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Ted Cruz Drops Out Of The Republican Presidential Race (washingtonpost.com)
rmdingler writes: Ted Cruz drops out of the presidential race after losing in Indiana. Donald Trump has become the presumptive nominee before Hillary has locked things up versus Bernie. This is huge. Cruz's decision to drop out came after losing significantly to Trump in the Indiana primary. "I said I would continue on as long as there is a viable path to victory. Tonight I'm sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed," Cruz told a small group of supporters Tuesday night. "Together we left it all on the field in Indiana. We gave it everything we got, but the voters chose another path." He said he would "continue to fight for liberty," but did not say whether or not he would support Trump as the nominee. The exit comes soon after he announced former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as his running mate in a desperate move to keep his candidacy afloat.
Namely "Cruz for President"
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Someone's God lied to them......
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
I'm not in the US so all I get are news paper reports.
Is it possible for trump to win the presidency? From the outside he looks incredibly divisive even in his own party, but are there enough disenfranchised people that would jump on his band wagon to get over the line?
We had a similar muppet in Australia called Clive Palmer who managed to get elected to our house of reps despite all the press saying he didn't stand a chance.
Clinton just got handed the White House. Game over.
Not yet, Clinton hasn't sung yet...
Or did you think we were crowning a queen?
What do we do now?
Prepare for civil war... not tomorrow, not next year... but in the next 20-40 years I expect one...
This nation is deeply divided between two very different points of view. Neither side is interested in the middle.
It won't end well.
What really troubles me is what happens after the election. 40 years of anti-intellectualism and pandering to prejudice and we got a significant part of the country voting for someone who really would not have been good for the country. The historical parallels are obvious. What do we do now?
The Republican pandering to people's worst instincts has been slowly catching up on them for years. In 2006, the religious right was openly complaining that they were were bringing in lots of votes and not getting much in return. [*] Then after 2008 the Tea Party took it over the top. Traditional Republicans thought the TP was just another demographic that they control, but the inmates took over the asylum.
The Republican party is fucked. Their core wants to rule for the rich, but of course they can't get elected on that platform. So they've spent several decades suckering single-issue voters into voting against their own best interests. Now the (traditional) Republicans have mostly lost all that support, so they can't possibly get elected to rule for the rich.
My guess is that traditional Republicans will team up with the "neoliberal" Democrats (think Hillary), and the rest of the Democrats will pursue a more people-oriented agenda (think Bernie). The Tea Partier / Trumpites will limp along, relegated to third-party candidate status.
[*]Of course not; the Republicans just wanted their votes because they needed them to get elected so they could rule for the rich. The demographics that they sucker into voting for them didn't matter in the least, to pre-TeaParty Republicans.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Pretty much. Clinton is delusional if she thinks after all the insulting things she's said about the Bernie supporters and the various dirty campaigning practices that she's going to get all of us to toe the line. I for one will not vote for that woman. If that means President Trump, then so be it. We can survive 4 years of Trump, I'm not sure we can survive the precedent of letting somebody as pathologically dishonest as Clinton to win.
Just the other day it came out that she's been using the Hillary Clinton Victory fund to funnel donations well above and beyond the legal limit into her campaign coffers. Roughly 99% of the money that was donated, ostensibly for the party and other Democrats has been funneled back into her campaign.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/clinton-fundraising-leaves-little-for-state-parties-222670
Is that really better than what Trump can do for us? I doubt very much that he really believes most of the inflammatory rhetoric.
There appears to be a choice between someone who is conniving and self serving and nasty and under handed, and someone who is conniving and self serving and nasty and underhanded
FTFY
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
What you're really asking for is a return to 1974. That's when Nixon, in need of more Republican voters, took the party then best described as the "Country Club Republicans" and convinced the segregationist South to join them as a middle road between Democrats and George Wallace. The segregationist Southern Whites had previously voted Democratic. So, where they had Jessie Helms leading the segregationists then, it's Donald Trump now.
I don't know if the Country Club Republicans would be able to win anything on their own any longer. It's a bit more clear today that their interests aren't anyone else's. You would have to find some other brand of conservatism.
The folks with Parliamentary systems seem to be able to handle this better than we do.
Bruce Perens.
Wait a second...
Rafael Cruz AND Glen Beck both said Ted Cruz was "anointed by god" to be the next president. How could god have gotten it so wrong??
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Regardless of how self serving or fraudulent you may think she is, the odds of Hilary accidentally plunging the whole planet into world War three due to ineptitude seems significantly lower than with Trump.
A vote for Reagan is a vote for war.
I suspect it won't matter. If the choice comes down to being between somewhat-disliked Clinton and outspoken-bigot Trump, a left-leaning voter will still pick Hillary, just to keep things from getting too bad.
The Clintons have a PR problem. Bill was friendly, and eventually that was a liability. Hillary has had mostly bad PR since becoming a controversial Secretary of State, and the Republican party has consistently amplified that controversy, exaggerating real problems and inventing conspiracies. However, Hillary's stated policy positions aren't too bad. Sure, she has ties to the right, and isn't as far to the left as Bernie Sanders, but if she gets the nomination, she's still a Democrat.
In the general election, though, that's exactly what would happen. It will become us-versus-them, and both sides will be sure to keep that in the public eye. If you're a Republican and you don't vote for Trump, the dirty Democrats will win. If you're a Democrat and you don't vote for Clinton, the rotten Republicans will win. I expect mud-slinging all around.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The only reason for super delegates is that the parties are private clubs and make their own rules. Geez, even the Republicans don't have them.
I'd put super delegates after the electoral college on the list of insults to democracy. One person - one vote isn't a radical idea.
Bruce Perens.
Trump is literally going to plaster the walls with Hillary, after the first debate that all become apparent even to you... I doubt Hillary will do more than one open debate, and then where will the reclusive sulking get her? Exactly nowhere.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
(The Democrats have their own extremists that need to be purged, but I don't think it's gotten to "party splitting" level quite yet.)
It has. The problem is within the democrat party, they're willing to pander to the crazies like it's 1987, notice how shrill the anti-sexual revolution, anti-speech, anti-personal responsibility, pro-protect us from stuff segment is getting these days. The crazies within and outside the party for the democrats have basically taken a page out of the religious right of the 70's and 80's. And average people, have already had enough of it. I have more friends that are democrats(mainly self-declared liberals), who are voting for trump then will vote for hillary or sanders.
Om, nomnomnom...
Lesser of two weasels.
"Lesser of two evils"
That's funny as hell. Look at what you left yourselves after generations of picking the "Lesser of two evils". Who ever dreamed that Bush could make the suit look good?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Celebrate diversity, right? Democrats could not convince the electorate of their ideas, so they changed the electorate — by diluting it with a heavy dose of people from countries, where the government is the source of what little wealth there is.
They don't mind big government, and are happy to receive "free" help from it. The dilution is ongoing — while the same Administration fought tooth-and-nail to deport refugees from a rich country, who fled over homeschooling...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The election will test the validity of that presumption.
Can you win the national election on pure PC virtue signaling? Because... Hillary has a lot of problems as a candidate as well.
She's a robotic speaker that is not especially charismatic. Not good in a president.
Just as Trump has problems with women, Hillary has problems with men... including Democrat men.
Just as Trump has a harder time with older voters that find his vulgarity off putting... hillary's corruption scandals have hurt her amongst younger voters which is why Bernie is trending as well as he is.
Very little you say against Trump is something you can't say against Hillary... the Flipflopping... the allegations of corruption... The being against one group or another. You can say Trump is an evil billionaire but then you have to admit that Hillary is getting most of the money from the other evil billionaires. So... sort of a wash really.
At the end of the day, the democrats are going to have to go positive on themselves. Say "we will do this good thing" whatever that is... with credibility. Because going negative on Trump and expecting to win the office on that alone is probably not enough to get elected at this point.
No one has a crystal ball into the future on this issue. But keep in mind that no one... means no one.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Regardless of how self serving or fraudulent you may think she is, the odds of Hilary accidentally plunging the whole planet into world War three due to ineptitude seems significantly lower than with Trump.
The great majority (if not all) of wars was caused by self-serving leaders, and never by incompetence. Psychopatic minds only interested in their own benefit, financial and political, have been the motive force behind practically all wars in recorded history.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
I suspect you will see his policies shift, but not in any way that allows for easy categorization. But there is one thing that Trump is very very good at which is he is a mainstream media prediction killer. From pretty much day one every prediction about him by the mainstream media has gone up in smoke. The initial prediction that I read about his campaign was that it would last just long enough for him to promote his show or a book.
Exactly. It's kindof scary that the most likely next president is hated by 75+% of the population. At least with Sanders or Kasich, the other side of the aisle tolerates them. I'm a republican/libertarian and disagree with most of what Sanders believes but I still think that he is a decent human being. I can't say the same about Hillary or Trump. If it was Kasich vs Hillary, I would vote for Kasich, if it was Trump vs Sanders, I would vote for Sanders, but Hillary vs Trump and I have no idea who to vote. We're either going to have one of the highest turnouts or lowest turnouts in voting history and most people are going to be voting *against* a candidate instead of for a candidate.
No....I'm not really a fan of Trump, but he pretty much seems to be an open book. How many politicians do you know of that will have reservation against a certain religious group and openly speak about it? With Trump, what you see is very much what you get. Obama can't claim that (compare his campaign promises vs what he actually did) and Hillary will make Obama look like a saint in that regard.
Really? Hillary has had her hand in throwing lots of people to their deaths in conflicts launched or made worse on her watch. Or are you trying to ignore that part? Ask some Libyans how all that's going lately.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I'd put superdelegates before the Electoral College. At least states, as sovereign entities, have some legitimacy to give input to the process. Political parties, being evil perversions of democracy that should never have been allowed to exist in the first place, do not.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
To the contrary the "war on women" campaign backfired in the congressional elections and it is not polling well as a political concept. Look at the number of college age women that self identify as feminists as well. There is a preception whether real or not that the PC thing has gotten out of control. It has become "uncool". Whatever women believe, when queried they are openly less willing to associate with these things because they're seen as divisive.
This perception is largely the result of males generally seeing modern feminism as hostile to men. Whether that is true or not is not really the issue here because we're talking about politics and politics is about perceptions. Those are the perceptions.
So it is a wash. The numbers were so bad that the Hillary Campaign or their proxies went so far as to claim male democrats voting for Bernie were merely doing so because they don't like women in power. THAT sort of behavior has consequences.
The Attraction of playing the woman card is that you want to get 50 percent of the voters on your side. The risk however is that you may turn off half the voters in the process. What is more, women have very interesting voting patterns depending on whether they're single or not. Single women tend to vote very differently from married women. To a large extent... Hillary is going after single women... that is the demographic that responds to this sort of thing. But the risk is that she can turn off men and even married women in the process which could easily be fatal.
The ultimate fallout here is unknown to either of us. Its all speculation. We won't know what happened or why until after it happened.
Various groups on the internet are over represented and under represented. Judging things based on activity in social media is unreliable.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Again, I wish I had a funny mod point to give you.
Anyway, as bad as Trump is, Cruz would have been worse. The Donald's primary identity is "con man" or "salesman" and he doesn't believe most of the crazy stuff he says. He's just saying those things because the suckers want to hear them. In contrast, Cruz's primary personal identity is "religious fanatic", supported by a secondary identity as "technically skilled liar", and he sincerely believed all of the crazy stuff he said, and some more besides.
Trump's nomination actually gives me some hope for the future of America. The so-called Republican Party has become a travesty of itself. Just an insane brand hijack of the actual Republican Party of Abe Lincoln and the pragmatic if overly business-friendly GOP of Ike and Teddy. It is overdue to follow the Whig and Federalists Parties into oblivion so the American political system can have a REAL choice. Yeah, the Democratic Party will win too easily, but it's not like they've ever been able to figure out what they want to do with political power even when they have it. I doubt the new challenger will be the Libertarian Party, but the election of 2018 may reveal which way things are actually going. Hey, it's even conceivable the so-called Republicans can reform themselves enough to earn their own name again.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Giskard. He knows what's on my mind.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I happen to think it is the exact opposite. Numerous people who would never vote for Trump otherwise will turn out in droves because the alternative is Hillary Clinton. I am a libertarian who cannot stand Trump. But this year I will be sure to vote for the uncultured New York hillbilly because the evil bitch shall not pass. And I have nothing against female politicians. I would vote for Nena Whitfeld long before Rand Paul. But Hillary Clinton, who wipes her servers with a cloth, is not someone I want to see in the Oval office. Ever.
I know what Libertarian means. You can maximize liberty in two very different ways: Maximize liberty for everyone, or maximize liberty for "me" (the Libertarian speaking). These things are diametrically opposed, and unfortunately the Libertarian party is very solidly on the "me" side of the question.
Bruce Perens.
What in the world? Hillary Clinton's two biggest "controversies" are Benghazi, which is about as much of a controversy as global warming, and this whole email scandal where she used a private server instead of the State Department one. Given how many government servers have been hacked in the last ten years, the emails were probably safer there than they were on the government system anyway.
Pretending that Hillary Clinton is anywhere in the same zip code as despicable a person as Trump is to ignore basic facts about the two people and their history. The only reason people even think stupid things like this is because we've been taught by the 24-hour news cycle to look at the constantly-updating horse race statistics rather than the actual policies and histories of the candidates.
It's funny that the American version of "extreme leftist" looks somewhat centrist from a European/Australian perspective.
Whut? From what is apparent, anti-speech and anti-responsibility group is squarely in the Republican camp. And then there are weaklings projecting their fears on Democrats.
You been paying attention to those bastions of liberal democracy called universities over the last 8 years? You know those places with "free speech walls" and all those ardent progressives that like to freak out and pull fire alarms on people during speeches. Using the "no bad tactics only targets" line of reasoning. You notice all those politicians in the democrat camp supporting those ideas, and wanting to implement them in the US at large. In the last year the "safe space" stuff has been very popular with democrat politicians too, and has been used as a tool to stifle dissenting points of view because it could "hurt feelings."
The political left in the US has a serious problem and it's fractured into two groups: Batshit crazy, and not crazy. And right now the crazy are winning because the main parts of the party(or their supporters) believe it's not a problem. But when those moderates look at it, they go NOPE. When those left-leaning people look at it and they go NOPE. Welcome to what the Republicans went through ~25 years ago.
Om, nomnomnom...
Good thing is that US geopolitically is as good as ever. Europe as usual is in trouble...
Please elaborate? There is UK voting on EU membership (ironically the politicians there is probably learning the same lesson as the GOP: don't produce fear mongering using opinions you don't really share)...
Then there is some ongoing financial trouble in Greece... Economic growth isn't completely back yet (but that the same case for 99% of the Americans).
But these are likely solved given time and luck, things are definitely being addressed.
The whole refugee crisis, is not a crisis, just an under-investment in refuges... The European countries can fix that anytime. It's mostly a superficial issue, not actual trouble in any sense.
So I'm curious how do you see a Europe in crisis?
That is so funny! it's pretty much madness to think there is historical precedent of any sort for what is about to transpire.
Let's look at the 2016 electoral map, which is identical to the 2012 and 2008 electoral maps. Hillary needs 28 electoral votes to win. Trump will need 168 electoral votes to win.
And here's the underlying math. If Clinton wins the 19 states (and D.C.) that every Democratic nominee has won from 1992 to 2012, she has 242 electoral votes. Add Florida's 29 and you get 271. Game over.
The Republican map — whether with Trump, Cruz or the ideal Republican nominee (Paul Ryan?) as the standard-bearer — is decidedly less friendly. There are 13 states that have gone for the GOP presidential nominee in each of the last six elections. But they only total 102 electorate votes. That means the eventual nominee has to find, at least, 168 more electoral votes to get to 270. Which is a hell of a lot harder than finding 28 electoral votes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/05/02/republicans-have-a-massive-electoral-map-problem-that-has-nothing-to-do-with-donald-trump/
It's also pretty centrist from an American historical perspective, and from a policies-the-general-American-populace-actually-support perspective.
It's only "extreme leftist" from a myopic, mainstream-media-manufactured view of the political spectrum.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
Yeah, as a European, the whole cold war just seems to have increasingly polarized the former USSR to the extreme left and the USA to the extreme right.
In the US, any mention of the word "social" seems to be interpreted as "communist" to the point where "anti-social" has become a positive.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Vote Trump.
If it comes down to Hillary or The Donald, I think the lessor of two evils is The Donald, simply because his unfiltered rants are preferable to the shrill non-answers given by the consummate politician.
In truth, the results will be pretty much the same either way, so for me it comes down to who's press conferences I'd rather hear for the next 4 years. (Or less, Hillary could stroke out at any time, and Trump could just say "fuck it", so it will be interesting to see who the veeps are...)
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
If those that dislike Hillary and Trump voted for a single 3rd party candidate, they'd probably win. I'm a Bernie supporter that has decided to vote 3rd party. I've heard "you're wasting your vote" every time I've mentioned it. I don't care at this point. It's the only way we'll ever buck the current two party system.
Hillary has no real accomplishments short of getting her husband and herself elected to numerous offices and then using those offices to make as much money as they possibly can. How much do they charge the secret service rent? Is it really enough to pay their mortgages? I bet it is enough to pay the average American's mortgage. Probably the average 10 Americans. How much do they charge to speak? How many foreign governments and companies have they taken money from? What exactly does their non-profit do besides pay for their travel expenses to speaking engagements?
She talks about giving the average American the same chances she had. How is she going to do that? Seminars on trading in cattle futures? Maybe how to setup a large scale chicken farm with her moneyed friends?
Her term as secretary of state was a disaster. She chose to intervene in Libya and not to confront ISIS. She made a big deal out of pressing a big red reset button with Vladimir Putin, who reset Russian expansionism.
As far as her policies, it would be better to look at whatever Bernie Sanders said two weeks ago. That's assuming she really means what she says and what the definition of is is.
Richard Nixon was so far to the left that he would have made Hillary look like a Republican!
I wish it was a joke but with the EPA, his health care proposals and a few other things he would be called a Communist by some Republicans if he was pushing such things today. That was of course before Koch and other similar donors made the demands that shaped current politics.
You're assuming that we'll still have a country after the Democrats are finished with it...
Ever the optimist, eh? Of course you will still have a country, even if you feel the Democrats are idiots. They may not have the right ideas in your view, but they still want to govern for the benefit of the whole of the nation - as will the Republicans, if they win. At the end of the day, both sides (or all sides, if you have more than two parties) have to trust their opponents to at least want to do what they think is right for the entire nation - otherwise, you end up like Syria or Libya. Nations fail at democracy, when the winners in an election only govern to benefit their own supporters and the all distrust each others. The point I'm trying to get across is: it is up to everybody - you and I included - to decide to trust our opponents, even if we disagree with them; that is what really determines the future of the nation.
Of course you will still have a country, even if you feel the Democrats are idiots. They may not have the right ideas in your view, but they still want to govern for the benefit of the whole of the nation - as will the Republicans, if they win.
Actually, I'm not at all convinced of that... and clearly tens of millions of other people aren't either, which is why both Sanders and Trump are doing so well...
At the end of the day, both sides (or all sides, if you have more than two parties) have to trust their opponents to at least want to do what they think is right for the entire nation
No, I really don't have to trust them, and I don't.
Obama is a terrible President, Clinton would be even worse. Obama is at least just bumbling about clueless. Clinton isn't clueless, she is evil.
Now Trump isn't all roses, I'm not thrilled with him at all. I would have loved 10 other choices.
But with Clinton running, frankly the ballot might as well say:
[ ] Clinton
[ ] Not-Clinton
The point I'm trying to get across is: it is up to everybody - you and I included - to decide to trust our opponents, even if we disagree with them; that is what really determines the future of the nation.
What happens when you don't believe they are worth trusting?
I honestly feel Clinton is evil and corrupt. She'll never be my President if she wins, I will call and write my members of Congress to block anything she does.
Sanders is nuts, but I at least believe he is honest in what he says. He is out of his mind on a few things, but not all his ideas are bad, at least I could listen to him speak. I can't listen to Clinton for more than a minute or so without wanting to throw up.
I'm not alone in my feelings. If it is just a few of me, then no worries, we don't matter. What happens when people like me become tens of millions?
Anyway, as bad as Trump is, Cruz would have been worse. The Donald's primary identity is "con man" or "salesman" and he doesn't believe most of the crazy stuff he says.
This is undoubtedly true; I was going to say that the choice between the two was like choosing between plague and cholera, but now-a-days both are survivable (that was a joke, BTW). In practice I don't actually think it matters enormously - the problems you are faced with, running a nation, are the same, whoever you are, and in most cases the solutions are going to be dictated by the problems; the only differences will be in symbol policies: things that don't really matter, but which look "conservative/liberal/..." or whatever colour you want to show.
A president, being the leader of the whole nation, must at least be able to care about the interests of everybody in the country, and be able to attract the respect of the international community. I feel pretty sure Cruz is too narrow minded to recognise that his policies would be beneficial to only to those who share his mindset and harmful to most of the rest, and I can't tell whether Trump actually gives a shit about the subject - he seems to change with the prevailing wind. As for international respect - I doubt anybody would trust a religious extremist, and Trump's erratic outbursts won't be easily forgotten. As far as I can see, he has cast himself in a rather bad light - he has already alienated Mexico and China, and if he holds that stance, then he won't be met with a lot of goodwill from those two or their allies in South America and Africa, among others. And of course, if he changes tack just like that, they will think that he is untrustworthy and slippery, which may be just as bad.
As sinister as it may sound, the success of Trump, Sanders, the Tea Party movement and even suicidal maniacs like Daesh, are all symptoms of the growing resentment against the unfairness of what looks like a progressively smaller upper class, who have access to all the advantages and are determined to keep it that way, and who are unwilling to listen to even the most reasonable demands of the majority. I think the only way to really change things is for people on the ground to reach out across their differences and unite to change the way these things work. People would probably find that the things they are unhappy with are the same thing the Tea Party don't like, as well as those on the left etc. I have often been surprised to find that I agree with people who claim to dead against Socialism because, as they say, they believe in freedom, self-determination, etc; to me those things are very much part of socialism. Of course, one can discuss whether is should be called socialism or not, but the point is - we are not really that different, and we could easily work together. And change things.
I say this with respect: Anyone who says the Electroral College is an insult to democracy has never thought about how you design an electoral system.
Suppose you have a freshly-minted country that is known for in-fighting and rabble-rousing. You want to unify them, and make it clear that no matter how slim the margin of election, one candidate has been resoundingly selected above all others. Why? If someone is elected from a field of two candiates with only a very slim margin, the members of the losing party are that much more likely to split off. The country is young, you need to ensure unity and cohesiveness. So, a mechanism that amplifies small differences into large ones will help provide the illusion of landslide victories to the public, even when there are none.
The Electoral College was a brilliant bit of work by the designers of our political system, and helped ensure the stability of a highly fragile young country. It was also a practical necessity since communication was so slow, but the real impact was in ensuring unity.
Do we need it still? Yes. For the very same reasons. We say that a 10% margin is a landslide in a national election. 55-45 is a landslide? That sounds to me like a split populace that lacks a single voice. If you had 9 people voting on an issue (say, as you do in the US Supreme Court), it would be equivalent to 5-4 (do the algebra, it's the same), and that is called a split decision. Split, not landslide. The only reason that the media reports 55-45 as a landslide is because the Electoral College amplifies that difference into a nearly unanimous decision. We definitely still need the Electoral College, and for exactly the same reasons. After a contentious election -- and which national elections are not contentious? -- the population needs immediate unification behind a single leader.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
As a foreigner who doesn't even live in the US, perhaps you could help me understand how the "evil" of Clinton will damage the country? From here it looks like Trump is already causing damage in international relations and domestically in terms of fuelling bigotry and hate. I suppose with Clinton we should expect a presidency distracted by the GOP going after her for an impeachment like her husband (mail server instead of Lewinsky)?
CryHelicopter more like. You sound like an emo teen blowing everything out of all proportion, convinced their interpretation of reality is infallible.
Your approach to democracy is beyond childish. For a country which espouses such love and respect for democracy, it's amazing how the democratic process has devolved to some team sport, with people like you cheering on from the sidelines. You suck at this.
I think the point my AC friend here is trying to illustrate is that so much of our country is lost in this same mindset as Trump. Clinton (and really any democrat, or even most of the republicans for that matter) is seen as nothing but the enemy to them. What's interesting to me is that most of my Democrat friends seem to actually support their candidate (Bernie or Hillary, but not both) and most of my Republican friends seem to oppose Trump but not actually support anyone. To me, the latter is impressive given the fact that they had so many people to choose from. My personal opinion is that no matter who wins, it will be another 4-8 years of not really doing much because congress and the house will continue to oppose the president strongly no matter who they are -- which may actually be our saving grace. Just peruse the comments on any article like this one on any US news website and see how many people are attacking each other (very offensively and aggressively, I might add) to see what is going on here.
I agree that the "team sport" mentality has been nothing short of insane, however the GP clearly did not state nor imply that he supports either 'team' and your schoolyard insults say far more about you than anything in the post you're replying to.
Bull.
The electoral college is not a democratic institution.
It is a bandaid solution for problem that no longer exists.
It's pros have long ceased outweighing its cons, the most significant of which is the possibility of a minority of the nation winning the vote, overruling the popular vote. Which was long considered unlikely, yet actually happened and gave us Bush whose effect we're still not done with.
It's a relic of a past age, a paean to a view of the relationship between state and nation that most people haven't held for over a century, and hasn't been relevant to governance for even longer.
Worse, it is possible, if unlikely (but see above), to actually win the EC with only ~26% of the popular vote.
That is not democracy.
The EC needs to go away.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I would point out that the gullible trump supporters are somewhat more complex than that. They believe that Trump means the things he says that they agree with, and they believe that he does not really mean the things he says that they disagree with. They are absolutely convinced of his dishonesty, yet they somehow think he's on their side.
NPR's This American Life did a segment about Alex Chalgren, an african-american, gay Trump supporter. In the segment, Alex explained that he supported Trump because Trump supported gay rights. Later when confronted by a statement from Trump saying that he would try to appoint judges to overrule the decision on same-sex marriage, he continued to defend Trump. He said that Trump only made the statement to get votes.
Trump rejected the one issue that Alex chose him for, and Alex continued to support him.
http://www.thisamericanlife.or...
The fundamental problem is that most of the so-called Republican Party now stands for "government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1%" ...
If this is in comparison to the Democrats, then you have it very wrong. From http://commentarama.blogspot.c...:
"...the Democrats are the party of lawyers. Not only were lawyers their largest contributors in 2010, giving 81% of their donations to Democrats, but Democratic ranks are crawling with lawyers. In the last Senate, 35 of the 54 lawyers in the Senate were Democrats. In the last House, 106 of the 162 lawyers were Democrats."
And the 0.1%-ers give to the Democrats as much or more than they give to the Republicans. From: http://www.ijreview.com/2014/0...
"... prepare to see a lot of blue donkeys, because 20 of the top 32 donors lean Democrat, while only 6 lean Republican. The rest are on the fence.
Not only that, if you factor in all the indirect benefits the Democrat Party gets from the non-profit sector, left-wing activism, public and private sector unions, Wall Street banks, universities, and superfund contributors, it has been estimated by Dr. David Horowitz and Jacob Laksin in their book The New Leviathan that the Republican Party is outspent in politics by a factor of 7-to-1."
One person - one vote isn't a radical idea.
The United States does have one person one vote. The 13th + 19th amendments established that. But we don't have direct democracy. In particular, we don't have direct election of presidents. It's actually really really easy to change this, so if it truly angers people then just do it.
The United States is a democratic republic. That means there are aspects of democracy, and aspects of a republic. Not every government office is elected via direct democracy, and that is probably a good thing for a lot of reasons too broad to cover here. This was part of the Great Compromise when the US constitution was created. The question is: Were the authors of the constitution wrong? Is direct election of presidents really a good idea?
So there are 2 paths to changing this: first, is state by state. The other is to amend the constitution.
The state-based approach is for each state to assign its electors proportionally to the popular vote. So if your state has 10 electors, and 60% of the votes go to candidate A and 40% of the votes go to candidate B, then give 6 votes to A and 4 votes to B. Most states give all 10 votes to A. Changing that will get you 90% of the way toward a direct election. The 2 limitations would be: rounding error, unless you can give half of an elector, and the fact that electors are not exactly according to population (see "The Great Compromise" I linked to above). And better yet: If there are 3 candidates, allocate the votes across all 3 instead of just the top 2.
The constitutional approach is to get 2/3 of the people to ratify an amendment calling for direct election of president. This changes it in one fell swoop instead of state-by-state, and it would be more accurate. While we are at it, lets use a run-off instead of a plurality system. That's one area I think the founders really were wrong.
The republicans and democrats must also change the way their primaries are held. I'm not sure how the parties established that or how to change it.
But looking at the presidents in the last 50 years, I'm not sure that direct election is a good idea. We have gotten too good at marketing, so the average person is too easily fooled. Today, America elects popular, wealthy, dogmatic, liars. If we went back to the old way, of having senators elect a president, perhaps we would get a real compromiser instead of a reality TV show star.
The only people here that have been fueling bigotry and hate are honestly the left. Racial tensions have gone way up under Obama as him and the news keep pushing out an "Everyone who isnt black is racist and hates blacks" agenda for the past 6 years. We also have anti trump supporters rioting and violently attacking trump supporters at his speeches ( no one at any democratic speech is subject to the same behavior). On top of that the same people causing these violent outbursts are then complaining that they are somehow victims.