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Author Topic: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread  (Read 870529 times)

RedKing

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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1605 on: July 13, 2011, 08:04:57 am »

I see the problem. Kael should have capitalized Democratic. There are plenty of people in the Republican party that profess to love democracy (with a small D) and abhor anything to do with "big D" Democrats.


A bit of progressive joy today: All six of the fake Democrats that the Wisconsin GOP used to try and completely disrupt the recall elections lost yesterday. I'm still boggling hard at how on earth this is even legal and why there aren't people facing jail time for this attempt at epic political trollz, but at least the first phase didn't work. It did still give the GOP recall targets more time to fundraise by forcing a primary, but I'm hoping that public outrage at pulling such a dick move will really sink these f**kers in the general election.
« Last Edit: July 13, 2011, 08:50:57 am by RedKing »
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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1606 on: July 13, 2011, 09:38:26 am »

I see the problem. Kael should have capitalized Democratic. There are plenty of people in the Republican party that profess to love democracy (with a small D) and abhor anything to do with "big D" Democrats.


A bit of progressive joy today: All six of the fake Democrats that the Wisconsin GOP used to try and completely disrupt the recall elections lost yesterday. I'm still boggling hard at how on earth this is even legal and why there aren't people facing jail time for this attempt at epic political trollz, but at least the first phase didn't work. It did still give the GOP recall targets more time to fundraise by forcing a primary, but I'm hoping that public outrage at pulling such a dick move will really sink these f**kers in the general election.
How the fuck is that legal! Surely there's some corruption crap someone can pull on that.
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Bauglir

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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1607 on: July 13, 2011, 11:30:54 am »

I strongly suspect that the authors of the relevant laws, if any, never thought anybody would be such a massive crapsack or so stupid as to actually try it, and there's nothing addressing the possibility of people running for office under the party they oppose.
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RedKing

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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1608 on: July 13, 2011, 11:52:40 am »

Well, the open primary thing is legal. NC doesn't have it, but it's better than it used to be. Formerly, it was such a closed primary that independents couldn't vote at all. Now indies can choose which primary they want to vote in. I'm okay with that system, because I don't see a lot of people going to the trouble of changing their registration to Independent just to screw with the primaries. Or, lots of people do it and it makes it more difficult for the two main parties to track their supporters, which I'm ok with.

But yeah...I guess there's no law against running in a primary even if your registration is of the opposite party. The underlying assumption being that you'd have a snowball's chance in Hell of getting elected. But combine that with the open primary (and the lack of an actual primary contest on the other side) and it's a real problem. I guess what gets me the most is that they've flat-out ADMITTED to doing this as a way to f**k with the whole recall system, and yet that's not illegal apparently. WTF, Cheeseheads?
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Sheb

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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1609 on: July 13, 2011, 12:33:56 pm »

Could someone explain that primary stuff to a guy from across the Atlantic? Primaries are when the parties choose who to present for elections, right? How on earth can independent vote for that? And what is this stuff of registrating to be an independent? Can't you just give up your party membership card?
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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1610 on: July 13, 2011, 12:50:32 pm »

Could someone explain that primary stuff to a guy from across the Atlantic? Primaries are when the parties choose who to present for elections, right? How on earth can independent vote for that? And what is this stuff of registrating to be an independent? Can't you just give up your party membership card?

Right, primaries are when a party chooses who to present for elections. Many states have laws about how primaries are held, who can vote in them, etc.

A voter registration restricts what district you can vote in. You may only be registered in one location for the final vote. You are required to declare a party affiliation, even if that affiliation is none. Primaries may also use the official voter registration for similar purposes. But local and state laws vary quite a bit. Some only allow primary votes to registered party members, some only to party members or non affiliated, some to any but the opposed party, and some have no restrictions.
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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1611 on: July 13, 2011, 01:12:41 pm »

Any decent court would throw that out anyway due to reasonable doubt. They were previously in a relationship and there was a breakup, so there's both a very good explanation for that "evidence" existing (consensual sex during the relationship) and an apparent motive to make it up. Proving that two people who dated had sex is by no means significant proof of rape.
Considering the amount of women that get raped while in a 'relation', it'd be rather short-sighted and dangerous to dismiss a serious allegation because the victim was engaged with the rapist. I'd expect a good court to base it's judgment on the likelihood that the woman's confession is real, instead of writing off like a quarter of all rape cases.

When did I say to dismiss the allegations? I didn't. However, the fact is that when a case boils down to simple hearsay between two people, proving guilt is extremely difficult. This isn't a good thing, but you can't have juries convicting people of crimes they easily might not have done.
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Sheb

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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1612 on: July 13, 2011, 02:01:26 pm »




It's so weird that parties cannot choose the way to hold their primaries. And that you have to register your party affiliation...

Well, I guess than when you're locked into such a bi-party system without real aternatives, you don't want parties to be anything else than labels on politicians.
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RedKing

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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1613 on: July 13, 2011, 03:50:13 pm »




It's so weird that parties cannot choose the way to hold their primaries. And that you have to register your party affiliation...

Well, I guess than when you're locked into such a bi-party system without real aternatives, you don't want parties to be anything else than labels on politicians.

The parties can...on a state-by-state basis. Via their elected officials. Problem is, letting the legislature decide it makes the very rules by which you elect politicians a political item itself, much like redistricting. In a state where one party is dominant, they're going to push for open primaries, because that frees up a lot of their base to go vote for the least-electable candidate in the other party's primary, with a minimum potential for interference in the opposite direction. In a state where it's always a narrow fight, you tend to see closed primaries.

In states where the political establishment is strong, primaries tend to be a joke anyways as the real contest for candidacy has been fought behind closed doors within the establishment itself. It winds up being the establishment candidate vs. a handful of hopeful outsiders or jilted establishment wannabes. But, those are situations where an open primary can be a crucial difference maker. If the establishment candidate is unpopular, and a populist outsider gains some traction, the added weight of independents or contra-partisans can tip the balance and unseat the establishment candidate. States without a strong establishment are even more prone to open primary mischief, because you might have a large field of candidates which dilutes the base and shrinks the margin of victory.

But a totally closed primary disenfranchises independent voters, which are the fastest-growing voter bloc when it comes to party ID. It's a trade-off...do you want your candidates hand-picked in smoky back rooms, or do you want to run the risk of false flag candidates throwing a monkey wrench into the system?
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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1614 on: July 13, 2011, 04:11:27 pm »

If you look across the list of primary rules in states, there's actually no clear pattern - if anything, the one-party dominated states tend to be close-primary.  A lot is made of the "independent" voter, but the fact remains that even a 10% total turnout for primary elections is extraordinary, and it will always be mostly the fervent ideologues, whether closed or open.

There are no states where the "smoky back room" exists anymore.  It's just that in most states, getting into a primary and then getting people to vote for you is such a massive hurdle that getting into a higher-level office means you have to know people.  Low level offices, most parties at the state level don't give a damn anyway.

The only primary system really worth mention as particularly outre is Louisiana's (and I think California's now which partially copied it), but I'd have to look through my old notes to describe it properly.
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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1615 on: July 14, 2011, 04:11:28 am »

Wow, so weird. Here in Belgium we have crapload of parties. (11 or so, for a 10 millions people, and I'm only counting the ones that get into Parliament) and we don't really have primaries at all, since the only thing we elect are MPs (But we have a total of 6 parliaments, plus city council that works like parliament anyway). Since our electoral district elect around 15 MPs each (For the Federal parliament. The others have their own elections, but the number are roughly similars) there is no need for primaries.

This system give party cronies a lot of power (they decide who will be on the top of each party's list) but it kinda work. And I feel it gives much more representativity than the US' two-party system.

I still cannot believe people aren't free to rule their political parties as they wish. But I'm starting to suspect parties in the US aren't the same as here. If you register as a Democrat or Republican or Green or whatever, do you need to register at the party's office to? And pay a contribution or something?
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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1616 on: July 14, 2011, 04:16:30 am »

Wow, so weird. Here in Belgium we have crapload of parties.

I think there were 17 officially registered parties here in Finland as of the last election. And we have only 5 million people. However, only 8 parties made it in eduskunta (parliament). The rest are typically extremists (compared to the parliament ones) or "specialists" - nationalists, communists, senior party, Pirate party, For The Poor...
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Sheb

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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1617 on: July 14, 2011, 04:32:17 am »

Well, as I said, 11 made it into Parliament. We must have had 50 parties in all. The fact is that here most parties split into Flemish and French wings long ago. So we've got two socialists parties, two green parties, two liberals parties...
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Aqizzar

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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1618 on: July 14, 2011, 04:48:58 am »

I still cannot believe people aren't free to rule their political parties as they wish. But I'm starting to suspect parties in the US aren't the same as here. If you register as a Democrat or Republican or Green or whatever, do you need to register at the party's office to? And pay a contribution or something?

As I understand it, America's political parties are very different from how Europe tends to treat parties.  I'm not even sure how to answer your question without just saying how it works altogether.  Basically, for a candidate to be on a ballot, you have to register with the state's or locality's election commission (depending on the level of the office you're running for), and almost always pay a filing fee (anywhere from $10 to a couple hundred, depending again, and widely varying between states) and usually provide some number of signatures affirming that you have a significant enough base of popular support that keeping track of your candidacy won't be a waste of the government's time (usually a few thousand names, again ditto).  Parties have nothing to do with this, and technically you don't even "need" to file to win for some offices, if you can run a huge enough publicity campaign to get people to write in your name on the ballot (this isn't always an option).

Where parties come in is that they make it a lot easier to run for office, with cash and people and recognition, especially in "down ballot" races where most people will have no idea who's actually running, so having the party label is a good leg up.  Primary elections are managed by the state governments, but they're not... I guess "connected" to them is a good word.  This is basically just because states all one by one took over the voting process as they all passed laws demanding transparency and accountability in party structures, and is actually fairly "recent" occurrence in American politics (mid 20th century).  Running in a party primary is its own registration process with the party, and only affirms you as the party's "official" candidate, entitling you to the label on the ballot.

Party registration is a little funny, in that it is not tracked by the government, but is legally allowed to be stamped on your Voter ID card, because every state in the union rules that you can only vote in one party's primaries.  This is always free, but you can't vote if you're not a registered voter in the first place.  The specific rules on which registered voters are allowed to vote in a party's primaries differs widely, widely between states - the "open" and "closed" labels mostly refer to whether you can mark your party registration when you show up to vote, or have to register in advance with a party to participate.

The only state that's significantly different from this is Louisiana, which places all primary vote nominees on a single ballot (distinct to each district), with no party labels, and the top two winners are the ones listed on the general election.  This is largely responsible for Louisiana's long history of hideous political corruption, because it relies entirely on name recognition, i.e. campaign spending; so it was (and still is) frequently the case where the general election candidates will both be from the same party.

In short, nothing about the primary process itself has anything to do with the two-party domination of American politics.  That's much more just a particular evolution of history, wherein the parties have always sort of gravitated around a metric of the "in power" and "out of power" parties, massive separation of powers between offices notwithstanding.
« Last Edit: July 14, 2011, 04:53:01 am by Aqizzar »
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Re: Vector's Progressive Rage Thread
« Reply #1619 on: July 14, 2011, 11:01:04 am »

I was just listening to this week's http://www.thisamericanlife.org/ on NPR (because I'm a snooty liberal) and raeging about coal companies being able to pretty much buy whoever they want, whether it's small town hick villagers who are allowing environmental disaster to be wreaked on their towns for some big payoffs, or, you know, Pennsylvania's biggest research university. Unfortunately I have a sinus infection and between that and the medicine I'm too fuzzy in the head to explain it or, tbh, even remember too many of the details, but that's pretty much happened. Listen and raeg at your own convenience.
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