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Should Joe Biden be the last US President in that presidency's current form?

Jimmy Higgins said:
... we should be aiming at retracting election cycles from their gargantuan lengths of 12 months for House and Senate and 24 months for the Presidency. Our Government spends more time running for Government than running the Government!
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Your proposed solution would just make your named problem worse. Having more elections is no way to reduce running for office.
 
lpetrich said:
Why Joe Biden Should Be Our Last President - YouTube

Political consultant and columnist Alexis Grenell advocates a parliamentary system of government, one where the legislature runs the executive branch.

She notes that such nations often have multiple parties, so one doesn't see what one has here, neo-Nazis proposing as Republicans. In such places, they have their own parties. It also happens on the Left, with left-wingers and centrists having their own parties. AOC once said that in any other country, she and Joe Biden would be in different parties. An overstatement, maybe, but not much of an overstatement.

She then described some research into which nations tend to suffer coups. Nations with parliamentary systems were much less likely to suffer coups than those with presidential systems, those with independent presidents like what the US has.

She likes ranked-choice voting because its winner will be someone who got a majority of the votes, even if that candidate was not the first choice of many voters.
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I think ranked-choice voting alone would accomplish what you want to get out of a parliamentary system while keeping our current system with three distinct branches of government. Mainly by encouraging people to vote for who they really want. It would thereby become a true market of ideas, and just like other markets provide for a price discovery process. In that way we would maintain a two party system but allow other parties to emerge and participate in coalitions. I think that's the main advantage of parliamentary systems. Otherwise we have divide-and-conquer politics and the inherent instability that results from the lack of any rational basis for making choices. And it might even increase voter turn-out if voters feel that their vote counts since they'd no longer be faced with the moral dilemma of voting not for the better candidate but for the lesser evil.
 
I recall reading at one point that at the end of WWII and General MacArthur was charged with rebuilding Japan with a representative democracy, he chose the British Parliamentary system instead of the US system. He considered it superior. Part of his choice though probably had to do with the fact that the US had agreed to allow Japan to retain the Emperor so long as he was just a figurehead with no real political power.
 
Jayjay said:
Derec said:
bilby said:
A president is an elected king.
Kings should be seen but not heard.
All of history suggests that presidents are bad, and kings are worse. Parliaments are not much better, but they are better.
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I disagree. Separation of powers is a good thing. In parliamentary systems the execute is the extension of the legislative and thus there is no separation.
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That's a valid point, but presidential systems don't seem to work very well anywhere else except the US. Maybe it's just harder to get separation of powers to work than a parliamentary system.

In any case, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
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I can see the value in having an independent judiciary, but explicit separation of executive from legislature doesn't seem to me to be particularly useful or valuable.
 
Wiploc said:
Jimmy Higgins said:
... we should be aiming at retracting election cycles from their gargantuan lengths of 12 months for House and Senate and 24 months for the Presidency. Our Government spends more time running for Government than running the Government!
Click to expand...

Your proposed solution would just make your named problem worse. Having more elections is no way to reduce running for office.
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The soln would be to retract the races to starting in August at the earliest. Not more elections.
 
Treedbear said:
I think ranked-choice voting alone would accomplish what you want to get out of a parliamentary system while keeping our current system with three distinct branches of government. Mainly by encouraging people to vote for who they really want. ...
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That's good for single-seat positions, but for best results, one should have multiseat positions with proportional representation.
 
lpetrich said:
Treedbear said:
I think ranked-choice voting alone would accomplish what you want to get out of a parliamentary system while keeping our current system with three distinct branches of government. Mainly by encouraging people to vote for who they really want. ...
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That's good for single-seat positions, but for best results, one should have multiseat positions with proportional representation.
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I think you might be addressing the part where I said we could still have a basically two-party system. I meant that the two main parties could still maintain their influence, but that minority parties could finally stand a chance of exerting some influence during elections as well as on the floor of either house when it becomes necessary to form a governing coalition. Isn't that pretty much of a necessity in Britain? As it is third parties never stand a chance of ever getting elected to a meaningful degree.
 
Treedbear said:
lpetrich said:
Treedbear said:
I think ranked-choice voting alone would accomplish what you want to get out of a parliamentary system while keeping our current system with three distinct branches of government. Mainly by encouraging people to vote for who they really want. ...
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That's good for single-seat positions, but for best results, one should have multiseat positions with proportional representation.
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I think you might be addressing the part where I said we could still have a basically two-party system. I meant that the two main parties could still maintain their influence, but that minority parties could finally stand a chance of exerting some influence during elections as well as on the floor of either house when it becomes necessary to form a governing coalition. Isn't that pretty much of a necessity in Britain? As it is third parties never stand a chance of ever getting elected to a meaningful degree.
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Not usually, no. The current Conservative government has an 80 seat majority, holding 365 of the 650 commons seats. Labour hold 202 seats, with the largest third party being the Scottish Nationalists with 48. The rest of the parties have a total of 35 seats between them; The Liberal Democrats having the largest number of these at 11.

The remaining 24 are mostly Northern Ireland seats, which have their own set of parties, split on mainly sectarian lines (there are seven Sinn Fein and eight Democratic Unionist seats, with three seats going to two non-sectarian parties. The DUP are Democratic in much the same way that the DPRK is, or the DDR was, and are the rabid protestant and unionist counterpoint to Sinn Fein's rabid catholic and republican position; Sinn Fein was closely associated with the IRA during the 'Troubles', and the DUP was similarly associated with various unionist terrorist groups).

There's also four Welsh nationalist (Plaid Cymru) seats.

It's not unheard of for one of the two main parties to require a coalition partner in order to secure a majority, but it's fairly unusual, and rarely produces a stable government. Typically either the PM in such a 'hung parliament' will call an election if he believes that this will result in a majority for his party; Or the leader of the opposition will push a vote of no confidence through the house, forcing an election, if he believes the government will lose.
 
bilby said:
Treedbear said:
I think you might be addressing the part where I said we could still have a basically two-party system. I meant that the two main parties could still maintain their influence, but that minority parties could finally stand a chance of exerting some influence during elections as well as on the floor of either house when it becomes necessary to form a governing coalition. Isn't that pretty much of a necessity in Britain? As it is third parties never stand a chance of ever getting elected to a meaningful degree.
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Not usually, no. The current Conservative government has an 80 seat majority, holding 365 of the 650 commons seats. Labour hold 202 seats, with the largest third party being the Scottish Nationalists with 48. The rest of the parties have a total of 35 seats between them; The Liberal Democrats having the largest number of these at 11.

The remaining 24 are mostly Northern Ireland seats, which have their own set of parties, split on mainly sectarian lines (there are seven Sinn Fein and eight Democratic Unionist seats, with three seats going to two non-sectarian parties. The DUP are Democratic in much the same way that the DPRK is, or the DDR was, and are the rabid protestant and unionist counterpoint to Sinn Fein's rabid catholic and republican position; Sinn Fein was closely associated with the IRA during the 'Troubles', and the DUP was similarly associated with various unionist terrorist groups).

There's also four Welsh nationalist (Plaid Cymru) seats.

It's not unheard of for one of the two main parties to require a coalition partner in order to secure a majority, but it's fairly unusual, and rarely produces a stable government. Typically either the PM in such a 'hung parliament' will call an election if he believes that this will result in a majority for his party; Or the leader of the opposition will push a vote of no confidence through the house, forcing an election, if he believes the government will lose.
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Well I guess religion poisons everything everywhere. Thanks for enlightening me on the British political climate. And it should have already been apparent to me after the Brexit vote that instability can still be a major problem. That bit about calling an election must create more turmoil than is good. You'd think with so many parties playing a part there would be opportunities to make deals when there's a stalemate. In the US I don't see how we'll ever get beyond ours. Maybe a leader like President Biden who knows and respects parliamentary procedure can foster a change of climate for awhile.
 
Treedbear said:
bilby said:
Treedbear said:
I think you might be addressing the part where I said we could still have a basically two-party system. I meant that the two main parties could still maintain their influence, but that minority parties could finally stand a chance of exerting some influence during elections as well as on the floor of either house when it becomes necessary to form a governing coalition. Isn't that pretty much of a necessity in Britain? As it is third parties never stand a chance of ever getting elected to a meaningful degree.
Click to expand...

Not usually, no. The current Conservative government has an 80 seat majority, holding 365 of the 650 commons seats. Labour hold 202 seats, with the largest third party being the Scottish Nationalists with 48. The rest of the parties have a total of 35 seats between them; The Liberal Democrats having the largest number of these at 11.

The remaining 24 are mostly Northern Ireland seats, which have their own set of parties, split on mainly sectarian lines (there are seven Sinn Fein and eight Democratic Unionist seats, with three seats going to two non-sectarian parties. The DUP are Democratic in much the same way that the DPRK is, or the DDR was, and are the rabid protestant and unionist counterpoint to Sinn Fein's rabid catholic and republican position; Sinn Fein was closely associated with the IRA during the 'Troubles', and the DUP was similarly associated with various unionist terrorist groups).

There's also four Welsh nationalist (Plaid Cymru) seats.

It's not unheard of for one of the two main parties to require a coalition partner in order to secure a majority, but it's fairly unusual, and rarely produces a stable government. Typically either the PM in such a 'hung parliament' will call an election if he believes that this will result in a majority for his party; Or the leader of the opposition will push a vote of no confidence through the house, forcing an election, if he believes the government will lose.
Click to expand...

Well I guess religion poisons everything everywhere. Thanks for enlightening me on the British political climate. And it should have already been apparent to me after the Brexit vote that instability can still be a major problem. That bit about calling an election must create more turmoil than is good. You'd think with so many parties playing a part there would be opportunities to make deals when there's a stalemate. In the US I don't see how we'll ever get beyond ours. Maybe a leader like President Biden who knows and respects parliamentary procedure can foster a change of climate for awhile.
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Well, Brecit was only made possible by a coalition between the DUP and the Conservatives, but unsurprisingly, the DUP hate the reality of the outcome they enabled. They were promised that the Good Friday Agreement would continue to be honoured in full, AND that there would be no border controls between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. However these two promises are incompatible. When you are promised the impossible, it's a very bad idea to assume that the person making the promises will keep them. The DUP are, however, exactly as reality challenged as you might expect from creationists, so they got screwed over.

The situation in Ireland is now untenable. International law prohibits a customs border between Ireland (which is part of the EU) and Northern Ireland (which isn't), and the famous 'deal' therefore requires customs checks between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK. Right now, those checks are fairly minimal, as part of an agreed transition period. But most of those transitional exemptions cease at the end of March, and the rest cease in July. At which point the entire island of Ireland will be treated as being in the EU, and trade between it and the UK will be subject to the same constraints as trade with any other non-EU nation.

This will essentially be indistinguishable from Irish unification as an independent nation state, something the Unionists have opposed (often violently) for several centuries, and which the current British government has promised will not happen.

I can't see it ending well. Perhaps the DUP and their supporters could flee to London as refugees, though I doubt very much that they will be welcome. A united Ireland ruled from Dublin does seem inevitable at this point; A return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the republic would be the only other realistic option, but that would require the UK to break some significant treaties that would force both the US and EU to take punitive action; And would also likely lead to a renewal of violence.

If Northern Ireland does leave the UK and return to the EU (as part of the Republic, or as a new nation state in its own right), then it would be hard to stop Scotland from doing the same. It seems that the final destruction of the United Kingdom as a nation state is at hand, completing the decline that began in the early twentieth century with her fall from imperial status. England and Wales might continue to call themselves "the UK" as a face saving measure, as long as Plaid Cymru don't gain too much more support.

Brexit was always going to be a disaster for the UK. Every person who understood the implications warned of this before Article 50 was invoked, but the idiots and nationalists* refused to listen, and now it's all fucked.



*Sorry about the tautology
 
bilby said:
Brexit was always going to be a disaster for the UK. Every person who understood the implications warned of this before Article 50 was invoked, but the idiots and nationalists* refused to listen, and now it's all fucked.

*Sorry about the tautology
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Lemming land is only about 900 miles away. I understand many invasions of GB originated from there.
 
Jayjay said:
jab said:
why are you discounting the regional parties?
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They are an anomaly, and have limited appeal. No two-party system is perfect, even America has Green Party and Libertarian party. They are just very small. Same with the hypothetical "Texas National Party" that might pop up. At best, it could gain seats in Texas, and nowhere else. But for purposes of funding and media coverage it'd be better off joining with one of the national parties.
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In Canada, a regional Party--the Bloc Quebecois--has held the balance of power in Parliament from time to time; and regional parties getting into coalitions with other smaller parties in a parliament can be quite influential.
 
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