On March 12 2008 22:36 Scorch wrote: i don't want to derail this highly interesting thread, but i think my question fits in quite well here.
do you think your voting system is actually democratic?
first off, it's a majority voting system. it doesn't exclusively matter who gets more votes, the results are determined in a complicated way, taking an unnecessary detour over representatives/delegates. some people's votes are worth more than others', depending on which state they live in and other factors. what bothers me immensely is that you can get fewer votes than your opponent and still win. my political understanding is that the candidate with most votes should obviously be the winner. that isn't necessarily the case in the US! can't you just vote everywhere at the same time, count the popular vote and determine the winner this way?
next, the majority voting system, as a matter of principle, eliminates all small parties, automatically reducing the system to two parties. small parties never have a chance to grow strong enough to win a single state. all diversity is missing.
on the other hand, alternative views must eventually find their way into the two big parties, blurring their core views. noone can say what "the democrats" or "the republicans" stand for exactly, because they internally have a wide spectrum of political views. you can only roughly say that democrats are more left-wing and republicans are the right-wingers. the radical skinhead, the religious preacher and the capitalistic business manager may have very very different interests and political opinions, but still they will typically vote for the same republican party. does that make any sense?
lastly, the donation system. in Austria, a big part of campaigning costs is paid for by the country, whereas each party receives an amount of money depending on how many votes it received in the last election. you may argue against this, but look at the alternative: in the US, costs are covered by private sponsors. it is quite obvious to me that if a candidate wants sufficient campaigning funds, he must sell his soul to lobbies and companies. in return for the money, the president of course works in favor of those sponsors once elected. arms industry anyone? the system is inherently corrupt!
don't you agree that there are huge fundamental flaws in USA's political system?
I'm not huge in to politics, but most educated Americans know about all that stuff. I asked one of my US history teachers in high school what he thought about all of it, and he said he thought it was a load of shit. Most votes should make the winner, but it doesn't.
Actually the funny part is, as I learned, the reason the electoral college and all of that stuff is there is to "protect" the citizens from their own stupidity. 200 years ago, most of the people in the country were uneducated farmers, who were susceptable to propaganda and the like. Who would know more about politics, politicians or farmers? That's the premise behind it, it just sort of trickled down to today where everybody thinks it's bullshit but nobody's going to change it.
the large majority of voters in the US (and any other country for that matter) still doesn't have a clue about politics. propaganda is even mightier than back then, because everyone has access to the media. whereas only few people could read 200 years ago, now everybody has access to radio, newspapers and television, who brainwash the public to have a certain opinion. it's awfully difficult to form a different opinion for oneself based on filtered information. i'm afraid it's fatally wrong to think people are smarter today.
The delegates are important in the primaries because this is a rare instance when one vote can actually mean more than another. For example, the vote of someone living in an area that always votes Democratic might be worth 2 delegates, and the vote of someone living in an area that always votes Republican might only be worth 1. That kinda makes sense because obviously, the votes of people who will matter in the actual election are worth more than those who don't.
In the general election, the original purpose of the delegate system was indeed to protect the people from their own stupidity. But it has the happy side effect of making sure that, at least in theory, candidates have to campaign across a wide variety of states instead of just one that has a lot of people. If there were no electoral colleges, a candidate might be able to be elected just because a few densely populated states voted for him. That's why it's hard to change, because sparsely populated states like the system.
in a proportional voting system, everybody's vote counts the same, regardless of where they come from. campaigning would thus have to be countrywide, ignoring all small states costs too many votes. for my democratic understanding, it should not suffice to win a number of states with 50.001% of votes and lose horribly in the rest.
since small states send only few delegates, they cannot profit all too much over the large states from the delegate system (only speculating, i don't know figures). i don't see why the small states would be sharply against a change.
clinton campaign loves to inject race into the campaign.
there are soooo many americans especially in ohio/pennsylvania type whites who are passive-aggressive racist. i really think the whole ferroro issue is going to help clinton in pennsylvania.
the only gamble they are taking is that it won't tick off some superdelegates, but i think destroying obama's white vote is worth it.
You may think Hillary Clinton won Texas, but she didn't, at least not by the rules of the game. The eventual Democratic nominee will be the one with more delegates, and Obama won more of Texas' than Hillary did.
To reiterate: Clinton won the state's popular vote and the primary, but that doesn't matter, because after a majority of the caucus votes were counted—the second step in Texas' two-stage process—it looks as if Obama won the delegates.
Declaring Obama the winner makes sense. In this primary season, we've got to stick fast to the rules. As both the Obama and Clinton campaigns spin themselves into the topsoil, that's all we have to keep us from madness. Except that Obama supporters have been making a case that doesn't stick to the rules in arguing how Democrats should pick the party's nominee.
Over the last several weeks, as Obama has taken an insurmountable lead among pledged delegates, I have heard various Obama allies and aides argue that if Clinton wins the nomination by convincing superdelegates to overthrow Obama's lead among pledged delegates, it will represent a subversion of the popular will. Whatever backroom thinking went into forming the superdelegate system, it is not in keeping with the view that the people—and not party insiders—should determine the nominee. Obama supporters argue that a superdelegate-driven Clinton victory would be unfair and would destroy the party. Obama's passionate constituents would bolt, furious that the prize had been snatched from them. To avoid this train wreck, superdelegates should sign up with Obama.
Fair or not, if Clinton wins by superdelegates, that win would be perfectly legal. The Democratic Party, in all its wisdom, designed the system to allow for this possibility. It may subvert the popular will, but the rules are the rules. In claiming victory in Texas, Obama is making this very same case, because the Texas delegate win happened through a subversion of the popular will. In just one of the contest's several wrinkles, Texas delegates were apportioned in the primary and caucus among state Senate districts, based on a system that gave more delegates to the candidate who won districts where turnout had been high in previous elections than to the candidate who won districts where turnout had been lower.
Obama played by the rules and won fair and square, but if, as an Obama supporter, you insist that he won Texas through a system that thwarts the popular will, you lose standing to complain about a system that thwarts the popular will in picking the nominee. One system may thwart the will more than the other, sure. But either the principle is that the rules are the rules or it isn't.
Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, says he is not suggesting that a Clinton nomination victory by a superdelegate majority would be underhanded—though some of his colleagues and allies certainly are making this case. Plouffe's own pitch is that superdelegates should look at Obama's lead in pledged delegates and decide to back him. This is a good argument, but it's not rule-based. Once you start climbing into the heads of the superdelegates, you've gone somewhere else. "There are few principled arguments in either camp," says Democratic pollster and strategist Mark Mellman, "only arguments of interest." There's nothing in the Democratic rule book that instructs superdelegates on how they're supposed to vote or what they're supposed to base their thinking on. Maybe they should support a nominee by following the pledged delegates, or maybe they should take a look at the popular vote. Or maybe they should roll a 12-sided die or ask their pet myna bird.
The Clinton campaign would prefer that superdelegates use the popular vote as a criterion for their decision, since Clinton's slim chances of winning the popular vote are better than her next-to-impossible chances of winning the pledged delegate vote. Obama aides say that the Clinton team's new emphasis on the popular vote is a desperate stratagem they've been forced into by Obama's pledged delegate numbers. This is true, but if the debate is over what criteria the superdelegates should use, any argument goes. But, wait, Obama supporters will insist, the rules say nothing about superdelegates following the popular vote. Correct. They also say nothing about superdelegates following the pledged delegate lead.
Which brings us back to this: If Obama supporters are going to insist that their guy won Texas because the rules are the rules, then they should not squawk if Clinton wins the nomination despite her pledged delegate deficit. The rules are the rules.
i think it's too bad, the media covered March 5. with headlines "clinton's major super mega comeback!!!" "clinton wins 3 out of 4! she's back!"
now that the most irrelevant part of the process is done, the counting, oops it turns out obama won. that'll be on page 55 of the newspaper.
Plus it's been reported how tons of republican voters showed up, signed up, and voted for Clinton in an effort to get the least electable democrat to the general election. And these numbers aren't insignificant - they've been reported to be in the millions in Texas, skewing the totals.
So really, she likely shouldn't have even been the 'perceived' winner.
On March 14 2008 04:53 a-game wrote: clinton campaign loves to inject race into the campaign.
there are soooo many americans especially in ohio/pennsylvania type whites who are passive-aggressive racist. i really think the whole ferroro issue is going to help clinton in pennsylvania.
the only gamble they are taking is that it won't tick off some superdelegates, but i think destroying obama's white vote is worth it.
hahaha
they only do it right before white states like ohio and penn though :D
On March 14 2008 05:13 Flaccid wrote: Plus it's been reported how tons of republican voters showed up, signed up, and voted for Clinton in an effort to get the least electable democrat to the general election. And these numbers aren't insignificant - they've been reported to be in the millions in Texas, skewing the totals.
So really, she likely shouldn't have even been the 'perceived' winner.
My dad registered as a republican in college so he could do this apparently lol. He's stil lregistered as one too
i'm actually beginning to see a clinton path to the nomination.
if michigan and florida hold re-votes then it's probable that at the end of the primary season clinton will have more of the popular vote than obama (he currently leads by about 700k votes afaik).
as one pundit said, the clintons are experts at turning string into gold, but if they are behind in pledged delegates and popular vote then they don't have anything to work with. but give them the lead in either and i think they can sufficiently smear obama and twist superdelegate arms to win the nomination.
On March 14 2008 05:13 Flaccid wrote: Plus it's been reported how tons of republican voters showed up, signed up, and voted for Clinton in an effort to get the least electable democrat to the general election. And these numbers aren't insignificant - they've been reported to be in the millions in Texas, skewing the totals.
So really, she likely shouldn't have even been the 'perceived' winner.
Do you have a source for that? I think I read that they were only a small percent.
On March 14 2008 05:13 Flaccid wrote: Plus it's been reported how tons of republican voters showed up, signed up, and voted for Clinton in an effort to get the least electable democrat to the general election. And these numbers aren't insignificant - they've been reported to be in the millions in Texas, skewing the totals.
So really, she likely shouldn't have even been the 'perceived' winner.
Do you have a source for that? I think I read that they were only a small percent.
Here is a related link. It's not the same one I was reading the other day, but there are half a dozen articles following this phenomenon on the same (linked) site.
An estimated 24% of Hillary's support in the Mississippi primary came from Republicans. In light of the evidence, it's probably safe to say Hillary's expectation-defying victory in Ohio benefited from a similar dynamic.
On March 14 2008 05:13 Flaccid wrote: Plus it's been reported how tons of republican voters showed up, signed up, and voted for Clinton in an effort to get the least electable democrat to the general election. And these numbers aren't insignificant - they've been reported to be in the millions in Texas, skewing the totals.
So really, she likely shouldn't have even been the 'perceived' winner.
Do you have a source for that? I think I read that they were only a small percent.
75% of republicans voted for hillary in missippi lol
if republicans decide the democratic nominee it will be pretty interesting
They picked the republican nominee...did you hear all the backlash from conservatives over McCain getting the nomination? It seems like they're just returning the favor.
On March 14 2008 15:20 Arrian wrote: They picked the republican nominee...did you hear all the backlash from conservatives over McCain getting the nomination? It seems like they're just returning the favor.
This is the chaos from open primaries.
No, Clinton seems appears more of a leftist despite the fact that she and Obama have similar policies. Rather, I think that many Republican voters are motivated over who they think will win in the general elections.
EPT
