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On November 08 2012 17:55 Romantic wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2012 15:52 babylon wrote:On November 08 2012 15:11 The Final Boss wrote:On November 08 2012 15:00 babylon wrote:On November 08 2012 14:52 tomatriedes wrote:Based on a lot of the post-election comments on various news sites I've been reading, I really don't think the republicans are going to make any of the changes they need to. The tea party faction is going to 'double down' and become even more aggressive and reactionary. Example: Romney lost because he did not act like he wanted the job. There were hundreds of things he could have brought up about Odumbo that would have exposed this phoney, but he didn’t do that. He ran a “nice” campaign, and lost. Nuts to being “nice.” I want a vicious attack dog who will eat the other side alive. I guess the Republicans will never learn….Bob Dole, John McCain and now Romney. What a bunch of losers! In their next primary they're going to force whatever candidates they have into more and more extreme positions on social issues and demographics are going to punish them even more. Any republican leader who tries to advocate moderation will be destroyed by Fox News, Rush et al. Eventually true libertarians will have to leave out of frustration. Oi. The more moderate Republicans should just leave and join the Democrats. It's not as if the Democrats are really Democrats anyways. Obama's practically a moderate Republican. The GOP basically needs to re-brand so they no longer get characterized as the "old white men party." Otherwise they'll keep alienating the communities whose support they need to win. Obama is not moderate at all, Obama is pretty far to the left (at least in terms of American politics). But I agree that the Republican party is going to have to re-brand themselves. I won't address "Obama is a moderate Republican" here, since I think a ton of websites do hash over it quite a bit. It didn't really click with me until I heard one of my profs talking about the election recently in his office, bemoaning the fact that the Democrats aren't Democrats anymore and that everyone's really a Republican. (He hopes that one day the Democratic party will rediscover its backbone, lol.) Re: abortion (sorry, don't want to quote your other post) -- You do not seriously expect people to sit there and not react when the GOP blatantly threatens their rights? It's a similar problem with opposing gay marriage; yeah, sure, it'll get legalized some day in the future, but let's just be honest here, it's pretty damn douchebaggy to say, "Yeah, you can wait for your rights, they're gonna come anyways, BUT FIRST, ECONOMY (wait, wtf is romney's plan anyways, will it really affect me like these social issues*)?" People shouldn't have to wait for their rights, and they shouldn't have their rights threatened in the first place, especially those rights that will have a very tangible effect on their lives. *I assure you there are lots of people thinking this way. I don't think it's a surprise to know that it is a lot easier to relate to social issues than it is to relate to a bunch of numbers floating in the air. The GOP shot itself in the foot here. EDIT: Okay, so I'm just going to throw in my two more cents here and say that the best course of action for the GOP about social issues is to not bring them up even if they disagree with the Dems. When will people realize they are just further left than most moderates and Democrats? People who are far left are looking at everyone else and seeing right wing because they are so left. They need to just realize they are far left and that is why everything looks right. This is all based on the American Scale of Political Reasonableness, of course. Not many communists around. The fact Republicans still pull ~half of the vote should be a hint they aren't uber right wing by the American Scale of Political Reasonableness.
The thing is, you can't watch things on that Scale of Reasonableness (which according to spellcheck is an actual word, wtf =p), because the left/right principles are universal. Since there is no large political faction in the US that upholds many of the principles of the left (or even moderate left), calling them left/far left is factually incorrect.
In US, it's more the inverse case to what you're suggesting - a case of people far to the right looking at other people on the not so far right and seeing evil communists of some sort. Just because one portion of the US political scene has blasted so far to the right that it borders insanity doesn't mean that any of these principles and definitions have changed.
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It always strike me as such a bad system to just have two (big) parties really...
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really interesting.. in BC there is a large marajuana culture (famous bc bud) and its nearly legal, but with our friendly neighbors to the south legalizing.. makes me really wonder if canada will quickly follow suite as it is a HUGE industry in BC that could be tapped into.. not legalizing soon could damage a lot of potential revenue for the government if legalization does not come soon.
Then again, i live in holland so what do i care 
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On November 08 2012 17:55 Romantic wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2012 15:52 babylon wrote:On November 08 2012 15:11 The Final Boss wrote:On November 08 2012 15:00 babylon wrote:On November 08 2012 14:52 tomatriedes wrote:Based on a lot of the post-election comments on various news sites I've been reading, I really don't think the republicans are going to make any of the changes they need to. The tea party faction is going to 'double down' and become even more aggressive and reactionary. Example: Romney lost because he did not act like he wanted the job. There were hundreds of things he could have brought up about Odumbo that would have exposed this phoney, but he didn’t do that. He ran a “nice” campaign, and lost. Nuts to being “nice.” I want a vicious attack dog who will eat the other side alive. I guess the Republicans will never learn….Bob Dole, John McCain and now Romney. What a bunch of losers! In their next primary they're going to force whatever candidates they have into more and more extreme positions on social issues and demographics are going to punish them even more. Any republican leader who tries to advocate moderation will be destroyed by Fox News, Rush et al. Eventually true libertarians will have to leave out of frustration. Oi. The more moderate Republicans should just leave and join the Democrats. It's not as if the Democrats are really Democrats anyways. Obama's practically a moderate Republican. The GOP basically needs to re-brand so they no longer get characterized as the "old white men party." Otherwise they'll keep alienating the communities whose support they need to win. Obama is not moderate at all, Obama is pretty far to the left (at least in terms of American politics). But I agree that the Republican party is going to have to re-brand themselves. I won't address "Obama is a moderate Republican" here, since I think a ton of websites do hash over it quite a bit. It didn't really click with me until I heard one of my profs talking about the election recently in his office, bemoaning the fact that the Democrats aren't Democrats anymore and that everyone's really a Republican. (He hopes that one day the Democratic party will rediscover its backbone, lol.) Re: abortion (sorry, don't want to quote your other post) -- You do not seriously expect people to sit there and not react when the GOP blatantly threatens their rights? It's a similar problem with opposing gay marriage; yeah, sure, it'll get legalized some day in the future, but let's just be honest here, it's pretty damn douchebaggy to say, "Yeah, you can wait for your rights, they're gonna come anyways, BUT FIRST, ECONOMY (wait, wtf is romney's plan anyways, will it really affect me like these social issues*)?" People shouldn't have to wait for their rights, and they shouldn't have their rights threatened in the first place, especially those rights that will have a very tangible effect on their lives. *I assure you there are lots of people thinking this way. I don't think it's a surprise to know that it is a lot easier to relate to social issues than it is to relate to a bunch of numbers floating in the air. The GOP shot itself in the foot here. EDIT: Okay, so I'm just going to throw in my two more cents here and say that the best course of action for the GOP about social issues is to not bring them up even if they disagree with the Dems. When will people realize they are just further left than most moderates and Democrats? People who are far left are looking at everyone else and seeing right wing because they are so left. They need to just realize they are far left and that is why everything looks right. This is all based on the American Scale of Political Reasonableness, of course. Not many communists around. The fact Republicans still pull ~half of the vote should be a hint they aren't uber right wing by the American Scale of Political Reasonableness.
I dunno, when guys like Richard Nixon or Adam Smith would be considered hardcore Communists, I think the scale itself is a bit unreasonable.
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On November 08 2012 17:55 Romantic wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2012 15:52 babylon wrote:On November 08 2012 15:11 The Final Boss wrote:On November 08 2012 15:00 babylon wrote:On November 08 2012 14:52 tomatriedes wrote:Based on a lot of the post-election comments on various news sites I've been reading, I really don't think the republicans are going to make any of the changes they need to. The tea party faction is going to 'double down' and become even more aggressive and reactionary. Example: Romney lost because he did not act like he wanted the job. There were hundreds of things he could have brought up about Odumbo that would have exposed this phoney, but he didn’t do that. He ran a “nice” campaign, and lost. Nuts to being “nice.” I want a vicious attack dog who will eat the other side alive. I guess the Republicans will never learn….Bob Dole, John McCain and now Romney. What a bunch of losers! In their next primary they're going to force whatever candidates they have into more and more extreme positions on social issues and demographics are going to punish them even more. Any republican leader who tries to advocate moderation will be destroyed by Fox News, Rush et al. Eventually true libertarians will have to leave out of frustration. Oi. The more moderate Republicans should just leave and join the Democrats. It's not as if the Democrats are really Democrats anyways. Obama's practically a moderate Republican. The GOP basically needs to re-brand so they no longer get characterized as the "old white men party." Otherwise they'll keep alienating the communities whose support they need to win. Obama is not moderate at all, Obama is pretty far to the left (at least in terms of American politics). But I agree that the Republican party is going to have to re-brand themselves. I won't address "Obama is a moderate Republican" here, since I think a ton of websites do hash over it quite a bit. It didn't really click with me until I heard one of my profs talking about the election recently in his office, bemoaning the fact that the Democrats aren't Democrats anymore and that everyone's really a Republican. (He hopes that one day the Democratic party will rediscover its backbone, lol.) Re: abortion (sorry, don't want to quote your other post) -- You do not seriously expect people to sit there and not react when the GOP blatantly threatens their rights? It's a similar problem with opposing gay marriage; yeah, sure, it'll get legalized some day in the future, but let's just be honest here, it's pretty damn douchebaggy to say, "Yeah, you can wait for your rights, they're gonna come anyways, BUT FIRST, ECONOMY (wait, wtf is romney's plan anyways, will it really affect me like these social issues*)?" People shouldn't have to wait for their rights, and they shouldn't have their rights threatened in the first place, especially those rights that will have a very tangible effect on their lives. *I assure you there are lots of people thinking this way. I don't think it's a surprise to know that it is a lot easier to relate to social issues than it is to relate to a bunch of numbers floating in the air. The GOP shot itself in the foot here. EDIT: Okay, so I'm just going to throw in my two more cents here and say that the best course of action for the GOP about social issues is to not bring them up even if they disagree with the Dems. When will people realize they are just further left than most moderates and Democrats? People who are far left are looking at everyone else and seeing right wing because they are so left. They need to just realize they are far left and that is why everything looks right. This is all based on the American Scale of Political Reasonableness, of course. Not many communists around. The fact Republicans still pull ~half of the vote should be a hint they aren't uber right wing by the American Scale of Political Reasonableness.
The realization needed is that the political spectrum has been pushed greatly to the right in the past decade. You don't need hints, you only need to look two-three decades before and compare policies. Though if you're looking for hints you might look towards the bigger one of them losing that they've gone too far right.
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On November 08 2012 18:24 Velr wrote:
Americans deciding on who to vote for to me looks more like:
"My ancestors voted republican/deomcrat." ---> So do I.
Your in dire need of more political parties, not because a 2 party system does not work, but because the reps/dems parties have to span over too many points and in the end you have no clue what your really getting anymore.
How is one to judge if someone that voted Party X not only did so because of some issues he has with a few fringe points of Party Y he really can't stomach?
This is such a good point. I would really have no clue who to vote for if I were American, because from my perspective, the parties have some things completely backwards. Thos guys that support free trade, low taxes and personal responsibility should be in favor of personal freedoms, right? So how come they support the religious commandments (anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage) that are against pesronal freedom from the very principle of them being religious commandments?
I actually tried to discuss this several times, but it seems that even in the US, noobody has a more reasonable explanation than "historical reasons".
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Because they need/needed more votes to win elections. What could be more reasonable than that?
And you vote for the candidate not the party.
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On November 08 2012 20:01 opisska wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2012 18:24 Velr wrote:
Americans deciding on who to vote for to me looks more like:
"My ancestors voted republican/deomcrat." ---> So do I.
Your in dire need of more political parties, not because a 2 party system does not work, but because the reps/dems parties have to span over too many points and in the end you have no clue what your really getting anymore.
How is one to judge if someone that voted Party X not only did so because of some issues he has with a few fringe points of Party Y he really can't stomach? This is such a good point. I would really have no clue who to vote for if I were American, because from my perspective, the parties have some things completely backwards. Thos guys that support free trade, low taxes and personal responsibility should be in favor of personal freedoms, right? So how come they support the religious commandments (anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage) that are against pesronal freedom from the very principle of them being religious commandments? I actually tried to discuss this several times, but it seems that even in the US, noobody has a more reasonable explanation than "historical reasons".
You're right it does make no sense. The only thing I can make of it is that there is a large voter base of bible humpers that support that kind of regressive stance on social issues, and they cater to them to get their vote. It's really frustrating to see as an American. I'd be voting for them if they didn't try to hijack religion to base their political stances on.
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On November 08 2012 20:18 Daniri wrote:
Because they need/needed more votes to win elections. What could be more reasonable than that?
And you vote for the candidate not the party.
Then.. How did someone like Romney with next to no solid stance on anything get into this election? No one knew what he would be doing, except that he is a republican (with a funny religion) and therefore probably will follow republican "doctrine" (more or less).
If you would really vote for candidates, there would be more than 2 serious candidates with sharper individual profiles.. Not just 2 with only one really defining attribute - The R or D before their name.
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You might see a bigger diversity in how demographics voted if there were more than two viable options in your elections. Now its either A or B, and when A seems to resent your whole demographic, what do you expect them to do? Not vote?
Now it's all about race, sex etc. because you make them an issue.
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Pretty amazing Bama won all 3 big swing states. Looking at it, that seems to be "the" story here: Dems got their vote out well where it counted.
The red and blue states voted just as expected, but swing states swung blue. It was pretty close, each one won with about 50k votes. 150,000 votes where it counted, distributed IDEALLY. Beautiful election result for the Obama campaign. Exact causes can be debated, but I firmly believe the large voter turn-out was the most important factor.
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On November 08 2012 14:49 The Final Boss wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2012 14:21 TyrantPotato wrote:
Now that all this is over (almost) and obama is da winrar.
WTF is up with your guys election process?
you live in a democracy.....BUT from what i know of your system its nothing like that at all.
correct me if im wrong, but if 1 person can get 270 electoral points(state vote thingy pont shit) by winning each state by only 100-1000 votes. then not get a single vote in every other state he can still be president?
please tell me that isnt the case and im horrible mistaken. Yeah it's pretty dumb. There's actually a way that in a three way race a person can win the presidency with less than 14% of the popular vote or something like that.
I think we all remember the good old 1824 election when John Quincy Adams won the presidency with only 30% of the popular vote to Andrew Jackson's 40%. That was a pretty poor display of integrity on the part of Congress.
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I think that the republicans need to shift away from the extreme right wing politics to be able to win the next presidential election.
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On November 08 2012 20:46 Kontys wrote:
Pretty amazing Bama won all 3 big swing states. Looking at it, that seems to be "the" story here: Dems got their vote out well where it counted.
The red and blue states voted just as expected, but swing states swung blue. It was pretty close, each one won with about 50k votes. 150,000 votes where it counted, distributed IDEALLY. Beautiful election result for the Obama campaign. Exact causes can be debated, but I firmly believe the large voter turn-out was the most important factor.
In all the post-election "Why did Romney lose?" debate this is the thing being missed. I was skeptical of the alleged strength of the President's GOTV machine and boy was I wrong. Romney didn't lose this election the President won it. The machine and campaign that Plouffe and Axelrod built was even better than advertised. The Obama campaign will be studied for years by political operatives to try to replicate what they did.
It also points to the strength of an unchallenged incumbent. While the Republicans were hashing out a nominee the Obama campaign was laying the groundwork to get the coalition it needed out to win. That the President's coattails were as strong as they were really helps illustrate this point.
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On November 08 2012 20:35 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On November 08 2012 20:18 Daniri wrote:
Because they need/needed more votes to win elections. What could be more reasonable than that?
And you vote for the candidate not the party. Then.. How did someone like Romney with next to no solid stance on anything get into this election? No one knew what he would be doing, except that he is a republican (with a funny religion) and therefore probably will follow republican "doctrine" (more or less). If you would really vote for candidates, there would be more than 2 serious candidates with sharper individual profiles.. Not just 2 with only one really defining attribute - The R or D before their name.
Well, he got past the primary because all the alternatives were invariably horrible or crazy. He was the option of last resort; they even tried Bachmann before him. And his positions were still solid enough that they were markedly different from Obama's.
I was speaking to your point about the parties being too broad though. Which definitely isn't true for the Republicans as their tent is very small lately. You know exactly what you're getting when you elect a Republican, the exceptions I can count on one hand. The Democrats are more broad but that's what I meant about voting for the candidate. The difference between Elizabeth Warren and Ben Nelson is clear.
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Getting sick of people from my Country saying "YAY OBAMA WON!" and don't even really know what it means. Hell, I don't even really know what it means, but people are enjoying his victory based off of nothing, besides the fact that he acts like a nice guy and is black.
It really seems to me Obama does a really good job at making his opposition look evil not by dismissing or ridiculing his ideals, but simply by acting sincere/genuine. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
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I like a second term Obama, even though the first left me unimpressed.
I mostly just wanted to see a 2nd term president, because I think that one has more leeway in dealing with Iran, which I think will be crucial in the next 4 years.
I don't expect some miracle change in his domestic policies. Economy is gonna keep growing, as it would have under any president, and nothing major really seems on the horizon, considering he doesn't have the political clout to get anything big done.
I just really like his foreign policy, so a 2nd term Obama should suit me pretty well in that regard.
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On November 08 2012 21:32 blug wrote:
Getting sick of people from my Country saying "YAY OBAMA WON!" and don't even really know what it means. Hell, I don't even really know what it means, but people are enjoying his victory based off of nothing, besides the fact that he acts like a nice guy and is black.
It really seems to me Obama does a really good job at making his opposition look evil not by dismissing or ridiculing his ideals, but simply by acting sincere/genuine. I'm not sure if that's a good thing.
I don't know how Australians come to form their opinions on our politics, but Republicans have "looked evil" here long before Obama came on the scene.
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EPT
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