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PoliGAF 2016 |OT5| Archdemon Hillary Clinton vs. Lice Traffic Jam
- Thread starter Spoiled Milk
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AntraxSuicide
Banned
I don't know what they could've done differently, but they really shouldn't have gotten to the point where the race was between 2 completely eliminated candidates and a frontrunner they openly hate. Because the very presence of Kasich and Cruz in this race demonstrates that they're thinking about stealing the election. That alone is driving up Trump support.
Politics is just a longer word for war. And in war, if you're planning on leaving large chunks of people on your side out in the cold (Trump supporters), you don't fucking tell them that for months before you do it.
Edit: Sigh, I lost a lot of comments just now
Fantomena, yes, 3rd party is a waste. You just end up stealing votes from the party closest to you in ideology.
Orbis Tabula
Member
Oh, man. That's awesome. Go McAuliffe!
People who registered to be voters who don't vote in 2 consecutive federal elections are purged from voter registration lists after a fifth year of inactivity in New York state. What that means is there are probably a chunk of people who registered in 2008, voted in 2008, and then didn't vote since then that are 'purged' from the lists.
The reason for this is that people die over time, and people complained there are dead people on the voter registration lists, so now the Board of Election removes people who don't vote. Of course, after people spend years not participating, they complain that they can't vote because they don't vote.
Two: these are primary elections. To my understanding, Norway doesn't allow voters to select the leaders of the political parties to run for prime minister at all! That is fantastically less democratic than the US primary process, which is used to determine the leaders of political parties. Not the president of the US. So what position are you in to be complaining about how undemocratic the primaries are?
Three: is it wrong for party members to pick their party leader without outside interference?
Four: To understand why in particular preventing outside votes in a party's primary is important in New York, you have to understand that the ratio of Democrats to Republicans in New York is nearly 2 to 1. What that means is that in New York, with a primary open to any affiliation, there is a high chance Democrats can easily participate in their own primary and still spoil the Republican one.
To give you an idea of how that can happen, in the Tuesday primary:
1,817,552 Democrats voted in the Democratic primary, while
868,987 Republicans voted in the Republican primary.
The number of registered Democrats in the whole state totals 5,792,497.
The number of registered Republicans in the whole state totals 2,731,688.
That means some 4 million Democrats didn't vote, while only about 2 million Republicans didn't vote. But even if all Republicans voted, Democrats have the numbers to subvert the NY Republicans' choice. And that is why the state insists on a closed primary.
It's incredibly silly to me that you just rush in and it's complaint after complaint and "so undemocratic" and "fucked up" but it's like you don't even stop to think or learn about the situation in NY state.
In US elections it's First Past the Post. If you don't get to 270, you don't win. Considering the dominance of the two major political parties, 3rd party candidates will never be successful enough to get to 270. Additionally, most 3rd parties have policies that overlap with one of the big two. Therefore, a major 3rd party candidate that takes away votes is probably going to take those votes from the candidate they are most aligned with, usually ensuring the victory of the opposing candidate.
He'll fall from his throne in scandal or incompetence like the best of the Liberals.
I am pretty sure you come from Sweden? In which case, the selection of your Speaker and Prime Minister (to say nothing of the monarchy) are done as completely internal processes among elected party officials. In effect your primary is 100% superdelegates and 0% democratic participation.
This leaves out, of course, the fact that you also don't vote for individual candidates at all but for the party slate*, so even your Riksdag is organized completely by internal party leaders with no participation from the citizenry.
So, like, I'm not sure why you would be surprised by the vastly more democratic American process?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election
* You could vote for an individual candidate, but either it would be a candidate from the slate, or your vote would, wonder of wonders, go to waste.
Giant Panda
Member
It's because of our first past the post system. If your vote a leftish 3rd party, all you do is split the vote among the left, which lets the Republicans win with less than a majority of support.
And yes, it's a dumb system. It's straight from democracy 1.0 in 1789. There's a firmware update, but we keep selecting remind me later.
and it just keeps going regardless.
gutter_trash
Banned
their General Election is not a popular vote system. it's a First Past the Post System which they call ''The Electoral College''
if a Party wins a State by 1 vote or 10000 votes, they win all the Electoral College Votes (like a point system) of that State.
After 12 years of reign yeah. They all fall after 10 to 12 years of reign
He'll fall from his throne in scandal or incompetence like the best of the Liberals.
Box of Kittens
Banned
Kasich won't be the nominee and, frankly, I don't think it would be smart to give it to him even if they could pull it off.
Ultimately it's the delegates who decide the nominee and Cruz has been hard at work making sure as many delegates as possible are loyal to him. It's not like Priebus or whoever can just say "nope, we're going with Kasich" if the delegates aren't willing to go along with it. I think it's very likely that either Trump wins on the first ballot or Cruz wins on the second or third ballot.
But let's suppose that somehow there's enough delegates who are willing to go along with a plan to give the nomination to the establishment's pick. In that scenario I don't see the pick being Kasich. First keep in mind that Kasich has made a lot of enemies, partly this election by staying in and splitting the stop-Trump vote and also over the years because of his abrasiveness and temper. If the establishment can get a non-Cruz, non-Trump nominee then they can rewrite the rules to nominate pretty much whomever they want and that person is unlikely to be Kasich.
Honestly, I think the optics would be better (really, less bad) if they nominate a "fresh face" over the guy who finished a distant third and basically was that high by virtue of stubbornly staying in the race after everybody else dropped out. I suspect that if the establishment is in the position to pick the nominee, they'll also want to shy away from someone the voters soundly rejected.
The other reason I think they shouldn't pick him even if they can is that his weaknesses as a candidate are magnified by running against a woman. The chance of him having an embarrassing public blowup seem awfully high in a race against Hillary Clinton and even if he can avoid that I think there will, at the very least, be a number of minor incidents that look bad for him. He'd be more electable than Trump or Cruz for sure, but if the GOP can handpick anyone they want, they can certainly find someone better.
To make a long story short, Paul Ryan is more likely to be the nominee than Kasich, and I don't think Ryan is at all likely to be the nominee.
Ultimately it's the delegates who decide the nominee and Cruz has been hard at work making sure as many delegates as possible are loyal to him. It's not like Priebus or whoever can just say "nope, we're going with Kasich" if the delegates aren't willing to go along with it. I think it's very likely that either Trump wins on the first ballot or Cruz wins on the second or third ballot.
But let's suppose that somehow there's enough delegates who are willing to go along with a plan to give the nomination to the establishment's pick. In that scenario I don't see the pick being Kasich. First keep in mind that Kasich has made a lot of enemies, partly this election by staying in and splitting the stop-Trump vote and also over the years because of his abrasiveness and temper. If the establishment can get a non-Cruz, non-Trump nominee then they can rewrite the rules to nominate pretty much whomever they want and that person is unlikely to be Kasich.
Honestly, I think the optics would be better (really, less bad) if they nominate a "fresh face" over the guy who finished a distant third and basically was that high by virtue of stubbornly staying in the race after everybody else dropped out. I suspect that if the establishment is in the position to pick the nominee, they'll also want to shy away from someone the voters soundly rejected.
The other reason I think they shouldn't pick him even if they can is that his weaknesses as a candidate are magnified by running against a woman. The chance of him having an embarrassing public blowup seem awfully high in a race against Hillary Clinton and even if he can avoid that I think there will, at the very least, be a number of minor incidents that look bad for him. He'd be more electable than Trump or Cruz for sure, but if the GOP can handpick anyone they want, they can certainly find someone better.
To make a long story short, Paul Ryan is more likely to be the nominee than Kasich, and I don't think Ryan is at all likely to be the nominee.
Orbis Tabula
Member
Let's say you're going out to dinner with eight other friends. You all have to go to the same place, one restaurant. 4 of your friends want Mexican, and four want Thai. Now you really want Chinese. Problem is, it would be really hard for you to get four more people to vote Chinese. However, you really, really hate Mexican. So you can vote for Chinese, but if a tie happens, you just go to the closest place, which is Mexican. So the choice is either vote for what you really want and end up with the thing you hate, or vote for Thai, which is close enough to Chinese for you, and at least get something good.
Just in time for Justin to start puberty.
Oops, I guess you come from Norway, not Sweden!
But it's the same deal. Norway uses party-list proportional representation, so you don't vote for a candidate at all, you vote for a slate of candidates selected internally by party leaders. There's no primary system whatsoever.
Norway's Prime Minister is selected by the Storting, meaning that it's again a purely internal process controlled by the candidates elected in the totally antidemocratic party-list system, so it too has no primary system and no direct engagement by citizenry in the process.
America's primary system is unquestionably more representative of the views of the people, and that's without even getting into the whole monarchy thing. (Although the monarchy probably makes your government more democratic according to political science.)
But it's the same deal. Norway uses party-list proportional representation, so you don't vote for a candidate at all, you vote for a slate of candidates selected internally by party leaders. There's no primary system whatsoever.
Norway's Prime Minister is selected by the Storting, meaning that it's again a purely internal process controlled by the candidates elected in the totally antidemocratic party-list system, so it too has no primary system and no direct engagement by citizenry in the process.
America's primary system is unquestionably more representative of the views of the people, and that's without even getting into the whole monarchy thing. (Although the monarchy probably makes your government more democratic according to political science.)
AntraxSuicide
Banned
I agree with all of this. It's already a shaky argument to give the nomination to the guy that's only got 7 states under his belt. The guy that's only got 1? Hell no. The party base would burn Cleveland to the ground before they accepted that.
Voysa Reezun
Banned
Thai food is terrible, like the American Independence Party of food genres, but your analogy is well-made.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Our system is first past the post, which means whoever gets the most votes simply wins. There's no run-offs, no alternative preference mechanisms, nothing. If you have four candidates and one gets 30% and the other three only get 20% then the 30% guy wins.
Over time this has consolidated voters into the two party system. It's rather similar to coalition government in other countries as parties used to wildly differ between regions (for example, southern Democrats or "Dixiecrats" used to be very conservative on social issues such as favoring segregationist policies, while northern Republicans used to be more liberal on social issues and were just Republicans because of fiscal policy), although that has changed in recent times and now a Republican from Massachusetts often will have very similar views to one from Texas. The Democratic Party is a little more diverse, but still much more ideologically coherent than it used to be.
Frankly for all the complaining about this system leaving out certain people, I'd say about 95% of America is represented well by either party. Even if someone doesn't like a party nominee that much, they'll still vote one or the other usually to keep the other guy out. Occasionally you'll have very remarkable candidates like Obama who unite the party and generate positive enthusiasm but this is pretty rare, it's more of a lesser of two evils thing for most people. In any case this prevents people from voting third party because they perceive the other major party's candidate as being dangerous and would rather vote for a Democrat/Republican in order to keep them out of office.
If you view this as a problem, the best way to solve it would be ranked choice voting in which you rank all of the candidates in the order that you would support them. Say Jill Stein is your first choice, Hillary Clinton your second and Donald Trump your third. They'll count up the first choice votes and whichever two get the most advance to a second round, in which they add up how many times those candidates appear as a second choice, third choice etc. so if Jill Stein isn't one of those top two, your vote instead goes to Hillary. This would allow many more people to vote for a third party that more closely aligns with their views without feeling like they're throwing away their vote, as they can be assured their vote will make its way to one of the winners. I don't think much would change in presidential elections (unless it's really close like 2000, which is a great example on why you shouldn't vote third party - if even a sliver of Nader supporters had backed Gore, we wouldn't have had Bush) but it could make for interesting results in downballot elections.
Macho Madness
Member
I just want to know what they've been feeding McAuliffe to make him ... Good. Why is he good?
gutter_trash
Banned
Just in time for Justin to start puberty.
I think they learned their lesson from their 10 year purgatory.
The generational change has rebooted the party away from internal factions wars.
but if you would ask me if I was either on the Chrétien camp or the Martin camp.
I was on #teamChrétien. Martin was too soft on separatists IMO.
Aaron Strife
Banned
Hey ivy. Did you see in that story about the RNC shifting to Senate races that private Republican polling has Hillary beating Trump in NC? Good times.
There was a Washington primary poll.
http://www.king5.com/news/politics/presidential-polling-ahead-of-washingtons-primary/148027660
It was open-ended but it makes sense given the nature of how the Presidential primary is set up in Washington. Funny that Clinton is ahead (it's non-binding though) and interesting that Trump and Cruz are tied. I expected a Cruz win but you never know.
http://www.king5.com/news/politics/presidential-polling-ahead-of-washingtons-primary/148027660
It was open-ended but it makes sense given the nature of how the Presidential primary is set up in Washington. Funny that Clinton is ahead (it's non-binding though) and interesting that Trump and Cruz are tied. I expected a Cruz win but you never know.
Cock uses are trash.
Yup, but it is what it is. Trump being tied in first (on the GOP side) is interesting because I expected Washington to be a comfortable Cruz state.
That's retroactive momentum.
Good. The same goes for DC voting rights -- yeah, they might be giving votes to Democrats -- but morally, it's the right thing to do.
I'm going to be nervous until Indiana.
Macho Madness
Member
You can in the general.
Primaries are basically private events, they only started allowing people to vote for candidates from the 70s forward so it's a new thing.
you can vote without updating your party for the general. up to this point is just the internal party elections.
Aaron Strife
Banned
The GOP primary? Yeah, I'm leaning towards a Trump win but the dearth of polling doesn't give me too much confidence.
But he can make it up with those unbound PA delegates right?
This is what a lot of people can't seem to wrap their heads around. If the primaries were open, the Democrats would basically be able to choose both winners without any real trouble.
Macho Madness
Member
I think Indiana is going to go Trump but if there's a state where his trans statement is going to hurt...
Plinko
Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Yes, please continue telling me that Cruz isn't going to walk out of there with the nomination. It's blatantly obvious that's what is going to happen at this point.
Spoiled Milk
Banned
In California, the Republican primary is closed but the Democratic primary is open to independents. A similar solution in NY would be better.
Then you'll have people bitching about how unfair it is. Better to just have a unified rule so everyone can easily keep track of how it works.
Yeah but that feels shakier than an outright win of pledged delegates.
I think he has a pretty good defense for it by saying it is up to the States (which is the same view as Cruz). A Cruz spokesperson was getting hammered on CNN this morning because the anchors kept hitting him over the distinction between their view and Trump's.
RustyNails
Member
Its not. The majority of the PA unpledged delegates have said they will outright support whoever wins PA. It's like a micro-dem primary.
Didn't realize a Governor could do that.
I think once you've finished serving your time you should be able to vote again. Makes sense to lose that right when you are serving, but afterwards? Salt in the wounds really.
Aaron Strife
Banned
That moment when Trump gets saved by superdelegates
Frank the Great
Banned
I really do think Trump should hammer this home. Say I'm for states rights on these issues, but at least I don't hate gay people like Cruz, who is campaigning with a guy who wants to murder gays. He's not only mathematically eliminated, but a hateful person like that doesn't have a GE chance.
Most of the GOP might be racist-ish, but Trump got murdered for his outright racial shit. Not sure why Cruz skates on similar issues, especially if he's the nevertrump guy.
Macho Madness
Member
Not sure but I've already seen some people saying "I see you Terry, looking for that cabinet"
ItWasMeantToBe19
Banned
Someone is massacring children in Ohio right now...........
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/04/22/shooting-reportedly-kills-7-at-ohio-home.html
Trump got murdered for the Klan stuff because the Klan is the one area where even racists can say "I'm not racist, I don't like the Klan!" He didn't even lose support for it either, just got negative media attention.
Cruz LOVES Jesse Helms and Kasich adores Strom Thurmond (both were open white supremacists) so they're willing to partake openly racist things too, it's just that they're boring and creepy people so the media never covers them.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/04/22/shooting-reportedly-kills-7-at-ohio-home.html
Trump got murdered for the Klan stuff because the Klan is the one area where even racists can say "I'm not racist, I don't like the Klan!" He didn't even lose support for it either, just got negative media attention.
Cruz LOVES Jesse Helms and Kasich adores Strom Thurmond (both were open white supremacists) so they're willing to partake openly racist things too, it's just that they're boring and creepy people so the media never covers them.
backslashbunny,
If I'm not too late to the tax discussion(I'm catching up and I'm a few page late) I'd add that if you don't go into needlessly complicated situation it's indeed easy otherwise it's rather painful.
I move to the US in the middle of a year, I had to basically separate my income based on the location of my contract and declare the whole yearly income and the part paid in France and the US.
Then depending on how long I was in the US I get a deductible or not and then I can declare that the rest of my income was already covered by the other country and provide a reference to the tax form of the other country (because there's an agreement between the countries).
Now you double that declaration to the State level too.
And I still didn't trigger a warning that I was a special case that was worth investigating.
I can imagine the whole mechanism for what I described be at least 10 pages.
I don't think you can wave a magic wand and simplify the tax code like that and anyone saying he would simplify the code by closing loopholes is basically creating more venues for dollars not to be taxed.
Ok this made me laugh at least, I'll just say voting should be reformed as well but I'll leave it at that.
If I'm not too late to the tax discussion(I'm catching up and I'm a few page late) I'd add that if you don't go into needlessly complicated situation it's indeed easy otherwise it's rather painful.
I move to the US in the middle of a year, I had to basically separate my income based on the location of my contract and declare the whole yearly income and the part paid in France and the US.
Then depending on how long I was in the US I get a deductible or not and then I can declare that the rest of my income was already covered by the other country and provide a reference to the tax form of the other country (because there's an agreement between the countries).
Now you double that declaration to the State level too.
And I still didn't trigger a warning that I was a special case that was worth investigating.
I can imagine the whole mechanism for what I described be at least 10 pages.
I don't think you can wave a magic wand and simplify the tax code like that and anyone saying he would simplify the code by closing loopholes is basically creating more venues for dollars not to be taxed.
Ok this made me laugh at least, I'll just say voting should be reformed as well but I'll leave it at that.
Box of Kittens
Banned
In addition to what Aaron Strife said, the specific mechanisms of our presidential elections make third party runs especially difficult. The system was largely designed before political parties were a thing, and it didn't really account for them. Since then it's been tweaked here and there but in most respects we're a 21st century country using 18th century elections. As a result, it really doesn't work well with more than two viable candidates. Specific issues:
-We elect the president indirectly using the Electoral College. Essentially the citizens of a state elect members to a body whose job is to themselves elect the president and vice president. The ballot will list the name of the candidates for president and vice president, but one is really voting for a slate of electors pledged to vote for those candidates. One key rule is that the president must receive an absolute majority (that is, at least 270 out of 538) votes in the Electoral College. If not, the House of Representatives chooses the president (the specific procedure for doing so is very arcane). This has happened before, most recently in 1824, but it really puts pressure on people to vote for one of the top two candidates.
-Furthermore, although states are free to assign their electors pretty much however they want, nearly every state works by having the people vote and then giving all of its electors to the first place candidate (the only exceptions are Maine and Nebraska, which have provisions for splitting its electors in certain circumstances, but those are small states with few votes anyway). This creates a high bar for candidates to receive any electoral votes at all.
Some examples to illustrate the ridiculous level of dominance of the two major parties in the US.
-The House of Representatives has 435 seats. Every single representative is either a Democrat or a Republican.
-The Senate has 100 seats. Now "only" 98 of are either Republicans or Democrats. The other two (Angus King and Bernie Sanders) ran as independents in small states but are still members of the Democratic caucus, i.e., they function as Democrats.
-The most recent example of a strong third party run for president would be 1992. Ross Perot ran as an independent and got nearly 19% of the popular vote for president. How many of the 538 electoral votes did that earn him? Zero.
-The most recent presidential election to be won by a candidate who was neither a Republican nor a Democrat was 1848. Zachary Taylor was elected as the candidate of the Whig Party, which was one of the two main parties of the time (the Republican Party was founded in 1854).
Long story short, third party candidates tend to fare very poorly in the US, largely for structural reasons.
ItWasMeantToBe19
Banned
Men who get mad at their family and decide to start murdering their children and nephews and nieces really show that we need mandatory anger management classes in America.
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