http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mike-...ry?id=42170897Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Fuel to the fire. ;)
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http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/mike-...ry?id=42170897Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
Fuel to the fire. ;)
Found this on the Trump sub-reddit so no idea if its actually genuine or staged... but it made me lol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64xo...ature=youtu.be
thedonald is largely a troll subreddit. Masters at their craft that forced the reddit admins to rework their formulas to stop their "shitposting" from drowning everything else out.
You would have thought the 2nd coming was here the way they celebrated getting that staged booby trap onto Fox yesterday.
Twitter Link
A presidential hopeful just told America to go watch a porno...
:| Would it kill him to have someone check his tweets before he hits send?
It's an easy mistake, he was in one himself.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ominous Gamer
It would probably have killed his entire campaign long ago. His tweets contribute a lot to his appeal.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
It would certainly deny him all the free coverage the U.S media seems to insist on giving him.
US media? The world's media is lapping this up.
Coverage from the world's media doesn't affect the U.S. election, though.
For those who think Trump can't do much damage by himself, have a look at the current president of Philippines, who ran on a Trumpian platform.
I do like to think our civil institutions have stronger pushback than those in the Phillipines. Of course I look at Congress' recent idiocy and it occurs to me that they may actually be too stupid to be an effective check on Trump.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
I'd like to think that too, but we have a Congress that criticizes the president for not trying harder to avoid a veto override. Plus the Philippines have a fairly consolidated democracy. The same kind of rhetoric is resonating in both countries. The courts can't do much when the public supports the idiocy and the legislature is too incompetent to stop it.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
http://www.systemicpeace.org/polity/phi2.htm
https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...0dc_story.html
There's fascinating people in this world.
Also, you have to wonder about a system which lets a guy like this even get near the voting lists. If there's a real chance of someone like Trump becoming president I wouldn't be too sure about the reliability of the rest of your system.Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki
There's no constitutional reason why someone like Trump couldn't be a serious contender in UK or German elections - it's the political climate in those countries which would stop it happening, not the constitution
Steely is correct. But as it happens, there is a structural reason for why Trump managed to get this far and it's because after the GOP felt some divisive primary fights weakened their final nominee in the general election, they put into place rules which would make it easier for an early front-runner to "landslide" the rest of the pool. Trump was an early front-runner, partly because several early states trend toward mavericks and partly because there were four very similar mainstream nominees. A system like the one the GOP put in place really calls for there being no more than four or five nominees but many races start with seven to ten. So there are arguably some structural flaws in the system (any system can be improved, of course) but this was mostly a case of a demagogue managing to gain advantage from not-necessarily unreasonable mechanics and generate an unexpected and undesirable result. It happens. Look at what Pim Fortuyn was accomplishing in The Netherlands before his assassination.
I understand a new chinese great wall will be built in the west.
Is it like when a new branch of Disneyworld opens doors in Asia?
Will this wall be a tourist attraction or just another useless pyramid during the ruling of pharaohs?
Admittedly, the U.S. system of primary elections is utterly bizarre, but to what extent can the parties own internal mechanisms for choosing parties be considered part of the 'system' - as I understand it the GOP or DNC could turn round tomorrow and say 'we are selecting our candidate for 2020 by a divining rod which does twitch in the presence of electability' and that would be entirely their prerogative.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
I'm not talking about the constitution. I was referencing the political system in its totality, i.e. including the parties.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
I think Fortuyn is a pretty poor example, he never rose to power in a main party, and was subsequently kicked out of the reactionary new party he was in and had to start his own. Not saying he wasn't a significant politician but there is almost zero chance he'd actually the prime ministership. Even with the post murder boost at the election they ended up with 'only' 1/6th of parliamentary seats. And die to the lack of a proper party, they had no pepper structure or cantatas which lead to a spectacular self destruction of the party (no hyperbole, guns were shown as intimidation by members).Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
Wilders and Verdonk also were either kicked out or forced to leave their party and as a result end up suffering greatly from that lack of support. Wilders' party has been around for quite some years now, and has serious stability issues because of that. Not to mention since we have a multi party system and he could easily be shut out of governing by a cordon sanitaire a la Vlaams belang.
Some of the rules are arcane and I know the way we do progressive winnowing is off-putting for some people, but I see no reason why a 10-way race with the same pool would not/could not have given us Cruz and Trump for a run-off from the mainstream candidates splitting up their overall larger share of the voting pool too much. Maybe that would have given us Cruz rather than Trump in the end, but I'm not certain he'd actually be a better candidate. As I said, you sometimes get these kinds of results, blind populism is and always has been one of the negative qualities and primary criticisms of democratic systems.Quote:
Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro
The UK system requires a potential PM to first be first an MP and then to stand up to attention in Parliament in order to be taken seriously. Trump has no electoral record, he has never served in Congress so he could not be candidate to be PM in the UK.Quote:
Originally Posted by Steely Glint
Having said that Labour have elected Corbyn as leader, but I'm not sure he's a serious contender anyway.
Trump never supported or encouraged terrorist attacks against the US.
Possibly why he's a serious contender while our joke is not.
Yeah, our founders wondered if Democracy could be trusted with the populace, so we set up a system of Representation. Checks and Balances between branches of government, premised on the value of individual votes. What they didn't know (and couldn't anticipate) was how our systems would be controlled by political parties and money. Or gerrymandering that influenced congressional districts, and eventually the electoral college.Quote:
Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
What's most amazing is that the US isn't re-evaluating its two party duopoly, in this craziest of Presidential elections, where Republicans who hate Trump are still "supporting" him, as the Republican Party nominee, because they vote Party first. That's just crazy.
That's why I'm throwing my vote away to Johnson. If 3rd parties can get more momentum (will happen slowly) to make them a reasonable alternative, then, and only then will mainstream folks seriously look at them.Quote:
Originally Posted by GGT
Will never happen. The only way we'll get a "third party" is one of the main two collapses, in which case we'll end up with two parties yet again.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
I'm going to vote for Johnson, too. He's not my ideal candidate, but I refuse to think my vote is a throw-away or spoiler vote. I resent the Clinton campaign's attempts to implicate any vote that's not for her is somehow implicit vote for anarchy, or fascism, or something really bad. She's a horrible candidate. He's a horrible candidate. The voters are screwed.Quote:
Originally Posted by Lewkowski
Except it is (well, in swing states at least). And as I recall, you live in one of the 3 states that's likely to decide this election.
You've cited that before. Well, one of our "main parties" has finally collapsed. What are you saying about the future of our political process?Quote:
Originally Posted by Loki