenses on the camera of Democracy. We can seriously reinvent Democracy in ways that overcome previous hurdles due to all our technology now... we just don't know how exactly yet.