356
Democratic socialists are winning in US cities with message of getting stuff done
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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politics
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It's because most Primaries are carefully controlled by the party leaders. Yes, there are requirements that are open and technically anyone with the correct paperwork/signatures/whatever else can run. But the people who control the two major parties locally have a lot of influence, and can make the job easier for theor preferred candidates.
Combine this with a dynamic where most general elections are already decided for one party or another, and this means the general election is basically a formality. In Congressional elections, you have gerrymandering that ensures that districts are drawn to drive certain results. But even in these Mayoral elections, you have the same problem because Republicans have abandoned the cities, and most cities here lean Democratic.
You might ask about third parties, but our FPTP system screws them over, too. There is just enough influence from the minority party to mean that a third-party bid that takes 25% of the vote might just hand the election to the minority major party, making all that effort on the part of the 3rd party counterproductive.
Our 2 party system is not formalized in any document. It is a result of how our electoral systems are structured. But that makes it even harder to reform, because we have to reform lots of little things (and a few big things) all at once.
The Republicans didn't abandon cities so much as living in cities require living with rules that are made to make things better for everyone. This requires governing. The Republicans didn't abandon cities, they abandoned governing.