Yes, ideally, but the US system is completely rigged in a million different ways to make the emergence of a meaningful 3rd party almost impossible.
The way we award seats, first past the post, is horrendously flawed, and means that if every specifically defined area just barely has a majority… the net effect is a government that is way, way out of sync with what the broader population actually wants.
And this is all rigged by regularly and precisely redrawing all those specific geographic areas to make it so they are either clearly gonna be Rep or Dem, or 51-49 split that looks ‘reasonably fair’ on paper, but in practice, almost always goes to that 51.
…
Ironically, if Musk goes through with making his own third party… he, the literal richest man in the world, is basically the only person that could possibly pull that off.
That is how huge of a role money plays in US politics.
Takes the richest man in the world to be even maybe potentially able to counteract all the rest of the combined lobbying money of other corporate lobbyists… and thats assuming he was able to basically shut the fuck up and let at least strategically competent people run the whole show.
Going by the probably actually legit poll Elon commissioned to be run about possible support for an Elon party, here are the numbers I ended up with:
(will update in a moment, gotta go find my old post)
So, throw that in with those previous calcs, and you end up with:
Reps: ~21%
Dems: ~28.5%
Elons: ~25.5%
Indps: ~25%
or, normalized to remove remaining Indps:
Reps: 28%, Dems: 38%, Elons: 34%.
…
So… theoretically, the Dems are still the largest, Elon is now second behind them, and the Reps are now a third party, less popular than having no solid political affiliation.
So if Elon actually goes through with this, I think you end up with a good number of corpo Dems leaving the Dems, so the Dems now have an easier time shifting to the left.
The Reps lose 1/3 of their voters, and basically just become a cult of idiot racist nazis, paleocons, theocrats, MAGA nutjobs.
Elon party … basically becomes the ‘centrist’/libertarian/ancap/corpo party.
both the DNC and GOP fight Socialists (or more like moderate social democrats already)
both the DNC and GOP do not fight Fascist, and often help them instead.
Problem is fascists get a lot of money or have their signal boosted with money for doing what they are doing. Socialists will be fought with money. Remember the billionaires standing in line behind Trump? Who were missing were the Murdoch media empire an Putin, they also signal-boosted Trump. But other than those, that row of billionaires gives you an idea of how much money is backing fascists.
In principle yeah, although I’ve a feeling the only way that’s going to happen is with a credible socialist party showing up to threaten the status quo and force their hand. Otherwise they’re just going to keep on keeping on; we already saw what happened with Bernie, and he’s not even that hard left.
Traditionally their views are in their names. You can expect other things from them, but also expect your expectations to not be met. Overcoming that is the fundamental point of democracy; quite irrelevant if trapped in a two party system, though. But try enjoy the ride where you can. There’s no getting off unless you leave the amusement park entirely.
So there should be a socialist party no?
Yes, ideally, but the US system is completely rigged in a million different ways to make the emergence of a meaningful 3rd party almost impossible.
The way we award seats, first past the post, is horrendously flawed, and means that if every specifically defined area just barely has a majority… the net effect is a government that is way, way out of sync with what the broader population actually wants.
And this is all rigged by regularly and precisely redrawing all those specific geographic areas to make it so they are either clearly gonna be Rep or Dem, or 51-49 split that looks ‘reasonably fair’ on paper, but in practice, almost always goes to that 51.
…
Ironically, if Musk goes through with making his own third party… he, the literal richest man in the world, is basically the only person that could possibly pull that off.
That is how huge of a role money plays in US politics.
Takes the richest man in the world to be even maybe potentially able to counteract all the rest of the combined lobbying money of other corporate lobbyists… and thats assuming he was able to basically shut the fuck up and let at least strategically competent people run the whole show.
Going by the probably actually legit poll Elon commissioned to be run about possible support for an Elon party, here are the numbers I ended up with:
(will update in a moment, gotta go find my old post)
…
Ok, heres the full poll:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1R4pZVo0ZnrQyElZQzdNtt7CQ1zwTypuS/view
Here’s some rough, but reasonable math to extrapolate.
If you say half of the 'somewhat likely’s actually go for it, then you get this:
Republicans who join Elon Party: 34.25%
Independents who join Elon Party: 28.25%
Democrats who join Elon Party: 13.75%
…
There are more Dem voters than Republicans.
But there are also more independents than either.
Roughly 32% Reps, 33% Dems, 35% Indp.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/the-partisanship-and-ideology-of-american-voters/
So, throw that in with those previous calcs, and you end up with:
Reps: ~21%
Dems: ~28.5%
Elons: ~25.5%
Indps: ~25%
or, normalized to remove remaining Indps:
Reps: 28%, Dems: 38%, Elons: 34%.
…
So… theoretically, the Dems are still the largest, Elon is now second behind them, and the Reps are now a third party, less popular than having no solid political affiliation.
So if Elon actually goes through with this, I think you end up with a good number of corpo Dems leaving the Dems, so the Dems now have an easier time shifting to the left.
The Reps lose 1/3 of their voters, and basically just become a cult of idiot racist nazis, paleocons, theocrats, MAGA nutjobs.
Elon party … basically becomes the ‘centrist’/libertarian/ancap/corpo party.
Nope if you ask me. Socialists must conquer the Dem platform just as fascist have conquered the GOP
Problem is:
both the DNC and GOP fight Socialists (or more like moderate social democrats already)
both the DNC and GOP do not fight Fascist, and often help them instead.
It’s worth remembering there was a “Never Trump” movement among Republicans, and it folded as soon as Trump won.
Because Rs support Rs no matter their characters or policy.
Team sports, and all.
A lot of problems there are, but what are going to do? ldar?
Problem is fascists get a lot of money or have their signal boosted with money for doing what they are doing. Socialists will be fought with money. Remember the billionaires standing in line behind Trump? Who were missing were the Murdoch media empire an Putin, they also signal-boosted Trump. But other than those, that row of billionaires gives you an idea of how much money is backing fascists.
In principle yeah, although I’ve a feeling the only way that’s going to happen is with a credible socialist party showing up to threaten the status quo and force their hand. Otherwise they’re just going to keep on keeping on; we already saw what happened with Bernie, and he’s not even that hard left.
That’s depressing on so many levels it’s almost funny.
Maybe.
Traditionally their views are in their names. You can expect other things from them, but also expect your expectations to not be met. Overcoming that is the fundamental point of democracy; quite irrelevant if trapped in a two party system, though. But try enjoy the ride where you can. There’s no getting off unless you leave the amusement park entirely.