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Colbert Ballot Bid Shot Down
wizzard2k writes "Some of you may have seen Stephen Colbert's bid for the South Carolina Presidential Primary, however it seems his hopes to appear on the ballot as a candidate for the Democratic Party have been shot down. From the report: 'Stephen Colbert's bid to get on the ballot for the upcoming Democratic primary in his home state was shot down on Thursday (November 1) by the executive committee of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Colbert's bid was voted down 13-3 ... Using criteria such as whether the candidate was recognized in the national news media as a legitimate candidate and whether they'd actively campaigned in the state, the committee put the kibosh on the Colbert bid.'"
... was probably because he would have won. Can't have that big of a threat to the Establishment.
Ron Paul has convincing tale... but then, he isn't running as a Democrat.
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I hope Colbert's candidacy and its high level of support serve a large clue-stick to the entrenched political parties. A large number of people are so sick and tired of politics as usual that they are willing to support anyone who is unusual.
Somehow I doubt the Republicrats and Democans will listen to this warning, though. I remember in college when a local comic-strip character (Hank the Hallucination, no less) won the student government presidential election (beating Paul Begala who went on to serve Clinton). All the budding young politicos were incensed that their resume-padding ambitions were being damaged by the will of the student body. But it didn't really change anything then and a fear Colbert short-lived candidacy won't change much now (but I can hope!).
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
I think this is fascinating, and I hope Colbert continues to see how far he can go. It's great that he is testing our democratic process, and bringing in his fans into how the system works.
Perhaps he can get on a third-party primary? As an independent? How hard is it to start your own party? Is running as a write-in the best option?
"I only speak the truth"
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...40 years ago when Pat Paulson did it the first time.
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Why can't he run as an independent?
-- Even if a god did exist, why the fsck should I worship it?
Colbert has handled this poorly, and while I'm dismayed he won't be on the political stage, I think it's his own fault.
I think he would have taken the place by storm if he'd gone out of character when off his show and dealt with people as a regular person, instead of making any attempt whatsoever to be funny. It would have put people off guard and left him the upper hand to control the political stage.
Nothing would have shown modern politics for what it is better than to have people show up to debate with him, armed with one-liners so they could compete one what they imagined to be the called-for level only to find that he was armed with complete thoughts on issues that he surely knows about but does not normally speak of.
That he has left people unsure about what he's doing is not the fault of the people he's confused. He's the one with the savvy to have overcome it, and his entire point is that people are not good about setting serious agendas. They're waiting for someone else to do it in lemming-like ways, and then instead of him doing it, he's leaving it to others to figure him out.
I love his show, but I think he has botched this. He could still recover, I think, but the only way I see him doing is stepping out of character. And to be honest, I think he's afraid to do that, which bodes ill for him as a candidate.
He wants to orchestrate things, but the US situation is not something that needs orchestration right now. It needs plain honesty. Honesty we know he's capable of. But it needs it straight up, not confusingly presented.
I don't care what he says on his show--I'll still watch the show. I care a lot that off the show, if he's going to do this, he do it as a regular guy, not a persona.
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
Doesn't mean, however, that he can't run for president on his own.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
Didn't Clarke say in "Imperial Earth" something to the effect that wanting an office was grounds for disqualification and the best officeholders are dragged kicking and screaming into office?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Stewart at least serves a valid reality based purpose, that is to make political idiots look ridiculous in public.
The Daily Show gets people interested and in fact cynical of politicians where they otherwise would not have even cared.
I won't however defend colbert, I've seen him bring too many guests on the show with important things to say, only to have him run his mouth and waste time as if its all a joke. It may be mocking political pundits, but his guests are real and were brought on for a reason, and he talks over them like a moron.
In "Founding Brothers", the author posits that shortly after the revolution, it was socially expected that leaders should appear not to want/have-wanted the office; Washington and Jefferson both did the [Lucius Quinctius] Cincinnatus "I'm retiring to my beloved farm" thing, and during the Jefferson/Adams presidential race, neither campaigned for themselves, but rather had/let their friends & colleagues do so for them.
That's the main reason I was hoping he was going to get in it. Just once I'd like to see a debate where the candidates were called on their bullshit non-answers. If nothing else, he'd at least draw attention to answers of "I'm pro puppies and happiness!" as not having any actual meaning. When they're asked questions about how they intend to tackle some problem, they deserve to be mocked if they try to pass off platitudes instead of plans.
Everything will be taken away from you.
Maybe I just run with the 'wrong' crowds, but I think almost every person I've ever met has complained about the fact that a third-party candidate can't win. People know about the problem, they just don't know what to do about it. They're too scared for the most part to vote for something other than D or R because it will likely not matter. Hell, I don't know how to fix it and vote according to the same reasoning.
I wish, at least, there were four parties though:
Liberal Social Issues/Liberal Economic Issues
Liberal Social Issues/Conservative Economic Issues
Conservative Social Issues/Liberal Economic Issues
Conservative Social Issues/ Conservative Economic Issues.
That way I could vote to lower taxes WITHOUT voting for torture and censorship. But they'll never do it because if one of them splits up (say Rs split into those for gay marriage and pro choice and Rs that are against) essentially it'll just hand the election to the Ds. It's bloc voting and you can't get around it unless everybody splits at once.
ESSENTIALLY, I think what I'm saying is that it's a monopoly, but I DON'T think anti-trust laws apply to elections (though it seems like they should...right?). Free internet for the first senator to bring THAT up in Congress...
They have to do something though. People get a little cocky about the US, but we weren't exactly big shots a hundred years ago and in another hundred (50, 20, 5..) years a lot could go wrong. Nations need to adapt and change. You can't just keep building up frustration and diverting it with a new scapegoat enemy every few years.
Cheers to the US, let's hope you make some wise decisions to admit your faults in the next few years. You can only repaint something so many times before it begins to rot inside.
Not even close. Other people can and often build off the successes of people who failed. And yes, when your all sitting around saying this sucks, you can ask yourselves who attempted to do something about it and who didn't. If everyone says they did something then fine. But as soon as someone said they didn't attempt to do anything, they they lost the right to bitch.
I probably failed 3 times before I started my first company that took off and became successful. If you ask many other business owners, you will see that they admit to have failed in the past too. It may not be their fault it failed but failing is failing. And it definately isn't jumping and attempting to grab the moon.
-metric
Once again we have evidence that the two big political parties are nothing short of the same cliques that most of us hated and detested in high school.
The Democrats (not to be confused with the democrats, small d) are thrilled to have someone like Steve on their side as long as he's not rocking the boat within their party. The second that he tries to cross the line from being the king's jester to trying to be a king he gets smacked down by the same people he supported for years and years. He's good enough to be their goof because he makes them laugh and be brings them free PR but he's not truely one of them. He's simply not a Democrat. He doesn't have the money nor does he do the same goosestep. He's the class clown that all the preps and jocks laughed at yet wasn't good enough to sit at their table during lunch. He has no chance within their exclusive socio-political structure to make any real headway. His role is defined and his attempt to leave that role is what really got him beat down. If he makes further attempts on this he'll find that those who use to laugh at him and praise him for being a stooge are going to be more than willing to feed him to the wolves. They're hoping that they've made their point and that Steve will go back to his old role. Otherwise he'll be doomed.
You see, both of the big political parties have this going on. Either you're a Republican or Democrat or a republican or a democrat. If you're not among their power elite they'll humor you into thinking that you're part of their structure but if you try to advance in their structure without being the power elite you're going to get flogged for being a bad dog and getting out of line. Their affluence and exclusivity are not to be questioned or approached. Especially within the ranks. As outsiders we can scoff but if you're inside there is a consequence for this. Stevie is finding that out. I'd like to think he's smart enough to have already known it. It'll be a dark day for him if he decides to rock the boat more.
The really sad thing is that the lemmings of the Republicans and Democrats are the ones who let this structure exist and regardless of how discontent these people are in their role they refuse to start supporting people who'd be willing to support them. This isn't to say that third parties could not fall into the same ruts but only having two choices makes it easy to stay in power when you're in the rut.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
95% seems excessive, but check out this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime#Statistics . In 1998, nearly one-third of all 20-29 year old black males in America were currently pending trial, in prison, or on parole (and this claim has two citations.) One_third. Now consider that this statistic doesn't include convicted black males who are no longer under parole. And consider that certain areas have a higher concentration of criminals than others (big cities having more because of their concentration of wealth and ease of evading law enforcement in their population density.) And also consider that Paul was accusing the D.C. cops of being ineffective (i.e. not catching the majority of the criminals)... I feel a tad sick in saying it, but if his accusation is true, I don't think that the 95% statistic is so obviously racist as you seem to think.
It's probably an exaggeration, yes, and but (provided we limit ourselves to young black men, and make the assumptions outlined above) it's not an obscene one. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the actual figure is in the vicinity of 75%, perhaps even higher. And before you peg me a racist, let me hasten to say that I am against the war on drugs, and the majority of those crimes are likely nonviolent drug crimes. Just because someone is a criminal does not make them a bad person; there are such things as unjust laws. Also, I don't believe that black people are in any way genetically predisposed to anything; any statistical discrepancies are most likely the generations-old leftovers of post-slavery (and post-discrimination) poverty.
On the Israeli note--it is a very sad thing that people cannot criticize Israel and Zionism without being accused of anti-Semitism. While I applaud many progressive Israeli policies, the Zionist movement really picked the worst possible location in the world for their homeland. I suppose it's now far too late to think about doing it elsewhere, but in the 60+ years since their sovereignty was declared, their government has done some horrific (and more than a few extremely stupid) things, which has just gone on to destabilize the region even more. Israel is kept alive in no small part by the United States' willingness to supply them with state of the art weaponry, including (as is widely assumed, but cannot be absolutely proven) nuclear weapons. On the whole I think that Israel has been a hell of a lot more civilized than their neighbors have been, but that doesn't mean we should continue to support them unilaterally--doing the "right" thing isn't right if it means destabilizing the region even further and pushing us closer to World War III. That's my own view of the matter--Paul's was about pro-Israel lobbyists having too much power. That may or may not be true, but simply putting forth the argument doesn't make him a racist. I agree, it *could* be an initial warning sign that he harbors deeper, more generalized (and crackpot) Jewish conspiracy theories, but it could also be a very sane and straightforward observation based on the fact that the United States is ONLY country (of any significant size) that consistently and usually unequivocally supports Israel in the UN.
We don't necessarily have to abolish political parties. I'm not sure that's even possible in practice. What we do need is a system without the property that only one Democrat and one Republican have any shot at any given political office.
The best suggestion I've heard so far is this: Move to approval voting for the president and senators and to proportional representation for the house of representatives.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.