It sounds like a delayed runoff election but you may as well just use instant runoff.
Be careful what you wish for. I live in a multi-party system (6 in parliament at the moment), and one of the consequences is that we’re stuck with coalitions wherein the parties hate each others guts and bring the whole thing to a stand-still. I’m not a fan of the first-past-the-line system like in the US, but the other end isn’t a peach farm either.
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The advantage of multi party systems is that they make it harder for extremist loonies to take over the majority party.
The disadvantage of multi party systems is that they guarantee parliamentary representation for extremist loonies.
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I’m from Austria, and nutjob Hofer is on the verge of taking the presidency (after losing in the first round and successfully repealing the result in the supreme court), and super nutjob Strache has great chances to be the next chancellor. So, no, extremists don’t rise to the top within their party, but extremist parties rise to the top anyway. And since the so-called “major parties” are so diminished anyway, they’re happy to collaborate.
Edit: I think your major (heh) misconception is that there is such a thing as a majority party in multi-party systems. If you get over 50 %, fine, you can govern on your own. But as soon as there are more than 4 or so, it just won’t happen.
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As they speed through the finish, the flags go down
The fans get up and they get out of town
The arena is empty except for one man
Still driving and striving as fast as he can
The sun has gone down and the moon has come up
And long ago somebody left with the cup
But he’s driving and striving and hugging the turns
And thinking of someone for whom he still burns
- The Distance, Cake
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What is it, 3-4 billion dollars at this point?
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Don’t we already represent extremist loonies in the US without parliament?
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You already have two houses, that’s pretty much the same thing.
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It’s also called basic sanitation.
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That
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After the recording of him bragging about sexual assault came out, I did notice that one of the huge signs in front of a house on my way to campus did disappear … for about five days. I’m not completely sure what happened there, if the people in the house had a momentary bit of sense (or perhaps it was only restricted to one,) but it’s certainly back out there now.
That said? While I do see four Trump signs in my sixteen mile route, I see a lot more Clinton signs. I can easily do a quick mental count of the Trump signs, but I quickly lose track of the Clinton signs, even before I’m to the halfway mark. (The location where the houses directly across the road from one another has to be a particularly fun neighborhood, I’m sure.) I’ll also note that three of the four are the ones that had up pro-Walker signs during all of the recent attempts at sanity here in Wisconsin, so no big surprise there, but what is noticeable are the number of houses with a number of pro-Republican signs that are conspicuously missing Trump signs … there’s a lot more than four of them!
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Trump gains on Clinton despite furor over women, election comments
My point was addressing the frequent assertion that the debates somehow mattered, that she had buried him, the show was over, etc. From what it looks like, the sexual assault stuff hasn’t even mattered, since he has gained on Clinton since.
You’re pretty much describing me and my household here. I’m certainly voting for Clinton, as she’s the closest thing to a liberal as we’re likely to get anytime soon, but that doesn’t actually make her one, despite what the much-farther-right conservatives say. To put it another way, if my problem with Clinton is only that she’s too conservative, and in my opinion she is, then selecting the other, even more conservative option is hardly a solution. (Of course if I had other problems with her … such as lack of a coherent policy platform, a temperament that shouldn’t be trusted with commanding military power and/or nukes, or literally decades of open sexism / racism / and other bigotry, … well, then I’d be looking for a third party, viable or not.)
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There’s still two weeks to go, and although very unlikely, there is still an outside chance Trump could win, simply because of how electoral votes are calculated.
Or to paraphrase @Modusoperandi, with the sarcasm removed, “don’t take it for granted, get out and vote!”
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Yes and no? I don’t think Clinton is as close to a liberal as we can get anytime soon. There are far more liberal politicians, and their time is coming soon. I also agree with you about not choosing someone further right over Clinton, but that part is a given.
What I really disagree with is the sentiment of vote for Clinton because she’s not Trump. Those are not the only two options. Although I’m not as firmly third party this election as others, I am not under any obligation to vote for Clinton.
I have never missed a presidential election in 20 years, but this one is mighty tempting to miss. I feel exhausted by this whole thing and am just waiting for it to end.
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I certainly hope so, but I think I’m a little disheartened over Sanders. I think my feeling that we’re not likely to do better soon is his defeat, but also out of Clinton (either one, or Obama, etc.) being so strongly cast as a liberal, both by her opposition and even by more neutral parties. It seems somewhat of a game of failed syllogism via binary opposites: if A has a property, and B is A’s opponent, then B must have the opposite property of A! Yeah, not so much …
I’m not against them, I’ve voted for them in local and state positions, but I can’t quite bring myself to do it on a national level. If nothing else, I think if someone third party did somehow manage to get elected to the presidency, the democrats and republicans in the house and senate would set aside their differences long enough to beat the ever living crap out of this newcomer for the next four years. (Basically, even less progress than usual.) Sorry, didn’t mean to turn this in a discussion of the relative merits of third parties, but I didn’t want to leave the impression that I’m against them! I just wish I felt they were more viable within our system.
I’ve been doing it for … um … almost 30 years now … (crap, how did that happen?) and I know what you mean. I keep waiting for an election where I’m living in a state where I feel like it’s a foregone enough conclusion that I can vote 3rd party without feeling like I’m giving a stronger position to a candidate that scares me, but it hasn’t happened yet. There have been elections where I’ve voted for a candidate, but those are depressingly few. (That’s happened more often in state or local elections, but even there I usually have feel like it’s a choice between being shot or being stabbed.)
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If you think Dems and Republicans are indistinguishable in terms of war and diplomacy it can only be because you haven’t been paying attention, or you’ve gotten confused as to who was president during various military adventures.
Term limits are a really bad idea and if Dems pushed for them I would berate them for it. They are another oligarchy-friendly tool to reduce the effectiveness of the gov’t and make it easier to shuffle well financed corporate stooges into office.
There’s a good bit of distance between many Dems and the GOP on campaign finance. If Gore had won, there’s every reason to assume Citizens United would not have gone the way it did, McCain Feingold would be in full effect, and campaign financing would have a very different landscape today, going back to my earlier comments on electoral choices causing permanent damage.
On privacy rights, lobbyists, and fiscal accountability there are fewer differences, and those are mostly nuance related, though the main difference is between a party where some elected representatives care vs a party where no elected representatives care.
Those “few sensitive issues” include
- protection of civil liberties for minorities vs. erosion
- protection of abortion rights vs erosion
- protection of women’s rights vs erosion
- protection of LGBT rights vs erosion
- some gun control vs no gun control
- the makeup of the Supreme Court’s ideology
- weakening vs. strengthening religion’s role in the public sphere
- a tax policy of tax cuts for the wealthy vs an attempt to make taxes more fair
- defending Soc Security, Medicare, and other social insurance programs, vs eroding them
- supporting greater and more equal funding of education programs vs the opposite
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I don’t know about anyone else, my “obligation” isn’t to vote for Clinton, it’s to stave off the detrimental avalanche of insane fuckery that is pretty much inevitable in the event of a Trump victory. Not to mention what will happen to the Supreme court.
To quote Des’Ree, “I’m living for TOMORROW, not today.”
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What you are espousing in terms of war is propaganda. Which “military adventures” do you mean? Korea? Vietnam? The Gulf War? Afghanistan? Iraq? The ones that weren’t started by Democrats weren’t opposed by them either. You might make a case for The Gulf War, but then Gore voted for it, against the majority of his party.
Hillary Clinton supported the war in Iraq, supported the patriot act, supported it again, after it was commonly known how awful it was. Extrajudicial killings continued and were expanded under Obama, with the full support of Clinton. Borders have ceased to have any meaning when the Obama administration wants to blow someone up.
The Obama administration has been said to be the worst administration since Nixon in terms of transparency and pursuing investigations against journalists. American diplomacy was not repaired under Obama, rather it continued a downward slide and we are just as hated around the world as we have ever been.
The diplomacy they actually carry out is just deeply tied to pandering and selling influence to nations like Saudi Arabia and China. Hillary Clinton’s fundraising is right there for you to see. It was the same for her husband, and Gore. Bill Clinton’s entire presidency was mired in investigations of fundraising misconduct, renting out the Lincoln bedroom. Your assertion about Gore is mind boggling, the whole reason Gore was in demand was his ability to raise huge amounts of money.
It’s very convenient to just accept that bad is not as bad as worse. Sadly in this case, worse isn’t much worse at all. You have to objectively look at history and see what people actually did, instead of just believing what they say.
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