"This is a mostly-truth. Yes, the parties agree and yes they're entitled to do so - but in doing so they're also ignoring their constituents."
There is nothing "mostly-true" about it - it's just the truth, plain and simple.
No party has any obligation to represent any particular opinion - a party isn't more then what it's members agree it should be. Every party is a democratic organization where all members have a say and obviously the people that actually care enough about the issues to be politically active isn't interested in pushing for different policies.
What you're describing is instead voters that are not politically active who in polling say they view certain issues as important, but no party has any obligation to change it's policies based on that.
If that was the law no party's policies would make any sense as they would all promise everything and at the same time promise to abolish all taxes - because public polling show they're really unpopular!
"This is on the surface not a crazy thing to say, but you're not really giving people many options here. Either vote for a mainstream party that doesn't address one of their most important issues, or vote for a fringe party that does."
I didn't invent the rules for democracy but this is how they work.
Expecting people who are actually politically engaged to change their parties policies to better suit some voters on some issues who can't be bothered to get engaged is clearly the less democratic option here.
And more importantly - as the example of the major right-wing party shows - it's can be a disaster policy-wise as you may drive away more voters then you attract.
Because what you don't seem to think about is that immigration being an important issue for many voters doesn't mean they all want the SD-party policies in place.
The SD-party themselves of course claim that - but they also claim "everybody" "actually" support them but are just too terrified to admit that.
But the fact is that ALL other parties in Sweden repeatedly promised before the last election that they would never cooperate with or in any way let the SD-party influence policy in Sweden. And 87% of the voters voted for one of those other parties.
Now if people where actually so incredibly supportive of SD but terrified to admit it they could safely vote for them in the privacy of the voting booth and not tell a soul. But they didn't - because in the end they don't think SD's policies are that important.
In fact - out of the number of people who in polling cite immigration as a really important issue for them, a lot are probably people who want to defend Sweden's traditionally liberal immigrations stance and who would therefore NEVER vote for SD or any party that adopted such policies.
That people say a question is important to them in polling doesn't mean they all agree with SD you know. It could also mean the direct opposite.
Also it's quite possible that some people do feel that immigration should be reduced - but they would still never dream of voting for a neo-Nazi party to achieve that.
I.E that the SD-party's baggage and still current stream of openly racist and other statements makes them an impossible choice for people who could possibly vote for a more normal party that had a tougher stance on immigration.
But even if that was the case you still can't democratically argue that any party has an obligation to provide these policies as a party is still only made up of it's members combined wishes.
Are those wishes less important then the possible wishes expressed by non-members in public polling? Of course not.
"Much easier said than done, and I suspect you know that. You're not proposing an actual solution, you're telling people to - figuratively - fuck off."
Again - this is how democracy works.
You have the right to express yourself, to get engaged politically in a party and influence it or start a new party if you want.
But democracy doesn't give you a right to demand that anyone start a party that cater to your wishes - that's simply a misunderstanding of what democracy is.
If people can't be bothered to engage themselves then clearly they don't deserve to be represented.
Which is basically what happens now anyway when they waste their vote on a party that's so awful no one else will have anything to do with them.
And everyone actually seems happy with that.
SD-voters get's to whine about how they're being treated undemocratically when they aren't.
SD's representatives in parliament doesn't have to do shit but get a nice fat pay check - and they get absolutely no criticism from their own members, despite the fact that they haven't got shit done - because they all just blame every other party for being mean to them for not giving them everything they demand.
In a normal party a party leadership that acted like SD's did - that blew any chance of cooperation by stating public demands directly after the election - would be questioned by it's own members and voters.
But SD's leadership has the same luxury as Trump - since both type of voters view their representative as the honest truthsayer they never question anything they do.
They're golden and can do no wrong - which means that there is never an incentive for them to get things right either, because they will always get the adoration and support of their devoted followers what ever they do.
SD even more so then Trump actually, since they're not in power. If Trump messes up to much for too long even his voters will sour on him, because it will have real life consequences for them.
While SD can just while away it's time in parliament, lifting their pay checks and doing squat since it's always everybody else's fault they can't find someone to cooperate with - according to both them and their voters.
And in the meantime every single party in Sweden has already shifted it immigration policy because of the massive wave of refugees that came in 2015 - after the latest election.
The interesting thing there is that SD have of course since it's founding for decades screamed about "mass immigration" and that Sweden couldn't possibly cope with all these refugees and so on.
When no other party agreed with them they turned to conspiracy theory - all other parties where actually acting in unison to destroy Sweden. They weren't just ignorant - they where down-right evil and out to destroy life as we know it and that's why the massive conspiracy covered up all the proof of how Sweden was being destroyed by immigration - which all the other parties knew but wanted to happen, for some unclear reason.
Well, that went on for decades until 2015 when the flow of refugees actually increased tremendously - and for the first time ever civil authorities actually reported that no, this is to much - we actually can't handle all these people at the same time.
And what did all those parties, that SD claimed had been out to destroy Sweden with mass immigration for the past decades do when their goal finally seemed to be at hand?
They all agreed - every single party - that OK, if the civil authorities say we can't do this in an orderly fashion, then we have to stop.
So they did. They instituted pass port checks and stemmed the flow of immigrant who are now just a trickle of what it was then - proving that SD had of course been crying wolf the whole time.
And none of this had anything to do with SD who was completely powerless in all these discussions as they are not part of either the government or the right-wing opposition.
This decision - that no doubt suited many SD-voters - was not a result of their votes in any way but a rational decision made based on actual facts and not owerblown scare-rhetoric.
Which just proves that Sweden works just fine without SD who doesn't really contribute to the discussion any way since their policy proposals aren't based on reality but fantasy.
It doesn't matter if Sweden takes in 10,000 or 100.000 or 10 refugees a year - to SD it will still always be "mass immigration" - because they don't want a single dark skinned immigrant, ever.
But the other parties know the difference and can make adequate decisions made on the actual facts.
"13% is also the 3rd most popular party in the country. A Nazi party is the 3rd most popular in Sweden. Either your country is overrun with Nazis, or there's a *serious* problem with the representation they're getting from mainstream parties."
As I said - most people voting for them aren't actually hard-core Nazi's of course. But it's a general theme in most of the western world right now - people are enchanted by fascist ideas again, because a new generation has emerged that doesn't realize that they're actually fascist ideas.
Also neo-liberalism has meant that the major parties of the political left all over the world since the 70's has basically become a slightly softer version of the right. There are hardly any true leftist parties left and societies have been transformed along neo-liberal lines which have meant that ordinary people have gotten less and the rich have gotten more.
That breeds resentment and when Nazi's shows up and blames everything on the immigrant it's a easy leap to make - especially when the political left isn't willing to point out that "no, actually you just have less now because we gave it away to these rich guys..." - since that's not something the like to admit they did.
Because officially the major Social democratic parties of Europe still pretend they're working for the ordinary citizen - and they still do of course, to a larger extent at least then the right-wing parties.
But the time when they actually cared deeply for building a more equal society for all are actually gone.
Now they're more about defending a fig leaf of caring for the working class while trying to beat the political right on who can deregulate the economy the most to please the big corporations.
The major leftist parties have simply been taking their core voters for granted for too long and gone to far to the right on economical issues.
But Sweden or the US could turn North Korea and shut our borders completely to every single immigrant coming and that still wouldn't make a shit of a difference in the lives of the people voting for tougher immigration policies.
The money didn't go to immigrants - it went to the richest amongst our own population and the big corporations, who have both increases their share of income tremendously over the last decades while most people have been left with very modest or no increases at all.
0
@Mickey
"This is a mostly-truth. Yes, the parties agree and yes they're entitled to do so - but in doing so they're also ignoring their constituents."
There is nothing "mostly-true" about it - it's just the truth, plain and simple.
No party has any obligation to represent any particular opinion - a party isn't more then what it's members agree it should be. Every party is a democratic organization where all members have a say and obviously the people that actually care enough about the issues to be politically active isn't interested in pushing for different policies.
What you're describing is instead voters that are not politically active who in polling say they view certain issues as important, but no party has any obligation to change it's policies based on that.
If that was the law no party's policies would make any sense as they would all promise everything and at the same time promise to abolish all taxes - because public polling show they're really unpopular!
"This is on the surface not a crazy thing to say, but you're not really giving people many options here. Either vote for a mainstream party that doesn't address one of their most important issues, or vote for a fringe party that does."
I didn't invent the rules for democracy but this is how they work.
Expecting people who are actually politically engaged to change their parties policies to better suit some voters on some issues who can't be bothered to get engaged is clearly the less democratic option here.
And more importantly - as the example of the major right-wing party shows - it's can be a disaster policy-wise as you may drive away more voters then you attract.
Because what you don't seem to think about is that immigration being an important issue for many voters doesn't mean they all want the SD-party policies in place.
The SD-party themselves of course claim that - but they also claim "everybody" "actually" support them but are just too terrified to admit that.
But the fact is that ALL other parties in Sweden repeatedly promised before the last election that they would never cooperate with or in any way let the SD-party influence policy in Sweden. And 87% of the voters voted for one of those other parties.
Now if people where actually so incredibly supportive of SD but terrified to admit it they could safely vote for them in the privacy of the voting booth and not tell a soul. But they didn't - because in the end they don't think SD's policies are that important.
In fact - out of the number of people who in polling cite immigration as a really important issue for them, a lot are probably people who want to defend Sweden's traditionally liberal immigrations stance and who would therefore NEVER vote for SD or any party that adopted such policies.
That people say a question is important to them in polling doesn't mean they all agree with SD you know. It could also mean the direct opposite.
Also it's quite possible that some people do feel that immigration should be reduced - but they would still never dream of voting for a neo-Nazi party to achieve that.
I.E that the SD-party's baggage and still current stream of openly racist and other statements makes them an impossible choice for people who could possibly vote for a more normal party that had a tougher stance on immigration.
But even if that was the case you still can't democratically argue that any party has an obligation to provide these policies as a party is still only made up of it's members combined wishes.
Are those wishes less important then the possible wishes expressed by non-members in public polling? Of course not.
"Much easier said than done, and I suspect you know that. You're not proposing an actual solution, you're telling people to - figuratively - fuck off."
Again - this is how democracy works.
You have the right to express yourself, to get engaged politically in a party and influence it or start a new party if you want.
But democracy doesn't give you a right to demand that anyone start a party that cater to your wishes - that's simply a misunderstanding of what democracy is.
If people can't be bothered to engage themselves then clearly they don't deserve to be represented.
Which is basically what happens now anyway when they waste their vote on a party that's so awful no one else will have anything to do with them.
And everyone actually seems happy with that.
SD-voters get's to whine about how they're being treated undemocratically when they aren't.
SD's representatives in parliament doesn't have to do shit but get a nice fat pay check - and they get absolutely no criticism from their own members, despite the fact that they haven't got shit done - because they all just blame every other party for being mean to them for not giving them everything they demand.
In a normal party a party leadership that acted like SD's did - that blew any chance of cooperation by stating public demands directly after the election - would be questioned by it's own members and voters.
But SD's leadership has the same luxury as Trump - since both type of voters view their representative as the honest truthsayer they never question anything they do.
They're golden and can do no wrong - which means that there is never an incentive for them to get things right either, because they will always get the adoration and support of their devoted followers what ever they do.
SD even more so then Trump actually, since they're not in power. If Trump messes up to much for too long even his voters will sour on him, because it will have real life consequences for them.
While SD can just while away it's time in parliament, lifting their pay checks and doing squat since it's always everybody else's fault they can't find someone to cooperate with - according to both them and their voters.
And in the meantime every single party in Sweden has already shifted it immigration policy because of the massive wave of refugees that came in 2015 - after the latest election.
The interesting thing there is that SD have of course since it's founding for decades screamed about "mass immigration" and that Sweden couldn't possibly cope with all these refugees and so on.
When no other party agreed with them they turned to conspiracy theory - all other parties where actually acting in unison to destroy Sweden. They weren't just ignorant - they where down-right evil and out to destroy life as we know it and that's why the massive conspiracy covered up all the proof of how Sweden was being destroyed by immigration - which all the other parties knew but wanted to happen, for some unclear reason.
Well, that went on for decades until 2015 when the flow of refugees actually increased tremendously - and for the first time ever civil authorities actually reported that no, this is to much - we actually can't handle all these people at the same time.
And what did all those parties, that SD claimed had been out to destroy Sweden with mass immigration for the past decades do when their goal finally seemed to be at hand?
They all agreed - every single party - that OK, if the civil authorities say we can't do this in an orderly fashion, then we have to stop.
So they did. They instituted pass port checks and stemmed the flow of immigrant who are now just a trickle of what it was then - proving that SD had of course been crying wolf the whole time.
And none of this had anything to do with SD who was completely powerless in all these discussions as they are not part of either the government or the right-wing opposition.
This decision - that no doubt suited many SD-voters - was not a result of their votes in any way but a rational decision made based on actual facts and not owerblown scare-rhetoric.
Which just proves that Sweden works just fine without SD who doesn't really contribute to the discussion any way since their policy proposals aren't based on reality but fantasy.
It doesn't matter if Sweden takes in 10,000 or 100.000 or 10 refugees a year - to SD it will still always be "mass immigration" - because they don't want a single dark skinned immigrant, ever.
But the other parties know the difference and can make adequate decisions made on the actual facts.
"13% is also the 3rd most popular party in the country. A Nazi party is the 3rd most popular in Sweden. Either your country is overrun with Nazis, or there's a *serious* problem with the representation they're getting from mainstream parties."
As I said - most people voting for them aren't actually hard-core Nazi's of course. But it's a general theme in most of the western world right now - people are enchanted by fascist ideas again, because a new generation has emerged that doesn't realize that they're actually fascist ideas.
Also neo-liberalism has meant that the major parties of the political left all over the world since the 70's has basically become a slightly softer version of the right. There are hardly any true leftist parties left and societies have been transformed along neo-liberal lines which have meant that ordinary people have gotten less and the rich have gotten more.
That breeds resentment and when Nazi's shows up and blames everything on the immigrant it's a easy leap to make - especially when the political left isn't willing to point out that "no, actually you just have less now because we gave it away to these rich guys..." - since that's not something the like to admit they did.
Because officially the major Social democratic parties of Europe still pretend they're working for the ordinary citizen - and they still do of course, to a larger extent at least then the right-wing parties.
But the time when they actually cared deeply for building a more equal society for all are actually gone.
Now they're more about defending a fig leaf of caring for the working class while trying to beat the political right on who can deregulate the economy the most to please the big corporations.
The major leftist parties have simply been taking their core voters for granted for too long and gone to far to the right on economical issues.
But Sweden or the US could turn North Korea and shut our borders completely to every single immigrant coming and that still wouldn't make a shit of a difference in the lives of the people voting for tougher immigration policies.
The money didn't go to immigrants - it went to the richest amongst our own population and the big corporations, who have both increases their share of income tremendously over the last decades while most people have been left with very modest or no increases at all.