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I'll probably get downvoted to hell for saying this, but whatever, it needs to be said. It's just unbearable listening to how all of you defend voting for people you hate and doing nothing about it.
Here's the truth: if you have one party that's neo-fascist, and another party that does nothing, then in reality, your country is a one-party neo-fascist state.
What you need to do about it is fixed the root cause. Throw your constitution in the trash and write a new one that guarantees proportional representation. Sure, PR isn't perfect, but it's better than a single party state.
No, voting in primaries isn't going to fix the problem. Maybe you get a small handful of 10 politicians around the country that make you feel good about yourselves, but there are still thousands more standing in their way preventing any real progress. What have Bernie Sanders or AOC really achieved? Nothing, because there's 500 other people in Congress. What has Mamdani done for more than the tiny fraction of Americans living in NYC? Nothing, because a mayor in NYC is can't do shit for the 90% of people who live in other parts of the country.
Do whatever you want, vote however you want, but real change won't come until you throw out that stinking piece of trash constitution you have and write one that makes the USA a real democracy. Shout it out as loud as you can, because until then, nothing meaningful is ever going to change.
P.S. It's not that people aren't aware of the shitty system, it's the fact that absolutely nobody is talking about the real problem, and there's no movement whatsoever to fix it. Even Canadians are pushing desperately for PR and getting nowhere, but the USA is even more silent about it, and it's fucking infuriating.
A complete lack of specific action suggested. So tired of these "don't even try not even in the primaries" comments. Just some vague wave a wand and have a new system, avoiding precisely how that would happen.
So far whenever pressed the answer tends to be "just wait until this all collapses on it's own, then our "I told you so" will clearly let us take charge once the masses have finally had their eyes opened by a collapse".
Run for president on a platform of "I will dissolve the United States." This could actually be done, and it would require no Constitutional amendment whatsoever.
Someone could run for office saying, "I'm going to literally fire everyone the day I'm sworn in. I will not send in the military to prevent states from seceding. I'll effectively be granting all 50 states independence. They can then come back together in whatever new country or countries they want to form."
Throw out your high school civics. Don't try to argue how illegal or unconstitutional this would be, as it wouldn't matter. The original Articles of Confederation weren't legal; they were just done. Same thing here. There's no mechanism to prevent a president from doing this, and once the federal government has been completely unwound and its powers taken over by the states, there's really no putting Humpty Dumpty back together at that point.
You don't actually need to reach the threshold of amending the Constitution in order to blow the whole thing up. You just need a president that will openly announce that he'll let any and all states secede from the Union. That's it. Legality doesn't matter here. What matters is power.
Keep in mind that my frustration stems from this sentiment:
So a scenario that is "first, vote for a president who will..." brings us back to voting, so I'm glad for that, just that many folks are saying don't even bother trying to vote.
But putting that aside, and going with the assertion that a President can unilaterally disband the current system and let everyone collectively 're-roll' a new system, this doesn't really pan out either. The assumption stems from a belief that the current administration demonstrates that an administration can act unilaterally. This isn't actually true, he has the support of congress, even if congress likes to sometimes pretend they don't support him. If you had your hypothetical, he'd be removed by congress immediately and the speaker of the house would replace him. Of course that's ignoring the reality that there's no way you vote someone with that position in without also voting in a lot of congress, but again, this scenario involves a lot of popular support expressed through voting. Not amendment level popular support, but enough popular support as to make the amendments frankly not really needed.
But stepping back a bit further, one could put aside the concept of a president and stick more with the historically demonstrated reality that a system can be taken down with less than it would take to rework the system as it stands. The amount of support to amend the current system would be inconceivable the way it works, but systems can be changed in other ways. Those ways amount to a combination of numbers, conviction, force, and cohesion. I just don't see that, and at least some of the folks on that anti-electoral bent have acknowledged that, and have suggested a hope for a collapse event that will draw numbers and conviction. They assume a cohesion will occur that naturally would align with them, despite not putting in the work because it 'just seems obvious' that they are right.
The reality is that people can look around globally and see that the system fails them more than they would like, but grading on a curve the current system resembles the ones that work more closely than it does in much worse systems. Rerolling the system would be pitting people against each other based on conviction to do physical violence, the resulting fear, and numbers. Very high odds you kick that off and ultimately end with an authoritarian state focused on purity of ethnicity, religion, gender and such because those dudes are way more willing to do harm than others.
There are dozens of ways it could be fixed. Here, I'll do the thinking for you.
First of all, if you read your own constitution, you would see that there are multiple ways to amend the constitution:
source
There are two ideas right off the bat: either start writing amendments and getting them passed through Congress, or have the state legislatures demand a convention be arranged. You don't even need your federal Congress to get involved if you use the second approach. Did you already know that? (And since you think voting is so effective, you can invoke this holy power against the politicians that don't support it.)
See, here's a guy that already tried to start the process, maybe you can jump on board!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig?useskin=vector#Article_V_convention
Or maybe you need to find a not-so-legal approach. Your constitution was written because the previous one (Articles of the Confederation) were not so effective. How is your current situation today different from the one then? They figured out a way to get it done, and they were under far less duress then than you are now so... why can't you? You start writing the new one, then ratify it the same way the same way the old one was.
And in case you weren't aware, this happens all the time! Look at France. France is on their Fifth republic, the most recent being established in 1958, according to Wikipedia. And they're not the only ones. There are new constitutions being proposed and voted on all over the world all the time, in the Middle East, in Africa, etc. Read the news and you'll find out more about it. I recommend Deutsche Welle, they have excellent coverage of global affairs.
There you go. Hope you enjoyed a small lesson about civics in your own country from a foreigner. There are plenty of ideas to get you started, and now that you're more in the know, don't complain if voting by the rules doesn't bring about the change you're looking for. Good luck!
And another edit to add: yes, it's hard work, but you have to start talking about real solutions at the very least. You can see very clearly and easily from where we are today that working within the system as it's currently designed isn't working and it probably never will. It's up to you to pick whatever path you think is best, but I think it's obvious that voting in your shitty electoral process just isn't going to work.
In the USA we refer to this as "third party support" and it's the crux of this argument.
Oh, thank you, obviously I need that. What a shit opening.
This was supposed to be guidance from the "don't vote" crowd. There's no way that "don't vote" leads to "constitutional amendment".
At least a bit more closer to direct. Usually there's an acknowledgement that this isn't in the cards, and instead they advocate to vaguely organize and wait for some catastrophe to generate the popular support that is lacking.
The whole point was about people who refuse to vote by the rules not bringing about the change.
But such a tremendously condescending tone is pretty asshole way of commenting.
You wrote, "A complete lack of specific action suggested." so I provided some specific action. I don't like being an asshole, but people tend to act like assholes if they think the people they're talking to are also assholes. I'll be more polite if you're willing to do the same.
In any case, what I wrote is, "Do whatever you want, vote however you want, but real change won’t come until you throw out that stinking piece of trash constitution" and somehow, you assumed that it means, "don’t even try not even in the primaries." I have no idea how you made that mental connection. You asked how to fix it, and I told you how to get it done. You wanted a direct example, and I posted several of them. I even found a guy that's already started the process, just go and read the wiki link I posted on Lessig. What more do you want?
You said that verbatim. It's a safe assumption to say 'voting isn't going to fix the problems' is intended to mean 'voting isn't going to fix the problems'.