2020 US Election (Part 3)

Status
Not open for further replies.
My lord, are you by chance an Anarchist? We are a two party majority state, however that is not to say that we are intolerant of a multi-party state, our closet ally on the planet is the United Kingdom. You can scream from the roof tops that the system is corrupt but by and large the system is manned by a great many good people who are simply doing what is best for the American people. Sure do some individuals in the system take advantage, do some far overstep their authority, do some violate rules and laws, yes on all accounts. This is not an indictment of the whole system. There is corruption in every government, the US has had its fair share but by and large the system works as intended and in the best interests of the American people.

On a similar note the best thing I can say about President-Elect Biden is that he understands that to move the country forward in the right direction it needs to be small incremental change over a long period of time. Mass changes to the system spark some of the fiercest partisanship and result in some of the worst regression on a national scale. Every generation on average has one or two moments where a massive change can occur which will result in a significant leap forward but this is almost always followed by a slap backward, ala the election of President Trump.

First of all, I am not Anarchist, unless you define someone who believes equal justice for all - including officials in government - and full accountability, transparency, and representativeness of Government to be a true goal to strive toward, and not just declared to be out of reach and to fall back on and never attempt to reform or improve a broken and oft abused system to be "an Anarchist," by some bizarre contrivance or twist of phrase. And, I don't believe EVERY SINGLE elected or appointed official, or employee of the U.S. Government is irredeemable, or even a bad or malign person, or doesn't have noble or good intention, in many cases- I do have a sense of perspective, just tempered with realism. And, "two-party majority state," (as opposed to rigged, suppressive Duopoly, like the Turno Pacific of late 19th Century Spain or the Gentleman's Agreement of early 20th Century Argentina and Colombia) implies Third Parties and Independents should have a CHANCE to take Government - that it should be remotely possible - but the last lime a new party took Government in the U.S. and old competitive party died was in the period of realignment in 1854-1860 - that was a LONG time ago! The last Third Party candidate in a Presidential Election that got electoral votes was a defender of Segregation 52 years ago, for crying out loud! That doesn't give me much faith that the two major parties are not unscrupulously abusing their incumbency and pulling tricks (short of arbitrary beatings and arrests, and even shootings on lonely bridges at night and polonium in coffee of upstart political opponents) done by Emerging Democracies the U.S. Department of State likes to scold for such acts. I admit, I may have been a bit hyperbolic in the post you quoted, but, the U.S. System does need serious reform and overhaul (like almost every Government in the modern day), and I'm convinced the lack of political will to do so is NOT because the great majority of Americans are satisfied with the way their Government works (and doesn't work, depending), but because the "powers that be," (which the paternalistic Founding Fathers gave all power over Amendments to, at least to the lawmakers, Federally and at the State level, with no binding power of initiative, consultation, approval, or veto by referendum of the will of people involved in that process - even though "You, the People of the United States of America," are supposed to the sole empowerment and source of legitimacy, along with the States as entities - but not necessarily State Governments - of the United States as a nation - quite ironic) do not want such change, because they're comfortable with the flawed system that keeps their collective unchallenged stranglehold on power, in a partisan manner, and not having to be burdened with accountability, transparency, or criminal or civil liability for their actions in government *gasp - what a horror that would be* - and, thus, the big self-perpetuating problem. Oh, and the corrupt and undue (and unacceptable) influence of plutocratic oligarchs - corporate donors, and moneyed special interest and lobby groups, are a big problem as well, and while that problem is certainly not unique to the U.S., it still compromises the integrity of the proceedings.
 
Last edited:
Every generation on average has one or two moments where a massive change can occur which will result in a significant leap forward but this is almost always followed by a slap backward, ala the election of President Trump.

An old sailors saying handling the sails standing on the ropes of the yards: "One hand for the ship, one hand for yourself"

When you leap forward you must parallel build up your defense... and if need be for your future defense, make a lesser leap forward.
amidst the euphory of winning.
I witnessed in NL some stupidities in the 70ies of the leftish parties... especially from some younger generation ego driven politicians.
 
First of all, I am not Anarchist, unless you define someone who believes equal justice for all - including officials in government - and full accountability, transparency, and representativeness of Government to be a true goal to strive toward, and not just declared to be out of reach and to fall back on and never attempt to reform or improve a broken and oft abused system to be "an Anarchist," by some bizarre contrivance or twist of phrase. And, I don't believe EVERY SINGLE elected or appointed official, or employee of the U.S. Government is an irredeemable, evil, wicked, baby-sacrificing, Satanic war criminal and corrupt puppet of Mammon - I do have a sense of perspective, just tempered with realism. And, "two-party majority state," (as opposed to rigged, suppressive Duopoly, like the Turno Pacific of late 19th Century Spain or the Gentleman's Agreement of early 20th Century Argentina and Colombia) implies Third Parties and Independents should have a CHANCE to take Government - that it should be remotely possible - but the last lime a new party took Government in the U.S. and old competitive party died was in the period of realignment in 1854-1860 - that was LONG time ago! The last Third Party candidate in a Presidential Election that got electoral votes was a defender of Segregation 52 years ago, for crying out loud! That doesn't give me much faith that the two major parties are unscrupulously abusing their incumbency and pulling tricks (short of arbitrary beatings and arrests, and even shootings on lonely bridges at night and polonium in coffee of upstart political opponents) done by Emerging Democracies the U.S. Department of State likes to scold for such acts. I admit, I may have been a bit hyperbolic in the post you quoted, but, the U.S. System does need serious reform and overhaul (like almost every Government in the modern day), and I'm convinced the lack of political will to do so is NOT because the great majority of Americans are satisfied with the way their Government, but because the "powers that be," (which the paternalistic Founding Fathers gave all power over Amendments to, at least to the lawmakers, Federally and at the State level, with no binding power of initiative, approval, or veto by referendum of the will of people involved in that process - even though "You, the People of the United States of America," are supposed to the sole empowerment and source of legitimacy, along with the States as entities - but not necessarily State Governments - of the United States as a nation - quite ironic) do not want such change, because they're comfortable with the flawed system that keeps their collective unchallenged stranglehold on power, in a partisan manner, and not having to be burdened with accountability, transparency, or criminal or civil liability for their actions in government *gasp - what a horror that would be* - and, thus, the big self-perpetuating problem. Oh, and the corrupt and undue (and unacceptable) influence of plutocratic oligarchs - corporate donors, and moneyed special interest and lobby groups, are big problem as well, and while that problem is certainly not unique to the U.S., it still compromises the integrity of the proceedings.


We shall take this point by point.

1. The last re-alignment of the major political parties was in 1968 with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Thus through the 70s, 80s, and 90s you saw a number of retiring "Democrats" endorsing Republican successors.

2. Accountability and transparency are great but without the protections of certain federal laws, you would open up elected officials and more importantly civil servants for criminal and civil cases to be tried against them for actions that were in the course of their official duties. For example: a National Guardsmen gets called up due to a Hurricane and is told to protect and deliver supplies. In the course of his duties a civilian attempts to steal the supplies and uses deadly force against said Guardsmen, thus he returns fire and kills the civilian. Removing these federal laws which protect officials would allow the family of said civilian to file a wrongful death suit against the individual as opposed to the Federal Government. No civil servant would be willing to execute their duties under that sort of system.

3. Next, Third party candidates... There are two independent Senators in the current Congress.

4. As to the powers of the people. The people have the full authority over elected officials. First and foremost they have the power of the vote as evidenced by this most recent election and the oust of the current President. Additionally if there was enough support for it the people could drive a constitutional amendment to strike any power currently vested in the Federal or State governments via a Constitutional amendment.

5. You have a strong disdain for the American system, it has served us well for over two centuries with some set backs but ultimately it is the truest form of a Republic in the current age. This system however is not the best to set upon emerging democracies, too much power for a country without the precedence is laid at the feet of the executive, ala the current President's abuses or President Nixon.
 
A dark money mystery in Florida centers on the campaign of a spoiler candidate who appeared to help a Republican win by 32 votes

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/23/politics/florida-dark-money-mystery-invs/index.html

(CNN)A month before Election Day in Florida a mysterious company called Proclivity, Inc. contributed $550,000 to a pair of newly formed political action committees in the state.

Two days later, the money flowed from the PACs to an Orlando-area print and advertising firm.
Shortly thereafter, came a torrent of nearly identical political fliers seemingly intended to siphon away support from Democratic candidates by tricking voters into casting their ballots for purported spoiler candidates who demonstrated no real interest in getting elected. None, for example, engaged in typical campaigning activities or raised significant funds.
In one case, the mailers appear to have helped a Republican—a co-founder of Latinas For Trump—unseat the Democratic incumbent in a state Senate race by a razor-thin margin of just 32 votes.

The situation, which has been generating headlines in Florida for weeks, has all the makings of a "dark money" mystery in the Sunshine State.
Among the key questions: What exactly is Proclivity and what was the purpose and desired effect behind its generous contributions to the two fledging PACs? And, why did those PACs support unknown candidates with no party affiliations and no real chance of winning?.......

The link has the entire article.
 
We shall take this point by point.

1. The last re-alignment of the major political parties was in 1968 with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Thus through the 70s, 80s, and 90s you saw a number of retiring "Democrats" endorsing Republican successors.

2. Accountability and transparency are great but without the protections of certain federal laws, you would open up elected officials and more importantly civil servants for criminal and civil cases to be tried against them for actions that were in the course of their official duties. For example: a National Guardsmen gets called up due to a Hurricane and is told to protect and deliver supplies. In the course of his duties a civilian attempts to steal the supplies and uses deadly force against said Guardsmen, thus he returns fire and kills the civilian. Removing these federal laws which protect officials would allow the family of said civilian to file a wrongful death suit against the individual as opposed to the Federal Government. No civil servant would be willing to execute their duties under that sort of system.

3. Next, Third party candidates... There are two independent Senators in the current Congress.

4. As to the powers of the people. The people have the full authority over elected officials. First and foremost they have the power of the vote as evidenced by this most recent election and the oust of the current President. Additionally if there was enough support for it the people could drive a constitutional amendment to strike any power currently vested in the Federal or State governments via a Constitutional amendment.

5. You have a strong disdain for the American system, it has served us well for over two centuries with some set backs but ultimately it is the truest form of a Republic in the current age. This system however is not the best to set upon emerging democracies, too much power for a country without the precedence is laid at the feet of the executive, ala the current President's abuses or President Nixon.

I won't say "strong disdain," as I would prefer living under it to all Third World systems, as well as the Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Portuguese, and the Five Dragons political systems in the First World. Statistically, in a list of all sovereign nations in the world, it's pretty high up there. I just feel it's screaming for reform, modernization (politically, certainly not technologically), and, we'll say, more accountability and transparency than it has, if not enough to utterly paralyze it. And more protections from plutocratic graft and corruption through campaign donations and lobbying. I fully admit, I believe Canadian Government, too, could use a lot of changes, just mostly (but not totally) in different areas. I was not trying to portray the U.S. as Oceania, the PanEm Federation, or other wretched dystopian fiction regimes such as that - or that wasn't my intention. The stress of lockdown does get to me, and hyperbole waxes, and I apologize if I came across as stronger in my message than I meant. I was trying to moreso write as a political reform critic columnist or blogger, and not a Neo-Trotskyist Screed-writer.
 
The link has the entire article.

Its not voter fraud when Republicans do it.
Florida is Republican controlled state, they likely to charge the candidate for fraud but they wont change the law since it benefits them.
 
Last edited:
We are a two party majority state, however that is not to say that we are intolerant of a multi-party state, our closet ally on the planet is the United Kingdom.

hyou wha

(they're an effective two party system using the same awful electoral system as the US)
 
The U.S. Congress is FPTP, though.

I would need to dig deeper, we had fptp last used 1993.

But also had things like independent electoral commission and each Electorate was roughly the same size.
 
Last edited:
Isn't UK fptp? That's an improvement over the EC imho.

The US is a FPTP system except for, like, in Maine. The presidency is just the needless agglomeration of lots of malapportioned local FPTP races instead of being one big one.
 
The US is a FPTP system except for, like, in Maine. The presidency is just the needless agglomeration of lots of malapportioned local FPTP races instead of being one big one.

Seems worse though because of the Senate.

And they haven't updated the EC for population changes either.
 
"All of the military commanders have spoken up and said this is the wrong thing to do. We want our troops home, but lets not bring them home in body bags." - Sen Tammy Duckworth on Trump's plans on drawing down troops in Afghanistan and Iraq

Mitch McConnell agrees
 
Release the Kraken
 
I saw a poll that showed GOP support for a Trump 2024 run was only 53%. To be fair, the next highest was Pence and Don Jr at 12% and 8%, respectively, so Trump is still clearly leagues ahead of the competition. At the same time, that's not nearly as high as I would expect for him and I think that number will only erode. I'm not convinced he actually will run in 2024, much less make it on the ticket.

If he really does flee his financial crimes as I half-expect him to, that would be the end of any nascent 2024 efforts. I also think that he'll spend the next few years focusing on making money with Trump TV or whatever.
 
I saw a poll that showed GOP support for a Trump 2024 run was only 53%. To be fair, the next highest was Pence and Don Jr at 12% and 8%, respectively, so Trump is still clearly leagues ahead of the competition. At the same time, that's not nearly as high as I would expect for him and I think that number will only erode. I'm not convinced he actually will run in 2024, much less make it on the ticket.

If he really does flee his financial crimes as I half-expect him to, that would be the end of any nascent 2024 efforts. I also think that he'll spend the next few years focusing on making money with Trump TV or whatever.

I don't think he will run in 2024 either, but only cause he is way too old. There may be a chance he gets to face charges, but probably will die before any court hearing (not sure if the law allows for large extensions for this kind of crime in the US).
Either his daughter or Trump Jr run, or some of the usual Gop fiends.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom