Who is going to win this election in November?

[JeffinOakland]

The "disease" is dumb people, which is most people. If you vote "Democrat" or "Republican", you are part of the problem. Fuck your team colors and vote for who you think the best candidate is. If you voted for someone who is obviously doing a shitty job, don't vote for them again. They aren't your kid or your parent. You aren't obligated to love them no matter what.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

The "disease" is dumb people, which is most people. If you vote "Democrat" or "Republican", you are part of the problem. Fuck your team colors and vote for who you think the best candidate is. If you voted for someone who is obviously doing a shitty job, don't vote for them again. They aren't your kid or your parent. You aren't obligated to love them no matter what.

Cool, nice way to write off 90% of the electorate! That'll make ya some friends.

 

[JeffinOakland]

Cool, nice way to write off 90% of the electorate! That'll make ya some friends.

Who says I'm interested in making friends with people too dumb to see beyond their tribalism?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Who says I'm interested in making friends with people too dumb to see beyond their tribalism?

The point is that yelling at 90% of the population to stop doing something... doesn't work.

 

[JeffinOakland]

The point is that yelling at 90% of the population to stop doing something... doesn't work.

I never thought it would.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

The point is that yelling at 90% of the population to stop doing something... doesn't work.

The thing is every democratic country has this kind of problem. Over here we have a 2 party system with the Labor Party (left leaning and not conservative) and the Liberal Party (who are conservative and right wing) and have a name that means the opposite. Anyway we have the same situation where people vote for either party stupidly enough because their parents voted that way, and their parents voted that way.

How stupid is that?

 

[Snaploud]

The "disease" is dumb people, which is most people. If you vote "Democrat" or "Republican", you are part of the problem. Fuck your team colors and vote for who you think the best candidate is.

Okay, I'll bite.

Representative democracy cannot be truly representative without parties and party platforms. The common American idea that you should vote for the 'individual and not the party' is both politically naive and liable to result in either governmental paralysis (due to a lack of cooperative action) or dictatorial action (the individual over-riding the collective).

If you voted for someone who is obviously doing a shitty job, don't vote for them again. They aren't your kid or your parent. You aren't obligated to love them no matter what.

Polling consistently indicates that people love their own representatives while hating Congress. That's not an indication of people voting for candidates they hate. That's an indication that collective will is not being expressed in a way that the people find satisfactory. Personally, I think that has a lot to do with gerrymandering (leading to the collective will being inappropriately expressed), but it also has to do with our form of representative democracy itself. If anything, our system under-performs in allowing elected parties to hold power and allow their platforms to be implemented on a national level. Parliamentary systems are much better in this regard.

 

[ichab]

The "disease" is dumb people, which is most people. If you vote "Democrat" or "Republican", you are part of the problem. Fuck your team colors and vote for who you think the best candidate is. If you voted for someone who is obviously doing a shitty job, don't vote for them again. They aren't your kid or your parent. You aren't obligated to love them no matter what.

Best post of the thread and I agree. The trouble is most people are too apathetic to actually bother doing something as boring as "research" all the candidates. Hence the extremes dominance of the political process.

 

[JeffinOakland]

Best post in this entire thread.

Thank you.

 

[JWPlatt]

Cool, nice way to write off 90% of the electorate! That'll make ya some friends.

Have you learned nothing? It's closer to 50% of the electorate under the bell curve who are stupid. The lowest 10% are idiots - not stupid.

If you vote "Democrat" or "Republican", you are part of the problem.

Yes. Sheep.

Polling consistently indicates that people love their own representatives while hating Congress. That's not an indication of people voting for candidates they hate.

Let's not conflate our representative doing a shitty job with hating them. We can love them but know they're doing a shitty job. The mentioned parent-child effect can apply here.

Your point about gerrymandering is a good one about selfishly corrupting the process.

 

[Ensign]

If they ignore fair elections what makes you think they won't ignore term limits?Those countries where "rigging" happens tend to be dictatorships which are almost always the result of using that flawed form of government.

There are multiple protections, in the United States, against dictatorship, term limits is just one of them. These obstacles to dictatorship are overcome in different ways and at different times.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Well this wasn't totally unexpected

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/po...s-followers/LcCY6e0QOcfH8VdeK9UdsM/story.html

And if anyone of these upstanding people goes off the reservation and does something nutty will anyone take responsibility?

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Well this wasn't totally unexpected

https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/po...s-followers/LcCY6e0QOcfH8VdeK9UdsM/story.html

And if anyone of these upstanding people goes off the reservation and does something nutty will anyone take responsibility?

Of course not.

This is stochastic terrorism. You repeat incendiary things over and over and over, suggesting there is a grave injustice happening, and while you don't explicitly tell the people listening to you to do something about it, the implication is that they can't take this lying down. Somebody needs to do something. And when somebody does, well, you can just disavow them--you never said they should take up arms! You're not responsible!

It's a way to incite people without rising to the legal definition of incitement.

 

[Mudd]

Term limits are a dumb idea that comes around every so often because people find taking sustained political action to be frustrating. It demands too much patience.

Putting amateurs in charge almost never works, unless your intent is to just blow things up.

 

[Squiggy]

We have term limits because of 12 years of FDR. Would've been 16.
We had that much FDR because he won elections.
He won elections by giving people what they wanted, be it economic or military leadership.

It's not like he forced the country to vote for him, or got an outrageous 98% of the vote. There were options, but they were bad options. Anyone remember Alf Landon? No?

So really we have term limits because one President was too popular and the opposing party - rather than try to be that popular - just added a rule saying it didn't matter any more. So now you couldn't get a third Reagan or Clinton term. In exchange you get Nixon or Bush. Well done! Good thing we have term limits to keep us all safe from people who make the country happy.

It's just as shitty as gerrymandering yourself into winning the House with a minority of the vote. But noooo....term limits are the answer.

 

[Makarov]

Reasonable term limits are a smart idea in my book. This election is filled with nonsense and I became much less inclined to both candidates as it went on.

 

[Snaploud]

I can see both sides of arguments over term limits for the presidency. I could never get behind the idea of term limits for the legislative branch, though. It was a disaster in Florida, and it would be a disaster on the national level.

 

[BillJ]

Some countries have leaders who 'win' elections again and again by rigging them. Term limits protect against this.

You don't think those with money simply wouldn't funnel it to pliable candidates anyway?

 

[MacLeod]

Some countries have leaders who 'win' elections again and again by rigging them. Term limits protect against this.

Not really, given the situation you describe one of the first things I would do after being elected Leader by rigging the election would be to abolish term limits.

But which of the developed democracies have leaders who win elections by rigging them?

We also have two main types of democracies, Parliamentary and Preidential so which system is more prone to leaders rigging them so that they'll win?

The upside to term limits that if you have an a politican who is doing a bad job they can only remain in office for so long, the downside is those that are doing a good job can only remain in office for so long.

 

[Smellincoffee]

In reference to the OP, the banks and the advertisers. They always win.