Make the US Politics Thread Great Again

One word, Dylanshiel

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I don’t see the State Senate equal representation as vote rigging , but as a necessary part of a Federated system, where the Senate is supposed to reflect State interests and the smaller States don’t get ignored in Federal largesse.
A State like Tasmania ( with 12 Senate seats) sure gets to secure concessions it might not otherwise get ( Also helps that, as a founding State, it has a minimum of 5 House seats)

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So looks like the polls were pretty bang on.

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What do you do for employment ? I will keep my eye out !

Marketing for now. Hopefully something a tad less stressful in the future! Thanks for the good thoughts!

Morrison is in dire need of someone with marketing expertise.

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Hear me out. A bus. With big letters on the side…

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Looks like people voting Greens may have given the Republicans the Arizona senate seat. Because 2.2% of the voters went Green, while the Democrat trails by 1.4% of the vote (85% counted). A Republican vote on the senate, judicial appointments plus all legislation (including environmental legislation) locked away for 6 years because some people voted principles over pragmatism.

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Greens biggest problem has always been they don’t understand the word.

Once they put Power ahead of practicality and the good of the Nation, as well as their own actual causes, they were dead to me.

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I’m moving back there next year. Wish me luck!

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John Clarke is here in spirit…

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Which City ?

I am spending three months in Houston soon.

The greens biggest problem is that the US doesn’t have ranked ballots and/or preferential voting. Its ridiculous that voting for greens or Libertarians ends up helping the party you are most opposed to.

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Yes. Which is why it’s even stupider to vote for them over there.

Or any 3rd party candidate in a “Protest Vote” for that matter.

Or even more ridiculous, … to actually run as one.

They have hurt the Dems, (again, in 99% of cases the party they’d prefer in power) to no end over the decades.

I’m looking at you Nader. Thanks for Bush. the Gulf War Zero action on Climate Change and the GFC.

Stupid Carnt.

This, basically.

Also, in most US states, the party that’s in power at a state level in a census year (once every 10 years) gets to draw the electoral boundaries. So you’ve got a LOT of states that are gerrymandered to hell and back. There’s been a series of court cases about that (North Carolina in particular, but Georgia, Texas etc I believe are in the pipeline) with promising verdicts, but for now, they’re stuck. And the ruling party also has control over the voting eligibility rules and electoral body, so you end up having very few polling booths in minority areas, voter ID requirements designed to be difficult for the poor or for people on native reservations, etc etc.

It’s really hard to wind this stuff back. Power begets more power. Which is why you get senate results like today, where the Dems won the popular vote by something like 8% but the repubs will actually gain seats.

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Alternatively the Dems should have run a candidate that was a true progressive and not a person who would alienate the far left liberal voters who are politically aware and more likely to vote.

This phenomenon isn’t exactly new and the DCC doesn’t seem to have learnt many lessons.

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It’s not exactly a city, but Pullman, Washington. Its about an hour from Spokane. Pretty much the polar opposite of Houston!

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Having had a scan through the House map…

  • Holy crap that country has been gerrymandered.
  • Libertarians cost the Dems at least 6 seats that were lost by 1% or less. I think a governorship as well.
  • It is now a divide of country and city, the Republicans lost their last suburban district with Statten Island. Every single suburban electoral district in the country was won by Democrats, every single one.

Now I’m very aware that a big reason for this is self sorting of the electorate. Democratic voters move to the cities, Republicans avoid suburbia. The Democrats won’t be able to take the Senate without rural voters, as they need the smaller states to reach a majority of Senators. For that they need to be attractive to non-urban voters, while still motivating their base enough to turn out in the cities. Tough spot they are in.

I suspect libertarian candidates are more likely to pull votes from republicans than democrats.

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Interesting. I’d always seen them as a radical left, but I honestly know next to nothing about them.