Impeachment II thread

[TomC]

Make the USA election system more democratic and Democrats would rule. One aspect I refer to over and over is:
https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

If every American had an equal vote for President this country would change enormously. Republicans don't want everyone to have an equal vote, because they'd lose so much power and money.
Tom

American democracy has serious flaws, but the Electoral College system doesn't make the Top Ten List. IMO.

I strongly disagree.
Let me ask you a question.
If the wholesale disregard for most American's vote for President doesn't make your top 10, what is the tenth most important issue on your Top 10?

I'm not asking about your most important issue. I'm asking you, specifically, what is the 10th most important item on your list?

Making voting mandatory would be a much bigger win.

Again, I strongly disagree.

While I would agree that every qualified person should vote, as able, I also understand that people have other issues. Why would you want to give the government the power to investigate the daily life of a single mother, juggling two jobs and two children, because she didn't make it to the polls before they closed? If that isn't what you meant, please explain what "Making voting mandatory" meant in that sentence.


Personally, I'd rather see voting made easy, safe, and most importantly, matter. Since you seem to differ, please explain what you think best.
Tom

 

[Elixir]

Personally, I'd rather see voting made easy, safe, and most importantly, matter. Since you seem to differ, please explain what you think best.
Tom

Making voting mandatory would certainly entail and require making it safe and easy. You couldn't penalize people for being prevented from voting.

 

[barbos]

I seriously thought Raskin was just bald in the back.
Why is he wearing a flesh-colored yarmulke?

LOL, me too.

 

[Swammerdami]

I have emphasized (painted red) some of TomC's words in the following quotes.

I strongly disagree.
Let me ask you a question.
If the wholesale disregard for most American's vote for President doesn't make your top 10, what is the tenth most important issue on your Top 10?

I'm not asking about your most important issue. I'm asking you, specifically, what is the 10th most important item on your list?

Tied for #9 and #10 on the list are

• A Supreme Court which has made recent anti-Democracy decisions like nullifying the Voting Rights Act.
• Voting machines which may facilitate hacking or other malfeasance. (There is some evidence such machines have already been rigged; it's only a matter of time until it does happen.)

BTW, Tom, You have made no effort to understand my point of view. You write "wholesale disregard for most American's vote for President" for the Electoral College system. As Dr. Zoidberg(!) implies, such imbalances are not uncommon. I am NOT advocating such imbalances, just asserting that the E.C. system is almost the "least of our problems" here.

The related U.S. imbalance has more effect on the Senate — though even that wouldn't make the Top 15 List. The effect of E.C. imbalance on Presidential election is almost happenstance. In a hypothetical where Trump won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote, I daresay that many observers would give credit to the Electoral College for saving us!

The real problem with the 2016 election is NOT that Trump got only 49% of the vote; it's that, due to suppression and lies, as many as 49% voted for this traitorous sociopathic oaf.

Making voting mandatory would be a much bigger win.

Again, I strongly disagree.

While I would agree that every qualified person should vote, as able, I also understand that people have other issues. Why would you want to give the government the power to investigate the daily life of a single mother, juggling two jobs and two children, because she didn't make it to the polls before they closed? If that isn't what you meant, please explain what "Making voting mandatory" meant in that sentence.

Many countries have "mandatory" voting without the problems you describe. Penalties for failing to vote are extremely mild: just describing it as "mandatory" improves turn-out hugely even if the penalty is much less than a parking ticket. Americans seem happy with mail-in voting, so your "juggling mother [with] closing polls" is a red herring.

Pragmatic people understand that mandatory voting would be crushing to right-wing haters in the short term and long term. Changing the E.C. might backfire on progressives after some demographic shifts.

Personally, I'd rather see voting made easy, safe, and most importantly, matter. Since you seem to differ, please explain what you think best.
Tom

You've made no attempt to understand my point of view. Indeed you misconstrue my views.

 

[blastula]

I seriously thought Raskin was just bald in the back.
Why is he wearing a flesh-colored yarmulke?

LOL, me too.

Should have stuck with your first choice, because you have both now failed the "Bald or Skullcap" guessing game, an old Jewish pastime. He is bald, but he has such a high contrast bald spot, it's hard to tell.

 

[DrZoidberg]

I don't understand at this point why zoidberg keeps thinking there is nothing to win here.

I mean shit, Hitler got slapped on the wrist and sent to jail rather than being censured, and then went right back into office, and the rest is history.

DrZ, do you want Hitler? Because what you are asking for is how you get a repeat of Hitler.

Do you seriously think Hitler would have been less dangerous in jail? All that would have changed is that another politician would have been the Nazi figurehead and Hitler would have been the de facto leader. After the Reichstag fire Hitler would be the actual dictator anyway. And we'd have a repeat of history. You know... like Putin did seized control over Russia even though he was blocked from being the president again. Nelson Mandela was sent to jail and branded a terrorist. That didn't prevent him from becoming the president of SA. There's many examples like this. Coming down hard on popular figures has a tendency to backfire.

I don't think you're not going to be able to stop Trump/Trumpism/MAGA with this. Psychologically I think this is free candy to Trump, and will fuel his supporters in the long run. It'll make him more dangerous for American democracy.

I think hitler would have been less dangerous if he had been barred from returning to office.

The Nazi party had a long queue of guys just like Hitler. It's dangerous to think that the problem was Hitler. There was an opportunity for a crazy psycho to exploit and grab power. So one crazy guy most likely would. Just like there was an opening for a narcisstic theatrical nationalistic tweeting clown to grab power in the American election of 2016.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Of course Trump won the 2016 election and was elected by the people. Claiming anything else is dumb. I'm sorry for being so blunt. But it needs to be said.

And once again, you demonstrate how superficial your understanding of the USA really is.

By making a blanket assertion about the USA that is in the "not even wrong" category.

Fine. If you prefer to believe your version of the USA political landscape and ignore the reality, you're free to do so.
Tom

This is no joking matter. If you don't understand how democracy works, or why it works, you won't know how to defend it when somebody tries to take it away from you. How governmental powers are balanced against each other to maintain a stable system is crucial. Stability is the key. Historically the American type democratic constitution is one of the less stable ones.

When ex-colonies became democratic they copied the structure from their colonial home country, or USA's. So we got a natural experiment comparing the systems. The South American countries all copied USA's constitution and it turned out to be extremely easy to derail for powerful landowners. Not a good track record. But we learned from the other experiments in ex-colonial democracy that getting the rules right was actually not the most important thing. There's a whole bunch of social and cultural factors that need to be present for democracy to work.

It's dangerous to hold up a utopian pipe dream as a standard for what is "correct" democracy and claim USA isn't one. How about giving your founding father's some credit for a job well done? For whatever reason they nailed it.

The point of democracy isn't to let everybody have a chance at being the president, or even to create equality or fairness. It's so that the people perpetually have a gun pointed at the presidents head and they can pull the trigger if he misbehaves. It's all about mitigating the damage a bad president can cause. The rest is just myths surrounding democracy we've packaged it in to make it sound nicer, and to give the poor some hope. But we want a political elite, a ruling class. They are the only people who can run a country. As, I think, the amateur Trump demonstrated well. The function of the party system is to make sure that the government is mostly staffed by people who know what they are doing, and to keep passionate and enthusiastic populists from causing too much damage. As is tilting the voting strength toward rural USA. That's not a failing of American democracy. It's a critical feature. Don't fuck with it!

 

[DrZoidberg]

So [democratic systems] have all instituted mechanics to offset this and to give increased weight to less densely populated regions. This is true for every democracy in the world.

ALL democratic systems? Doubtful. The Lower House of Thailand, for example, is methodically laid out in proportion to population. (No ordinary voters at all currently participate in selection of Thailand's Upper House, let alone rural voters.)

More generally, since Saddam Hussein received 99.96% of the vote in 1995, is criticism of him also off-limits? What's that you say? Saddam cheated? So does the GOP; it's just a matter of degree!

It can be done in different ways. Sweden for example has a proportional voting system. So a political party can get 4% of the vote and create a coalition government with bigger parties, which gives them a massive power in parliament. The bigger parties want to avoid this. If the other parties would neglect any one single part of Sweden a regional party would pop up and cause trouble. So the bigger parties have an incentive to care about the whole country.

In Sweden the governmental agencies running Sweden are not placed in Stockholm. They are placed around the country. It's intended to prevent Stockholm-centric policies by politicians. This too is a balancing of regional power.

Every country has loads of these clever little methods to prevent one region from being too influential.

 

[barbos]

Getting rid of Two-Party and Electoral College system in US is harder than getting rid of Putin in Russia.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Getting rid of Two-Party and Electoral College system in US is harder than getting rid of Putin in Russia.

But why would they? Why fuck with something that works? USA is right now the richest and most powerful country on Earth. As well as being a free open society. We can speculate on the reasons, but ultimately we're just speculating. Not even the experts know for sure the secret sauce. Not the exact recipe. But it's working. We can all agree on that. Why fuck with it?

Any system will make some people unhappy. Often it makes some people unhappy who have every reason to be happy about it. Making everybody satisfied is a non-starter. Why bother?

 

[barbos]

DrZoidberg, I thought you were suggesting proportional system like in Europe.
I do think that US needs to get rid of their antiquated system.

 

[DrZoidberg]

DrZoidberg, I thought you were suggesting proportional system like in Europe.

Nope. I'm a pragmatist. If something is working then don't fuck with it. USA is clearly working.

I'm also against a one-size fits all solution. A big country will need a different form of government than a small country. Cultures, traditions and histories are different. It's better to keep laser focus on what we want, ie protected personal freedoms, free expression and an economy that's efficient. Different cultures will need different power structures to maintain this. For Sweden it works great to have a king. It's not necessarily what USA needs.

 

[barbos]

Nope. I'm a pragmatist. If something is working then don't fuck with it. USA is clearly working.

LOL, clearly

 

[KeepTalking]

Personally, I'd rather see voting made easy, safe, and most importantly, matter. Since you seem to differ, please explain what you think best.
Tom

Making voting mandatory would certainly entail and require making it safe and easy. You couldn't penalize people for being prevented from voting.

You shouldn't penalize people for being prevented from voting when voting is mandatory, but make no mistake, if voting were mandatory, Republicans would still do everything they can to both disenfranchise people, and punish them for being disenfranchised. It's what they do.

 

[KeepTalking]

Getting rid of Two-Party and Electoral College system in US is harder than getting rid of Putin in Russia.

But why would they? Why fuck with something that works?

It clearly is not working (see Jan 6th insurrection).

 

[Keith&Co.]

Getting rid of Two-Party and Electoral College system in US is harder than getting rid of Putin in Russia.

But why would they? Why fuck with something that works?

It clearly is not working (see Jan 6th insurrection).

475K former citizens might also have a quibble....

 

[DrZoidberg]

Nope. I'm a pragmatist. If something is working then don't fuck with it. USA is clearly working.

LOL, clearly

It's still the primary destination people want to emigrate to. I think that's the best indicator of what nation has it's shit together.

Obviously USA has problems. It's not perfect. But you don't need to be perfect to win this race. You just need to be better than the competition. Every country has plenty of problems.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Getting rid of Two-Party and Electoral College system in US is harder than getting rid of Putin in Russia.

But why would they? Why fuck with something that works?

It clearly is not working (see Jan 6th insurrection).

It depends what we are measuring. What I used as a metric was personal freedoms, standard of living and strength of the economy. The insurrection changed none of that. USA is still kicking ass.

If this insurrection would have impacted any of that, I'd say you had a point. We're in the middle of a pandemic. It leads to a predictable pattern of unrest of trouble. In Copenhagen we're having weekly riots in the streets by "The Men in Black" who look like neo-nazis and certainly behave like them. An unfortunate choice of name for your movement if you want to gain support in a country once occupied by Nazi Germany. They're marching angrily about the repressive Covid restrictions. Anyhoo.. Slight derail. My point is that it's like this everywhere.

Some people, like children, don't want to accept that the fact that a plague sweeping the world will impact what we're able to do. And they, like children, lash out in anger.

Yeah, it was unfortunate that Covid-19 peaked with president Trump's ungracious loss in the election. He's an idiot. Worst possible guy at the helm in a time of national/global crisis. That's my interpretation of the 6/1 insurrection.

 

[barbos]

Nope. I'm a pragmatist. If something is working then don't fuck with it. USA is clearly working.

LOL, clearly

It's still the primary destination people want to emigrate to. I think that's the best indicator of what nation has it's shit together.

Obviously USA has problems. It's not perfect. But you don't need to be perfect to win this race. You just need to be better than the competition. Every country has plenty of problems.

You clearly misspelled word "kinda". - "USA is kinda working"

 

[DrZoidberg]

It clearly is not working (see Jan 6th insurrection).

475K former citizens might also have a quibble....

This isn't evidence that the democracy isn't working. People will vote for whatever guy they think will do a good job in a crisis. In 2016 enough Americans thought that the funny guy with the hair from The Apprentice seems to be an ace guy when the going gets tough. I'm sure 475K former citizens disagree. Hindsight is 20-20. But luckily even more people disagreed. So the next time around they didn't vote for him again. That to me sounds like democracy when it's working exactly as intended.