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Is there ELI5 for us Europeans?
Members of parliament are vacating their seat because they are not satisfied with what their party is doing? That would be seen as rather undemocratic over here. You would expect them to leave the party, maybe join a different one, or stay as an unaffilated member.
What will happen with the empty seats?
You would expect them to leave the party,
There are effectively only 2 parties in the US: Republican and Democrat. They are so ideologically opposed (far-right vs moderate, mostly) that changing parties is anathema. There are a few other parties, usually called Independent when they win a seat, but those tend to go to politicians in spite of them being of a different party, i.e. following the individual.
When people vacate seats before a term is up (more commonly a person just states they won't run for reelection), the state either appoints a replacement (senators) or the states hold a special election (representatives).
I was really wondering about that one. Thanks for answering.
Everyone here seems to be relaxed about tzhte fact that there will be vacant seats. Good to hear it's just part of how the system works.
Leaving the parliament before the term ends is so uncommon here, I really don't know what would happen.
They aren't that different tho. The range of policy and stances in policy would/could/does fall within one single party in the rest of the world. Let's break it down.
Foreign policy = same, cept for the Pro-Putin MAGA crowd. So essentially, there's 2 sides. One side pro-"western" nations (EU, US, Can, Aus, NZ, Jap, SK, Iz, UK) the other is Pro-Putin (Rus, NK, etc, etc)
Economic policy = samesies; both NeoLiberal, both pro-wartime debt spending, both austerity as matter of course, suppressing knowledge of an alternative even existing.
A happy worker is a productive worker. Shut up and do your job.
one side pulls hard hard right, the other comes pre-negotiated to guarantee plans will land further right than they've been written. Like clockwork, undoing the gains from the new deal, slowly and steadily to not invoke revolution. Democrats pass more Republican legislation than Republicans do. We have a choice of working class slavery with no taxes on business or the wealthy, or working class slavery, now but with 10% less taxes on the middle class - but with higher gas prices, cuz fuck you. Since communism fell the US has turned its ire inward trying to turn everyone into proletariat. In other words, with only their labor to sell for $. Add in the destruction of small, local business, rigging the stock market against retail/'dumb' money but usurping retirement accounts and investing everyone's pensions into their pyramid scheme, essentially holding everyone, not just those that want change, hostage
Social policy = the ONLY difference. This manifests not just thru media, but judicially. Both Pro-Police state. Both twist Mass media (and that's 5he only media now) into the 5th government branch, regurgitating the governments propaganda.
Republicans are varying degrees conservative, pining for years long gone that no one has actually lived thru. The right wants a return to the post war era, minus unions, taxes, and civic investment (the things that allowed the middle class to exist). Democrats are socially conciliatory. Which is seen as spineless. They'll go along with the get along. But they'll never actually spur change, just appease w/e unrest and go right back to fellatiating corporations and police unions.
Civilians on both sides want change. Both sides can acknowledge that America is broken but one side says it's because of the transgenders and the gays and the other side just says, to song and dance, "hey, we aren't them 👉" to distract from the pointing fingers at consolidated wealth as the problem.
So it's get in line, act in line, or get benched.
Fuck America. We're out here starving and we have the choice of a road side carcass or a multivitamin but never actual food.
None of that matters. It's a 2-party FPTP system and one party is fascist and trying to overthrow democracy. It's literally a choice between a shitty country and facsism.
The place to try to push for progressive change is the primaries, not the fucking General Election. At this point the General is just survival.
You've seen less election cycles than I have if you think voting will bring change.
Social unrest, protesting, rioting brings change
Voting (in the past 50 years) simply reaffirms or denies the social unrest. The media talks of nothing else. It's ratify the status quo or the end of democracy, neverminding that the status quo is essentially institutionalized fleecing. We are tax-chattle. Every dollar you save, somehow, in the system entirely built to make that impossible, will be extracted from your body in exchange for medicine. We will all die penniless and propertyless. By design.
Social unrest, protesting, rioting brings change
So fucking do it. Get out there and riot or whatever you want. All you're doing is shitting on the last form of peaceful change we have left. We all get you're jaded and cynical.
Any that don't work against MAGA are complicit. Leaving what's left of the Republican party to the MAGAs kills any chance of eventual recovery of the American political system. There are enough knee-jerk single-issue voters that will only vote against Democrats to do severe damage. If these cowards stayed to moderate the extremists, recovery might have been possible, but they will wash the political blood off of their hands, hide, and watch it burn.
this title is unfortunately metaphorical
Don't forget Joe Manchin.
Wish I could
I would also like to opt out of the next election cycle.
If a Republican wins in 2024, they will ensure that comes to pass for everyone forever.
Hey is that Jonah the cloud botherer over his left shoulder there?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
This rush of Republicans abandoning the House is tied to former president Trump’s large lead in the GOP presidential primary race.
Every Republican still in the House next year will be forced to run for reelection while possibly supporting a convicted felon at the head the GOP ticket.
The bad behavior continued last week with House Republicans authorizing subpoenas for Biden’s family in an effort to impeach the president.
They are locked into fear of Trump attacking them even though last Tuesday’s election results signaled that voters reject extreme right-wing MAGA Republicanism.
“Daniel Cameron [in Kentucky’s governor’s race] is the millionth Republican candidate to lose because he was endorsed by Trump,” said conservative commentator Ann Coulter.
To repeat, that means any Republican on the ballot in 2024 faces the ugly prospect of being asked to defend Trump for the next three years, while getting nothing done on Capitol Hill.
The original article contains 838 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 82%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
When the GOP is being blackmailed into submission by an orange flaming dotard, their only option is to submit or quit.
And they're quitting too late. They could've stuck to whatever morals they had and stood their ground and possibly lost their seats, but they were content to toe the line and participate in the destruction of their party. Fuck em.