It is not possible to have a democracy in the face of oligarchy and perpetual war. When both political parties are working for special interests, and when Democrats are appointing their presidential nominees which they have for several cycles now and continue to do, we should not fool ourselves. Biden continues to talk about Israel as a …
It is not possible to have a democracy in the face of oligarchy and perpetual war. When both political parties are working for special interests, and when Democrats are appointing their presidential nominees which they have for several cycles now and continue to do, we should not fool ourselves. Biden continues to talk about Israel as a democracy while it's a theocracy and supplies autocracies around the world with weapons of war. We are not saving democracy, we are saving an imperialist oligarchy that dehumanizes large swaths of the population in favor of perceived geopolitical and economic advantage, and while it is easy to blame Republican malfeasance for our woes their hijinx are a symptom of the tribal nature of our politics and our loss of journalistic integrity, not to mention our sacrifice of humanity in the interest of electoral politics.
When I last looked we are US citizens and 30 of our countrymen were murdered and 11 more are unaccounted for most probably in Gaza. US policy has been land for peace since 1967. On paper, Israel has the same.
Why did the October 7 pogrom happen? Because Hamas wants to undermine peace negotiations between Israel and other Arab countries. Peace is Hamas' WATNA. .
Israeli Arabs have greater civil rights than citizens in any Arab country. They and Christians and others are free to worship. I personally do not like the Likud history or their philosophy, but they cannot dictate their philosophy. I am personally offended that ultraorthodox Jews are exempt from military service.
I've been advocating that Arabs form a peace corps, should go to Gaza. Save innocents. But the Arab leaders generally hate Hamas more than Israel.
According to estimates from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 600,000 people have been killed since the start of the war. In its 2023 Global Appeal, the UN reported that more than 6.9 million are currently internally displaced, with more than 5.4 million living as refugees abroad. Where are the demonstrations at every Syrian embassy?
How many Arabs or Muslims must be murdered before there are global demonstrations against that regime?
Hmmmm.. what's missing here is that Israel has been illegally occupying land AND committing crimes against humanity against its occupants for decades. That is the real issue. If Israel would retract its illegal settlements and offer a land compromise, as well as returning the hundreds if not thousands of Palestinians children and men it holds prisoner without cause, that would be a major step towards peace in the region. Leaders of Hamas who have been ostracized by American press during their interviews have repeatedly stated they want return of the prisoners and their land, all the while the terrorist government of Israel is portrayed as the victim and Biden hugs the Trump of Israel Netanyahu. Let's be clear--it is Isreal who stole the land of the Palestinian people and then punished them for it. Israel is the oppressor, they have all the power, the Palestinians are the oppressed, they have none. The US does the dirty work of Israel as proven by the first legislation passed under Trump's Congress, anti-free speech legislation favoring Israel in this country some label as a democracy. https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/04/23/us-states-use-anti-boycott-laws-punish-responsible-businesses
Get your facts straight, before you spread lies and disinfo
Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, and his group of volunteers, purchased land from the Arabs, the Bedouins that call themselves Palestine after WWI, they turned a barren land, into green, constructed homes, Kibbutz, and the land prospered.
Their Muslim neighbors looked upon their success with envy and anger. Anger because the Jews showed the paucity and stagnation of their own culture.
So in 1948, their Arab neighbors launched a war to drive out the Jews, the Brits when they left the area, disabled their planes and tanks, and destroyed their ammunition.
The Israel's were able with ingenuity, repair the disabled planes and equipment and ordered lipstick tubes with they re-manufactured into bullets.
And they drove out the Muslim invaders, and in so doing took the land, (to the victor goes the spoils, and they needed the land to provide a barrier against their neighbors, the "poor Arabs" that lived in the land, trekked into Lebanon carrying the keys to their homes. They should have thought about the consequences when they tried to wipe the Jews off the map of the Mid East.
Not having learned their lesson, they kept trying again and again, and each time they lost more land.
So pity not the "poor Palestinians". and pity not the Gazan's, who to a person vigorously supported HAMAS invasion of Israel. I can well imagine women sitting in front of their TV sets, watching the terrorists kidnap, rape, torture and murder Jewish women, children, disabled and elderly. Ulating and the kids cheering, now they are weeping as chickens come home to roost. (Did you know that HAMAS has ordered that kidnap victims that are too much trouble, like the disabled, young children, even teens be killed.)
Hell of a world, when Muslims have a license to kill, rape, murder, and the Jews are called war criminals for defending themselves and attacking their enemy.
Hermann Göring was tried and condemned to hang For bombing cities, but the commander of 8th AF, Curt Lemay (my old boss) and Air Marshall "Bomber" Harris weren't, neither was Stalin even reprimanded for his war crimes.
Either Israel has a right to exist or it doesn't. Where do you stand on that?
How can it exist when surrounded by enemies who are RELIGIOUSLY dedicated, per their sacred texts, to obliteration of the Jews, as evidenced in Art 7 of the HAMAS covenant
Iran is more oblique, It's preamble says: "The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran sets forth the cultural, social, political, and economic institutions of Iranian society on the basis of Islamic principles and norms, which represent the earnest aspiration of the Islamic Ummah." The Islamic Ummah is the whole community of Muslims bound together by ties of religion.
And those ties that bind are the Quran and haddiths, including the biography of Mo by ibn Ishaq.
In case you aren't familiar with Islam. I am I have studied it, the Quran, haddiths and ibn Ishaq. I know so much that a Muslim on the intwerwebs said I was murtadd, an apostate, because anyone who knew as much as I, just had to be a Muslim.
Like a Christian saying if you read the Bible you have to be a Christian.
The haddith of al Bukhari quoted above and the Coveneant of HAMAS, calls for not just the eradication of Israel, but finishing the job that Hitler started.
You missed the part where Jews lived and were a majority in the old city of Jerusalem, taken by the Arab Legion in 1948. In 1948, 150,000 Jews. From 1948 to 1967, NO (0.00) Jews in the old city. In 1948 the Arab Legion was going to kill all Jews or chase them into the sea, and told Arab residents to leave. Those who stayed are Israeli citizens. Those that left, estimated at 700,000 were displaced by 900,000 Sephardic Jews, who lost their land and life in Moslem countries, SENT by the Arab Legion to die in an Arab Legion march to the sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world
I don't support Likud, or Netanyahu, but the answer is not a pogrom. It's not killing an Olympic team. It's not sending kids to die as suicide bombers. Its's not blowing up non military targets like delis and pizza shops. How about land for peace.
Did you oppose the 1979 deal? The Oslo Accords. Hamas and Islamic Jihad did. They oppose the existence of Israel. Death to all people named Barry Kaufman.
If the Arabs wanted to help, they would have developed the West Bank and Gaza. They have a history of support for indiscriminate terror against civilians, suicide bombings, and murder of Jews everywhere.
Let's talk about Jerusalem. Mark Twain, visited the city, and wrote of it, that it was a filthy, rat infested, run down dirty place. The Jews cleaned it up.
Call me racist, in this regard, but look what Arabs (Iran isn't Arab) have done or rather not done, to their own societies. Riyadh, the desalination plants, the oil wells, refineries, and Hiways, even their airports were built by foreign contractors and overseen by foreign engineers. They have to import foreigners to haul their garbage and clean their streets, and, if infidels, force them to live behind walls in compounds which they then desacralize, because infidels can not live on holy Muslim land.
Hi Boris. At it again. Always the shift to Democrats. Not so clever you are, most of Thom's readers take you at face value. I certainly don't. Oh I have my complaints about the Democratic party and the DNC, but as usual, you blush over Republicans, ignore Putin, and spread your"Democrats are war monger, propaganda"
First you champion the war criminal Putin, now the war criminals HAMAS
The world did not hesitate to carpet bomb Germany, fire bomb Dresden, and kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of "innocent civilians" .
Yet you and the idiot Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and their guiding lights like Noam Chomsky, condemn both Ukraine and Israel for defending itself.
I once found myself in accord with the DSA, but no more, I am disgusted with the stupid self righteous immature idiots. I was disgusted with the Israeli right, the rabid Orthodox Jews, who invaded Muslim homes and enclaves, killing them and evicting them, but not all Israelis, Israel unlike Islamic communities and countries, is in fact a democracy, and until the current ultra right wing Orthodox cabinet, recognized women's rights, LGBT rights, and even the rights and vote of Arab citizens.
Tell me what the life expectancy of a Jew is in Gaza, or in any Muslim country. If your passport has an Israeli stamp, you can't enter the Kingdom.
How long will Barry Kaufman last, provided that is your real name, in Gaza?
And while at it, how about providing proof that Israel is supplying autocracies around the world with weapons.
We know that it did supply Iran, as part of Reagan's Iran Contra deal, because it needed the cocaine cash, that the CIA was making in "Operation Snowfall". They or some Israeli businessmen, lined up to sell the hangmen the rope. Iran then as now was dedicated to exterminating the Jews, as is HAMAS.
The preamble to the HAMAS covenant
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
Article 7. Blatant antisemitic sentiment, Quote is copied from the haddith of al Bukhari, sahih 2295 and 2296, book 56, haddith 193\
The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him."
This actually makes a two state solution impossible as it is a perpetual war of Muslims vs Jews, until all Jews are driven into the sea, or board planes for the American and European continents,
"when both political parties are working for special interests..."
1. This situation is caused by the enduring Duopoly (Democratic and Republican Parties).
2. The fundamental mechanism maintaining the Duopoly is the "spoiler effect". The voter who wishes to vote for someone outside the Duopoly is faced with this choice: Do I vote for the candidate I truly prefer, knowing this:
a. Third party or independent candidates DON'T WIN. (The only exception in Presidential elections was in 1860, when third party candidate Abraham Lincoln was able to win because the Democratic party had split in two over slavery. Lincoln defeated each of those separately but would have lost to a unified Democratic Party. The Republican Party then replaced the Whigs as one of the Duopoly parties.)
b. Voting for the third party or independent candidate draws votes away from the Duopoly candidate most like him or her. This is the toxic spoiler effect, and the stronger the non-Duopoly challenger is, the more toxic is his effect on the election. (There are wealthy people or organizations who will surreptitiously give financial support to such candidates, not because they want them to win, but to cause more votes to be taken from the Duopoly candidate most like them. This is deliberate weaponizing of the spoiler effect.)
c.) Consequently, the voter's rational choice is to grin and bear choosing the "lesser of two evils" so that his vote can make a difference, and so that he can avoid contributing to the toxic spoiler event.
d.) The operation of this rational choice is why the third party or independent candidate always loses, and the Duopoly is once again maintained.
3. The reason the voter is forced to make this choice is because we have a dysfunctional voting system that limits him to only one choice and allows a candidate to win with a mere plurality, not necessarily an absolute majority. The Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) system allows the voter to express his second, third, etc. choice. If there is no immediate clear majority-winner RCV facilitates an instant runoff, dropping the candidate with least votes from all ballots. On ballots where that “low man” candidate was first choice, the second choice is elevated to the first position, and the recount is made. The process is repeated if necessary until someone gathers a majority. This person is the winner. With RCV the voter has no reason not to make the candidate he truly prefers his first choice. If it was not a member of the Duopoly, he makes the “lesser of two evils” from the Duopoly his second choice, guaranteeing that he has not “wasted his vote” if his first-choice candidate is eliminated. THIS DESTROYS THE SPOILER EFFECT and the structural maintenance mechanism of the Duopoly disappears.
4. RCV would have at least two major effects:
a.) As mentioned, the maintenance mechanism of the Duopoly disappears and over time more and more third parties and independents will be elected. They will provide alternatives to any party captured by special interests.
b.) Winning an absolute majority when running against multiple opponents will require the candidate to be concerned about winning second choice, third choice, etc. votes to gather a winning majority through the run-off votes. This will require being moderate and conciliatory: FIREBRANDS LOSE!
5.) The current process of converting from the defective single-choice, plurality system to RCV is being done (slowly) at the state level—one state at a time. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to mandate RCV for all federal elections, which would immediately sweep away all the political dysfunction caused by the single choice, plurality voting system. (In order not to lose members in Congress it will be in the interest of the state parties to convert primary elections to RCV as well.)
6. The current Republican Party will have no part of this. We will need to wait until the Democratic Party has at least temporary control of the federal government. The Democrats will also be reluctant because of their Duopoly status, and because the spoiler effect gives incumbents an electoral advantage in elections. So it will be necessary for grass-root groups to organize to compel the Democrats to pass legislation mandating RCV. When the possibility of creating this legislation arises, nothing should be of higher priority than organizing and supporting the campaign to accomplish this.
It is not possible to have a democracy in the face of oligarchy and perpetual war. When both political parties are working for special interests, and when Democrats are appointing their presidential nominees which they have for several cycles now and continue to do, we should not fool ourselves. Biden continues to talk about Israel as a democracy while it's a theocracy and supplies autocracies around the world with weapons of war. We are not saving democracy, we are saving an imperialist oligarchy that dehumanizes large swaths of the population in favor of perceived geopolitical and economic advantage, and while it is easy to blame Republican malfeasance for our woes their hijinx are a symptom of the tribal nature of our politics and our loss of journalistic integrity, not to mention our sacrifice of humanity in the interest of electoral politics.
When I last looked we are US citizens and 30 of our countrymen were murdered and 11 more are unaccounted for most probably in Gaza. US policy has been land for peace since 1967. On paper, Israel has the same.
Why did the October 7 pogrom happen? Because Hamas wants to undermine peace negotiations between Israel and other Arab countries. Peace is Hamas' WATNA. .
Israeli Arabs have greater civil rights than citizens in any Arab country. They and Christians and others are free to worship. I personally do not like the Likud history or their philosophy, but they cannot dictate their philosophy. I am personally offended that ultraorthodox Jews are exempt from military service.
I've been advocating that Arabs form a peace corps, should go to Gaza. Save innocents. But the Arab leaders generally hate Hamas more than Israel.
According to estimates from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, more than 600,000 people have been killed since the start of the war. In its 2023 Global Appeal, the UN reported that more than 6.9 million are currently internally displaced, with more than 5.4 million living as refugees abroad. Where are the demonstrations at every Syrian embassy?
How many Arabs or Muslims must be murdered before there are global demonstrations against that regime?
Only Jews get this honor!
Hmmmm.. what's missing here is that Israel has been illegally occupying land AND committing crimes against humanity against its occupants for decades. That is the real issue. If Israel would retract its illegal settlements and offer a land compromise, as well as returning the hundreds if not thousands of Palestinians children and men it holds prisoner without cause, that would be a major step towards peace in the region. Leaders of Hamas who have been ostracized by American press during their interviews have repeatedly stated they want return of the prisoners and their land, all the while the terrorist government of Israel is portrayed as the victim and Biden hugs the Trump of Israel Netanyahu. Let's be clear--it is Isreal who stole the land of the Palestinian people and then punished them for it. Israel is the oppressor, they have all the power, the Palestinians are the oppressed, they have none. The US does the dirty work of Israel as proven by the first legislation passed under Trump's Congress, anti-free speech legislation favoring Israel in this country some label as a democracy. https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/04/23/us-states-use-anti-boycott-laws-punish-responsible-businesses
Get your facts straight, before you spread lies and disinfo
Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism, and his group of volunteers, purchased land from the Arabs, the Bedouins that call themselves Palestine after WWI, they turned a barren land, into green, constructed homes, Kibbutz, and the land prospered.
Their Muslim neighbors looked upon their success with envy and anger. Anger because the Jews showed the paucity and stagnation of their own culture.
So in 1948, their Arab neighbors launched a war to drive out the Jews, the Brits when they left the area, disabled their planes and tanks, and destroyed their ammunition.
The Israel's were able with ingenuity, repair the disabled planes and equipment and ordered lipstick tubes with they re-manufactured into bullets.
And they drove out the Muslim invaders, and in so doing took the land, (to the victor goes the spoils, and they needed the land to provide a barrier against their neighbors, the "poor Arabs" that lived in the land, trekked into Lebanon carrying the keys to their homes. They should have thought about the consequences when they tried to wipe the Jews off the map of the Mid East.
Not having learned their lesson, they kept trying again and again, and each time they lost more land.
So pity not the "poor Palestinians". and pity not the Gazan's, who to a person vigorously supported HAMAS invasion of Israel. I can well imagine women sitting in front of their TV sets, watching the terrorists kidnap, rape, torture and murder Jewish women, children, disabled and elderly. Ulating and the kids cheering, now they are weeping as chickens come home to roost. (Did you know that HAMAS has ordered that kidnap victims that are too much trouble, like the disabled, young children, even teens be killed.)
Hell of a world, when Muslims have a license to kill, rape, murder, and the Jews are called war criminals for defending themselves and attacking their enemy.
Hermann Göring was tried and condemned to hang For bombing cities, but the commander of 8th AF, Curt Lemay (my old boss) and Air Marshall "Bomber" Harris weren't, neither was Stalin even reprimanded for his war crimes.
Either Israel has a right to exist or it doesn't. Where do you stand on that?
How can it exist when surrounded by enemies who are RELIGIOUSLY dedicated, per their sacred texts, to obliteration of the Jews, as evidenced in Art 7 of the HAMAS covenant
Iran is more oblique, It's preamble says: "The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran sets forth the cultural, social, political, and economic institutions of Iranian society on the basis of Islamic principles and norms, which represent the earnest aspiration of the Islamic Ummah." The Islamic Ummah is the whole community of Muslims bound together by ties of religion.
And those ties that bind are the Quran and haddiths, including the biography of Mo by ibn Ishaq.
In case you aren't familiar with Islam. I am I have studied it, the Quran, haddiths and ibn Ishaq. I know so much that a Muslim on the intwerwebs said I was murtadd, an apostate, because anyone who knew as much as I, just had to be a Muslim.
Like a Christian saying if you read the Bible you have to be a Christian.
The haddith of al Bukhari quoted above and the Coveneant of HAMAS, calls for not just the eradication of Israel, but finishing the job that Hitler started.
You missed the part where Jews lived and were a majority in the old city of Jerusalem, taken by the Arab Legion in 1948. In 1948, 150,000 Jews. From 1948 to 1967, NO (0.00) Jews in the old city. In 1948 the Arab Legion was going to kill all Jews or chase them into the sea, and told Arab residents to leave. Those who stayed are Israeli citizens. Those that left, estimated at 700,000 were displaced by 900,000 Sephardic Jews, who lost their land and life in Moslem countries, SENT by the Arab Legion to die in an Arab Legion march to the sea. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_the_Muslim_world
I don't support Likud, or Netanyahu, but the answer is not a pogrom. It's not killing an Olympic team. It's not sending kids to die as suicide bombers. Its's not blowing up non military targets like delis and pizza shops. How about land for peace.
Did you oppose the 1979 deal? The Oslo Accords. Hamas and Islamic Jihad did. They oppose the existence of Israel. Death to all people named Barry Kaufman.
If the Arabs wanted to help, they would have developed the West Bank and Gaza. They have a history of support for indiscriminate terror against civilians, suicide bombings, and murder of Jews everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_for_peace#:~:text=The%20name%20Land%20for%20Peace,of%20belligerency%20(Making%20Peace).
Let's talk about Jerusalem. Mark Twain, visited the city, and wrote of it, that it was a filthy, rat infested, run down dirty place. The Jews cleaned it up.
Call me racist, in this regard, but look what Arabs (Iran isn't Arab) have done or rather not done, to their own societies. Riyadh, the desalination plants, the oil wells, refineries, and Hiways, even their airports were built by foreign contractors and overseen by foreign engineers. They have to import foreigners to haul their garbage and clean their streets, and, if infidels, force them to live behind walls in compounds which they then desacralize, because infidels can not live on holy Muslim land.
Hi Boris. At it again. Always the shift to Democrats. Not so clever you are, most of Thom's readers take you at face value. I certainly don't. Oh I have my complaints about the Democratic party and the DNC, but as usual, you blush over Republicans, ignore Putin, and spread your"Democrats are war monger, propaganda"
First you champion the war criminal Putin, now the war criminals HAMAS
The world did not hesitate to carpet bomb Germany, fire bomb Dresden, and kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of "innocent civilians" .
Yet you and the idiot Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and their guiding lights like Noam Chomsky, condemn both Ukraine and Israel for defending itself.
I once found myself in accord with the DSA, but no more, I am disgusted with the stupid self righteous immature idiots. I was disgusted with the Israeli right, the rabid Orthodox Jews, who invaded Muslim homes and enclaves, killing them and evicting them, but not all Israelis, Israel unlike Islamic communities and countries, is in fact a democracy, and until the current ultra right wing Orthodox cabinet, recognized women's rights, LGBT rights, and even the rights and vote of Arab citizens.
Tell me what the life expectancy of a Jew is in Gaza, or in any Muslim country. If your passport has an Israeli stamp, you can't enter the Kingdom.
How long will Barry Kaufman last, provided that is your real name, in Gaza?
And while at it, how about providing proof that Israel is supplying autocracies around the world with weapons.
We know that it did supply Iran, as part of Reagan's Iran Contra deal, because it needed the cocaine cash, that the CIA was making in "Operation Snowfall". They or some Israeli businessmen, lined up to sell the hangmen the rope. Iran then as now was dedicated to exterminating the Jews, as is HAMAS.
The preamble to the HAMAS covenant
"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."
Article 7. Blatant antisemitic sentiment, Quote is copied from the haddith of al Bukhari, sahih 2295 and 2296, book 56, haddith 193\
The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him."
This actually makes a two state solution impossible as it is a perpetual war of Muslims vs Jews, until all Jews are driven into the sea, or board planes for the American and European continents,
"when both political parties are working for special interests..."
1. This situation is caused by the enduring Duopoly (Democratic and Republican Parties).
2. The fundamental mechanism maintaining the Duopoly is the "spoiler effect". The voter who wishes to vote for someone outside the Duopoly is faced with this choice: Do I vote for the candidate I truly prefer, knowing this:
a. Third party or independent candidates DON'T WIN. (The only exception in Presidential elections was in 1860, when third party candidate Abraham Lincoln was able to win because the Democratic party had split in two over slavery. Lincoln defeated each of those separately but would have lost to a unified Democratic Party. The Republican Party then replaced the Whigs as one of the Duopoly parties.)
b. Voting for the third party or independent candidate draws votes away from the Duopoly candidate most like him or her. This is the toxic spoiler effect, and the stronger the non-Duopoly challenger is, the more toxic is his effect on the election. (There are wealthy people or organizations who will surreptitiously give financial support to such candidates, not because they want them to win, but to cause more votes to be taken from the Duopoly candidate most like them. This is deliberate weaponizing of the spoiler effect.)
c.) Consequently, the voter's rational choice is to grin and bear choosing the "lesser of two evils" so that his vote can make a difference, and so that he can avoid contributing to the toxic spoiler event.
d.) The operation of this rational choice is why the third party or independent candidate always loses, and the Duopoly is once again maintained.
3. The reason the voter is forced to make this choice is because we have a dysfunctional voting system that limits him to only one choice and allows a candidate to win with a mere plurality, not necessarily an absolute majority. The Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) system allows the voter to express his second, third, etc. choice. If there is no immediate clear majority-winner RCV facilitates an instant runoff, dropping the candidate with least votes from all ballots. On ballots where that “low man” candidate was first choice, the second choice is elevated to the first position, and the recount is made. The process is repeated if necessary until someone gathers a majority. This person is the winner. With RCV the voter has no reason not to make the candidate he truly prefers his first choice. If it was not a member of the Duopoly, he makes the “lesser of two evils” from the Duopoly his second choice, guaranteeing that he has not “wasted his vote” if his first-choice candidate is eliminated. THIS DESTROYS THE SPOILER EFFECT and the structural maintenance mechanism of the Duopoly disappears.
4. RCV would have at least two major effects:
a.) As mentioned, the maintenance mechanism of the Duopoly disappears and over time more and more third parties and independents will be elected. They will provide alternatives to any party captured by special interests.
b.) Winning an absolute majority when running against multiple opponents will require the candidate to be concerned about winning second choice, third choice, etc. votes to gather a winning majority through the run-off votes. This will require being moderate and conciliatory: FIREBRANDS LOSE!
5.) The current process of converting from the defective single-choice, plurality system to RCV is being done (slowly) at the state level—one state at a time. The Constitution gives Congress the authority to mandate RCV for all federal elections, which would immediately sweep away all the political dysfunction caused by the single choice, plurality voting system. (In order not to lose members in Congress it will be in the interest of the state parties to convert primary elections to RCV as well.)
6. The current Republican Party will have no part of this. We will need to wait until the Democratic Party has at least temporary control of the federal government. The Democrats will also be reluctant because of their Duopoly status, and because the spoiler effect gives incumbents an electoral advantage in elections. So it will be necessary for grass-root groups to organize to compel the Democrats to pass legislation mandating RCV. When the possibility of creating this legislation arises, nothing should be of higher priority than organizing and supporting the campaign to accomplish this.