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PoliGAF 2016 |OT8| No, Donald. You don't.

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Chichikov said:
Aaron Sorkin is truly the master of writing dialog that sounds clever at first, but the more you think about it you realize it's stupid.
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I keep seeing that bit posted as "the most honest three minutes in television history" when it's really the most sanctimonious three minutes in television history.
 
Y2Kev said:
I think DWS knows what she's said in email, so I imagine if there were more to come she'd already be out. That said, she's bad so she should be out because she's bad.
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Or she knows something is gonna force her out and it makes the timing better to resign on that.

Bernie called for her to go. No doubt clinton is OK with that. Bernie will get his scalp and there'll be a compromise candidate like Dean in 2004
 
thestopsign said:
Whenever I'm feeling down, I just look at the NYT Election page with the decision tree and remind myself that she literally just has to win Virginia and Florida to win. Or Virginia, PA, and NH. Even if Trump has a national lead in total votes, I doubt he wins due to electoral constrictions.
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Well, an electoral win with a popular loss is better than a Trump win but it's still really really really bad.
 
Joe Shlabotnik said:
Well, an electoral win with a popular loss is better than a Trump win but it's still really really really bad.
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I dunno. I mean, it's bad in that you'll have people attempting to delegitimize her, but you'll have that anyway. Nobody seems to care about how Bush swept into power on a WAVE!!! and then fucked everything up as though he had.
 
You'll have to forgive me because I'm a major pessimist. I just don't trust the American electorate is all.

How much of an impact do you all think those emails will have?
 
GutsOfThor said:
You'll have to forgive me because I'm a major pessimist. I just don't trust the American electorate is all.

How much of an impact do you all think those emails will have?
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None. Nobody will remember these emails in a week. DWS will step down at some point within a month. Everyone will move on with their lives.
 
I can't find the thread that was talking about all the planned Bernie protests, but:

VABVOX said:
Only a dozen @BernieSanders supporters have showed up for the demo scheduled for 8am...
Keeping 6 rescue trucks on hold.
#DemConvention

No.
Berners didn't get out of bed for protest THEY PLANNED.
Permit was for 30k pple.
A dozen showed.
#DemConvention
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shinra-bansho said:
The US presidential system, at least with regard to the executive branch, will naturally coalesce towards a two-party system.

I'm not sure what the alternative to the "shitty system" is.

Voting third party will basically always be pointless, unless you actually reach a point where you fracture one of the parties in two.
At which point the part that survives becomes the new party in the two party system.

Vote for whoever you want, but it does absolutely nothing.
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Fundamentally, I think it comes down to the fact that you cannot put an executive into power with the kind of authority the President has without a majority behind them. It's not like a PM where they're the leader of their party, and thus the leader of their coalition, and thus the leader of the state; the President sets our foreign policy, directs our armed forces, and has a huge influence on domestic conditions through various federal agencies. You can't give that kind of power away based on a simple plurality of voters. Thus, the 2-party arrangement: somebody has to get 51% of the votes, so logically, reducing the party count to 2 was going to happen anyway, regardless of the Electoral College.

NYCmetsfan said:
Flynn went full anti-Semite

https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/757225757919752192

This guy got a prime time speech and was on trumps short list.
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Oy vey. Not even trying.
 
pigeon said:
I don't think this is a particularly accurate ethical comparison.

Voting third-party is much more like refusing to buckle your child's seatbelt. If there is an accident, you may not be responsible for it, but you are responsible for the consequences.
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I disagree.

This is about having no options but bad options. The use of a seatbelt is not a bad option. And even if there were no seatbelt, you could probably create a makeshift one. With the two party system, you literally have no other viable options.

shinra-bansho said:
The US presidential system, at least with regard to the executive branch, will naturally coalesce towards a two-party system.

I'm not sure what the alternative to the "shitty system" is.

Voting third party will basically always be pointless, unless you actually reach a point where you fracture one of the parties in two.
Vote for whoever you want, but it does absolutely nothing.

At which point the part that survives becomes the new party in the two party system.
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Then re-write the constitution to allow better representation of all of the government's constituents. Saying "this is just how it is" is simply pure intellectual laziness.
 
brainchild said:
I disagree.

This is about having no options but bad options. The use of a seatbelt is not a bad option. And even if there were no seatbelt, you could probably create a makeshift one. With the two party system, you literally have no other viable options.
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Hillary Clinton is not a bad option.
 
I don't understand why the DNC and other non-tech savy organizations don't use Gmail or some other freely available email service that's actually run by professionals who understand security.
 
jbug617 said:
all the protesters are on Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.
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Retweeting the same shit from the comfort of your parents house is a lot easier than going out in 100 degree heat. And no I'm not referring to all Bernie supporters, I'm talking about the wackos on most social media
 
brainchild said:
Then re-write the constitution to allow better representation of all of the government's constituents. Saying "this is just how it is" is simply pure intellectual laziness.
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Suggest an amendment.

Maybe there should be a council of ten copresidents. And they each appoint their own Cabinet.

You accuse intellectual laziness when the nature of the system naturally leads to two major parties, something that isn't uncommon in other forms of government anyway.

And your response is... change it. Somehow. Who knows.

Jibber jabber.
 
Look, I love West Wing as much as the next guy.

It drives me up a wall when people post a clip from it and are like "Why can't Obama/insert Dem politician be more like Jed Bartlet?"

I don't know, because he's a fictional fucking character? Why can't he be more like Frank Underwood? Why can't he be more like Sherlock Holmes? Why can't he be more like Captain Hook? Who the fuck cares?
 
NYCmetsfan said:
They aren't "victims" of a two party system. They are people who are complaining the system can't give them everything and humanity and society have flaws in divning the choice of 300 million people for ONE spot.

It's a bullshit excuse. There's no way to fix it. There's one seat. They don't have the numbers to even out number their ideological brothers but their pissed anyways.

They're not victims their entitled people who believe their opinions should be respected more than others.
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We're all victims of the repercussions of a two-party system!

Just because you're willing to compromise your vote, it doesn't mean that you're not negatively affected by it. It would be in the best interest of the people to minimize that impact as much as possible, and we can't do that unless the people have better representation in the general election. Two choices selected by private parties is not enough. We don't need a perfect candidate, but you're less likely to pick a horrible candidate if you have a wider selection to choose from.

What you've done is simply create a false dichotomy where people have to make a choice between perfect options and shitty options, but protestors of the two-party system aren't necessarily looking for a perfect candidate.

pigeon said:
Hillary Clinton is not a bad option.
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This is a much more subjective argument than asserting that a seat belt isn't a bad option!
 
brainchild said:
We're all victims of the repercussions of a two-party system!

Just because you're willing to compromise your vote, it doesn't mean that you're not negatively affected by it. It would be in the best interest of the people to minimize that impact as much as possible, and we can't do that unless the people have better representation in the general election. Two choices selected by private parties is not enough. We don't need a perfect candidate, but you're less likely to pick a horrible candidate if you have a wider selection to choose from.

What you've done is simply create a false dichotomy where people have to make a choice between perfect options and shitty options, but protestors of the two-party system aren't necessarily looking for a perfect candidate.



This is a much more subjective argument than asserting that a seat belt isn't a bad option!
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I mean, saying Bernie Sanders is a good option is also inherently a subjective argument.

I think it's interesting when Bernie supporters take to complaining about the two party system. Because if Bernie had won no one would be saying a goddamn thing - except of course, for people who don't like Bernie or Trump. Maybe even people who preferred Clinton in the primaries! And what do you say to that person?

Like fundamentally I agree we should have more options in a democracy but it all comes off as sour grapes.
 
The alternative is even more undemocratic - a coalition emerges from the multiple parties in the legislature and they pick one of their own to be the leader.
 
brainchild said:
Two choices selected by private parties is not enough. We don't need a perfect candidate, but you're less likely to pick a horrible candidate if you have a wider selection to choose from.
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This is a BS argument. there were literally 17 separate candidates running for the republican slot.

17!

and an additional 5 on the democratic side, though admittedly 2 of those were never viable.

an additional third party candidate or three would not have changed the outcome at all, nor would it have provided significantly more choice than already existed.

It's down to "two candidates" but those were selected by voters, not "private parties." eventually it will be down to "one candidate" selected by those voters, whether you start with 22 candidates or 100. given the nature of finding one man or woman to represent 330 million people or so, there are always going to be an asshurt minority complaining that their views werent adequately represented.

tough shit, that's called compromise.
 
Aaron Strife said:
Look, I love West Wing as much as the next guy.

It drives me up a wall when people post a clip from it and are like "Why can't Obama/insert Dem politician be more like Jed Bartlet?"

I don't know, because he's a fictional fucking character? Why can't he be more like Frank Underwood? Why can't he be more like Sherlock Holmes? Why can't he be more like Captain Hook? Who the fuck cares?
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Also, Bartlett's reelection campaign was pure liberal wish fulfillment post-Gore v. Bush. An appeal to intelligence and complexity winning the day? Sure.

(Of course, at the time it was a nice wish to see fulfilled. But if anyone truly believes those speeches would be as well received in real life, they need to step outside of their bubble)
 
brainchild said:
We're all victims of the repercussions of a two-party system!

Just because you're willing to compromise your vote, it doesn't mean that you're not negatively affected by it. It would be in the best interest of the people to minimize that impact as much as possible, and we can't do that unless the people have better representation in the general election. Two choices selected by private parties is not enough. We don't need a perfect candidate, but you're less likely to pick a horrible candidate if you have a wider selection to choose from.

What you've done is simply create a false dichotomy where people have to make a choice between perfect options and shitty options, but protestors of the two-party system aren't necessarily looking for a perfect candidate.
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Are you just looking for a parliamentary 'coalition government' type system? I'd personally be fine with something like that; let's say Dems get 40% and some non-crazy version of the greens get 15%, and they form a coalition government to work together.

But this would require a hell of an amendment. And the end results of which would be similar to what we get now. You can express dissent within your party, and parties over time change because of this. The big tent system we have just means that people who are somewhat ideologically similar have to work together under the same name as opposed to under different names as part of a coalition government. People just need to get over the idea that the same party means ideological lockstep.
 
brainchild said:
This is a much more subjective argument than asserting that a seat belt isn't a bad option!
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That's true. :) My choice of metaphor is certainly linked to my priors.

I know second-hand of like large groups of people who refuse to wear their seat belts because they think it's a government imposition, however. (Mostly they live in New Hampshire.) I'm sure if you asked those people they would say something about the low frequency of car accidents and how wearing a seat belt makes your driving less attentive (this is about as far as I can take this metaphor).

So that's kind of driving my comparison.
 
thcsquad said:
Are you just looking for a parliamentary 'coalition government' type system? I'd personally be fine with something like that; let's say Dems get 40% and some non-crazy version of the greens get 15%, and they form a coalition government to work together.

But this would require a hell of an amendment. And the end results of which would be similar to what we get now. You can express dissent within your party, and parties over time change because of this. The big tent system we have just means that people who are somewhat ideologically similar have to work together under the same name as opposed to under different names as part of a coalition government. People just need to get over the idea that the same party means ideological lockstep.
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exactly.
 
I'm sympathetic to arguments about the merits of other political systems (though all have their disadvantages). I'm just not sure what a vote for a presidential candidate who's going to get like 1% of the vote actually does to the end of reform. Especially when it's a candidate as unappealing as, say, Jill Stein.
 
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