That dude will totally find his way into another Trump administration. Yet another reason to vote Harris.

I'll say it again: for anyone to the right of Cory Booker, hypocrisy is meaningless now. Gaetz will only be run out of office if he loses the sauce. Anything short of jail and cuffs is weak shit for fascists, and anonymous affidavits in a dropped civil suit don't cut it.

NC GOP is trying to dump Robinson because he's 11 points down. He's 11 points down because the NC GOP rank and file will tolerate unhinged public policy statements and "un-Christian" personal sexual habits from white guys only. The hypocrisy is a parsley garnish by comparison.

Trump preemptively blaming Jewish folks for his loss... I mean we all knew it would end up here at some point, right? It always does. Because of the bizarre love/hate thing Evangelicals have going on with Israel and its relationship to their doomsday prophecies, those comments won't even rate. Gone in a week.

My NC GOP family are choosing to ignore all of this and focus on how there must be some great failure going on in the Secret Service for these two assassination attempts to occur. Not outright accusing the Biden admin of leaning on the scales, just delicately wafting the scent of it into the room so you can draw your own conclusions, etc. They do, as the saying goes, want to be persecuted so badly.

PASTA wrote: Fri Sep 20, 2024 3:49 pm

I guarantee Trump is a full breakfast old school, quotas at Harvard antisemite

losthighway wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2024 8:09 pm Sorry, I'm not trying to be obtuse or dense. It's just that the concerns about the electoral process in the U.S. are absolutely valid, but they're only ever played out as whether or not to vote for a 3rd party which seems to insidiously waste most of the energy on the issue.

Ideally it would have to be a grass roots movement which would take a long time to build and would face many obstacles.

losthighway wrote: Thu Sep 19, 2024 8:09 pm If I were an Orwellian puppet master who wanted to protect the two party system, I'd simply dangle a libertarian or Green party candidate in front of the trouble makers' faces every 4 years and let them tire themselves out with that.

Bonus points if you can leverage them to be a spoiler for your least favorite party.

This is undoubtedly what was happening with RFK Jr. He was being funded by the same people funding trump. I can only think their reasoning was that the Kennedy name is associated with the Democrats, so would pull votes from that side to help trump. Unfortunately for them, the person he is and some of the things he says and does appeals more to their side and when it became obvious he was only pulling votes away from trump I suspect someone had a word which is why he stepped down.

PASTA wrote: Fri Sep 20, 2024 3:49 pm

If Israel ceased to exist in a couple of years it won't be because he lost an election. What an ass.

"people opposed to election reform are not consensus builders. anti ranked choice voting money is from MAGA. mainstream republicans [and democrats] have more to gain."

"will this lead to a viable 3rd option? the more we experiment with this in different states, the more we will find out. it's still relatively early."

"you don't even have to ask the voters to rank them. just let them choose, A vs B, B vs C, and A vs C and find the consensus candidate that way. RCV is not essential to get the benefits we hope for."

"Strategic voting is a horrible thing to place on voters and candidates."

"Alaska is providing a window to the future of election systems in the US."

i will keep pounding this issue to death.

The UK also suffers from an appalling voting system. The first past the post electorate based system is completely useless.

We had a vote on moving to a secondary preference system a few years ago and in typical British style it was “hey plebs here a slightly better system you have six weeks to decide.” It was a fucking insult but very typical of how the establishment here view voters, an inconvenience.

In New Zealand we had an election in the 80s where a third party won 20% of the vote and got zero seats. We realised the system was broken. Andrew correct me if anything below is off, it was a long time ago.

We then went through a series of plebiscites pegged to general elections to maximise turnout. First ask “do we want to potentially change the voting system?” Yes. Between the next election cycle (three short years in NZ) a commission selected and presented eight (I think) options and we had an ongoing debate on these options. We then voted on those options and came up with Mixed Member Proportional which is a seat plus proportional list system the same as Germany. Finally a straight keep the current system or move to the new one. Thankfully we chose MMP. There was a 15 year break clause vote to lock it in, which passed.

That’s how you do the work to change politics. Grindingly slow but things stick when you bring people with you

Not really understanding how Harris and Trump are dead even RN, but then again we had Nazism in Europe 100 years ago.

Lu Zwei wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2024 10:09 am Not really understanding how Harris and Trump are dead even RN, but then again we had Nazism in Europe 100 years ago.

The polls could be way off.

It’s all going to depend on how many people show up and vote.

the polls are right. it will be close no matter what.

Lu Zwei wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2024 10:09 am Not really understanding how Harris and Trump are dead even RN, but then again we had Nazism in Europe 100 years ago.

we stopped teaching wwii in school.

it's closer since biden dropped out.

since everyone agrees they were better off in 2019
walz's message is, "we can't have four more years of this!" trump is saying don't reelect harris and harris is saying don't reelect trump but neither one has a plan.