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Post by Davos Dayne on Feb 22, 2020 16:06:34 GMT 1
I would say you are both right, just in regards to different parts of the process.
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Post by Father on Feb 22, 2020 19:56:36 GMT 1
If I were in charge of the Democrats, I'd rearrange future primaries so that the states with the closest margin in the last election goes comes first, maybe with some added weight for midterm results and number of mandates in play.
But that's just on the list of quick-fixes. It doesn't address the fact that Senate Republicans would get eviscerated by Fox News and the Trump base if they did what they really wanted and kicked the clown out and put Pence in charge, thus allowing a corrupt narcissist to pretty much do whatever he likes to enrich himself, dole out favors to all his friends and provide ongoing inspiration for Lord Eldon.
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Post by Davos Dayne on Feb 22, 2020 21:42:57 GMT 1
Yeah, the primary/caucus system needs an overhaul, but I think Perez had a hard enough fight on his hands making sure the nomination process was so airtight that no one could accuse the DNC of putting their finger on the scale the way that Schultz did back in 2016. One can only force people to accept so much change at once... I'm hopeful that if today's Nevada caucus goes well (in particular the early voting portion) it might make more people realize the benefits of a ranked choice system over plurality voting. I suspect that BOTH parties will try to stamp it out though, as plurality voting is a key part of what gives them power.
The Republican party had an opportunity to ditch Trump back at the 2016 Convention, when Trump's support was still just a minority of the Republican voters. Now that he has stacked the RNC leadership with cronies, no elected Republicans can afford to go against him because too much of their re-election funding and support gets channeled through the party. That's why the only republicans to seriously go against him were either forced out of the party (Amash) or are from Utah (Romney), where Trump only won because of plurality voting.
In some ways, it's a good thing - in the same way that Watergate was a good thing: if the system survives the crisis, protections will be put in place to prevent it from happening again. Ironically, by trying to consolidate so much power in the executive branch, Trump is virtually guaranteeing that more power will shift to the legislative branch in the aftermath... which is good, because as a whole the legislative branch has been ducking it's responsibilities for decades, which is part of what led to the current mess in the first place.
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Post by Balon Blackbriar on Feb 22, 2020 22:08:04 GMT 1
I think it'd be interesting to dig into why the electorate prefers gridlock over to one party dominating. I can't recall where I read it but voters tend to vote to ensure at least one part of government is held by the minority be it the House, Senate, or Presidency.
A lot of Trump voters that voted for Obama continue to vote for Blue at the local and legislative level.
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Post by Father on Feb 22, 2020 22:40:08 GMT 1
If it wasn't for gerrymandering (some of it done deliberately, others by giving each state two senators and the whole first past the post electoral college thing), Republicans would probably have been forced to be a responsible party instead of doubling down on their advantages and pander to very select groups of society to move the vote just enough to put them in power. At least back before Newt Gingrich, if the president didn't have a majority in the house, he'd negotiate with the opposition to get as much of his agenda as he could, if memory serves, Reagan actually worked with some of the Democrats to sidestep some Republicans that didn't want to play ball.
But there's usually a backlash against the sitting President at the polls, a bit of a trend is that he gets to start out with a majority on capitol hill which gets corroded away in the midterms when he fails to deliver on his promises (or it just rains too much), but he gets the incumbency bonus come re-election anyway.
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Post by Davos Dayne on Feb 23, 2020 0:02:52 GMT 1
The two-senators thing was supposed to be a balancing factor for House seats being based on population. At the time smaller colonies were afraid that they would significantly underrepresented relative to larger colonies. Before the US Civil War, it was more like the EU - most people identified themselves as belong to a particular state more strongly than to the federation of states.
Similarly with the Electoral College - it made sense at the time. Sometimes it's easy to forget that these systems were devised back in the day when getting a message (or ballot box) from one end of the country to the other could take months. That's why the electoral college made sense - you elect *electors* who travel to D.C. to cast the actual election votes. Far less open to tampering than a wagonloads of ballots being shipped across the country to be counted officially.
Even the seemingly random tradition of Election Day being 'the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November' was based on what are now out-dated pragmatics.
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Post by Father on Feb 23, 2020 0:22:19 GMT 1
Just switching things up so that 55% of the vote in one state gives you 55% of the electoral college from that state would go a long way to improve how politics works, would also force them to campaign all over the place. As it is now, the system incentivizes tailoring your campaign and policies towards favoring the battleground states. Both in terms of what issues you campaign on and good old pork and barrel politics.
Scrapping the congressional districts and throw all of a state's representatives into a single pool to be voted on (maybe allow the parties to put up lists you could vote on) would also be a good idea IMO.
Senate is trickier, might just scrap the whole thing and give each state two extra congressmen instead. An upper house is generally superfluous in modern times.
All of the above would take away a great deal of power from some very powerful people, so I wouldn't hold my breath for it.
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Post by Davos Dayne on Feb 23, 2020 5:30:17 GMT 1
I like having congressional districts - it increases the diversity of representation by preventing cities from completely dominating rural/suburban areas. However, I think that district lines should be drawn by mathematical formula rather than partisan politics (Gerrymandering is named after a democrat, it's a problem with both parties). I'm no mathematician but I know enough that I'm pretty sure a method can be devised to divide each state into districts that conform to a standard of minimal average distance from the district's geographical center.
Unsure about the upper/lower house distinction. I do like having a mix of term lengths, though - as it stands house seats are often swayed by short-term trends (e.g. the 'Tea Party' movement), but because of the longer terms and staggered elections, the senate is more stable.
Yeah, not many politicians want to up-end a system which has put them in power. Most would prefer an ill-functioning system that keeps them in place than a revision that could cost them their jobs. Of course, that's true of most people in most careers, not just in politics.
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Post by Daeron Wildfyre on Mar 2, 2020 0:22:05 GMT 1
If I were in charge of the Democrats, I'd rearrange future primaries so that the states with the closest margin in the last election goes comes first, maybe with some added weight for midterm results and number of mandates in play. But that's just on the list of quick-fixes. It doesn't address the fact that Senate Republicans would get eviscerated by Fox News and the Trump base if they did what they really wanted and kicked the clown out and put Pence in charge, thus allowing a corrupt narcissist to pretty much do whatever he likes to enrich himself, dole out favors to all his friends and provide ongoing inspiration for Lord Eldon. If Lord Eldon becomes king Daeron is moving to Essos.
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Post by Laena Pyre on Mar 24, 2020 0:59:43 GMT 1
Whelp. The UK (where I live) is now in lockdown, for at least the next few weeks.
I've told work I won't be coming in (they already told us if we wanted, this was an option, even before the lockdown).
My fridge and freezer are pretty much full.
As far as I can tell, I'm healthy.
I've got plenty of toilet paper.
*Cracks knuckles*. Let's do this.
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Post by Father on Apr 20, 2020 20:31:23 GMT 1
In other news, I just finished Isaacsons biography on Ben Franklin, now on to lighter fare, Bernard Cornwell's grail quest trilogy.
*Rubs palms together* The sequel to those books gave me the inspiration for Lord Eldon.
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Post by Mikel of Harroway on Apr 20, 2020 21:50:58 GMT 1
Have you heard of the Chivalry series by Christian Cameron?
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Post by Father on Apr 20, 2020 22:13:52 GMT 1
Nope, and considering that I've been collecting books faster than I can read them for a few years now, I'm not very likely to go out of my way to look into that. Although if I do stumble over that in a second-hand store, I probably will buy it. Usually do if I can remember it suggested to me.
I mostly read non-fiction, but then I have a few authors and/or book series that I consume greedily.
There's a second-hand store with a fairly large book section next to my primary grocery store, so I drop by every now and then to have a look, then I go splurge away on Amazon after Christmas/Birthday, but that's mostly non-fiction, but this christmas I got a gift-card for a Norwegian book-store, which conveniently had 50% all English language pocket, so I filled out my collection of Grail Quest and Saxon Stories, and had a little leftover so grabbed Capital (Marx's doorstopper), a bit of Tom Holland, too.
My bookshelf can be summed up as containing: 1. Books on Finance/Economics. 2. Biographies and history. 3. Fantasy (GRRM, Robert Jordan*, Tolkien) 4. Thrillers (Guillou, Clancy). 5. Historical fiction (Don't think anyone in particular aside Cornwell) 6. Self-Help and "hobby psychology". 7. Various other stuff.
*They had the entire wheel of time series at the second hand store, haven't started on that yet, but read first four books ages ago.
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Post by Mikel of Harroway on Apr 21, 2020 3:17:23 GMT 1
Bernard Cornwell had me hooked with his Saxon Tales. I think that "Gates of Fire" by Steven Pressfield was the only historical fiction I had read up to that point, and I really enjoyed the details of viking life provided in the series, especialy the first book.
The Chivalry Series is also a historical fiction, following a character named William Gold from London, to war in France then in Italy, the crusade/sacking of Alexandria, pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and on.
There are four books out now, I got them all on kindle, and the fifth comes out within the next few months. Im on my third read through of the series and have only know about them for two years at most.
This series is fun to read and I learned a lot from it. One historical character (apart from William Gold) is Fiore dei Liberi, and I enjoyed the authors depiction of him and his craft. There is a lot about the series I enjoy, but the insight into a life if arms for the medieval professional is my favorite.
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Post by Mikel of Harroway on May 9, 2020 1:08:12 GMT 1
Thr Andals brought the 7 to westeros, some being described in a way which describes some of those of the faith militant.
So thefaith militant came over with the andals. The faith militant came from where the andals came from, and was eventually put down in westeros. So there is still a faith militant in the lands which thw andals came from?
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