The crux of the issue is, where you see a democracy that is keeping fascism at bay, we see through the illusion of choice that keeps allowing the slow steady march towards fascism.
It's a ratchet. Gop moves everything rightward (including the Dems) and the Dems refuse to push left in the name of "bipartisanship". Then conditions get worse (because the policy is further right than before), Dems eventually lose because they allow gridlock and the ratchet suddenly frees up and cranks to the right again.
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.
further down:
In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites and/or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.
What is it, like, 70% of Americans want single payer healthcare?
The crux of the issue is, where you see a democracy that is keeping fascism at bay, we see through the illusion of choice that keeps allowing the slow steady march towards fascism.
It's a ratchet. Gop moves everything rightward (including the Dems) and the Dems refuse to push left in the name of "bipartisanship". Then conditions get worse (because the policy is further right than before), Dems eventually lose because they allow gridlock and the ratchet suddenly frees up and cranks to the right again.
And how much worse would it be right now if Dems never won elections due to people saying "this dem isn't far enough left therefore I won't vote"?
How far right would things have flown?
Voting for the lesser of 2 evils reduces harm now. And when the lesser of 2 evils isn't pushed that things are allowed to shift further to shit.
Let me be more blunt. We do not live in a democracy. Voting is fundamentallly unable to change that.
idk man there's a literal genocide going on right now I think we're past the point of quibbling over minor differences in the deree of evil.
A genocide being perpetrated by Republicans.
Who can forget these 16 states (blue states) introducing trans refugee bills. Does that look like something republicans would do?
The parties are not the same, there are differences between them.
Study: Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens:
From the abstract:
further down:
What is it, like, 70% of Americans want single payer healthcare?