"Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932. The leader of the German Communist Party, Thälmann saw mainstream liberals as his enemies, and so the center and left never joined forces against the Nazis. Thälmann famously said that ‘some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest’ of social democrats, whom he sneeringly called ‘social fascists.’
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested. He was shot on Hitler’s orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944."
We could avoid this with ranked choice voting.
in ranked voting there is still the possibility that a fear of a deeper evil driving straight to a bipartisan situation again.
You still have all the same campaigns exacerbating fears with just a different look to the ballot. Ppl could easily fall into the trap of picking their top 1-2 choices based on who they don’t want in power after glued to the screen watching all the drama.
Rcv just seems like the new ev where someone oversells that it fixes all things but hides the cons that we’re all pretty much in the same spot we started.
I agree with this assessment for the most part, but it does seem like the best method for introducing a third party, which the US desperately needs. Do you have a better EV?
Yes, but you’re going to need to find a way to think beyond that, because both parties understand that it’s in their interests to oppose rcv, so “vote democrat until we get rcv” effectively means “vote democrat forever”.
Fundamentally, there is a limit to the extent that a capitalist democracy will tolerate actual democratic power, because eclipsing the power of capitalists obviously means threatening their position. They will not sit idly by and allow their power to be voted away.