"I admire folks like Mamdani who can run an alternative platform but not even in NYC will there be another party of consequence."

Yes but there's no other alternative.
To get a Parliament would require a Constitutional Amendment.
For obvious reasons, neither party in a Duopoly has anything to gain by allowing other parties to join the fun.

Perot did pretty well in '92. Huey Long probably should have won in the 30s.
But there's no sustained third party in this country because there's no unmet need that would drive the moneyed interests to fund a third party.

I will always boil down to the 2 parties....and who shows up.
#25 | Posted by eberly

Well, we're getting to "who is allowed to show up" territory now.
But yes, in a functioning democracy, this is all that really matters. Turnout.

"folks are just too lazy and apathetic to actually get away from the 2 parties."

That's also pointedly missing the point of how change actually comes about. What you're doing, voting for the moderates, is how change is affected. From within. You're failing at it, but you've got the right idea.

MAGA got what they want not by starting a new party, but by completely taking over the Republican Party and turning it into the American Nazi Party. Change comes from within.

Reagan, as you know full well, did a massive amnesty for immigrants. If Reagan did that today, he'd get shot, and not by a crazy person trying to impress Jodie Foster, but by a Patriotic Republican trying to save America from an invasion of filthy disease carrying mud races Who admittedly would also be a crazy person, but his crazy is 100% aligned with today's Republican Party.

Because Republicans changed. That Republican party left you a long time ago, Eberly.

She's not coming back.

It's not the voters, Eberly.

It's the structure of society.

It's much bigger than the voters.

Republicans are in fact 100% bad, though.
Even Eberly won't vote for them for the past fifteen years.
And the ones he does vote for, the "good" ones, they always get the lowest votes in the primary.
Because Republicans prefer Bad to Good.

I'm not sure how exactly you planned on sharpening that to an edge, though, since KWRX25 is an "Independent" "Libertarian" whatever the ---- that means.

The Libertarian pages on Social Media are a hoot lately. Half are hardcore MAGA, the other half are kinda like KWRX25 here who thinks people should be able to protest without getting murdered by the State.

True identity crisis unfolding -- because Libertarians never actually had an identity in the first place! It's a catch-all for malcontents and misanthropes. And some I'm sure are good, but deeply misguided or confused, people.

Libertarians need to build success at the local level and demonstrate their ideas can work. Why anybody would take this "philosophy" seriously when it's never been implemented, is the reason it's dismissed out of hand. Libertarians, in practice, are no different than the kid in the Che T-shirt saying the USSR wasn't real Communism and if we tried it the right way it ought to work.

"The voters are hooked on the two parry system."

The Constitution is the hook.
People who seem like they can figure out water is wet don't seem to be able to make that connection, for whatever reason.

Our Constitution created a winner take all system.
That system might start out as one winner and ten losers, but not for long.
The ten losers are going to join forces to try to take on the one winner.

Why haven't both parties shoved laws we want through when they have it all?
Posted by Petrous at 2026-01-29 02:52 PM | Reply

Money is why.
Both parties are dependent on private money to fund their election campaigns.

While both parties are required to play by the same rules, only the Republican party fought and won for unlimited dark money in American politics.

As a result, for the past twenty years, Russia has been funneling money through the NRA to Republican candidates.
Republicans didn't set that in motion because it benefits We The People.

"We are a nation of laws."
--Republicans, once upon a time.

"To make the claim that I have my opinions fed to me is actually pretty insulting."

Good. Sounds like I'm getting through.
For you not to be able to say how you came up with your opinions is pretty insulting to your own mental capacity.

So let me try being Good Cop.
I wouldn't even bother to engage with you if I thought you were actually a fool like most "centrists" and "libertarians."
You can do better.

A President with his own unaccountable police force, going after his own Base?

Republicans are getting exactly what they voted for!

"We already know he was there to protest and interfere."

How do we know that?

It's immaterial to them. You seem to think it is.
#30 | Posted by eberly

I agree they don't care. But what do they care about?
You know these people, break bread with them, go to church with them. Do you actually not know?

"I do feel that the majority of the moderates in the country feel that the lefts policies have become much more progressive and that the litmus test used by the left has become more extreme."

This is you, regurgitating a paraphrased "I didn't leave the Democrats, the Democrats left me."
And this is also you, tricking yourself into thinking you thought of that on your own.

But you didn't think of that on your own.
And the reason I can tell you didn't think of that on your own, is you can't explain how you came up with it.

You can't resist assigning yourself positions, and thinking that you thought of them all by yourself.
When in fact you didn't think at all.
Get it?

#56 you can't resist assigning me positions...

Tell ya what.
If you can figure out how to stop flirting with Republicans, I'll figure out you don't like them.
But that hasn't happened in the decades we've been here.

"Hamas killed the children you idiot."

You're not actually this stupid. You know IDF killed the children.

You're just saying killing children is worth it, if that's what it takes to kill Hamas.

"ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection employed at least 30 people with sexual and violent criminal histories in recent years"

^
These are the criminals our 37 year police veteran trusts implicitly.