If you can get past antisemitic conspiracy theories about AIPAC you'll find out it's a group of Jewish American citizens and they have exactly as much right to representation as you do. There are a lot of people in the pro-Palestinian movement that are in this "uncommitted" movement which is an attempt to threaten politicians with removal from office if they don't change foreign policy to help their side in a foreign conflict. How is what the pro-Palestinian movement is trying to do any different from what AIPAC does? The only difference is AIPAC is significantly more competent at doing what the pro-Palestinian movement is trying to do. Also the pro-Palestinian movement has an antisemitism problem that they're in denial of which means they're doing nothing to address. So it's obvious to any politician which of these groups they'll be happy to associate with and which group they'll generally avoid. The pro-Palestinian movement has to fix their problems to be able to have any kind of influence.

Third parties are simply not viable in the current system. There is a proposal to have ranked choice voting at least for congress, but it's currently lacking the votes needed to pass. That would make third parties at least possible in congress. I'll give you one guess about which party has proposed it.

You always have a representative in a community representation system. It may not be the person you voted for, but there is someone that's supposed to represent your community. If they don't do a good job of that then they get voted out in the next election. Parties don't want to lose seats so they're incentivized to pick people that are capable of representing community interests. This is why you get oddities where people like Josh Hawley speaking loudly against programs like FEMA, but also accepting FEMA money when his district needs it. Push comes to shove, they have to represent their communities.

Also because the seat belongs to the person (not the party as in a PR system) a party could lose a seat even between elections if they fail to serve the interests of a community. So if a party is doing something that's really bad for your community, then you may not even wait until the next election for them to lose a seat.

In a PR system, you vote for a party that isn't part of the ruling coalition, you have no representation at all. Because it's not a good representative system. The power lies solely in the parties forming the ruling coalition, If you can get 50% + 1 votes for your party by screwing over minorities your party rules the country. PR systems have more of a tendency towards radical right wing politics because there's less need to represent minority interests. In a Community Representation system if even five members of a party are in close districts in communities with a significant number of minorities that might be the deciding factor that can change party policy.

And this isn't really theoretical either. The EU is PR and has countries leaving because they don't feel represented and they've taking a turn towards the extreme right. Israel has a PR system and it's current ruling coalition is made up of a right wing party that has to make concessions to extreme right parties to stay in power. Before claiming PR is better than a community representation system then I suggest closing the spreadsheet for a few minutes and look at the real world track record of PR systems. I've had conversations with people in Europe that are a little jealous of us for having community representation.

Of course any democratic system will fail without participation of the people. So make sure you go and vote.

That 3. party better be Election Reform.

No, I think their tone is completely warranted. Frankly I, too, am sick and fucking tired of seeing this shit plastered all over this website. You are a scourge.

It's not even math. You need 270 electoral votes to win. They are not on enough state ballots to do that. It is literally not possible for them to win.

They disappear, and then every four years they emerge from whatever hole they were rotting in, to siphon votes from Democratic party candidates. It really is that simple.

Political parties don't become successful by disappearing, and showing up for a few months every four years. That's not how it works. Just put some critical thought into it.