but just because there’s one party doesn’t mean there isn’t debate or democracy within that party. Does anyone here seriously think the electoral discourse would be any worse off in say, the USA, if people had to actually weigh up individual candidates positions and policies, rather than writing “blue = good, red = bad” (or vice versa) on their hand in permanent marker and letting that decide for them for their entire political life?
Multiple parties just devolves into this team sport horse race bullshit
It's never actually about single parties or if it is then the liberals complaints are blindly dogmatic. The US had a one party state for the first half of the 19th century. Mexico was a single party state for the first half of the 20th century (concurrent with the "authoritarian" Bolsheviks). It should be abundantly clear in today's political climate that parties allow room for ideological debate and party politics. It was never about political parties or democracy though, it's about Marxism. Liberals don't want to argue with Marxism on its face because they can't so they take these sorts of workarounds which seem nuanced but are hollow.
As a sidetrack, any time libs cry whataboutism, point out comparative politics is a massive and legitimate field of study that could not exist if whataboutism was actually a fallacy