- cross-posted to:
- news_us_politics@lemmy.link
- cross-posted to:
- news_us_politics@lemmy.link
Former President Trump holds commanding leads over potential Republican challengers in early 2024 primary states Iowa and South Carolina, according to new Fox Business polls. In Iowa, Trump garnered 46% support compared to 16% for Ron DeSantis and 11% for Tim Scott. In South Carolina, Trump received 48% support to 14% for Nikki Haley and 13% for DeSantis. The polls show Trump with wide leads despite being under investigation by the Justice Department for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results. The strong polling numbers indicate Trump remains a formidable front-runner for the 2024 GOP nomination.
We need to rethink democracy
I would say democracy is less of a problem, the problem is lack of accountability at least on constitutional level. One of the biggest thing I’d add to the constitution is a rule that mandates for every dollar we spent on the military, another dollar must be spent on education.
While I appreciate the sentiment, such a law would be far too rigid to work in practice. What happens if we get into another world war? Military spending goes up by necessity, but then so does education and the military budget has a much lower ceiling than it would otherwise.
Obviously there would be exceptions, but in general for the last few decades, we have been mainly engaging conflicts outside of the US. So until it is in our home territory, it a good idea to put a limit on the military and divert fund to education. Don’t Let the Perfect Be the Enemy of the Good
We need to rethink our electoral system because it undermines democracy.
We need to think
Funnily enough, Trump would very much agree with you.
And you’d both be wrong.
Hmm, probably. But we need to rethink the details of how US democracy works.
First past the post elections are as much or more a problem than the current state of gerrymandering to our overall health as a nation (IMO), and I bizarrely find myself agreeing in different measures with both supporters and detractors of the electoral college system.
I don’t have much in the way of solutions, but smarter folks than me should be figuring out how to fix these issues fairly (and probably already have) - so we can modernize without destroying our system.
For sure, there are absolutely reforms that we should strongly consider. But that’s different from this attitude of “ugh, the voters are so stupid and really need to be protected from themselves by a powerful figure who happens to agree with all of my ideas”, which you do see floated around in the more authoritarian camps of both political sides.
Fair enough, I see your point. 🙂
I wasn’t only thinking about Trump or USA in my comment. Generally voters these day are only skin thick. They spend their vote like voting for a reality show
People need to know that there is more on the line. I don’t think that democracy as such is broken but people exercising it need to be educated about it