American Politics Discussion Thread

[BRickAstley]

Trump is blocking needed funds to the postal service because more Democrats vote by mail.

They backed down after the resulting outrage.  Its generally been a route for them in the courts as well, twice an all Republican Texas Supreme Court has thrown out attempts to get Harris County (aka Houston) ballots rejected.

Darrell

Nice. Two good news amongst all the chaos Well, I suppose Trump trying to already throw out votes is not good news, but Republicans going against him is.

On a related note, I want to state from my perspective in the trenches, especially for everyone outside to the USA, please remember that there is a vast number of normal people who identify as a Republican and cannot support Trump, as well as a vast number of people who identify as Democrat and cannot support Biden. I know and work with a lot of both.

That just to say, even if seeing a court side "against" "party lines" is rarer than it should be, don't assume all of us normal folk slide neatly into easily definable partisan frameworks.

[Gustaran]

On a related note, I want to state from my perspective in the trenches, especially for everyone outside to the USA, please remember that there is a vast number of normal people who identify as a Republican and cannot support Trump, as well as a vast number of people who identify as Democrat and cannot support Biden. I know and work with a lot of both.

That just to say, even if seeing a court side "against" "party lines" is rarer than it should be, don't assume all of us normal folk slide neatly into easily definable partisan frameworks.

But an important point is that Democrats who won't support Biden are usually Sanders voters who still despise Trump. In all the election coverage I haven't read about a single democratic Hillary voter, who prefers Trump over Biden after the last 4 years. So it's certainly not a balanced story of "some Republicans like Biden, some Democrats like Trump".

And the divide over Trump seems to be quite large, certainly much more pronounced than McCain vs Obama for example.

[darrelljs]

Put another way, Trump is too extreme for the more moderate Republicans and Biden is too moderate for the more extreme Democrats.

Darrell

[Jowy]

Put another way, Trump is too extreme for the more moderate Republicans and Biden is too moderate for the more extreme Democrats.

Darrell

That's how I see it too. And I'd imagine the moderate will always have the advantage in a two party system with voters nearly split at half. I would have voted for Sanders, but I don't think he'd have had a chance in the election. After getting into politics and finding out about US' two party system and UK's first past the post system, I'm happy we have what we have over here.

[darrelljs]

Example of a moderate Republican who can’t support Trump.

Darrell

[BRickAstley]

I won't be expressing my own political candidate opinions in this thread, but I'll happy express my huge distaste at our two party system and the voting setup that led to it. I'd much rather have something like this:

[Gustaran]

Put another way, Trump is too extreme for the more moderate Republicans and Biden is too moderate for the more extreme Democrats.

[Cyneheard]

I won't be expressing my own political candidate opinions in this thread, but I'll happy express my huge distaste at our two party system and the voting setup that led to it. I'd much rather have something like this:

STV is not something the US is particularly set up for - 2 Senators doesn't create a proper system of districts, and doing that in just the House doesn't really solve anything. Inertia is a powerful force in politics (and yes, I know every physicist is cringing at that statement). There's also some merit to a system that's easy to understand - and STV is not one of those. The math gets pretty gnarly when you start reassigning excess votes to second preferences (and risk awkward tactical voting).

Ranked Choice Voting, however, would be cleanly legal & consistent with our existing structures (and is equivalent to STV with single-member districts). You'd also get multiple candidates much more reasonably - instead of fighting with the Libertarian or Green supporters about why they're throwing their votes away, it's about convincing them why your candidate should be their #2 choice. I also think it pretty cleanly does NOT support tactical voting, which is an important consideration. The less a voter has to pay attention to polls to figure out how they should vote, the better.

Of course, right now the US needs to also:
- Ensure that the right to vote is protected
- Fight against gerrymandering in state legislatures/US House of Reps (this is going to be super hard, because the Dems are going to not want to disarm unilaterally, and the GOP is not showing themselves worthy of trust)
- Figure out a solution to the Electoral College

[superdeath]

[Old Harry]

Hey, what happened to the flame wars? The last 11 posts of this thread are balanced and thoughtful and I think I agree with all of them. Anyway, here is my misguided, not-from-around-here 2 cents, to try to get the flame wars restarted.

How do the US political parties cope when dealing with natural disasters?

I took some data from the NOAA website here: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/time-series

And worked out the cumulative cost of billion dollar weather and climate disasters over the last forty years, plotted against who the president was:



Wow! This looks bad for the GoP...

"But wait!" I hear you cry, "that chart is unfair - the republicans have held the presidency for far more years than the democrats, you need to work out the cost per year of presidency served to get a real picture of governmental response."

Quite right. This next chart shows the cumulative cost by party over the last 40 years.




So the dems start terribly, but recover somewhat while the republican death-spiral ends up leaving them more costly by over 15 billion dollars per year. That's either 33% or 50% worse, depending which side of the aisle you sit! Surely that can't be due to sample size or partizan trickery?

So that just leaves us with a vital question: Is the higher price paid under republican presidents due to incompetence in running a clean-up, unwillingness to recognise and respond to danger or because god hates republicans?

I hope this is helpful tomorrow for anyone who hasn't yet voted.