Wow Bis give it a rest
Sadly, I don’t think our pols are half as clever as they would need to be to make a US version entertaining.
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I think Obama is clever. He’s wrong on virtually every issue, but he’s clever.
I do like the idea of direct exchange in a certain sense, but I think it would mostly be used for theater and humiliation, which denigrates the co-equal branches that are ultimately supposed to work together.
McCain floated question time as something he’d want as a President back in his 2008 run. It’s come up a few times through our history (Estes Kefauver pushed for it, I think?).
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Every election l like to start tracking newspaper endorsements. The Houston Chronicle came out early for Clinton:
Re: Obama, that is undoubtedly true.
Not true, re: Bill.
Surely the prospect of enduring it/ engaging in it would assist in changing the composition of your politicians, no?
Lol yeah Bis, all signs point to Russian interference in an American presidential election, but stop talking it now pls ok thnx.
Btw Zeb, you know guys like Max Boot and Robert Kagan are conservative, yes?
I’m leaning towards a Gary Johnson vote as well (for what it’s worth, I share countingbeans’ general outlook of the two “major” candidates: both suck, HRC sucks slightly less, I don’t like either as a Presidential candidate).
pat has said, several times, that this election is too important to waste a vote on a candidate who will not win. I respectfully disagree that a vote is “wasted” if it is spent on a candidate that does not win. I feel that it would be better for our nation’s collective political discourse if we had more than 2 parties (for many reasons), and the only way we will ever have more than 2 viable parties is if a third party shows well enough in polls & elections to gain some traction.
So, given the choice between voting for “the lesser of two evils for the next four years” with a vote for Hilary/Trump against “possibly maybe doing something that could move the needle in a positive direction over the long haul” by voting for Johnson in the hope that the Libertarian Party will gain a little more traction, I’ll take the latter.
And yes, maybe it’s a pipe dream. But it’s sure to REMAIN a pipe dream if We the Sheeple continue to vote for Republicans and Democrats only on the grounds of “I don’t want to waste my vote on a candidate that has no realistic chance to win.” Voters who despise both major-party candidates and continue following that logic anyway are precisely WHY those candidates have no chance to win, now and in future elections.
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The person who allowed 4 brave men to be killed in Benghazi, the person who was investigated and nearly indicted by the FBI (politics saved her). The person who is part of the Clinton Foundation which is still being investigated by the FBI…she is the best?
Don’t get me wrong I know what Trump is but sheesh–HILLARY CLINTON?
Tell me when is the last time a third party candidate was elected President since the beginning of the 20the century?
I don’t think it’s about being a sheep, it’s more like being practical. Either the Pants suit or the big mouth wins the White House. Gary Johnson is not winning.
So…you can let others decide for you but I would rather have a say in it personally.
Don’t get me wrong I understand your frustration.
But surely the fact that the parties tow the Presidential line (broadly speaking) means the separation of powers has already faltered in this regard?
Good post, and it’s absolutely not a wasted vote. Parties should earn your vote, and if neither the Republican or Democratic parties have, then vote third party.
In 2016, we don’t have decent candidates, that damage has already been done, and we’ll get more of the same in 2020 unless we do something different. Doing something different begins now.
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Very true - we have unwittingly morphed into more of a parliamentary system because of the partisanship. Used to be, Congress has more of a spine to protect its turf, even if the White House and Congress were controlled by the same party. No longer.
And it’s a trend that should be reversed. But I don’t think question time is the answer or would even help much.
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Oh, I completely agree. But lemonade from lemons and all that.
NATO commander agrees members should pay up
MAGA
Honestly, I don’t really want to make this about Hilary vs. Trump, as that wasn’t the spirit of my original post. I only put that in there to give an idea of where I stood. With that said, I believe that the only reason Trump doesn’t have a Benghazi of his own is because he’s never held an elected office where he had that degree of responsibility. He’s never had to make decisions with lives on the line, only with money on the line (and with respect to that angle, the guy has made his entire life by screwing other people for his own benefit)
So pardon me if I don’t have any confidence that the guy who has a history of fucking regular working Joes (people who may have been dependent on those contracts to make curtains and chandeliers and pianos for his casinos) is suddenly going to care about the lives of the common American man any more than HRC. It’s just that now when he fucks around, instead of costing some poor bastard the $10,000 his/her business needed to stay afloat, it will cost people’s lives.
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Eliot Cohen is also among the most prominent conservatives on that list, whose work “Supreme Command” was very influential in the Bush 43 administration.
Also, it’s very interesting to note that all three (and many more) also signed the following open letter:
An inexperienced president with no understanding of the theory and practice of foreign policy surrounded by inexperienced advisors is a recipe for disaster. As the political scientist Elizabeth N. Saunders writes, “This scenario raises the possibility of inexperienced advisers gathering information and formulating policy options without the substantive background to know where to look, what might be missing, and what has worked in the past — all while working for a boss who is not likely to spot the problems or fill in the gaps.”
Trump? He’s not only ignorant of the theory and practice of foreign policy, his policy prescriptions (if his call his bar-stool bluster qualify as much) are antithetical to the core pillars of the American world order that have maintained great power peace for over seventy years, brought about unprecented prosperity, and led to the proliferation of democratic norms and values - all to the enormous benefit of America and her allies. A Trump presidency would make his midnight phantasm of America’s place in the world a reality.
Before I start, we’re clearly both frustrated with the current state of affairs. We are just coming at this specific piece (the 3rd-party vote) with two different perspectives: the short game and the long game.
But as long as you (and the majority of the American people) retain this attitude, that is precisely the reason that no third-party ever will gain traction. By failing to consider that other choice and keeping this guess-I’m-stuck-picking-between-2-shit-candidates-again, that keeps us going with the current state of affairs. You’re playing the short game. You want to have a say in THIS election, and I understand that. I’ve decided that I would rather spend my vote (trying) to get that third party to a point where it’s taken seriously, where that guy can actually stand on stage in the real live Presidential debates in 2020. It might be a long shot, but it’s guaranteed NOT to happen unless people like me, who believe that the 2-party system creates some impossible dichotomies - sorry to take us off track, but my fiancee is an opera singer, so we have a lot of gay friends, some of whom far are very against Democratic fiscal policies but that puts them in a position of voting for certain Republican candidates who actively work against their right to marry whom they choose…and I don’t want to turn this into a gay-marriage thread, either, just making the point that the 2-party system often leaves people conflicted between a choice they hate on one side and a choice they hate on the other for a different reason. Earlier, you mentioned not being able to support a candidate who supports abortion - so what happens if/when the R’s ever trot out someone who pledges NOT to close any more abortion clinics, while the D’s trot out a candidate who you find utterly objectionable in everything else?
Anyways, I went off the rails there, but my point is that this sort of short-term “I hate both the D and R candidates but I won’t throw my vote away on someone else” is what will keep bringing us back to the table with only 2 choices. I want more than 2 perspectives represented in our federal government. I don’t want to keep dealing with laws that get killed because one party sticks in a poison-pill that’s a non-starter for the other party, like this:
$1 billion needed badly for research into Zika virus, which got killed because, well…
"Just two months previously, the Senate had overwhelmingly approved a bipartisan compromise that appropriated $1.1bn without any significant caveats. Barack Obama was prepared to sign it, despite having requested $1.9bn in February.
House Republicans, however, attached provisions to the bill that imposed restrictions on abortion, overturned clean water regulations, defunded parts of the president’s healthcare law, and sought to undo a ban on flying the Confederate flag at federal cemeteries."
Whether you are D, R, or neither I think we all ought to agree that when badly needed funding for (insert issue here) gets killed or held up because the other side of the aisle sticks a bunch of their own (insert issue here) into your original bill, that’s a problem. I believe that the only way crap like this will stop is if we have more than 2 legitimately functional parties with voices at the table. And the only way we will have more more than 2 parties is if we actually start voting for people outside those 2 parties.
So in the spirit of mutual understanding - I do understand your perspective that you want to have a voice in who gets elected this time. It’s just my personal feeling that maybe my vote in this election could (potentially) do something about who gets elected over the next few decades if I (and others) decide it’s time to have more than just D’s and R’s on the political stage. Kind of a “meta” perspective, I know, just how I feel.
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