American Politics Discussion Thread

[Mjmd]

Making a stance on allowing gay marriage and abortions is not the requirement for being a moderate, it's the requirement for not being a raving foam-at-the mouth neocon lunatic. We'll have a majority of those in the supreme court in a few months.

Do you see how low my expectations for being called "moderate" are? Its really not hard.

Would love to have an independent judiciary as a core of a democracy, but dream for a different nation.

[Amicalola]

Making a stance on allowing gay marriage and abortions is not the requirement for being a moderate, it's the requirement for not being a raving foam-at-the mouth neocon lunatic. We'll have a majority of those in the supreme court in a few months.

First of all, Yikes. That's uh... disconcerting, when you put it like that.

How badly would what looks to be a conservative supreme court affect Biden (or any other 'progressive') candidate that gets elected while the court is that way? Is it a minor inconvenience, or a Massive Deal, or something in between?

[Mjmd]

Depends how blatantly political they decide to be and what exactly Biden does if he wins. Just undoing some of Trumps more destructive executive orders could run into issues in court though.

Sidenote: executive orders have really gotten out of hand for both parties.

[GeneralKilCavalry]

Making a stance on allowing gay marriage and abortions is not the requirement for being a moderate, it's the requirement for not being a raving foam-at-the mouth neocon lunatic. We'll have a majority of those in the supreme court in a few months.

First of all, Yikes. That's uh... disconcerting, when you put it like that.

How badly would what looks to be a conservative supreme court affect Biden (or any other 'progressive') candidate that gets elected while the court is that way? Is it a minor inconvenience, or a Massive Deal, or something in between?

Biden's best hope is to paraphrase Andrew Jackson:


Roberts has made his decision; now let him enforce it!

[Amicalola]

So it's a Really Big Problem?

We had a couple of apparent American politics experts on our national news programme a couple nights ago (just before Romney's decision), and one thing they were suggesting is that if the Republicans go through with this, it's essentially an electoral death sentence because it'll ultra-motivate a bunch of young democrats into actually voting when they wouldn't have otherwise.

If that's true, are Republicans basically just assuming Trump is going to lose, and think controlling the supreme court with a majority is more important anyways? Is it more important anyway?

As a sidenote, I'd love to hear the opinion of you guys who live there on non-compulsory voting. Do you think it's better or worse than compulsory?

[Bobchillingworth]

It's a Very Big Problem for sure, and for more alarming and immediate reasons than you're likely considering; for one, Trump has made it clear that he will contest any Biden victory, and intends to install a justice who will decide the election in his favor.



There's an excellent piece in the Atlantic which lays out how badly things could go in the U.S. in the next few months.

[Bobchillingworth]

As a sidenote, I'd love to hear the opinion of you guys who live there on non-compulsory voting. Do you think it's better or worse than compulsory?

Compulsory voting would likely be a violation of the First Amendment, as it's arguable that refusing to vote counts as political speech.


I'm all in favor of reducing barriers to voting, having Election Day be a Federal holiday, allowing felons to vote, and encouraging as many eligible people to vote as possible, but forcing everyone to vote doesn't sit right with me.

[Miguelito]

What I have a really hard time to get my head around is the voter registration system in Anglo countries in general (?) and the US in particular. I can only explain it to myself as your democracies being older, with a tendency to eccentric traditions.
As a citizen I'm eligible to vote, why should I have to register for that seperately? Should be sufficient if I show up on election day. I have a vague idea that the US doesn't really have a civil registry? But you do count everybody in this huge periodical census, don't you, and then obviously it is a laughable idea that in this day and age the US government of any would not know all of its citizens by name and adress...

For contrast, in Germany every citizen who on election day is eligible gets a notification letter to their registered adress a few weeks in advance, complete with an application form for mail in ballots. With this you go to the poll and identify with your state issued ID which everybody has because required, and free of charge for needy persons. I have not yet found a serious flaw in that system, but would of course be interested if someone pointed one out (I don't get why Democrats in the US don't push for a government issued free of charge ID for every citizen. Fighting against voter identification has a scummy look, as much as I may sympathise with the specific reasons, and reject the conspiray theories).

Also, I can't find fault in the justice confirmation. Sure the acting persons are terrible, the concept of lifelong judges is absurd in my book, the politization deplorable, confirmation by simple majority is a dubious rule that incentivizes the former, and the composition of the US Senate runs under eccentric traditions, see above, but the fact is that there is a democratically (or say, constitutionally) elected majority among the relevant actors when in 2016 there wasn't. They act different because the boundary conditions are different. I don't like the rules but I don't see foul play. I can understand why many people would really want to avoid this confirmation from happening, of course.
I mean she could have resigned at 80(!) and have avoided this mess.

fwiw voting was compulsory in the (Socialist) German Democratic Republic, so absolute nonstarter here. We (the west) adopted a handy traffic sign from them, but that's it.

[superdeath]

I agree ^ I dont get why they are lifelong especially with newer ideas being harder for those old fucks to understand. The entire US election/governement system is flawed but good luck getting so many of my red/white/blue blooded Americans to admit that. Deep down most of them are happy with the status quo, so long as its "their" color on the seat. Its disgusting and i wish many things were different.

[Amicalola]

What I have a really hard time to get my head around is the voter registration system in Anglo countries in general (?) and the US in particular. I can only explain it to myself as your democracies being older, with a tendency to eccentric traditions.
As a citizen I'm eligible to vote, why should I have to register for that seperately? Should be sufficient if I show up on election day. I have a vague idea that the US doesn't really have a civil registry? But you do count everybody in this huge periodical census, don't you, and then obviously it is a laughable idea that in this day and age the US government of any would not know all of its citizens by name and adress...

I agree that the US 'register to vote' system is absurd, but I think it's specific to the US rather than Anglo countries. We don't have it here in Aus (we have compulsory voting, which I've always thought seems far better, though I don't have personal experience with the alternative; hence the question), and I'm pretty sure they don't in NZ either. Unsure about other commonwealth countries and the UK itself. 

The way our compulsory voting works is that if you don't vote, you get slapped with a ~$150 fine (maybe a little under $100 in US money?). Lots of people choose not to anyway, and you could argue that it's only compulsory for poor people to vote, but it also only takes 15-30 minutes from start to finish and is traditionally done on a weekend, with the option of advance-mail voting if you can't make it on the day. "Compulsory" probably makes it sound harsher than it is, even if technically correct.
Edit: You can also just submit an empty ballot if you hate every party, so it's probably more accurate to say that it's compulsory "attend the polls," but you don't actually have to vote. Again, the name is misleading.