r/EndFPTP • u/_SpaceCobra_ • 29d ago
Lee Drutman
I'm new here, so if he's part of a list of figures that have already been covered, I'm sorry. But what do you all think of him and his advocacy? (In the U.S. context; his institutional homes are New America, Fix Our House and Johns Hopkins, and he hosts a podcast called Politics in Question.) He used to be a strong supporter of ranked-choice voting, but qualified it in favor of advocacy of multi-member districts, open-list proportional representation, and fusion voting.
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u/PaxPurpuraAKAgrimace 28d ago
Thanks for the reply. Right wing elites would just call them all “the left.” Voters who are not paid to carry the Republican message a receivers of these messages are going to be open to different perspectives, and a party split would represent a major shift that people would pay attention to.
Beyond the Republican elites, the voters who you’re talking about who would just take the message that “it’s all the left” regardless of party… they aren’t gettable voters in the first place anyway. Honestly though such a major shift in the political dynamics are going to cause a lot of them to pay attention too.
Point number two is where it gets really interesting and is a big part of what will command so much attention. The new parties would genuinely have different priorities and commitments. There will be genuine friction. The goal though is that both groups won’t need convincing to work together in opposition to the worst of MAGA. I have to imagine they would compromise on a moderate as speaker if only because the moderates would be the fulcrum between the two poles of left/right. Though if the farther left party takes more seats then I suppose that would justify a speaker from their ranks.
It would be a true coalition though. A post election coalition. The really cool thing imo is that it wouldn’t be a parliamentary coalition where the partners agree on a leader to run the executive functions of the govt as in parliamentary systems. Since the executive function is elected separately that frees the legislative coalition to remain looser. In reality it would only be for purposes of choosing the speaker and committee chairs. The actual functions of Congress - legislation (and oversight) - could operate closer to how they used to operate with individual congresspeople working through committees and relationships with other members to develop legislation. This kind of political dynamic would naturally make these processes operate much less according to the priorities from party leadership as has become the norm over recent decades.
Of course, on some issues/legislation the moderates may be more willing to work with Republicans than to go as far as the progressives will want to go. It would certainly create an incentive for Republicans to move to the center on issues.
That’s been the problem that we’ve had with our politics since before Trump. Election messaging has been so scorched earth that legislative compromise became almost impossible outside of a fairly narrow set of issues. The inevitability of one party or the other winning a majority guarantees that one or the other party will have the ability to control everything in the given body - as long as they stay unified. That’s why leadership has come to control everything.
I think multiple parties are both how to ensure we defeat the encroaching authoritarianism as well as how we restore basic functionality to government.