"Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932. The leader of the German Communist Party, Thälmann saw mainstream liberals as his enemies, and so the center and left never joined forces against the Nazis. Thälmann famously said that ‘some Nazi trees must not be allowed to overshadow a forest’ of social democrats, whom he sneeringly called ‘social fascists.’
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested. He was shot on Hitler’s orders in Buchenwald concentration camp in 1944."
Plus we keep using this outdated first-past-the-post voting system in the 21st century.
Yup. We need ranked choice/instant runoff voting first.
Approval Voting is even better.
Literally any voting system other than the one we use is an improvement.
Yeah, ranked choice already seems to have a lot of momentum, and would fix a lot. That counts more than theoretical perfection that may not even exist in the real world.
I think people just want the emotional satisfaction of submitting a vote that says “this is my preferred person”
I second Approval Voting. STAR as well, but perhaps slightly less intuitive.
That’s why one should always vote for Democrats who support voting system reform.
Are we talking about the same Democrats that sued to keep ranked choice boating off the DC ballot this year? or the Democrats that chose to keep ranked choice voting that had already been passed by voters off the Alexandria VA ballot?
I interpreted it as “vote only for those democrats who support voting reform,” but it could also be sarcasm.
Do those sound like Democrats who support voting system reform?
We need the presidency first. We need a majority in both houses first. We need a supermajority in the senate first. We need a 2/3 majority in the senate first. We need to completely overhaul the voting system first.
There’s always something we need to do first. It’s right there on the timetable. Timetable subject to change. Offer void in red states.
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What’s your plan to change the system?
Different user, but still have an idea.
Take over the DNC with actual leftists that will implement better voting systems, starting at the lower levels with grassroots campaigns, and slowly work our way up.
We desperately need more real third-party participation in politics, but voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen—the US voting system isn’t a business that adapts its products to meet consumer demand.
Yup. We need ranked choice balloting first.
in presidential elections
Or in House of Representative, or Senate. The real power is in Congress.
Local elections is where most of the current people in power got started. Anyone voting for third party in the presidential race missed the boat.
Vote progressives into local offices so they can get experience to work in state offices so they can get experience to work in Congress so they can get experience to be a good presidential candidate. Also to fill offices at every level with progressives.
And it’s a hell of a lot easier to reform voting there too.
That… is the exact opposite of what the article is arguing. If one side of the political spectrum (inevitably right-wing) unites, they immediately run over the side that is split up into different fragments that are arguing over just how much of a school lunch should be subsidized by the government.
And we have seen this in the modern day as well. A couple months back basically the entire Left/Center-Left of France had to unite to try and prevent fascists from taking power and… it is unclear if they actually succeeded.
Its fun to parrot the exact same text every single time a topic comes up. But shit like this is a lot more important than meming about Subway and it is well worth understanding what efforts do and don’t address and think through those problems. Otherwise we just leave ourselves more and more vulnerable to hate.
The point though is that ranked choice allows you all the benefits of 3rd parties without the downsides.
One can just as easily argue that that is the point of primaries in the US and other countries. You get a wide range of left and right leaning candidates and you downselect based on who the majority wants as well as general election theory to handle moderates.
And… the end result is that people get incredibly pissy when their candidate doesn’t win and disenfranchise themselves. Theoretically, a very strict ranked choice model that requires ALL candidates to be ranked could help with that but you still get into the realm of “protest votes”. See: People who refused to vote for Biden because he had shit stances on genocide and who would have given trump, who is openly genocidal, the win.
The reality is that we need to actually educate people on how governments work to undo decades of “haw haw, douche or a turd sandwich” levels of narrative. But we also need the politicians to actually unite against common threats. The fascists already understand that. But the Left continues to infight at every opportunity.
voting for third parties in presidential elections doesn’t make that happen
In a winner-take-all system, the marginal votes on the winning and losing side don’t matter. Third parties are an extrapolation of this principle. But when you’re voting in a state that is 60/40 for a given party, any individual vote for a given party is equally meaningful.
The only real benefit to valuing a Big Two party over a Third Party is if you’re in a swing state, where the odds of your vote being the tipping point are reasonably high. And even then, the powers invested in the partisan state secretary and county election’s commissioner offices render that decision relatively meaningless.
People losing their shit at Ralph Nader and Pat Buchanan in 2000 seem to have completely overlooked the impact of the mass voter disenfranchisement under Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris, the Butterfly Ballot design that confused voters into voting Buchanan over Gore, as well as the transformative impact of the Brooks Brother’s Riot and the subsequent SCOTUS decision to halt the vote count in Dem leaning districts.
At some level, Americans must stop treating their elections process as free and fair, and then deflecting blame of defeat onto anyone who doesn’t vote for your favorite candidate.
Tbf, it very much appears similar to battered partner syndrome. It’s going to be painful either way, but if I stay blah blah blah.
Don’t feed up on the propaganda all it takes is a bunch of celebrities endorsing third parties and then they become popular enough to make a change. The moment the red and blue start to lose votes and their grip on power they have to go in damage control mode and change their politics to please people and get votes back.
The liberals fucking won that election and it was the liberal Hindenburg appointing Hitler to the Chancellorship that facilitated his rise to power, not anything the KPD did. This is disgusting historical revisionism that a search engine could dispel in 5 seconds, but you choose to warp history to make it look like Hitler actually won the election and make the liberals who enabled him seem blameless. It is, in effect, apologia for Nazi collaborators. Exactly appropriate for someone shilling for Dems while they gleefully subsidize genocide.
there sure seems to be a lot of Nazi apologia coming out of .world recently. wonder why that is 🤔
I’ve seen a lot more come out of lemmy.ml.
Especially the Russian and Chinese kind, they apologise for all kinds of atrocities those fascist states make. Even apologise illegal invasions of sovereign nations.
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No way it’s something connected to America, one of the most direct inspirations for the Nazis. No, the reason there’s this Nazi apologia must be the sissy pee.
Gleefully?
No you’re right they’re super sad about funding the genocide
I feel like we need something like the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact that is aiming to eliminate the electoral college, but for Ranked Choice.
Passing this federally is too hard. We need do to this state by state.
Until I can vote for a third party with RCV, then I might as well be saying that I have zero preference about the GOP and DNC options on the table.
Alaska does it (assuming they won’t repeal it in nov). Oregon is going to try and do it, if it hopefully passes. If we get two states proving it works and isn’t a problem, that momentum can snowball.
Please help support the RCV effort in Oregon if you can. https://www.oregonrcv.org/
I heard this a couple of days ago, and the more I’m looking into it, the more I find the green party a joke at best.
Alaska has a number of things. A population of conservationists amoung the general population who are likely disaffected. An environment that is being exploited harder than most states. Now ranked choice voting. Most people would see them as the environmentalist party. How much good could they do towards that cause if they got into that state legislature? What if they could take the congress seat or a senator? If they took the electoral votes it would be harder since the ranked choice only seems to be for the states choice, but they could prove they could win at some level. How many candidates are they running in Alaska? One, jill stein. How much effort are they putting in there for her? I can’t tell. The main criticism of them does not exist there, but they aren’t even trying. They can accomplish many of there goals there more easily than anywhere else. It’s the perfect storm for them. Pathetic.
I wish it were different, but the Green Party sucks in the two countries I’ve lived in. I want to vote for environmentalists, but they seem to be Russian shills in the US, and they’ve had literal stasi members in Germany, where they were so opposed to nuclear, that the country still uses mostly coal.
Rightwing Dems that get to the primary off corporate donors in the primary will never let RCC take over
The only reason they win in generals is the only other option is Republicans.
To fix anything on the federal level we need the Dem party onboard and all on the same page, then heavy majorities, then fix the system
I’d argue that you don’t need it in every state. You just need it in enough states to make a 3rd party candidate viable.
Look up the Moral Majority. They wrested control of the GOP from Nelson Rockefeller et al by showing up at every local Republican function with enough votes to make sure they got heard. They started out putting their sheriffs and county clerks on the ballots.
Dems are not letting that happen.
Problem is that RCV will only have a chance in deep blue states, and all it would accomplish is reducing the blue representation in congress.
To put it bluntly, all it would accomplish is more in fighting and contributing to the reputation that Dems are ineffective. Except, it would be the “blue aligned coalition” instead of “Dems”
The only real path to making this change is to give Dems a super majority so they can amend the constitution.
And, well, the minority of Red voters have a majority of power thanks to the electoral college, so a super majority is absolutely impossible for the foreseeable future.
Edit - it’d also cause disruptions in States that don’t adopt RCV, as “progressives” protest vote 3rd party and sandbag the Dems
Blaming progressives for not aligning with centrists instead of blaming centrists for siding with Nazis to lock out progressives is a weird take.
That’s historical revisionism. They would have easily created a coalition government to oppose Hitler, but without the support of the communist party, the conservative block ultimately held onto control, and Hitler was appointed chancellor by Hindenburg.
You’re disingenuously conflating the conservatives that ceded power to the Nazi party (that had only taken about 30% of the vote) with the center left that reached out to the communists in an attempt to stop them. A decision by the head of the communist party that directly led to the murder of millions of people, including himself.
We are talking about a parliamentary system. The communists could have formed a coalition government that had a majority, but they refused. Without their support, no party won a majority or were able to form a majority coalition government, and the Nazis were able to take control from the conservatives in power (or more accurately, they gave it to them freely).
I’m not a historian, so someone correct me if I’m wrong.
That comment was not referring to literal nazis. They were talking about the American right wing.
Ok. Then I was explaining why it’s not a “weird take.” Because, you know… History.
It may not have been a weird take in the early 20th century. It’s a weird take now.
It’s literally an equivalent scenario.
Ah, of course. America’s communist party should be trying to form a coalition government in Parliament this year. Literally equivalent.
Essentially, yes. Bernie Sanders caucuses with the DNC.
No, at no point did the Centre try to form a coalition with the KPD, but were turned down. In the Weimar system, it is the Chancellor that is in charge of forming coalitions, so even if the KPD, SPD, and Centre had enough seats to form a majority (which they didn’t), they couldn’t just form a coalition. This is why Franz Von Papen was appointed by Hindenburg, since he was expected to be able to convince the Centre party and Nazis to form a coalition with the conservatives and monarchists. And why when that failed and there was a failure to form a ruling coalition that Hindenburg appointed Hitler as chancellor to create a Nazi lead coalition.
Huh. Thanks for the correction. Sounds like Hindenburg sold Germany out big time.
Hitler didn’t win because he beat Hindenburg after Thälmann split the vote. He lost to Hindenburg, the center-right candidate endorsed by the social democrats, then won anyway because Hindenburg appointed him Chancellor.
The social democrats were the ones who refused to back Thälmann, the only anti-Hitler candidate in the race. And the same way that the communists called them “social fascists,” the social democrats used similar rhetoric, frequently saying that the communists were no different from the Nazis, that there was no difference between the far left and the far right.
But also, we don’t have to keep rehashing 100 year old grudges from another continent.
I’m not voting for Harris. I’m voting against Trump via Harris.
I’m voting FOR Harris in the same way I was previously voting FOR Biden. Biden/Harris & Harris/Walz support policies that most closely match those policies I support.
If Trump died tomorrow I still wouldn’t support Vance or any other Republican because they support policies that I am strongly opposed to.
I would like to have more options, but realistically those are my choices.
I don’t have to agree with Harris/Walz on 100% if issues. I’m allowed to criticize them. But at the end of the day I’m voting FOR something and not just against the worst possible choice.
Given that she has the same stance on Gaza / Palestine as Biden, I vote against the orange bad rather than for her.
I agree that is a fucking terrible stance. It’s fair to criticize them both for that stance and, especially after the election, we should all push them hard to change their stance.
It is absolutely shitty that they won’t charge until after the election (if ever). Yes. Is it fair? No. Is it likely the only chance? Yes.
Single issue voters are hilarious. That’s how we got here.
My comment said that I’m voting against my conscience wrt Palestine, so your comment doesn’t really make sense.
I’m voting for Harris i like the money for middle class people thing
There currently is no middle class. There’s people that think they are still middle class, but they are struggling just as much as they poor.
I hope you never suffer an illness or injury that suddenly thrusts you into the group of working poor, living out of the car, couch surfing or sleeping rough.
American mercenary healthcare is the primary reason I abandoned my green card efforts. It just wasn’t worth the risk that a car accident could render me homeless.
The average American tax payer individuals who make less than a certain amount get nothing in return. If we got services instead of global war, I believe very few would have an issue with taxes.
And they have no clue how close to reality that is for all of them.
We know. I have plenty of my own cognitive dissonance to sort.
i hope so too yes :c
By the math, just the economic policy changes will give the non-rich a bit of a boost.
Same!
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ok but you are voting republican
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but you are though
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yeah just don’t kid yourself
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“I am single issue” - at least you are under no illusion about it.
This is silly in our current voting system. Not voting in this election is equivalent to voting for Trump.
People on the right (e.g. evangelicals) often see voting as their responsibility and will vote for whomever they see as the lesser of two evils. Those of us on the left get too bourgeois about our candidates. Our failure to vote keeps moving the window right!
There’s a lot you can say about how broken US electoralism is, but using this as an example is just not accurate.
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Hitler wasn’t elected by people, he lost to Hindenburg in 1932 and was appointed Chancellor later.
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The Nazis who appointed him Chancellor had the majority, meaning more than every other party combined. Meaning third parties didn’t syphon the Hitler vote
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Hindenburg didn’t want to appoint him, but meetings with industrialists made him change his mind
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Hindenburg then gave Hitler more powers after the Heischtag fire.
If anything, it’s an example of what happens when you reach over the aisle and compromise with nazis.
Number 2 is wrong. The nazis never had a majority, only a plurality. If the other parties, the social democrats, the communist party, and the Centre party had banded together instead of fighting amongst themselves, he wouldn’t have been made Chancellor.
No, that still incorrect. First, KPD, SPD and Centre did not have an outright majority together. Second, it is the Chancellor that is in charge of forming coalitions, they can’t just form a coalition if they had an outright majority anyway in the Weimar system and at no point did Centre try to form a coalition and was turned down by the KPD. The entire point of Hindenburg appointing Franz Von Papen was that he thought that he could convince both the Nazis and Centre to form a coalition with the conservative and monarchist parties. And the reason later to appoint Hitler as chancellor was to form a Nazi led coalition.
Banded together and all refused to have a Nazi Chancellor? They could have done that, this just happened in France but this time the left had a majority. Centrists are more likely to join the Nazis than the communists though
I’m gonna assume you’re still talking about the Nazis since that was your original comment so let’s look at the reichstag breakdown of the election prior to Hitler being appointed Chancellor.
The Social Democrats won 121 seats in November 1932, the communists won 100 seats. The Social Democrats were socialists and the communists were communists. The nazis had 196 seats in the 1932 election. So if the socialists and communists had combined they would have had 221 seats which is more than 196. And those were leftist parties who were bickering. So if the leftists had combined they would have kept Hitler from being chancellor when he was appointed that in January 1933. But what about the centre party? Well, they had 70 seats and had a significant wing that was left and wanted to work with the social democrats. Now if we are conservative about it and say just 25 of those 70 were leftists, that would bring the 221 up to 246. And if the other 45 went to the nazis, which all of them never would because it was a big tent with diverse view points, that would have brought a nazi coalition to 241. So not as big of a majority but still a majority for leftists.
So yes, again, if the socialists, communists, and leftist wing of the centre party had combined their powers and hadn’t been bickering, hitler wouldn’t have been chancellor.
Basic source for the election results of November 1932. There’s more pages for the parties and stuff on there so go ahead and poke around.
The Social Democrats won 121 seats in November 1932, the communists won 100 seats. The Social Democrats were socialists and the communists were communists. The nazis had 196 seats in the 1932 election. So if the socialists and communists had combined they would have had 221 seats which is more than 196. And those were leftist parties who were bickering.
The problem here isn’t “leftist parties bickering”, it is self-evidently “the SPD aligning themselves with liberalism and fascism”. It’s not like the KPD refused to form a majority with other parties.
As an aside, “socialist” and “communist” are generally interchangeable terms and the SPD were neither by conventional definitions, but were instead (being very charitable to them) what we would call DemSocs.
The real lesson, I think, is that fascists take power when the mechanisms of liberal democracy crumble away.
I have great reason for concern on this in modern times, even if the details are different.
The only part that is wrong is that Nazis did not have an overall majority, it was because of Hindenburg, monarchists, conservatives, and right-wing liberals deciding to side with the Nazis.
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Do not forget that in '32 the SPD backed Hindenburg… who then nominated Hitler as chancellor.
Thälmann was foolish, but even if he didn’t run, Hitler would still get into power. If the far right is strong enough, mere electoralism will not stop them. Fighting them must happen on the street level.
We could avoid this with ranked choice voting.
Republicans are not going to suddenly stop being evil, so what’s the solution? Just endlessly comprise and never accomplish anything? Fuck that. I refuse to be held hostage. If Democrats want leftist votes then they have to deliver leftist policies. Otherwise they’re just as responsible
That is what Liberals are perfectly fine with. An infinite state of groveling with people in power and never doing anything else. They are hostile to protesters too and ignore bad actions by Dems. Everything turns into but Trump is worse.
The solution is a Multi-Party system with coalition and then compromise out of a position of power. We need to accept that in almost all societies the real left are a minority. Humans don’t like the socialist ideas even if it benefited then Right now because they dream of escaping poverty and to then be better than others. If we destroyed the class system they’d have no chance to some day be better than other people. I believe this drive to get ahead is part of human nature and only few are able to fight it and think in the benefit of the whole.
So there are 2 options:
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Is a revolution, violent and ends in establishing an authoritarian government forcing your beliefs on the majority of people which kinda goes against my democratic beliefs and the right of freedom
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Go into politics. In europe it would be voting very left and gain enough votes to join a coalition to make the centrists enable more and more socialist policies. This worked very well in some countries like early Germany, netherlands and a big portion of Scandinavian countries. In America basically the only option would be to join the democratic party and advocate socialist policies from within like Bernie sanders is trying for example. Vote more left in the primaries to try and gain influence.
After that when it comes down to voting either of the 2 parties though you probably need to accept the current majority in the democratic party in order to not enable far right.
The time to go more left is between big elections and from within. In big elections like the upcoming its time to set differences aside and unify for the lesser evil.
Never forget that a democracy is a rule of the majority of the population and not a rule of the best policies from your perspective. If you think: Fuck the majority, this is how the country should be run, you are not democratic.
This of course disregards the influence powerful people take in politics which is another topic and way more complicated.
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Every time they run on a left policy, they lose. Every time they enact left legislation, they lose. And you wonder why they don’t run a big left platform? Frankly they do left things in spite of it always costing them.
What the left needs to do is actually show up.
Hillary proves you wrong, though. Awkward!
Hilary who said she would have a map room to flight climate change. That existential issue that the left cares so much about, right? And bam she lost the election.
Exactly. If you’re as interest candidate, or arguably a center-right candidate, saying a few things to try to pretend you’re left wing is not going to get the support that you want. You need to actually change your policy in a major way well in advance.
Pretend? She declared fucking war on climate change. That’s what a map room means, a fucking war on it. But you want to say pretend lol.
And this is the big existential issue, isn’t it? It’s the big issue that all the logical leftists care about, right? It’s the issue of our generation, right?
And the left didn’t show up. She ran on that big important left policy. And. The. Left. Didn’t. Show. Up.
But we can go more! Why was it “only” climate change? For that let’s look at Obama. So Obama enacted the ACA. That’s great, right? The thanks Obama got for that was to lose the House of Representatives for year 3 and 4. And lose the House of reps again for years 5 and 6. And then lose both the House of reps and the Senate for years 7 and 8. He enacted left policy and: The left never shows up. So what did Hillary learn from the last 6 years of Obama? She learned that the left never shows up. And you’re amazed she didn’t ruin a big left platform on every issue? So she ran a mostly center platform to try to get voters, BUT with a big position to left on the map room to climate change. And bam she lost the election.
So what did Biden learn from Hillary? Don’t run a left position on anything, because it’s a sure fire eat to lose. So he ran center. But guess what happened in office? He governed left. He did a lot of left things. And what was his thanks for it? Dismal poll numbers. Aka the left was not going to show up.
Like I said, when the Dems enact left policy, they lose. When they run on left policy, they lose. Because. The. Left. Never. Shows. Up.
Totally fucking agree with this. Well said!
Progressives should not make the same mistake that Ernst Thälmann made in 1932
The mistake Ernst Thälmann made was not throwing his support behind checks notes Paul von Hindenburg, the man who ordered the police massacre of the Spartacus League?
After Adolf Hitler gained power in 1933, Thälmann was arrested.
Who elevated Adolf Hitler to the Chancellorship in 1933?
It’s not old Junkers like von Hindenburg that they’d ally with. It’s other slightly different leftist factions and a few centrists.
The centrists were aligned with Hindenburg. Friekorps were just as avid commie-bashers as any National Socialist.
The main problem Ernst had was affiliating himself with the Russian Revolution and advocating for more of the same in Germany. That made him an enemy of nationalists during a period in which “International Jewery” was the boogie man under everyone’s bed.
The idea that he could just strike up common cause with people who wanted him dead is absurd.
Particularly, there was huge overlap in membership between the Freikorps and the Stürmabteilung. So it is important to note that the Freikorps was a direct precursor to the Nazi brownshirts.
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They’d have thrown their support behind the centrist, Wilhelm Marx, who lost by about 3%
The Catholic Centre Party was in open - often violent - conflict with the largely atheist-leaning German Communists. The German Catholics were terrified of a repeat of the Spanish Civil War, where Spaniards were revolting against a religious dictatorship and burning down churches.
Von Hindenburg, with the help of the governing coalition formed by the Nazis and DNVP
Wilhelm was aligned with the DNVP as far back as 1923. He was the one who pushed through the Enabling Act of 1923, which the Nazis would ruthlessly exploit a decade later, with their help. And he continued to govern in coalition with the DNVP through 1928, when he was dismissed from the Chancellory by…
Von Hindenburg, with the help of the governing coalition formed by the Nazis and DNVP
So, to answer your question
What point are you trying to make?
My point is that blaming Ernest Thälmann for his minority party position in the German government through 1933 when it would make much more sense to finger Alfred Hugenberg and his DNVP, which abandoned Wilhelm in '28 and aligned with
Von Hindenburg, with the help of the governing coalition formed by the Nazis
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What point are you trying to make?
Muddying the waters. That’s the point these shills are trying to make.
You need ranked voting
The only way a third party would be viable in the US is if it grew organically from small, local races that aren’t captured by large donors. A dedicated group of volunteers knocking on doors and spreading a message can have a real effect in those races. Get a few candidates in office and start doing some good, and a party can grow around it. Draw up a blueprint for how you did it, and spread it around to other towns and cities, making allies with other local groups as they spring up.
Is that easy to do? Of course not, but that would be a viable path for the formation of a functioning third party.
The moment it makes waves on even a local level, one or both major parties would begin to invest resources in crushing it wherever it appeared.
Just a note, while ranked voting is much better, the people who are influenced by parties that game the system and a gullible ignorant base usually consolidate themselves into one big party that still does everything to undermine the rest of the coalitions as long as it makes them look bad even if it’s worse off for society as a whole and that like a tumor can keep growing until it goes past the midpoint for toppling the democracy that elected it. It’s part of the solution, but not all of it, societies act like headless chickens when things get bad enough, regardless of who was responsible for them. For example, Brexit.
