All-purpose news and politics thread: Two Steps Beyond!

[Iron Maiden]

Not a single vote?? None of those millions of Americans that voted for Donald had decent family orientated values deep in them that could be brought into play??

You are "pulling my plonker".

What's your own explanation of why Hilary didn't attack a glaring weak point?

I am related to a few people who go to church regularly ( I don't), have done volunteer work in Africa and Haiti yet still voted for Trump because of their religious views. They want to see Roe vs Wade reversed. They hold their nose and vote.

[aja_christopher]

But there are substantial floating voters surely?? Or people who might come out and vote rather than stay at home? And those floating voters are surely influenced by quality of candidate, and type of campaign run.

I'd never make the argument that "not a single voter" could be convinced: I believe there a few and I believe that the election of Obama proves that to a certain extent but to be fair, Obama (and Trump) generated a lot of excitement whereas Hillary appeared to be more of the same old status quo.

Regardless of actual politics, charisma has a lot of influence over the voting constituency as a whole and Trump played the media like a fiddle -- up to and including having them focus on WikiLeaks (and Hillary's emails) which conveniently helped him swing the election in his favor in its closing weeks.

You keep trying to make this about Hillary -- the candidate who won the popular vote and didn't brag about grabbing women by the p----y -- when it really was a referendum on racism, electoral interference, and how far Republicans are willing to go to stack the Supreme Court and other legislative and judicial branches in their favor.

It's important to remember that Trump walked through about a dozen other Republican candidates before he even got the nomination and that he was already a strongly supported nominee who got his "base" to the polls by using lies and openly racist rhetoric to slander his opposition -- the only way Hillary couldn't have been a "better" candidate than Trump is if she had divorced two men, repeatedly cheated on her spouses, publicly ogled her child -- and other naked teen children at pageants -- bankrupted numerous businesses, defended dictators and despots like Putin, slandered "minorities" at every opportunity, bragged about sexual assault on television, and actually lost the popular vote.

It's not her fault the "better" candidate didn't win -- that's on the American voter.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

This right here. The religious right will often sacrifice values and morals for 1 or 2 single issues without a whit of guilt, as they can pray it away next Sunday.

Just as all the ammosexuals out there would be all too willing and eager to flush their right to free speech under the First Amendment down the toilet as long as they back candidates who’ll keep the Second Amendment sacrosanct. Single issue voters are far and away the most dangerous because they accept ZERO compromise when it comes to what they consider most important to them.

[Jack Dracula]

I am related to a few people who go to church regularly ( I don't), have done volunteer work in Africa and Haiti yet still voted for Trump because of their religious views. They want to see Roe vs Wade reversed. They hold their nose and vote.

The worst kind of short-sighted single-issue voter.
If they'd actually think about how they're also voting for the dissolution of social programs to help those underprivileged children they're supposedly saving...

[JackDaw]

No -- you probably just don't understand how partisan American politics are due to our two-party system.


Edit: With that in mind, feel free to let us know if you feel like a parliamentary system is more effective -- we definitely need to reassess a few things about our electoral system after the last few elections where Republicans won despite losing the popular vote: we essentially let a partisan Supreme Court put Bush in place and now Trump's win will always be seen as questionable due to Russian interference, regardless of the outcome of Mueller's investigation.

It also might help candidates like Clinton and Sanders work more effectively as a team instead of letting the Republicans continue to divide and conquer.

By itself my gut feeling is that UK parliamentary is no more effective system than US system....it's close, one might be a bit better than other...but not obviously so. Some of the disadvantages that you see in US system you also see in ours. Certainly the winning party often wins by getting less than 40% of votes cast...meaning that once non votes are taken into count maybe only 30 percent of country may be supporters of government of the day.

And although there are two "houses" (The Lords and the House of Commons) 95% of the power lies with the MP's in the House of Commons...so the party that wins the Commons vote is effectively in power for 5 years. There are 650 "seats" in the House of Commons...win 326 of them and you're in power. (Not quite as simple as that, of course. Only having one more Member of Parliament than combined opposition would be a logistical nightmare, when your own rebels acted up, etc.)

I suppose one advantage is that concentrating so much power in the winning party in the House of Commons theoretically allows things to get done without constant squabbling....but in practice it really doesn't seem to work really well.

Bizarrely, I think most effective government we have had in recent years was coalition government 3 elections ago, when no one party won an overall majority, and Liberals and Conservatives formed an alliance. I felt the Liberals pressed for humane measures in several key areas, while Conservatives kept the overall spend under slightly better control.

One startling difference between US and UK, I think, is amount of open unpleasant behaviour some American voters tolerate. One obvious example, no UK mainstream political party would retain any MP who appeared openly racist...any mainstream party that did would get slaughtered in election. Similarly no person standing to become a Member of Parliament could appear to encourage people to beat up hecklers at election rallies (as The Donald appeared to). That would be unthinkable in UK...his or her own party would rescind their party membership within days.

[Tendrin]

The worst kind of short-sighted single-issue voter.
If they'd actually think about how they're also voting for the dissolution of social programs to help those underprivileged children they're supposedly saving...

They do. I believe most of them know exactly what they are voting for and that it will hurt others more than it will hurt them. That's why.

[PaulBullion]

That might be more believable if on this very thread one liberal poster said he wanted nothing but facts and someone else piped up about the detention centers being "kidnapping."

They told a mother they would take her child to be bathed.

Then took the child to a detention center.

I haven't checked the dictionary lately but... what would you call that?

[PaulBullion]

I wonder if deep down Hilary felt that way: that she couldn’t lose? And that made her play too “safe”...she seemed fairly passive in head to head debates?

Wait, what?

She called him Putin's puppet. She presented him with a former pageant candidate who accused him of bullying and fat-shaming her. She was fierce.

And then she was accused of "being over prepared" by very serious journalists.

[4saken1]

Most people think Bill Clinton has had a number of affairs, and treated a string of young women disgracefully in other ways. It’s just about unreasonable to believe anything else...he clearly treated Monica Lewinsky appallingly, for example.

Hilary by staying in the marriage accepted all that...at one level she accepted that type of behaviour. By so doing, she made it more difficult to condemn similar behaviour in others.

This was a lose-lose for Hillary. If she stayed, she was complicit in his behavior. If she left him, she would have been crucified just the same for not standing by her man.

[aja_christopher]

Bizarrely, I think most effective government we have had in recent years was coalition government 3 elections ago, when no one party won an overall majority, and Liberals and Conservatives formed an alliance. I felt the Liberals pressed for humane measures in several key areas, while Conservatives kept the overall spend under slightly better control.

One startling difference between US and UK, I think, is amount of open unpleasant behaviour some American voters tolerate. One obvious example, no UK mainstream political party would retain any MP who appeared openly racist in slightest degree...any mainstream party that did would get slaughtered in election. Similarly no person standing to become a Member of Parliament could appear to encourage people to beat up hecklers at election rallies (as The Donald appeared to). That would be unthinkable in UK...his or her own party would rescind their party membership within days.

Your initial statement here is my ideal -- there's absolutely no reason why our two parties shouldn't be allied to work for the good of all Americans as that should be the foremost objective of our government as a whole. I don't pay taxes (their salaries) to support Democrats or Republicans -- I pay them to support America as a whole. Partisanship has become the foundation of our political system and the presidency of Obama essentially cemented said partisanship into the fabric of the Republican Party.

Which brings us to your second statement: the fact that you see such openly racist behavior as completely unacceptable within your political circles while the Republican party would nominate said racist into the presidency speaks volumes about your lack of awareness with regards to the realities of division here in America -- as someone who lived in England for about a year or so I can tell you that you from experience that racism is far more pervasive in America than it is in the UK... which is exactly why someone like Trump could be elected as President here.

(Btw, it's not an meant to be an insult to point out that you probably aren't aware of just how deeply embedded racism is into American society due to your lack of exposure -- just like free health care, it's one of those things that makes your country better as a whole.)

[4saken1]

Exactly.

If you look at those two situations and see a "Black"/"White" difference, that doesn't mean that everyone else is willing to.

Exactly! Not sure if Clinton continued this behavior or not after his impeachment. I don't think President Caligula would give it a second though to cheat on his wife again or even rape somebody, because he knows that his evangelical base doesn't GAF.

[4saken1]

Yes, it is more relevant.

But the Clinton horse NEVER GOT FLOGGED. That's the problem.

And it's OK to talk about that, instead of complaining that it's finally getting flogged.

Ummmm...FOX News owes a good deal of it's success to the 24/7 flogging of Clinton during this scandal.

[PaulBullion]

She also made unwoke comments about those young women, who society has determined are also victims in all this.

You're not boss enough to use far-out language like that, wonder chick.

[Dalak]

You're not boss enough to use far-out language like that, wonder chick.

[4saken1]

Look at The Donald. He has a number of weak points in terms of "electability". One glaring one is his consistently shabby treatment of women.

This is actually a feature for his base, not a flaw.