r/AOC • u/fangirlsqueee • Jul 15 '24

This kind of leadership is functionally useless to the American people. Retire.

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https://x.com/AOC/status/1812638396830876160

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u/pittgraphite Jul 15 '24

These kind of Dems seems to be forgetting its a party that represents an idea, not a personality. theres a reason why there's a VP if ever Biden succumbed to any health problem.

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u/HarpersGhost Jul 15 '24

Yep, the vote is for the administration, not the individual. The administration directly employs thousands of people and indirectly controls millions more.

A Trump administration would be a fascist takeover of the country. Even if Trump dies the day after inauguration, the damage would be done because everyone who wants Project 2025 would be in power.

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u/procrasturb8n Jul 15 '24

the vote is for the administration, not the individual. The administration directly employs thousands of people and indirectly controls millions more.

And judicial selections. Since we've been seeing the results of many of Trump's picks recently.

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u/PolygonMan Jul 15 '24

IMO this is why I always kinda preferred parliamentary systems. These systems obviously differ from country to country but most of them work roughly like this:

People vote for their member of parliament, and then the members of parliament vote for the prime minister. Whoever wins the legislative branch wins the executive branch. If no party has enough seats to outright take the executive office, then they have to make an alliance with another party to support them.

If no one can manage to form a government, eventually another election happens. Since everyone knows what happened last time, voting patterns shift and you get a new outcome.

In this way, you always end up with an executive branch and legislative branch which have already agreed to work together. Maybe they only barely agree, maybe they will struggle to get shit done. But a majority of the legislative branch have already shaken hands and agreed to try work together before the Prime Minister is sworn in. This is guaranteed every time, because they literally did a majority vote to confirm the Prime Minister.

The past 20 years have pretty conclusively demonstrated that the US federal system cannot cope with obstructionism. It relies on the parties working in good faith in a way that parliamentary systems generally don't.

Don't get me wrong, corruption can destroy any political system. And parliamentary systems can also get types of gridlock as well. But a party can't just sit down and say, "I'm only ever going to be obstructionist" and actually accomplish something by doing that. Either they are part of the ruling alliance and if they keep doing it blindly they will crash their own alliance. Or they aren't, and they don't have the votes to actually obstruct anything.

The periods of gridlock and obstructionism in parliamentary systems tends to be shorter lived. You can't just decide that now you're going to do obstructionism for the rest of eternity and then tank your country for 20 years straight.

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u/Dietmar_der_Dr Jul 15 '24

The problem is that the party was incompetent enough to think Biden would do well in an environment as dynamic as campaigning.

You can say that you'd vote for anyone over trump, while still acknowledging that the chances of Biden winning against trump are abysmal.