Why Are US Presidential Elections So Close?
nautil.us
nautil.us
Reasons for this I believe include upvote/downvote trains on the internet, clickbait headlines, and networks streamlining content to cater to certain audiences. People who watch Fox news don't want to hear about Trump rape allegations, they want to watch news casters talk about Evil Hillary. It's the reverse for CNN. Remember in the Bush era how blatantly Fox news was a Republican news-horn, and how the case is the same now for CNN and Clinton?
Euck. Can't stand it. No room for moderates, your voice won't get heard if you aren't making someone stamp their feet.
Ninjaedit: I mean honestly how is it possible that of the 300 million people spread across one of the largest (geographical) countries in the world and one of the most diverse populations on the world, exactly half want one person to represent them, and exactly half want one other person to represent them. It doesn't make sense.
A fifth or sixth major candidate in the election with exactly your political views is almost exactly as superfluous as three hundred million candidates, so each of us gets a candidate with exactly our views and we don't have to compromise at all when voting.
Figure out which of your beliefs and views are most important and which you're willing to compromise on. Or get used to being a very bitter member of a pluralistic democratic society.
I want proportional representation, not this phoney pluralism. I'm talking about something beyond "ranked choice". I want serious mathematical, scientific rigor to be applied in developing a new voting system that is humane and practically secure from gaming in the 21st century.
To be perfectly frank, my internal reaction to your comment was infuriation. Don't take it personally, just know that I'm "triggered" by this kind of patronizing political attitude that has marginalized me out of the conversation since before I even became eligible to vote. I know I'm not alone in that.
There are thousands of representatives local and federal levels. It's not unreasonable for people like me to be asking for a less "compromising" process.
I'm from Minnesota, and I remember when I was 17 and Paul Wellstone was killed, very possibly assassinated, before the Iraq war vote. Meanwhile, many of my classmates, children of politically established Minnesotans, told me that a vote for Ralph Nader was just short of treason. I'm writing this comment right now to say that I reject these kinds of attitudes entirely.
On the contrary, people falling in behind these busted-ass mainstream parties should be grateful that, given the state of U.S. politics, we even have political participation from marginalized positions at all. This election is an indictment on this split populism of the establishment 2-party.
The U.S. political process needs to evolve in a serious way or it's going to result in social/political/spiritual upheaval... for better or worse.
I know it might sound irrational to you, but I'm getting ready to vote for Jill Stein right now. I am not "a liberal". I see no good reason, at this point, to vote for either of the "two choices". Seeing as how I'm not in a swing state, it strikes almost me as duty to vote against the two parties. Maybe if I lived in Florida, I'd vote for Clinton.
But right now my "strategic vote" is to send a strong warning to the DFL establishment that they need to take voting reform very seriously.
The problem isn't the voting system, the problem is naively thinking that a significant number of your countrymen agree with you in every significant way, regardless of whether you fall on the left, right or middle.
Right now, the voting system is mechanically dividing the country against itself into two groups that don't really exist. Meanwhile, various corporate, media and political interests are capitalizing on this machinery in less than honorable ways.
This is enabled by the voting system on a foundational level. The other stuff, campaign finance law, media cultivation of ignorance, lobbying, etc... it's all very important, but it's all underpinned by the voting system itself.
You could certainly rework the voting system so that a wider mix of parties are elected to Congress (and every other level of government), but then what? At the end of the day, parties aren't important, policy is important, and enacting policy still requires some sort of majority. A majority, when you don't have a homogeneous population with largely similar views on everything, still requires some sort of coalition. And the coalitions you build affect the policies you can enact.
So how will changing the voting system, either to your current favorite or to some hypothetical, not-yet-invented voting system affect coalition building and the sort of policy that will be enacted?
Right now I don't even see coalitions being built by major political parties. I see political organization being transmogrified into factions and enemies.
I recognize that there are millions of dedicated activists and organizers who are building coalitions, building consensus, reworking political narratives.
For all that human effort to be channeled through the grimey distorting lens of left and right... Its wasteful at best.
I absolutely agree that issues are what's important. Unhooking the issues from the gridlock of corrupt political establishments would give elected officials the freedom to build consensus beyond the coersion of corrupted political parties.
Everyone looks at the president as some kind of be-all, end-all, but it isn't. Informed voting on candidates in lower level of government who has opinions that are more in line of your own, can then go on to shape the political landscape further on in their career.
Where is the choice on land value tax, on money creation as debt? Nowhere, because they only want us to have a choice on issues that might actually challenge the roots of the system.
We fight over issues like gay marriage and abortion which make no difference to the establishment, while the cable companies strategically raise rates while reducing service and avoiding competition. The medical industry extorts us so the insurers' can get a 20% cut off a larger pie. Police departments around the nation use civil forfeiture to pay their bills and buy margarita machines.
As long as elections can be won on bullshit tired issues like abortion, we'll never see any political progress - and that's just how the robber barons want it.
Your other issues are quite valid, but I thought that was a very poor lead example.
So it's the ideal example.
Yet we let these issues continue to decide our elections. For the top hat wearing monopolist, it's great because politicians/pundits are so busy campaigning for/against abortion that nobody points a finger at the soul sucking corporations who run this country.
But the middle ground often is the best solution in politics (not necessarily exactly in the middle, but definitely not on the extremes).
Some examples: The best government is between Authoritarianism and Anarchy, rather than one or the other.
Likewise the best government has an economy that is somewhere between completely free-market and absolutely government controlled and regulated. Both extremes have issues.
The best legal government is somewhere between ultra-capitalist and ultra-communist: We don't want only two classes, super-rich and super-poor, but we don't need to make everyone exactly the same either.
Likewise, private investment is definitely a good thing, and we want incentives, but we also don't want CEOs or boards being completely blameless when things go wrong, and we want good pay and good rights for the employees. Most people are ok with CEOs getting paid more that most employees, but most would prefer they not be paid anywhere near as much as they are.
On and on it goes. Generally, the best position is a moderate one. The extremes are where the failure comes from. (There are always exceptions, so that is why I say generally).
If you take a completely leftist approach then college tuition would be covered by the government. Many people would have college degrees, which would devalue them somewhat, but at least students wouldn't go into a decade of debt for it. It's an okay solution.
If you take a completely rightist approach then the government would have nothing to do with paying for college. Either your family can afford to send you (or have good enough credit to get a private loan), or you just don't get to go. Fewer people would go to college, which would make degrees very valuable. In other words, it's hard to get a degree, but worth it. The people who can't get them shouldn't be forced out of the work force, because most people wouldn't have degrees. This is also an acceptable approach.
The combination of the two is what we have now. We want everyone to go to college, so we make it easy to get huge unsecured loans that are almost impossible to get rid of. The loans are easy to get, so everyone does. Now degrees are expensive, but not worth much, because every other applicant also has one.
There are other examples (like housing and health insurance) where the same thing plays out. Sometimes you just have to pick a side, or you get the worst of both worlds.
Because people are paying for it, we are getting much higher quality than we would if it was completely government funded. Also, it's still being paid by people who want it rather than it just being a tax.
Because it's expected a lot of people are getting an education that wouldn't be educated otherwise. This is improving our overall productivity.
The rising cost of an education right now is an issue, and we can do a combination of letting it self-correct (many businesses and students are realizing they really don't need a BS to do a good job) as well as adding public schools so more people can get the AS to get a good education.
I don't see any reason to expect that this solution is less optimal than any of the other ones you have mentioned, and it seems much cheaper than revamping the entire system.
To me the root cause of rising health insurance costs is the rising cost of all the lawsuits that doctors and hospitals deal with. When we were just paying for the doctor's education it was a little expensive, but nothing like what we are paying now. You're really just padding the budget to deal with legal fees. A more moderate court system (that awards smaller payouts) would knock this out easily.
I am not familiar with the housing issue, I would have to learn more about it to make a comment.
But I really do think the issues you bring up are best solved with a moderate solution.
https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/
I really don't get all the hyperbole around this. As long as you didn't make arrangements with private loan sharks, you should be fine after college.
> We want everyone to go to college?
Do you think college is the only solution to a more educated and fiscally responsible society? Is there no other solutions to the situation than College? What about education prior to College, is there room for improvement there so we can specialize College and reduce costs in some fashion? Could we streamline education for those who know what they want to be and provide the proper framework for those who do not?
Sometimes it's not about sides, but about asking the proper questions, and questioning the system that exists.
Because this is the only real solution. We have to acknowledge the arguments and feelings of both sides, not shout one another down.
"What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!"
Second, since radio and television (media) started catering towards individual interests (echo chamber) people get so wrapped up in "Hillary/Trump/Somebody is so evil!" that they _don't_ want to experiment because it could cause the person they dislike to win.
Third, nobody cares about politics. We get ~40% turnout in midterm elections, ~60% for presidential. That's pitiful. Those who vote are those who _really_ like voting--those who are engaged.
To break the stranglehold you'd need:
- people to stop consuming sound bite media (Now This, Twitter) and tailored media (talk radio, some major news stations)
- better civic engagement at the local level (this is _the_ most important bit)
- better civic knowledge (the previous bullet point is predicated on this one)
- people willing to run for office as a third party _and_ not be a fringe weirdo
people willing to run for office as a third party _and_ not be a fringe weirdo
I believe this is why the GOP produces such poor candidates in the last 20 years or so; they must pander to the hard core of the party to become a candidate, and the people that pass that test are almost always too far removed from the electorate to win the general.
This is also why we're devolving to a system of ruling families. Clinton was never the best candidate. She was the presumed candidate and the candidate preferred by the party core, so nobody was willing to challenge - except Sanders who could seriously run on ideology.
In California, for example, I'm supposed to cast votes for over 40 positions and issues this election between choices for the president, federal and state representatives of various sorts, local positions, and dozens upon dozens of propositions and measures. There are over 500 total pages in the official voter guides, and the mail-in ballot is supposedly so heavy this election that regular postage isn't enough! It's crazy!
During the primary, we had the first senatorial election without an incumbent in decades and damned near no one was talking about it! (Barbara Boxer is not running for re-election.) It was completely overshadowed by the presidential election. I don't know if it was because the voter guide was so over-packed with propositions or what, but they didn't even print the senatorial candidates' statements during the primary and I had to go online instead to see them!
And people wonder why this country is so fucked up...
I would think their strengths for better economic policies, better military policies, better domestic policies and on and on would outweigh the black-and-white single issues but I am afraid you might be right.
People would rather have simple dogma on single issues. It's just easier to understand a single point of view on a binary issue.
Personally, on a related tangent: I find that the weakest part of most discussions is the tendency to try to make every discussion into 2 opposing viewpoints, rather than seeing the billions of permutations possible on nearly any issue. But it happens all the time.
It's so common that I believe it must be something somewhat hardwired into the way our brains work.
If he doesn't go w/ the people he is banned from the party. in this way the moderate party would cater to the demographic of the area... where one member might vote for gay marriage in NY, another in Alabama would not, but still be part of the same party, but only answer to their local constituents.
What happens is that factions develop along a new politically-important axis which have different answers for a new pressing problem, and the moderate party bifurcates into two.
Huge incentive to find any division.
I don't expect anyone here to believe it, but ironically Trump's GOP is pretty close to being a real moderate party. Dispensing with the astroturfed tribal warfare by supporting gays, not making abortion into a big-ticket issue, reaching out to minorities, and so on, he has drawn in record numbers of supporters from across the line. "We're all Americans" and "America first" are the creeds of him and his supporters. An openly gay man spoke at the RNC to genuine applause, as did Trump holding a rainbow "LGBTQs for Trump" flag at a rally. The barriers once thought concrete are rapidly deteriorating for the ordinary citizens that have successfully pried their eyes away from the propaganda machine.
They don't; just like the article says, it's an effect of the first-past-the-post election model. Two strong parties emerge out of that.
Not sure why some people consider the Democratic party "extreme". They most definitely seem like a moderate party. The Republican party, well, they're just incredibly laser focused on cutting taxes on the rich.
And Republicans would say the opposite. This is why we never get anywhere.
If you can't recognize faults in both _you_ are the problem. Nothing in politics--especially subjective issues like this--are black and white.
The Democrats have, for the most part, at least rallied behind their candidate.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhe286ky-9A
EDIT: I say ex loosely.. I voted mostly dem. down the line, but wrote in Bernie Sanders, I'm not fond of Jill Stein something about her doesn't seem right. But I couldn't in good conscience do a protest vote for Trump, and I can never support Clinton, the most corrupt politician of the past 40 years.
There is no perfect candidate other than perhaps yourself. When it comes to third party, you can safely consider your vote a vote for the party values themselves, rather than the candidate in particular. A vote for Jill Stein is really a vote for the major political parties to work on more green legislation.
I actually led the charge on my site PivotAmerica.com to encourage people to go green/vote for Jill, but I don't really think it's possible to break up the two party monopolies anytime soon, and her opinions on vaccines, and nuclear energy are disconcerting.
A nuclear power plant is NOT the same thing as a weapon of mass destruction. And you can't just print money like she wants to do for the education plan - Bernie's plan of raising taxes on speculation makes way more sense. But I did throw my vote to down-candidate dems. But Hillary ran the shadiest campaign I've ever seen, and is one of the most corrupt people in the world. I'd say she's worst than Bush / Cheney imho, or at least not far removed in policy. (THey both supported the Iraq war after all).
>First: I am going to institute a 5-year ban on all executive branch officials lobbying the government after they leave government service.
>Second: I am going to ask Congress to institute its own 5-year ban on lobbying by former members of Congress and their staffs.
>Third: I am going to expand the definition of lobbyist so we close all the loopholes that former government officials use by labeling themselves consultants and advisors when we all know they are lobbyists.
>Fourth: I am going to issue a lifetime ban against senior executive branch officials lobbying on behalf of a foreign government.
>Fifth: I am going to ask Congress to pass a campaign finance reform that prevents registered foreign lobbyists from raising money in American elections.
>There is another major announcement I am going to make today as part of our pledge to drain the swamp in Washington. If I am elected President, I will push for a Constitutional Amendment to impose term limits on all members of Congress.
>Decades of failure in Washington, and decades of special interest dealing, must come to an end. We have to break the cycle of corruption, and we have to give new voices a chance to go into government service. The time for Congressional term limits has arrived.
If you wanted to actually do something about corruption in Washington instead of just talking about it, you should have voted Trump.
I personally do not believe that he would enact a single one of those campaign pledges.
Those two things don't seem to go together well to me.
I don't know why people keep acting like it is - Trump isn't going to ride into Washington on a white horse and pass a Constitutional amendment or fund a massive immigrant detainment and deportation program or convince Mexico to pay for a wall through sheer willpower.
At best, he'll try, and either have to compromise significantly to get anything passed at all, or else fail entirely.
Meanwhile the Dems double-down on the status quo year after year.
How many times were Reagan and Nixon going to run before they got the nod? McCain? Romney? W's singular skill was being the son of a former President.
Yeah, Hillary is running for Obama's third term. But otherwise Dems don't double down year after year. That'd be the Republicans. Trump's bull in a china shop approach doesn't change this.
Yes. And I consider them both neocons as was the George W. administration. That's what I'm referring to as the status quo.
As a lifelong democrat I'm very excited to see what happens to the GOP in the next few years. I don't expect the DNC to change in a significant way.
There's a definite divide between the moderate GOP and the new, hard right GOP that far surpasses the small, somewhat positive divide when the tea party movement came to be ca 2009.
In fact, he was just officially endorsed by the KKK's official newspaper... his whopping 2nd newspaper endorsement!
His campaign immediately distanced themselves.
Perhaps parties shouldn't have such tight control over things; I certainly would have strongly preferred Sanders as the Democratic nominee. Still, it's a party. Technically it is up to the party to decide who they nominate. That they use primaries to make this decision is certainly nice and democratic of them, but it's not a legal requirement, and it wasn't always like that.
The thing that's really broken is the entire political system that only offers these two parties as realistic options. But the Republican party has also become really dysfunctional over the past decade or so, where representatives and senators basically refuse to do their job and work to undermine the country by their political gamesmanship.
I am both. And understand the pain of being a square peg.
You're confusing how someone votes with what their ranked preferences are. I suspect that many people vote for someone who is not their most preferred candidate (particularly in this election, where the two major party candidates are extremely unpopular). And that makes sense, given that only one person can be President at a time and the USA uses first-past-the-post voting for presidential elections. This tends to lead to only two dominant parties (Duverger's law).
I was partly inspired by this application of game theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coWgbmlvRTU
I've been meaning to do a full writeup but hesitant in the current election climate... :)
One or two more parties in Congress would make the current obstruction tactics much more difficult.
So, in short, if you really want a parliamentary democracy, you'll need to move to one.
E.g. I support something like basic income, but I notice two contradictory arguments are used. The first says that basic income increases the incentive to work for the poor. The second says that basic income releases the poor from being forced into low pay work, and allows them to use their free time on positive things. These are contradictory, but you never see basic income advocates arguing this point among themselves.
Instead of encouraging people to be activists, we should be encouraging them to be intellectually honest. Very few issues are so important that they justify using marketing techniques that ultimately corrode the effectiveness of public debate.
To your point, Maybe allow for more than two points of view? :)
I think you are falling into your own "black or white" trap here.
Sean Hannity is singular in the way he is a sycophant for Trump. I struggle to think of a similar personality for Hillary on any other news network. I mean, CNN made a point to hire Trump's former campaign manager, and he seems to be on the air around half the time I randomly turn on their channel.
It is difficult even in politically stable countries (see: Liberals and NDP in Canada). However, it is by and large the primary mode of operation for most democratic countries. The largest democracy, India, has 10's (100's?) of federal parties that organically align and dis-align to gain power on wedge issues.
This isn't an issue that needs a middle ground. Black Lives Matter never said that cop lives don't. It didn't need to be said that cop lives matter because cops were already treated as though their lives mattered. When a cop gets killed nobody says "Well, he probably had it coming".
I've witnessed people saying exactly that. You can't argue that anti-cop violence is any less real of a problem than anti-black violence. What about the shooting in Dallas?
If the political spectrum had more than one-bit resolution, you'd see all sorts of colours. Here, is only black or white. From afar, it looks grey, hence the apparent 50-50 split. Everyone falls into one of two buckets, and chances are roughly equal.
You just described Libertarianism
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/kausfiles_sp...
Choice quote:
"But why should we expect the deadlock to be broken at all? Think of it in ... well, cheap Darwinian terms. Imagine that we have a two party system, and each party is a collection of status-seeking individuals looking for power by winning a greater "market share" of the vote. Imagine that they each have their ideological principles --one is more to the left, one more to the right -- but these principles are quite flexible in the face of imminent or repeated failure at the polls. Over time, as each party crafts its message to maximize its appeal -- and adjusts its message after each election to regain any lost share of the votes -- wouldn't one expect the system to reach a roughly 50-50 equilibrium, in which every election was a cliffhanger?"
Which party is the 'pro-war' party? Which party is the 'pro-public healthcare' party? Which party is the 'small-government' party? Both parties have been on both sides of these lines in the last two decades.
Yes, and you can see it happening after every election. For example, as soon as gay marriage passed the 50% level of popularity, both parties switched position, saying they favored it to some degree. Democrats switched faster (because of their local politics), but Republicans had a gay speaker at their convention.
One of the toughest issues used to be abortion, until democrats softened on it somewhat, and they let anti-abortion candidates into the party (which is why Bart Stupak, a democrat, held up Obamacare based on opposition to abortion).
Democrats were anti-war under Bush (but they voted for his wars anyway), and Republicans were anti-war under Clinton (but they voted for his wars anyway).
If any view on an issue is clearly a loser, no candidate will espouse that view.
This is what the Tea Party was about - people got tired of Republicans who were happy to vote for large government spending. Many Republicans quit voting for candidates who wore the "R" label but didn't have any actual convictions (at least, they voted against them in the primaries).
But I think in this election cycle, the anger is higher than it's been in my memory, partly because neither presidential candidate's convictions are what anybody wants.
Hillary doesn't have any convictions, except that she should be elected by any means necessary.
Trump has convictions, though they change from day to day, and many of them are convictions that an honorable man would be ashamed of having ever thought, let alone spoken aloud.
So they would say, as politicians, that they have no choice but to pretend they believe the nonsense.
Where are you getting that from? The Republican party platform explicitly condemns gay marriage and wants to ban it federally. [0]
The fact that they're willing to accept millions from a gay Republican is hardly evidence of a changing worldview.
[0] http://time.com/4411842/republican-platform-same-sex-marriag...
On the other hand, there are Republicans who've fought for gay rights for a while, see for example: http://bangordailynews.com/2012/05/10/opinion/the-untold-sto...
The libertarian wing of the Republican party has favored gay rights for a long time, even if they didn't openly fight in favor of them.
If you want to see a switch like this happen again, watch marijuana legalization. Right now, most politicians oppose it, but as soon as enough polls come out showing you can win an election based on that issue, both parties will come out in favor of it more-or-less, almost immediately.
I don't disagree with you saying the Democrats switched position, but I 100% disagree with the notion that the Republican party is "somewhat" in favor of gay marriage. The party platform explicitly condemns the idea and calls for a complete ban on gay marriages.
I don't dispute that some Republicans support gay rights, but that no more proves that the Republican party supports it than the fact that some Republicans believe the moon landing was faked means the Republican party "somewhat" believes the moon landing was faked.
In practice, what happens when a contentious issue like this gains majority support is that one major party adopts it into their platform and the other party mostly tries to stop talking about it in the general election (thereby avoiding making it an issue while still holding on to the voters who oppose it). That's what you're seeing with gay marriage now and, historically, racism.
Because the "rational" policy depends on politics being 1-dimensional. Trump has refused to deal with politics that way.
The ice cream theory is how things work normally, the same way that Newtonian mechanics works normally, but when you find yourself in a situation with extreme gravity wells or high velocities, using Newtonian mechanics to solve problems can get you killed.
Everyone knows politics isn't really one-dimensional. It just ends up being treated that way in plurality voting races because mathematics enforces it, unless you want to take a big risk and upset the apple cart. When you get an opponent who can triangulate an extreme non-centrist position in multi-dimensional politics, moving to the 1-dimensional center might be fatal because of negative traits that centrism implies on certain dimensions that the other candidate has made the campaign about.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/01/us/elections/n...
The "public" debates are sponsored by a partisan non-profit that is controlled by the Democrats and Republicans. Ogliarchs do not like competition. Their tax-exempt status is being challenged in court but other lawsuits have been unsuccessful.
http://www.shapiroarato.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Memor...
Polling requirements for other political parties are arbitrary 15%, but the media companies write the polls to exclude minor party candidates, and the major parties control the media.
Billions $USD are spent on political advertising and propaganda. The Citizens United case allows unlimited spending for political activities.
Congress does not have term limits, further consolidating power within the major parties.
Most Americans don't know or don't care that there are other options. In WA there are 7 candidates on the ballot. But in the left/right paradigm that the powers insure is the only public dialogue, there will always be a race to the middle. This explains why: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_voter_theorem
I'll be voting for Gary Johnson. Ignoring biased media accounts of him, he's one of the few honest candidates and his platform mostly aligns with my own. Being public about this has cost me some relationships this year. I've never seen the amount of negativity and belligerance on social media. The only good thing to come of it, is I finally deleted my Facebook account.
This election has brought out the worst in us, and we will get who we deserve on November 8th.
Do we need to change the system? The players/politicians? Groups exerting influence onto the system (the media, big business, big unions)? Push more decisions to the State level?
Good luck untangling that mess... we can't even agree to end crap like gerrymandering and voter suppression.
Pedantry follows:
First past the post is [more or less] the election system we have - you select one candidate. Candidate with plurality [that's a generalization of a majority, ie the person with the most votes even if they don't have > 50%] wins.
There are lots of alternatives, and even a ballot initiative in Maine [2] to switch to a different type of voting system known as Ranked Choice Voting.
New types of voting systems are exciting, but complexity lends itself to a poor user interface. So more sophisticated forms of voting actually depress poll #s [I'll just cite Harry talking about this ballot initiative in this podcast [3]].
If you're looking to ever have a real alternative to the big two, the path to that is convincing your local government to switch voting systems.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law [2]: https://ballotpedia.org/Maine_Ranked_Choice_Voting_Initiativ... [3]: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/elections-podcast-countd...
[Edit: put scare quotes around law]
I've been wondering recently if California would go for a ballot initiative to change their primaries to approval voting or score voting or some other reasonable improvement. Since recently the state has open primaries, meaning you might end up with a general election between two Democrats, or two Republicans, and other weirdness. I can imagine less resistance to a change here, than for the mechanism of the general election.
I think the most important thing is for voters to want to experiment. And to be engaged.
Would it really be better to have three candidates, each of which was more or less reviled by 66% of the population?
The truth is that Americans don't agree on many major issues, and that the major parties are a personification of this unhappy fact. Adding more parties doesn't help that. In fact, splitting the vote among more parties makes it likely that the elected official will represent the views of fewer of the total electorate!
The obvious answer to this is to dismantle the Federal system, devolve as much power as possible to the states, and perhaps abolish the office of President altogether.
It would probably be a terrible idea on the one hand, but on the other hand, no more Presidential elections.
Problem with that theory is, the two parties aren't close in the slightest. Democrats prefer expanding the social safety net, minority rights, etc. Republicans prefer... the opposite.
Which party had a healthcare plan in 2008? Was the 'individual mandate' a Republican or Democratic idea?
Here's a quick Python snippet to test it empirically:
print sum(random.randint(0, 1) for x in xrange(0, 100000000))
With 8 runs, I got these results:
49995906
50003341
50009287
49996048
49996424
49993962
49989590
50002171
(I would argue that random votes isn't related to reality either...)
n <- 100000000
diff <- 0.1/100
a_wins <- n*(1-diff)/2
b_wins <- n*(1+diff)/2
p1 <- pbinom(a_wins, size = n, prob = 0.5)
p2 <- pbinom(b_wins, size = n, prob = 0.5, lower.tail = F)
p1 + p2 # = 1.523959e-23There was this study that showed when remove parties from policies, something like 90% of the population wants free health care for all, free education for all, richer people to be taxed more, not less. 90% isn't really split down the middle.
It's like, democracy-wise, Americans are all still driving around in Ford T-Models.
No. (Well maybe runoff voting would be a slight improvement.)
My point was that with proportional voting, you get more than two viable parties in the parliament, and thus the whole political landscape will be different. And more than two parties will be putting forward their presidential candidates, too.
It seems that elections are won and lost at least as much by whose supporters bother to show up as by people switching allegiances.
Instead, what we observe is that our political center has been moved further and further into the Republican Party, ever since the '70s. Prior to that, during the fifth party system, the political center rested with a coalition of urban and Southern working-class Democrats.
Now in our current election, the center seems to be moving into wealthy suburbs and Silicon Valley, libertarian-lite.
The interesting question is what sort of forces move the center and alter the composition of the party-system at any given time.
Perhaps in an economic sense, but hardly in a cultural sense (other than guns, is there a single Republican cultural issue which has been winning against its Democratic inverse?).
Though in an economic sense, yeah, my original point stands. And actually, it's strengthened in a way: how can we talk about the median voter theorem pushing the parties to the center if they spent the whole most recent party system both moving strongly to the right on economic issues while moving erratically but consistently to the left on social issues? That would mean there isn't even one center!
For example, Republicans in congress strongly supported the 1965 Voting Rights act, 111-20 in the house and 30-1 in the Senate (Democrats 217-54, 49-17).
I think this is an important point because there is a good chance that the existing Republican coalition will break down in the next 4 or 8 years.
I am not impressed by the article, which does not delve into actual party positions, reasons voters give for voting, or well-known blocks of voters, and instead gives an analogy about ice cream vendors.
I mean, you may have the opinion that it's a trivial or incorrect point that wasn't worth expressing, but you seem not to be aware that it's there at all.
(tl;dr: you didn't like the article because it had the temerity not to be the article you were expecting. Who knows, if one read such articles one might learn something one didn't already know!)
Not unlikely U.S is source of leak not Russia. Total media blackout. NYT, Bloomberg, CNN, WaPo, ect.
538 has a 3.1 popular vote margin and in the last 24ish hours Trump has gone from 80/20 to 60/40. Many sides manipulating information, so both amplify their candidate. Going to be very close
Either this or these agencies are secretly controlled by Putin.
They sure are all out to get her it seems.
FBI was a hero to Democrats and a villain to Republicans a couple months ago and now it flipped. So the FBI probably isn't controlled by either party.
No, they wouldn't have, because the FBI can't indict anyone; indictments are sought by Justice Department prosecutors (who don'the work for the FBI) and issued by grand juries (who also don't work for the FBI.) All the FBI can do is investigate, conduct lawful arrests, and provide information to prosecutors who decide whether and when to prosecute (including seeking indictments.)
Well, and conduct politically motivated information releases, though that isn't a legal option, as it violates the Hatch Act.
And the FBI is, in fact, controlled by a Republican. This is a matter of simple, undisputable fact.
And that's a Republican whose naked political manipulation has been criticized not only by Democrats, but by numerous Republicans, including, among other notables, former Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales, and by others with no love of Democrats, like conservative icon, Fox News legal anlayst, and Libertarian Party member Judge Andrew Napolitano.
> And they would have let General Petraeus (who was a potential Republican primary candidate) off instead of bringing charges against him
Again, that's Justice Department prosecutors, not the FBI. Plus, that kind of blatant political manipulation that is likely to get you fired or forced to resign is a one-time-only thing that only works well if you do it right before the election. If a partisan Republican -- especially working in a Democratic Administration -- was going to do it, they do just what Comey did, do it close enough to the general election that it would have an effect, but not so close that it wouldn't have time to get plenty of play in the media and magnification through partisan propaganda outlets.
I have been getting updates via a fucking uncharged fugitive seeking asylum from my country and reading updates via RT (Russian News). I feel sick to my stomach and I am very cynical.
NYT is covering the Wikileaks emails:
http://www.nytimes.com/topic/organization/wikileaks
Also, are you confusing CNN firing a commentator with the NYT? Donna Brazile was not 'a staff member' at CNN, they paid her to go on TV and babble, not as a reporter. She acted in bad faith, but she wasn't in a journalistic role.
I am not contending there is a blackout-- that was an over reaction, but all major networks are barely mentioning much of the disclosures or even showing HRC in that bad of a light. If this was Gary Johnson-- who most people dont know; would ve surprised if state dept & WL werent front page.
Bloomberg, CNN, NYT, WaPo, CBS, NBC are running with blatant propaganda. Just because I find HRC to be a dangerous, doeNt mean I support T.
The state dept/FBI are releasing data dumps on a former senator & secretary of state as well as pursuing her investigation of criminal activity. None of these papers allude to that scary fact, or the scarrier fact that there is a schism internally as well.
Comcerned.
There is a blackout, it's just not a 100% blackout.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/us/politics/hillary-clinto...
If they don't give good placement to something scandalous from the released messages, then you have an argument.