POLL: How do we get out of this two-party debacle we're in now?

[kieefer]

I like that idea

[monkeylizard]

Monkeylizard, are you a signed-in member of youtube? What browser? I just wonder because another member here is a member of youtube and his video links tend to be odd or mangled as well. Was wondering maybe if you belong to youtube and are signed-in, it gives you links that don't work well for folks not signed in? I don't belong to youtube, so will attempt to re-post those three grey videos for you, or then again maybe it won't work for me either--

Thanks, but that wasn't it. I was trying to avoid multiple posts, and I can only put 2 media links in a post, so it would have been 2 posts to get 3 media links. Instead I was able to get one post to have 3 URL links, but FUBARd it up so bad that I ended up with 3 posts instead of the original 2....doh!

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Lester. The Tea Party folks are plain old American conservative/libertarian types who see the country

slipping away from them. The GOP is struggling to maintain power and are doing what they can to minimalize

the Tea Party by doing what you say, and, at the same time, keep those votes. I hope the Tea Party wins that

fight because it's a worthwhile goal. The GOP are where the RINO's and progressives hang out. The GOP

doesn't represent Republicans very well. If you lost interest in the Tea Party, just say it, please. The media

and the GOP can go on and on minimalizing and they eventually make people move on to other things,

don't they? The "social" end of it can come and go, as it always does, but the grass roots folks of the Tea

Party just want the same things as you and I.

I haven't seen the Tea Party people as having changed that much. There are four or five senate races that

they have placed the Tea Party candidate in primary against some well entrenched incumbents and are winning

that battle.

When you get something that is moving in the right direction and give up on it because of time, when it takes

time to move any mountain, you just haven't given it enough time, or are in a hurry to see something that ain't

gonna happen without the effort. We are all pundits, aren't we? It's hard to get any group to agree on much

of anything, nowadays, at a time when we could use some focus.

I think the Tea Party is here to stay. Screw the damned Democrats!

[TMF]

You would find me at a TEA Party rally if the only thing they were pushing was fiscal conservatism. Unfortunately, Lester is right. Leadership at local levels have attached baggage which has national level implications. As much as folks in the TEA Party want to consider themselves very loosely affiliated, that is not the percepetion. I don't think they're whack jobs the way the media protrays them. When the movement first started I was on board all the way. Then I hear a bunch of crap that has nothing to do with the objectives of cutting spending. I won't attach my name to something I don't believe in even if some of their goals suit my wishes. That's how we ended up with the two parties we have.

[Guest ThePunisher]

I think the Tea Party is here to stay. Screw the damned Democrats!

Yeah; Absolutely my sentiments.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Lester, I think you took a little too much out of Rand's book that time. The idea she was extolling was the

superiority of man's mind to create, not that there was only one super scientist. She was praising man's mind.

I doubt you and I will ever find any balance in a government vs. industry argument, but we have one mighty

close. We just have to keep government in check a little better. We haven't been doing that for a long time.

Capitalism allows for winners and losers, depending on how hard you work at it. When you over-regulate

capitalism, it becomes something else, and not capitalism.

Thanks 6.8

I like Rand. She wrote interesting ideas in entertaining fashion. A novel need not be hyper-realistic in order to entertain or deliver a message. The Fountainhead was also good. There was an only-slightly-corny old black'n'white movie of The Fountainhead. The Fountainhead world was similar to Shrugged, populated by a few people of intelligence and integrity. Maybe there are additional smart people but Rand only shows us a few. Everybody else is kinda dumb-- The brightest are mere socialist hacks lacking any trace of originality.

Wasn't criticizing old classic era wish-fulfillment megalomanic SF stories. They're great regardless that in the real world a fella doesn't singlehandedly build a starship no matter how smart he is. A nerdy shy chem engineer wrote the finest-ever Space Opera in the 1920's thru the 1950's. He was good friends with Heinlein and apparently Heinlein most-admired E.E. Smith among SF writers of the era. By the mid 1940's most SF authors and "sophisticated" fans considered Smith hopelessly unfashionable with awkward prose, ponderous plots and cardboard characters. But Smith's books still sell to this very day.

Smith's first series, the Skylark series of novels, opens with the handsome super-genius building a huge starship-- But it isn't quite so unbelievable because he does have the help of his wife, his handsome super-genius best friend and his best friend's wife. The wives are brilliant, drop-dead gorgeous, excellent cooks and eternally in a good mood. If you insist on painstaking realism then don't read E. E. Smith!

However, if you want to go straight to the hard stuff-- The most potent 200 proof escapist sci fi ever concocted-- Read the Lensman series. There is nothing like it. Cheezy in the best way. Cheezy enough that by comparison, even premium cheeze like Edgar Rice Burroughs reads like rancid velveeta. A massive heroic plot spanning entire universes. Epic space battles involving millions of starships vaporizing entire galaxies. Its great! But be forewarned-- Reading of the Lensman series will slay more brain cells than washing down an ounce of bath salts with a gallon of moonshine and then sniffing toluene for a week! [joking]

[tnhawk]

What third parties?

We have Libertarians which are just far right Conservatives.

We have the TP, which I had high hopes for in the beginning, but have essentially turned into a Libertarian'esq party of another name.

And we have independents. Independents don't stand a snowball's chance because they typically are not far enough to the right for the Conservatives and not far enough to the left for Liberals.

Meh... I think I'll just vote for who's face I see on teevee the most like the rest of the country

If a politician hasn't given me a very strong reason to re-elect him, then it's time to relace him. Public office wasn't meant to be a career, by the founders of our country.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

I remember the Fountainhead. The young Patricia Neal was a stunner, wasn't she? Gary Cooper

was a "made for this movie" actor in it, also.

I don't know if the other folks were meant to be portrayed as smart or dumb, but there is certainly a distinction

between the main actors and everyone else in her writings. It is what it is. That's just focusing on the subject

for a story, as far as I know. The characters are a tool to get you through the story, hopefully. A lot of folks get

hung up on the characters and forget the story, nowadays, creating a whole new genre of crap movies from

books that had real good stories that weren't delivered. Hollywood, what can I say?

I know you weren't.

E.E. Smith is someone else I haven't read. Guess I will look for those, now. Thanks.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Man is absolutely meant to be a heroic being. Hell, it takes 12-18 years of schooling to get it out of him.

That's such an understatement. And if they had their way(not that they aren't working on it), babies would be

borne complete with a pack of Lucky's, six pack of beer, EBT cards etched on their forehead, big screen TV

and a ball and chain attached to their ankle.

[viscero]

Both current parties need to be removed and the entire political game needs to be restarted as a true 3 party system along the lines of conviction; liberal, moderate/independent, and conservative. Accompanying that needs to be a drastic re-organziaton of congress in how bills/laws are created and voted upon as well as how the whole thing is funded. We need real term limits for congressmen/women, no free rides for serving in congress, etc.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Well, Hell! why not the 4 party system? You'd best include the retard party, whoever they are.

We have a system that we can bitch about until Hell freezes over, and until everyone gets involved,

it will continue to produce what we have.

[monkeylizard]

Both current parties need to be removed and the entire political game needs to be restarted as a true 3 party system along the lines of conviction; liberal, moderate/independent, and conservative. Accompanying that needs to be a drastic re-organziaton of congress in how bills/laws are created and voted upon as well as how the whole thing is funded. We need real term limits for congressmen/women, no free rides for serving in congress, etc.

A 3-party system can't work as long as we have winner-take-all (first past the post) elections. There will be the occasional 3rd party candidate in smaller races, but nothing in the big races. If it ever happens, it won't be consistent. It will be an anomaly.

The question is, how do we change from a first-past-the-post to another system, like alternative-vote, or mixed-member-proportional, or something else?

In the CGP Grey videos I linked to earlier, his examples say that the queen lioness changes the system. But how do we change that, since we don't have a benevolent queen lioness?

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Those videos posted by MonkeyLizard (I reposted them on message #45 of this thread)-- Excellently explain how the nuts'n'bolts of the election system affect viability of third parties (and satisfaction of voters with election options and results). Explaining how it is quite feasible in the current system to perpetually elect politicians which the vast majority of the electorate despise. It is not at first intuitively obvious that a simple system where the guy with the most votes wins-- Such system can easily elect the candidate which only a small minority of voters prefer-- Elect the candidate which the majority of voters despise more than any others that were on the ballot.

edit-- posted same time as monkeylizard.

Another question of interest, given that even if everybody wanted to change the vote system to something better, it would probably take decades to get it done. If possible at all. The two major parties wouldn't like it one little bit, and "traditionalists" from both D's and R's would spew endlessly about how unamerican it would be to mess up an election system which has been so successful for 200+ years (successful at giving two and only two parties a perpetual lock on power).

Some nations especially in Europe, manage to elect significant percentages of three or more parties, not devolving into a two-party lock. Do they use something other than first past the post, or are there other features of those govs which encourage multiple parties? Such as BOTH a president and a prime minister, no-confidence votes, coalition governments which can be "dissolved" triggering an automatic new election if part of the coalition picks up its marbles and goes home? Just curious if there is something about the structure rather than voting method, which encourages multiple parties, some places?

Anyway, even if we can improve the voting method 50 years from now after "traditionalists" finally quit bitching about it (if they would ever quit complaining)-- Is there anything we can do now to "work around" a system which virtually guarantees that the typical voter is never happy with what he gets?

Edited July 16, 2012 by Lester Weevils

[Guest 6.8 AR]

No

[kieefer]

Well, Hell! why not the 4 party system? You'd best include the retard party, whoever they are.

We have a system that we can bitch about until Hell freezes over, and until everyone gets involved,

it will continue to produce what we have.

Aren't all the retards in the democratic party?

[RobertNashville]

The problem is not now nor has it ever been nor will it ever be the "two party system" or "winner take all primaries" (and not all states are)...the problem is getting good men and women with the correct (i.e. a servant-leader) attitude to run at all levels.

If just 1% of the people who complain about the parties or the candidate choices actually involved themselves in the system and did something things might change.

Complaining about all the shortcomings, real or imagines, will never change anything.

Edited July 17, 2012 by RobertNashville

[Guest Lester Weevils]

Aren't all the retards in the democratic party?

For some cycles the greens, libertarians, and constitution party were drawing about the same (tiny) numbers. Nibbling from various edges of the major parties. I think in Y2K it kinda balanced out because the small parties hurt both major parties about equally. The democrats were cursing the greens, and republicans were cursing libertarians and constitution party.

Some folks opine that third parties don't usually hurt major parties much, because the typical guy who will leave the house and go vote for a third party candidate, probably wouldn't have voted at all otherwise, According to how big a percent of third party voters who wouldn't have bothered to vote if the third party wasn't on the ballot-- If that really is most of the non-conventional voters then the third parties raise the turnout rather than stealing from major parties. Turnout is typically really small, so there are plenty of voters "out there" without having to steal any from R's and D's, if an alternative party could figure out how to shoo those folks to the polls?