Trump v Clinton: who do you support?

[seebart]

> gawker.com

*sigh*

True, gawker is pretty mindless "entertainment".

[fohat]

True, gawker is pretty mindless "entertainment".

It is deeply disappointing that Elizabeth Warren dignifies Donald Trump by responding to his insults.

She should reserve her energy for her real adversaries, the stooges of the financial industry.

[seebart]

Right, that is part of how Trump "works", he throws out these provocations and anyone who is responding then automatically gives him media coverage for free.

[vivalarevolución]

I am going to start promoting Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, to anyone and everyone. Because why not. Better than the alternatives. In the year of Trump and Bernie, I wouldn't discount it from happening.

[seebart]

I am going to start promoting Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate, to anyone and everyone. Because why not. Better than the alternatives. In the year of Trump and Bernie, I wouldn't discount it from happening.

Interesting, how come I've never even heard his name?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Johnson

[jacobolus]

There’s no reason for someone in Europe to know who Gary Johnson is. He was a 2-term Republican party governor of a smallish state, term-limited out of office a decade ago, whose main agenda was vetoing everything that crossed his desk. The US Libertarian party is a joke.

It would be like an American knowing who the minister president of Thuringia was in the year 2000. (Hint: nobody in America even knows what a minister president is, or has any idea that Thuringia isn’t a place in a children’s fantasy novel.)

[seebart]

No Thüringen is quite real, current minister president is Bodo Ramelow of the Left. Not very relevant by all means. But I get what you mean.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuringia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_Ramelow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_(Germany)

[fohat]

The US Libertarian party is a joke.

It would be great if we had about half a dozen viable parties! (that is about the maximum to avoid dilution)

But the simple reality is that in a rigid 2-party system a 3rd-party vote is, at best, flushed down the toilet, and, at worst, promotes the candidate you least favor by a 2-point spread: losing the positive vote that the favorable candidate did not receive + the lowering the threshold the less favorable candidate needed to reach his majority or plurality.

No Thüringen is quite real, current minister president is Bodo Ramelow of the Left.

I quite enjoyed the book 1632 by Eric Flint, set there. It was an inspiring American read.

[Muirium]

We've got 5 viable parties in Scotland now, all have elected members in the Scottish Parliament ever since its (re)foundation in 1999.

The way you get there is proportional representation. First past the post (single member districts, winner takes all) is expressly about squashing this kind of stuff.

Over here, between local seats and regional lists, every Scot has 8 different representatives they can chase to take up issues in parliament. I've got a Liberal, two Greens, two Labour and three Tories as it happens. The only party not representing me here is the one I voted for and which won the overall election! No system's perfect…

[jacobolus]

No Thüringen is quite real, current minister president is Bodo Ramelow of the Left.

Well sure, as a German, you know that. My point is that there would be no reason for someone living in, say, Chicago to know who Dieter Althaus (minister president of Thuringia from 2003–2009, according to Wikipedia) is. It isn’t going to help with understanding international affairs.

[Muirium]

Read: "American affairs."

Ever since the disastrous Dubya years, we Europeans have spent too much attention on American domestic strife. Whereby spent I mean wasted. And by strife I mean strife.

[jacobolus]

Knowing who Gary Johnson is is not going to help with understanding American affairs either. You can safely 100% ignore the US Libertarian party. It has a comparable influence to the US Peace and Freedom Party, or only marginally more influence than the US Revolutionary Communist Party.

[seebart]

One good thing that this US presidental race has for me (aside from the entertainment factor) is that I am actually learning quite a bit about the process itself. I keep hearing various people arguing that the large portions of this presidential election process is outdated and needs to be restructured. Not sure if that is the case or not?

https://www.usa.gov/election

[fohat]

I keep hearing various people arguing that the large portions of this presidential election process is outdated and needs to be restructured.

The entire process is completely outdated and needs to be revamped entirely.

Our Constitution was written to accommodate a late-1700s-pre-industrial society and while "people" don't change, society does.

The underlying concept of governance revolved around the logistical difficulties of communication and transportation that prohibited timely or reliable governmental actions above the local or state levels. That and a healthy dose of mistrust of "the masses" by the wealthy educated elite who, as always, have held the majority of the power. Thus, early on, the understood and stated intention was that both the members of the national Senate and the chief executive would be selected directly by the State legislatures and barely by the people themselves, only very indirectly.

[seebart]

The entire process is completely outdated and needs to be revamped entirely.

Our Constitution was written to accommodate a late-1700s-pre-industrial society and while "people" don't change, society does.

Right, that's what I also read serveal times. That would be some piece of work.

[Muirium]

Great. Now read up on what it takes to pass an amendment to the US Constitution. It's not a process for the fainthearted. Or the progressive, frankly.

[fohat]

what it takes to pass an amendment to the US Constitution

Jefferson wanted to make it easy.

The rest of them wanted it laborious and difficult, but none of them intended it to be the Herculean effort that it would be today.

Unless there is an overwhelming Progressive sweep at both the national and state levels.
With solid majorities in agreement, the process is pretty straightforward.

[Muirium]

For those who don't know, it takes *all* of the below:

2/3 super majority in US Senate
2/3 super majority in US House of Representatives
Ratification by 3/4 of state legislatures

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitut ... nstitution

The first two steps are damn well difficult. It'd take an epic liberal sweep to achieve either, let alone both. But it's the 75% of all states that's the real lock. Most states are red. Even if Trump loses them by the barrel load, they're still governed by conservatives. Exactly the people opposed to such dramatic change in American politics.



Turkeys seldom vote for Christmas. Never say never: registered republican voters just did! As did the English parliament in 1832, bringing in the first vague semblance of democracy over here. But you need black swans under blue moons for these events to happen. No breath holding!

[jacobolus]

With solid majorities in agreement, the process is pretty straightforward.

Only for a very aggressive definition of “solid”, and a definition of “pretty straightforward” which involves many years, large-scale organizing effort, and a lot of twists and turns. The last serious attempt to amend the constitution was the Equal Rights Amendment, which would have enshrined gender equality in the constitution. It passed both houses of congress (with something like 90% support), and over the next few years was ratified by 35 states (out of the 38 required for adoption), ... then it just died, when the other 15 states refused to ratify it.

[seebart]

Great. Now read up on what it takes to pass an amendment to the US Constitution. It's not a process for the fainthearted. Or the progressive, frankly.

I'm too lazy, but I can imagine it's no small feat. There must be a reason it was never changed in over 100 years.

[fohat]

There must be a reason it was never changed in over 100 years.

Not true. We have had both Prohibition and Repeal of Prohibition in that time.

[jacobolus]

Anyway, I think both the US constitution and the broad strokes of the US election system are mostly fine, not substantially worse than anywhere else, but certainly with somewhat different culture and outcomes. A lot of the difference in US politics is down to the electorate and the economic and social power-base of the country, rather than the formal system. The high-level structure of the formal system is in many ways brilliant, but the perfect formal system doesn’t help if the people themselves want to vote for tyrants.

There are however some big improvements which could be made, within the constraints of the existing constitution. Most importantly in my opinion,
(1) a new law requiring non-partisan redistricting commissions carry out the task of drawing up congressional districts after the census, as already happens in a number of states
(2) additional federal oversight of federal elections, including a mandatory paper trail, non-partisan or bipartisan election observers, enough funding to ensure that there are enough polling places, some standardization of vote-by-mail and so on, outlawing of bullshit voter ID laws and other types of vote suppression, and maybe some kind of national holiday on election day for federal elections
(3) changes to campaign finance, dramatically curbing the ability of billionaires and large corporations to fund congressional campaigns and maybe some supply of public money, and hopefully reclaiming some time for congresspeople to work on policy instead of continuous fundraising
...

Many other changes can be made to improve elections at the state level.

Overall though, I think people are more pessimistic about the high-level formal structure than necessary. The system works reasonably well, insofar as we have orderly transition of power between rival governments, the new government each time is considered legitimate, governments and politicians who betray the public trust in an obvious way often become unpopular and get voted out of office at the next election, etc.

I can’t think of any polity with similar size and diversity which works much better. For instance, the EU is horrible undemocratic and ineffective. Other countries of comparable scale, like China, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, India, Turkey, Indonesia, etc., have plenty of their own political problems.

[fohat]

I can’t think of any polity with similar size and diversity which works much better.

As usual, I agree with you almost 100%

The Founding Fathers left too much in the hands of the States, for reasons which were probably valid at the time but are not so wise now. In particular, they left almost the entire mechanism of registering voters and of voting itself for the individual states to administer, and that may prove to be one of the hardest nuts to crack.

edit - back on-off-on-topic: https://www.facebook.com/hillaryclinton ... 869467774/

[andrewjoy]

(3) changes to campaign finance, dramatically curbing the ability of billionaires and large corporations to fund congressional campaigns and maybe some supply of public money, and hopefully reclaiming some time for congresspeople to work on policy instead of continuous fundraising

Or just limit how much each candidate can spend to about 20,000 -25,000 USD , that has to include everything from travel to advertising to accommodation and staffing. So every single cent you spend or gets spent for you on your behalf as a candidate has to fall under that cost. No big gifts from someone to get you to think there way, they give you a gift of a 25,000 rolex then you have spend your money sorry. If you go over , your SOL you get disqualified even if you win. Thats for each candidate , you should limit each party for a few million dollars say 30-35 mill for the whole US election.

EDIT

and absolutely no granny farming

[Muirium]

As always, you'll need one of these:

Politics is about making things happen. Not just wishing idle fancies.

[andrewjoy]

You do know that that is implemented in the UK right , that is what happens

[Muirium]

More or less. And you do know that America is a different country, right? There's immense vested interests in preventing such reform. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

As for "granny farming"…

[andrewjoy]

More or less. And you do know that America is a different country, right? There's immense vested interests in preventing such reform. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

As for "granny farming"…

http://www.waywordradio.org/granny_farming_1/

[Muirium]

Ah, I thought you were smearing Hillary and her fellow aged and gendered supporters again. Come November, she'll have plenty of young folk, and even males, voting for her against that eijit, too. Especially those with (nonwhite) skin in the game.

Besides, old people *are* conservative. They even show up that way in opinion polls. Voting is what passes as fun for them!

[fohat]

Besides, old people *are* conservative.

Speak for yourself, sonny.
I support Bernie, the oldest of the candidates.