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Real Presidential Debates
slithytove writes "As many of us are aware, the presidential debates are currently controlled by an organization called the Commision on Presidential Debates. As anyone who's seen a presidential debate recently could guess, the CPD does just what our two major parties want: exclude third parties and impose rules that make the event more of a joint press conference than a debate. Non-establishment candidates Michael Badnarik and David Cobb will be having an actual debate this Thursday. After debating each other, they will be rebutting the points Bush and Kerry make in their pseudo-debate. Free Market News will be streaming it and providing a download afterwards."
Obviously Ralph is holding out for an invitation to the Kerry-Bush debate. Or else he's afraid to set foot in Florida after the problems he caused in 2000.
Have you read my blog lately?
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I don't respond to AC's.
go to OpenDebates.org. Click on "issue" if you want the full scoop on the objections. Do you support scripted debates with no invites to 3rd,4th,5th party candidates?
From OpenDebates.org: Under CPD sponsorship, the major party candidates secretly design all the elements of the formats. Consequently, challenging questions, assertive moderators, follow-up questions, candidate-to-candidate questioning, rebuttals and surrebuttals are often excluded from the presidential debates. The CPD's formats prevent in-depth examination of critical issues, and allow the candidates to the deliver pre-packaged soundbites that are repeated over, and over, and over again on the campaign trail.
Presidential debates were run by the civic-minded and non-partisan League of Women Voters until 1988, when the national Republican and Democratic parties seized control of the debates by establishing the bi-partisan, corporate-sponsored Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD). Posing as a nonpartisan institution committed to voter education, the CPD has continually and deceptively run the debates in the interest of the national Republican and Democratic parties, not the American people.
As for me, I am an observer that has observed there is a lot of observing to observe.
Hell, I want full presidential debates. Every single candidate.
I know you're joking, but there is an easy answer to this: anybody who is on enough state ballots to have a mathematical chance of winning a majority under the Electoral College should be invited.
How many candidates would that include? Get ready for it...: 6. Including Bush and Kerry. That's half as many as some of the debates during primaries. It's entirely feasible.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Which is probably why one of the first lessons any politician has drilled into him by The Experts is "Never answer a hypothetical question."
Indeed, they learn a whole battery of rhetorical tricks specifically to avoid having to deal with hypotheticals. Watch the next time you see somebody pose one to a politician -- any politician -- and you'll immediately see that, no matter what their answer, it has nothing to do with the hypothetical. Which is a shame, since hypotheticals can be useful ways to see how someone thinks; but maybe that's the reason why they avoid them so assiduously...
Read my blog.
Winner takes all is there because we once believed in strong state government and a weak federal government. The idea was that states would all agree to basic principles and trade freely with one another. And that the state itself would vote in a weighted system for representives. But after the civil war this antifederalism ideal lost out, and we became a unified nation with little difference between states. Pushing control of the land up to the national level. Now you can no longer escape a crappy government by moving out of state, you have to move to a different country now.
The idea was that a state of mainly Quakers wouldn't want the same laws as a state mainly of Catholics. And just because there were more Quakers (at the time) than Catholics in the US it would not be fair to the minority if federal laws were made in favor of one group even if that group was almost non-existant in a region (not many Quakers in Maryland, not many Catholics in Pennsylvania).
The constitution doesn't prohibit a powerful federal government, nor does it grant it. People (or perhaps lawyers and bankers 120ish years ago) decided they wanted a strong federal government, and that's what we got. But we still have a lot of baggage from our times as a Nation of States.
There were certainly disadvantages to almost fully autonomous states (like slavery). On the otherhand there are advantages too. It is perhaps more efficient. It gives states the ability to compete for productive citizens (what place has the best taxes, best government, etc). Thus giving individuals a choice on what set of laws they live under.
Given the current system, "Winner takes all" is perhaps not a good system. My vote would to be to dismantle most of the federal government and reinstitute the rights of States, and then just keep the current voting system. I think most people would rather have strong federal government, in that case it would be best to update the voting system to reflect this.
One thing is for sure, the current system is strategically more interesting. It's quite simular to playing a game of Risk. Where as a fair system is a much tougher game to play, because clever strategy won't yield huge gains. Just gains proportional to the amount of work put into it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
"Political campaigns are always eager to keep hecklers out of their pep rallies, but the Republican National Committee took that desire to a new level last week, requiring supporters to sign an oath of loyalty before receiving tickets to Saturday's New Mexico rally featuring Vice President Cheney."0 19-2004Jul31.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31
you couldnt make this stuff up