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United States42008 Posts
On September 25 2016 02:00 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2016 01:39 TheDwf wrote:On September 25 2016 01:23 Gorsameth wrote:On September 25 2016 01:18 TheDwf wrote:On September 25 2016 01:15 Plansix wrote:On September 25 2016 01:06 TheDwf wrote:
I assume the Monday debate won't include the other candidates? No, they did not get 15%. And how do people feel about it? This threshold sounds like it's designed to make it impossible for smaller parties/candidates to have access to the big scene. Them being on the stage would just take time away from the real candidate. The electoral collage makes the US a two party system, trying to pretend its anything else is pointless. Yeah well, when you get Clinton vs Trump as the result of your political system, you should maybe ask yourself a few questions... Plenty of people here have advocated fixing the system so that more parties become viable but your not going to do that by putting 4 people on stage instead of 2.
Only the two dominant parties created by the two party system have the power to end it, and then even only working in concert. It's not changing, not ever.
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I'm going to abstain since my state is deep blue and Hillary doesn't deserve any more of the popular vote than absolutely necessary.
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The two party system is not so bad if you consider it.
In a parliamentary system with a president like France, it's the top two parties with winning chances anyway. The difference there is the fringes have their own parties, because they're trying to win seats in parliament and so on. In the US, those fringes are attached to the two major parties by default, meaning your starting point is a coalition and not just a measly party.
Think of it as a giant runoff. A fringe candidate like Ralph Nader wouldn't win in any system (Maybe slightly higher chances outside the US sysem). But if you do get a major party nomination, like Bernie Sanders came close to doing, your winning chances suddenly jump much higher than they would if you were a fringe candidate stuck in a fringe party.
Real third parties show up at the presidential level during transitional periods, when you have one party splitting (Teddy Roosevelt), one party supplanting another (Lincoln), or a towering figure who can just come in and compete (Ross Perot). It's just not every election gets to be that interesting.
What most third parties end up doing is having an effect on the conversation and the focus of the major party candidates. And that's what the whole US electoral process is supposed to be about. The reason the presidential campaigns last for months and over a year, even though a term is only 4 years to begin with, is we're supposed to use that time to carve the candidates into perfect versions of what we want and steer the direction of the parties.
The reason this year is different is because nobody on one side wants to consider playing ball with the other guy, making it a contentious historical fork. Those happen too.
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On September 24 2016 09:32 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2016 17:16 ChristianS wrote:
But I wasn't really looking to pick a fight either. I don't really long to be a civil rights crusader. The 50's and 60's sound awful, and I'm glad I didn't have to be around for it. I honestly wish that we were having a relatively normal election between, like, Tim Kaine and Jeb Bush, and I could tune out and read the occasional headline without click on it and maybe get around to registering to vote if I had nothing better to do, but I probably never would because I wouldn't care that much who won. This part is pretty illustrative. Jeb Bush particularly is the kind of establishment candidate everybody likes: stands for nothing, doesn't fight for anything. To me it's looking at the looming debt, lawlessness, and bureaucratic control and deciding that everything fine, let's have some more of it! I even get some of the wistful feelings for an area of boring politics. Not for today's age, try the 1950s.
Well it's hard to tell how I would feel if there were a Republican candidate who stood for debt reduction, restoring rule of law to American government, reducing red tape, and all that other stuff Republicans used to stand for. We may never know, because Donald Trump is not that man. His tax proposals are about as bad for the debt as any we've seen from a nominee in a long time, he only talks about "fixing bureaucracy" or "reducing government spending" in the vaguest of terms, and he's shown blatant disrespect for rule of law. Hell, we catch a criminal and we put them in prison, or give them healthcare while they're in jail, or give them a lawyer, and he throws a fit. He doesn't see why we shouldn't go out there and punish terrorists' families for what they've done. He favors racial profiling and a "stop and frisk" policy across the country's police forces. That kind of justice isn't about rule of law and due process. It's about riling up your friends about how bad the suspect is, and going down there and beating the shit out of him, maybe killing him, because we all just know he did it. It is, again, the type of justice seen in lynch mobs and pogroms and vigilanteism.
Show nested quote +Instead we've got a large, disgruntled population of lower- and middle-class white people who feel that they've been wronged by the world. They think they used to have some kind of glory and power, but now their manufacturing jobs are fading away and they're losing their privileged place in the world, and they feel betrayed and unsafe and powerless. We've got a demagogue candidate who's appealing to this population by telling them that they lost their power because of Mexicans and Muslims and China. He's parading around families of people that were raped or murdered by illegal Mexicans to gin up a rage against these foreigners that are raping and murdering their wives and children. He's saying the whole world is laughing at them because they don't win any more. And he's promising them that if they support him, then by the time he's done, nobody will laugh at them again. Lest we forget, we had a political class of BOTH parties that declared they would fight for their jobs and bring back all this economic growth and prosperity. You try explaining that most manufacturing jobs aren't coming back when you've lied for your entire political career. The backwards trade view that dominated both Trump & Bernie's campaigns is primarily the result of bad education and political lies that eroded people's faith in government.
Donald Trump hasn't lied about it for his entire political career be cause he doesn't have a political career. He's under no obligation to lie to these people. He does it because he knows their hurt pride and their outrage helps him, and it can be elevated by lying to them and telling them there was no reason their jobs had to go away, it's those dirty liberals and cuckservatives that gave their jobs away in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation or w/e. The more trivial and unnecessary it seems, the more outrageous it is that those people didn't consider these poor and middle class white people's interests. When in reality, the only way to save those jobs (protectionist trade policy) would have hurt those workers just as much.Show nested quote +This is not a drill, this is how real life racial persecution gets started. This is the type of movement that used to lead to pogroms and lynchings and blood libel. People get so caught up in the movement and the propaganda and the cult of personality around a charismatic leader that they stop paying attention to facts and policy, to the point that you can explain to them that the crime rate is down, not up, that they lost their manufacturing jobs to the inexorable forces of globalism and no one can bring them back, and that illegal immigrants actually commit violent crime at a lower rate than the rest of the population, but it has absolutely no bearing on how they feel. Not by a long shot. The reason we get stories about illegal alien rapists in the country is nobody cares about securing the border. The reason we get repeat offenders is the release policies and deportation policies and sanctuary city laws create a catch and release system. If this issue got even a fraction of the news dedicated to black men shot by police, justified and unjustified, it wouldn't be an issue because the American people would demand an end. But it's awfully inconvenient for comprehensive immigration plans and amnesty/citizenship plans to deal with people that have nine previous felonies and one deportation being arrested for another crime. Two prior deportations on record, but now he's back for felony sexual penetration with force. Now do you have a heart? Would you sooner go up to a grieving black mother and tell her that her son deserved to die, or a grieving white mother and tell her that the illegal alien that killed her daughter is a member of a group with lower-than-average crime rates? When you show callous disregard for every anecdote of another death or rape, that's what builds resentment. Sanctuary cities are never brought up by your Tim Caines and Jeb Bushes, and they are one part of letting criminal aliens go free and flee deportation.
It's not really about having a heart. No, I wouldn't tell a grieving black mother that her son deserved to die, or tell a grieving white mother that it was really improbable for an illegal alien to have done this, and it would have been far more likely to be an American citizen. I would tell them I'm sorry for their loss.
But Donald Trump isn't just telling victims he's sorry for their loss. He's parading these victims in front of millions of people to try to tell everyone, "this is what illegal Mexicans do." As he's said from the beginning, "they're rapists." Victim worship is a well-worn tradition of racist movements to make followers feel like they're not attacking members of that race, they're defending themselves from that race! That illegal immigrants actually have a lower rate of violent crime than the rest of the population would seem to prove that preventing violent crime is not really a legitimate reason to think we should crack down on illegal immigrants, but by arguing with anecdotes instead of statistics, Trump avoids that issue and continues to explicitly and implicitly slander a whole class of people (who happen to have a different skin color).
Worth noting this isn't really equivalent to cases of police brutality. If I kill someone, it's not national news; if a cop kills someone, it is. That's because police are supposed to protect us. If the cop was justified, most people aren't too bothered by the news. But when a black guy calls the police because an armed robber was in his house, and then the cops show up and shoot him instead, it would seem to highlight that the justice system is not working for black people. In the single greatest situation in which you would want the police to come defend you (armed intruders are in your house), he's still better off taking his chances with the armed intruders. If these cases were very rare, and highlighting them was in spite of statistics, it would be the same. But these cases happen frequently, and are indicative of statistical fact – black people are far, far more likely to be wrongfully shot by a police officer.
Show nested quote +Seems like you're throwing out a lot of punches at stuff I'm not sure if you're assuming I support. I'm also not sure what's meant by terms like "racial realism." It seems to denote a position which acknowledges the realities of race (about which this "regressive left" is presumably in denial), but I'm not sure what realities you think those are. A white supremacist might say they're a "racial realist" for acknowledging that white people are better than black people. An SJW might call themselves a "racial realist" for acknowledging the power dynamics between whites and various minorities in America today, such that a "color-blind" approach can't solve racial issues. I assume you're in neither of these camps, so you probably mean something more along the lines of acknowledging black culture has some toxic trends which contribute to blacks' underprivileged state (which the regressive left insists is a racist position)? I'm only guessing at your meaning here. I'm just using as mushy of a term I could find to contrast with the similar passage you used originally. Progress and racial equality are in the eyes of the beholder. How much discrimination in job applicants is permissible to achieve racial quotas? Is disparate impact alone enough to prove racism and discrimination? How do you square equal protection under the law and disparate impact provisions? It's a very easy thing to believe in a utopia of an "inevitable march towards progress and greater racial equality," but when it comes down to policy, a lot of it looks like pushing for the hardest discriminatory hiring systems and promotion rules, throwing out good candidates for candidates with the right skin color in the name of equality. I say racial realism to call attention to the mushiness typifying the debate (apparently the alt-right has already defined it and added it to their lexicon--oops). After all, who can be against progress and racial equality or antiracist attitudes? Let me just keep it simple. Staying in reality and approaching race with a healthy attitude means reducing and eliminating how many issues we observe purely through the lens of race. It's police training on brutality and firearm discipline first, not white cops shooting unarmed black teens. Fix the problem, don't racialize the problem for political power and influence. Understand that making everything about race demonizes whites and white hispanics and poisons cooperation on real issues. Your talk about Trump inciting future racial persecution is a good case in point. Fix the issues and let tempers go back down, don't pretend the man in front of the movement is using race for nefarious purposes.
So this is more or less what I thought, you're throwing out a lot of punches against stuff I didn't really advocate. So let's say you're right about this stuff. Let's say we should abolish affirmative action. Let's say that police brutality really doesn't have anything to do with race. Let's say white people are right to be mad that they're being passed over for jobs and college admissions due to affirmative action.
None of that excuses the stuff I'm criticizing in the Trump movement. Slandering Mexicans as rapists is still racist. Birtherism is still racist. Trying to convince everyone that their women and children won't be safe while those illegal Mexicans are still around is still racist. The alt right is still:
a) racist af,
b) growing rapidly in popularity (in large part because of Trump), and
c) enthusiastically backing Donald Trump 100%.
It's been a while since we've seen a racial demagogue run for such a high office in the US, but we really still ought to be able to recognize it when we see it. Worth noting that you skipped over the first part of my reply, which actually went into some of the explicitly racist shit Donald Trump has said and done in his lifetime (e.g. really blatantly discriminating against blacks in his apartment buildings because he preferred to rent to Jews and rich white guys).
Show nested quote +On September 23 2016 21:18 xDaunt wrote:On September 23 2016 18:42 Acrofales wrote:On September 23 2016 17:16 ChristianS wrote:On September 23 2016 15:49 Danglars wrote:On September 23 2016 15:03 ChristianS wrote:
Jesus this thread is depressing sometimes.
The last ~24 hours of discussion have put a sobering thought into my head, and I wonder what you guys think of it. Basically, in the last 50 or so years, there's been a strong anti-racist movement in the country as a whole. Laws that discriminate against blacks became widely considered unacceptable, public figures are shunned for expressing racist ideas or using racist epithets. The implied justification was that we as a society were making a concerted effort to eliminate racism as much as possible, and drive whatever resistant strains that survived to . Considered with other historical moves towards equality (elimination of slavery, blacks joining the military, Brown v. Board, etc.), it fit nicely with an overarching narrative of racial progress.
Maybe this is just a problem with anecdotal evidence, but it seems to me those attitudes are completely different in a lot of people today. Hardened Trump supporters often try to deny that Trump is a racist, but far more frequently I see people that just don't seem to care much. They might even lean toward thinking he probably is, but it's just not that important an issue. This is really baffling to me, since for my whole life there's been a widespread cultural agreement that overt racism is one of the ugliest sides of human civilization and absolutely cannot be tolerated, but in the broad view of history, racism is absolutely the norm. Not always as bad as early American South racism, but it's always been pretty normal to distrust people with different cultural and ethnic background than you, treat them worse, value their life less than that of your family or friends or tribe members. I always figured that was just part of progress – unlike humans for most of history, we have cars and refrigerators and computers and a prevailing cultural understanding that racism is bad. It's a nice stroll through memory lane, but you make a sudden leap into modern times by contrasting the civil rights era with Trump and his supporters. Sit at the back of the bus was racism. Separate eating establishments based on race was racism. Immigration policy isn't. Political invective on several issues isn't (though abrasive speech will still cause others to bristle no matter the subject). You're right to call it anecdotal, and it's intensely subjective. You'll see the comparisons to late 1800s racism and xenophobia, others will see you as a wannabe crusader longing for a bygone era but without a real civil rights cause today. Worth noting I never said Trump's immigration policy means he's racist. I was honestly more focused on Trump himself. Being prosecuted by Nixon's Justice Department for really explicitly discriminating against black tenants in his hotels back in the 70's. That stuff by Jack O'Donnell about how when he was president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino, Trump went off about not wanting a black guy as an accountant because blacks are lazy, and he only wants Jews counting his money. Calling Mexicans rapists. Those shitty stereotypes he embraced talking to the Republican Jewish Coalition. Y'know, that stuff. But I wasn't really looking to pick a fight either. I don't really long to be a civil rights crusader. The 50's and 60's sound awful, and I'm glad I didn't have to be around for it. I honestly wish that we were having a relatively normal election between, like, Tim Kaine and Jeb Bush, and I could tune out and read the occasional headline without click on it and maybe get around to registering to vote if I had nothing better to do, but I probably never would because I wouldn't care that much who won. Instead we've got a large, disgruntled population of lower- and middle-class white people who feel that they've been wronged by the world. They think they used to have some kind of glory and power, but now their manufacturing jobs are fading away and they're losing their privileged place in the world, and they feel betrayed and unsafe and powerless. We've got a demagogue candidate who's appealing to this population by telling them that they lost their power because of Mexicans and Muslims and China. He's parading around families of people that were raped or murdered by illegal Mexicans to gin up a rage against these foreigners that are raping and murdering their wives and children. He's saying the whole world is laughing at them because they don't win any more. And he's promising them that if they support him, then by the time he's done, nobody will laugh at them again. This is not a drill, this is how real life racial persecution gets started. This is the type of movement that used to lead to pogroms and lynchings and blood libel. People get so caught up in the movement and the propaganda and the cult of personality around a charismatic leader that they stop paying attention to facts and policy, to the point that you can explain to them that the crime rate is down, not up, that they lost their manufacturing jobs to the inexorable forces of globalism and no one can bring them back, and that illegal immigrants actually commit violent crime at a lower rate than the rest of the population, but it has absolutely no bearing on how they feel. My sobering thought was this: what if we're not on an inevitable march toward progress and greater racial equality? What if the anti-racist attitudes of the last 50 years aren't a lasting cultural achievement, but just a temporary backlash against the ugly racism of the 40's and 50's? People saw how hideous that Nazi movement was, and they saw the horrible treatment of blacks in the South, and the lynching of Emmett Till, and the dogs and firehoses deployed against civil rights protesters, and for a while it became fashionable to be against racism.
But now that all that stuff isn't such recent memory, racism takes on all of the advantages that made it prevalent in human society before. Scapegoating is an easy way to feel better about your problems. Stereotyping is almost inescapable in the psychology of how humans understand the world. Many apparent virtues that people are encouraged to cultivate (e.g. loyalty, empathy) can subconsciously promote tribalism (e.g. loyalty involves favoring those you're close to over those you're not, empathy encourages greater connection to people who are more like you). Racial minorities are often small enough in number that society can get weird impressions of them simply from having too small a sample size, and once a weird (especially negative) bias gets in place, confirmation bias and self-fulfilling prophecy effects tend to maintain or expand that bias.
I've been hoping all the bigotry of the Trump movement would be remembered by history as a weird spike of bigotry as the white American middle class came to terms with several realities it had been in denial about for years. But what if history remembers these past ~50 years as that brief period where American society was largely anti-racist? My sobering thought is this: what if the current campaign against out-of-fashion ideas and racial realism won't be reversed for many years? What if the zealots of today, the current victors of the culture war, won't realize how hideous their own movement has become, nor how the '60s rebellion against authority became a puritanical persecution from authority (cultural leadership brought to you by Your Moral Betters™). Scapegoating and stereotyping of Trump supporters for social ills could continue, as much as I wish it would not. It is intensely psychological and the fight in every generation is to inspire the better angels of our nature. I'm hoping the atmosphere of moral scolds today are later regarded as a weird period of American history when people embraced racializing every issue to the detriment of true debate on the issues. When language was so bastardized and social media lynch mobs so emboldened that every political opinion was viewed by the color difference of the author & subject's skin. I look with some hope to the next generation. Today's left-leaning culture responds to criticism like a priest to sacrilege, and even young people today can see how bizarre it acts. It's far more likely that today's regress, disguised as progress, continues to win and that's a very sobering thought indeed. Seems like you're throwing out a lot of punches at stuff I'm not sure if you're assuming I support. I'm also not sure what's meant by terms like "racial realism." It seems to denote a position which acknowledges the realities of race (about which this "regressive left" is presumably in denial), but I'm not sure what realities you think those are. A white supremacist might say they're a "racial realist" for acknowledging that white people are better than black people. An SJW might call themselves a "racial realist" for acknowledging the power dynamics between whites and various minorities in America today, such that a "color-blind" approach can't solve racial issues. I assume you're in neither of these camps, so you probably mean something more along the lines of acknowledging black culture has some toxic trends which contribute to blacks' underprivileged state (which the regressive left insists is a racist position)? I'm only guessing at your meaning here. But you seem to be opposed to much of the social backlash that currently exists against people and positions viewed as "racist," and I assume you don't think we shouldn't stigmatize actual racism, so you must think the labels of racist and bigot have been over-applied by the left. I might even agree with that. Online articles trying to teach white people about "microagressions" and the like can be alright when they come from a place of earnestly trying to help whites understand how to make racial minorities feel more at ease and less alienated, but when they come in the form of condemning anyone who uses the question "So, where are you from?" in small talk as Grand Dragon of the KKK, I think it weakens the label of "racist" and makes it easier for actual racists to hide behind the cover of just being "politically incorrect." A lot of people that use terms like "cultural appropriation" and "gentrification" to explain how white people are literally Hitler are being sloppy in their reasoning, and mostly just making people think it's okay to be skeptical that they could possibly ever be racist. So I think you've assumed that I'm a member of that club, and I'm really not. Back in saner times, most of my online arguments were with those very people. But that group mostly just whines and blogs about Miley Cyrus appropriating this or that. This ethnocentrist movement wants to take over the world. I was hoping that, based on a progress-based view of racial equality, America had come far enough that it could tell the difference between telling an off-color joke to your friends (i.e. political incorrectness) and accusing Mexico of deliberately sending rapists across the border (i.e. racism). I was wrong, thus I am rethinking my assumption that racial equality has steadily improved over time and will only keep getting better. I think this is the first opinion since the "racism war" started about 20 pages back that is actually worth reading. His post is the saner and nicer version of Kwark's 40% of America is racist posts. And it's unsurprising to me that he, like everyone else on the other side of the issue, struggles with this part of Danglars' post: My sobering thought is this: what if the current campaign against out-of-fashion ideas and racial realism won't be reversed for many years? What if the zealots of today, the current victors of the culture war, won't realize how hideous their own movement has become, nor how the '60s rebellion against authority became a puritanical persecution from authority (cultural leadership brought to you by Your Moral Betters™). Scapegoating and stereotyping of Trump supporters for social ills could continue, as much as I wish it would not. It is intensely psychological and the fight in every generation is to inspire the better angels of our nature.
I'm hoping the atmosphere of moral scolds today are later regarded as a weird period of American history when people embraced racializing every issue to the detriment of true debate on the issues. When language was so bastardized and social media lynch mobs so emboldened that every political opinion was viewed by the color difference of the author & subject's skin. I look with some hope to the next generation. Today's left-leaning culture responds to criticism like a priest to sacrilege, and even young people today can see how bizarre it acts. It's far more likely that today's regress, disguised as progress, continues to win and that's a very sobering thought indeed. The struggle is real. I always have hope for the newer names to have the light bulb turn on and step into somebody else's shoes.
Glad to hear there's still hope for me yet.
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yep, If you want more fringe voices in mainstream politics the two party system is much more permeable than our multi party system over here. The ability to hijack mainstream parties leads to much more influence than having a third or fourth party. A reality TV star without political experience in any major party here as a candidate would simply be impossible. Also the primary system is much more volatile than having indirect representation.
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This election season is so scary that I'm considering study abroad programs more now when looking at colleges.
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On September 25 2016 03:01 Nyxisto wrote:
yep, If you want more fringe voices in mainstream politics the two party system is much more permeable than our multi party system over here. The ability to hijack mainstream parties leads to much more influence than having a third or fourth party. A reality TV star without political experience in any major party here as a candidate would simply be impossible. Also the primary system is much more volatile than having indirect representation.
You should try living under a constitution that allows a citizen to cast a ballot for the highest executive office.
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I mean I'm biased of course but I'm pretty sure Switzerland has the best political system out there.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On September 25 2016 02:54 oBlade wrote:
The two party system is not so bad if you consider it.
In a parliamentary system with a president like France, it's the top two parties with winning chances anyway. The difference there is the fringes have their own parties, because they're trying to win seats in parliament and so on. In the US, those fringes are attached to the two major parties by default, meaning your starting point is a coalition and not just a measly party.
Think of it as a giant runoff. A fringe candidate like Ralph Nader wouldn't win in any system (Maybe slightly higher chances outside the US sysem). But if you do get a major party nomination, like Bernie Sanders came close to doing, your winning chances suddenly jump much higher than they would if you were a fringe candidate stuck in a fringe party.
Real third parties show up at the presidential level during transitional periods, when you have one party splitting (Teddy Roosevelt), one party supplanting another (Lincoln), or a towering figure who can just come in and compete (Ross Perot). It's just not every election gets to be that interesting.
What most third parties end up doing is having an effect on the conversation and the focus of the major party candidates. And that's what the whole US electoral process is supposed to be about. The reason the presidential campaigns last for months and over a year, even though a term is only 4 years to begin with, is we're supposed to use that time to carve the candidates into perfect versions of what we want and steer the direction of the parties.
The reason this year is different is because nobody on one side wants to consider playing ball with the other guy, making it a contentious historical fork. Those happen too.
I think of the US parties as the equivalent of coalitions in other countries. They are a coalition of the state parties which are more like the parties that other countries have. It's not a perfect comparison, and the parties do emphasize "party loyalty" more than a coalition should, but I think it a reasonably accurate analogy.
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On September 25 2016 03:24 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2016 02:54 oBlade wrote:
The two party system is not so bad if you consider it.
In a parliamentary system with a president like France, it's the top two parties with winning chances anyway. The difference there is the fringes have their own parties, because they're trying to win seats in parliament and so on. In the US, those fringes are attached to the two major parties by default, meaning your starting point is a coalition and not just a measly party.
Think of it as a giant runoff. A fringe candidate like Ralph Nader wouldn't win in any system (Maybe slightly higher chances outside the US sysem). But if you do get a major party nomination, like Bernie Sanders came close to doing, your winning chances suddenly jump much higher than they would if you were a fringe candidate stuck in a fringe party.
Real third parties show up at the presidential level during transitional periods, when you have one party splitting (Teddy Roosevelt), one party supplanting another (Lincoln), or a towering figure who can just come in and compete (Ross Perot). It's just not every election gets to be that interesting.
What most third parties end up doing is having an effect on the conversation and the focus of the major party candidates. And that's what the whole US electoral process is supposed to be about. The reason the presidential campaigns last for months and over a year, even though a term is only 4 years to begin with, is we're supposed to use that time to carve the candidates into perfect versions of what we want and steer the direction of the parties.
The reason this year is different is because nobody on one side wants to consider playing ball with the other guy, making it a contentious historical fork. Those happen too. I think of the US parties as the equivalent of coalitions in other countries. They are a coalition of the state parties which are more like the parties that other countries have. It's not a perfect comparison, and the parties do emphasize "party loyalty" more than a coalition should, but I think it a reasonably accurate analogy.
A pretty apt comparison yes.
The main thing tho is that coalitions can shift a lot easier. If someone like Trump rises up as a candidate for a party who is reviled by the other parties of their usual coalition it is much easier for those other parties to re-align themselves away from the Trump then the US system.
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United Kingdom13775 Posts
On September 25 2016 03:28 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2016 03:24 LegalLord wrote:On September 25 2016 02:54 oBlade wrote:
The two party system is not so bad if you consider it.
In a parliamentary system with a president like France, it's the top two parties with winning chances anyway. The difference there is the fringes have their own parties, because they're trying to win seats in parliament and so on. In the US, those fringes are attached to the two major parties by default, meaning your starting point is a coalition and not just a measly party.
Think of it as a giant runoff. A fringe candidate like Ralph Nader wouldn't win in any system (Maybe slightly higher chances outside the US sysem). But if you do get a major party nomination, like Bernie Sanders came close to doing, your winning chances suddenly jump much higher than they would if you were a fringe candidate stuck in a fringe party.
Real third parties show up at the presidential level during transitional periods, when you have one party splitting (Teddy Roosevelt), one party supplanting another (Lincoln), or a towering figure who can just come in and compete (Ross Perot). It's just not every election gets to be that interesting.
What most third parties end up doing is having an effect on the conversation and the focus of the major party candidates. And that's what the whole US electoral process is supposed to be about. The reason the presidential campaigns last for months and over a year, even though a term is only 4 years to begin with, is we're supposed to use that time to carve the candidates into perfect versions of what we want and steer the direction of the parties.
The reason this year is different is because nobody on one side wants to consider playing ball with the other guy, making it a contentious historical fork. Those happen too. I think of the US parties as the equivalent of coalitions in other countries. They are a coalition of the state parties which are more like the parties that other countries have. It's not a perfect comparison, and the parties do emphasize "party loyalty" more than a coalition should, but I think it a reasonably accurate analogy. A pretty apt comparison yes. The main thing tho is that coalitions can shift a lot easier. If someone like Trump rises up as a candidate for a party who is reviled by the other parties of their usual coalition it is much easier for those other parties to re-align themselves away from the Trump then the US system.
Trump candidates are exceedingly rare. This election was unusual in that the Republicans were stupid enough to think that anyone actually wanted Jeb Bush as president. In that power vacuum, the candidates with the most loyal following emerged at the top of the pile, which were Ted Cruz and Donald Trump. Trump had a broader appeal and he completely trounced Cruz, who is a shittier candidate than Trump by far.
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On September 25 2016 04:00 kwizach wrote:The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times both endorsed Clinton. Both convincingly make the case for Clinton and not only against Trump.
Probably found that check that they meant to donate to the NYT from last year 
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On September 25 2016 03:11 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2016 03:01 Nyxisto wrote:
yep, If you want more fringe voices in mainstream politics the two party system is much more permeable than our multi party system over here. The ability to hijack mainstream parties leads to much more influence than having a third or fourth party. A reality TV star without political experience in any major party here as a candidate would simply be impossible. Also the primary system is much more volatile than having indirect representation. You should try living under a constitution that allows a citizen to cast a ballot for the highest executive office.
I don't think I'd like that, I think indirect democracy makes a hell of a lot more sense than direct ones. Especially at times when candidates seem to be pushing for policies with little regard for constitutional or individual rights.
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Saw this coming from a mile away:
I wonder what happened between Donald and Cuban. I remember Cuban on the Nightly Show saying Trump is the guy all the billionaires make fun of, but I feel like that was in response to something Trump did to upset Cuban.
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On September 25 2016 04:14 GreenHorizons wrote:Probably found that check that they meant to donate to the NYT from last year
I don't get it, why would they openly endorse anyone, aren't they supposed to be news organizations.
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On September 25 2016 04:58 biology]major wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2016 04:14 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 25 2016 04:00 kwizach wrote:The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times both endorsed Clinton. Both convincingly make the case for Clinton and not only against Trump. Probably found that check that they meant to donate to the NYT from last year I don't get it, why would they endorse anyone, aren't they supposed to be news organizations.
Do you know what the editorial section of the newspaper is?
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On September 25 2016 04:58 biology]major wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2016 04:14 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 25 2016 04:00 kwizach wrote:The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times both endorsed Clinton. Both convincingly make the case for Clinton and not only against Trump. Probably found that check that they meant to donate to the NYT from last year I don't get it, why would they openly endorse anyone, aren't they supposed to be news organizations.
GH is the only one who gets to hold opinions that are not based on corruption and money.
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On September 25 2016 04:59 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2016 04:58 biology]major wrote:On September 25 2016 04:14 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 25 2016 04:00 kwizach wrote:The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times both endorsed Clinton. Both convincingly make the case for Clinton and not only against Trump. Probably found that check that they meant to donate to the NYT from last year I don't get it, why would they endorse anyone, aren't they supposed to be news organizations. Do you know what the editorial section of the newspaper is?
From what I've seen the editorial section usually has opinion pieces from select people in the organization, but this is pretty much an endorsement from the entire org no?
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On September 25 2016 05:02 biology]major wrote:Show nested quote +On September 25 2016 04:59 farvacola wrote:On September 25 2016 04:58 biology]major wrote:On September 25 2016 04:14 GreenHorizons wrote:On September 25 2016 04:00 kwizach wrote:The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times both endorsed Clinton. Both convincingly make the case for Clinton and not only against Trump. Probably found that check that they meant to donate to the NYT from last year I don't get it, why would they endorse anyone, aren't they supposed to be news organizations. Do you know what the editorial section of the newspaper is? From what I've seen the editorial section usually has opinion pieces from select people in the organization, but this is pretty much an endorsement from the entire org no?
It's fairly common for the overall editorial staff of a newspaper to issue an endorsement.
Likewise, there are sometimes general editorial articles that the whole staff has signed on in support for.
Perhaps these things should not be the case, but they are. If you wanna long discussion about whether it should be, there's plenty of room for that discussion.
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EPT
