GOP Failure Watch Part III

So does Soros, Buffet, and any number of big bank execs.

You're not going to get disagreement that the party system is garbage right now, but performing unconstitutional gymnastics on the funding side isn't going to get us anywhere.

 

We must amend the Constitution to stop masked entities from purchasing access and legislation. The main problem is that those able to do so are the biggest beneficiaries of the affront.

 

Actually, you can find the reason why we are a two-party system right in the Constitution.

http://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Duverger_s_law.html

 

Unfortunately it is a consequence of self-interest on the part of political professionals. The Federalist papers decried the potential rise of factions.

 

All that shows is that even the founders had a shaky grasp of irony.

 

Show your work.

 

I did...that's the link concerning Duverger's Law...

You can try to be clever and smarmy all you want, but you'll never fool anyone into thinking you're literate. Not if you can't be bothered to read the posts you respond to.

 

Hahahaha.

Let's try again. I'll enumerate an example. California has 53 representatives at the moment. Let's say one day the state decides that they are going to allocate seats based on a party list. Thus, depending on the system used, it's possible that a party that gets all of 2% of the vote would get a seat, and thus a platform to potentially build on.

a) What in that precious quote of yours prevents that from happening?

b) How does your precious link apply in that case?

 

Ahh, this argument. Yes, in the early years, Connecticut and Pennsylvania experimented (others may have as well) with statewide representatives, much like a party list. And, I'll concede, the Constitution does not explicitly forbid states from adopting party list voting structures. However, even if that's true, there are two other Constitutional provisions that will ensure two parties exist nationally:

1) Each state is required at least one seat, and all the seats have to have roughly an equal share of the population. That means that a state like California might get 4-5 parties, but Delaware, Vermont, South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, and Alaska are guaranteed to only have two parties, and Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, and Rhode Island would almost certainly have two parties as well as they gain and lose seats over time. That's assuming Duverger's Law is true. We can extrapolate that Senate seats work the same way as states with two seats, only their elections are staggered so we would see a very small number of third party Senators and Representatives, roughly corresponding to the two we have today. If a large number of states can only have two competitive parties, they will be able to wield enough power to weaken and force out moderately strong parties in larger states, ensuring two-party dominance in the long run.

2) The President will still get elected. There can still only be one President, even if all the states adopt party lists. In countries like Brazil, where parties are weak, the president's party is still very dominant because parties compete to win the top spot. Parties unable to compete get lost in the fog.

 

Spot on. Although I rather like him, certainly better than either of those guys.

 

You'd seem like somewhat less of an engorged knob if you could refrain from insulting people that you disagree with every once in a while.

 

Two things:

1) I can't "disagree" with MasterShake here, because he hasn't got an opinion. He has a purely hypothetical conjecture. We can debate whether or not going from SMDP to PR would create more parties in big states - and I welcome that debate - but we can't debate what changing the presidency to PR would like like, or what going to PR in small states would look like. Those are constitutional restrictions that answer the original post of this increasingly asinine back-and-forth.

2) If MasterShake had been bothered to write his second post, ignoring the middle man altogether, this might have been constructive. I'm sure a more diplomatic person could have overlooked Shake's umpteenth snarky, merit-free post and asked politely what he meant, but this is the guy that thinks every single member of our political elite, and the political elites of most other countries on the planet, are war criminals who deserve to be put to death or something insane like that. What I'm saying here is that perhaps calling him illiterate is a bit less insulting than demanding the heads of Congress.

 

No, you can't disagree because you posted that A automatically means Z, and skipped the letters in between. Surely, a political scientist such as you knows that the thing that would cause your conclusion to be necessarily true wasn't in the excerpt you posted. You read that, didn't you?

Any professor would fail you for that logic. I gave you a chance to realize the error of your ways, and you went the insult route.

But, whatever. That makes someone look bad, and it ain't me.

 

So what's your opinion on the Presidency enforcing two competitive parties, or single-district states enforcing competitive parties? I may very well be insulting in my posts, but it's not the only content of my post. We can both agree, however, that your posts are largely devoid of any serious content or analysis. But prove me wrong; let's debate it. Why don't those two Constitutional requirements restrict the electorate to two viable choices?

 

Well, the same logic that applies to my House example could apply to Presidential electoral votes also. Each state can devise their own system for awarding them. But, even with such a system, would it tend toward two larger (if not completely suffocating) parties? Maybe. There would at least be some competition.

As for the single district House scenarios, I guess so, but there aren't a ton of those. I don't think knowing that Alaska would only send a Democrat or Republican to the House would mean someone in California or Texas wouldn't vote for another party with a realistic chance to win a seat.

 

The Presidency stuff is covered extensively in the Latin American politics literature, since there is actual variance in the constitutions of those countries over time. As for the House seats, if California has three viable parties, the minor viable party would eventually lose out because it could never win the speakership (and with it the committee chairs) - it could never rely on the votes from the small states.

It is possible that the minor viable party in California could be the major viable party in other states, however. The Populist Party in the 1890s and the Know-Nothings are great examples of temporary state majority despite being a national minority. If different institutions were in place, not necessarily constititutional ones...who knows.

 

In any event, it would provide more competition for the GOP (this being their thread), hopefully making them less of a failure. Doesn't seem like it would make it any worse.

Not that it has a chance in hell of happening.

 

I think you'll be pleasantly surprised by the complete and total lack of respect my generation has for the two major parties. Eventually this dam is going to break, and my hope is the Libertarians and the Greens have the resources to be viable when the floodwaters sweep away all this dirty money.

 

Since the two major parties have systemically marginalized those two parties, I wouldn't bet on it. The only hope I have is for some filthy rich dude with nothing to lose to decide that enough is enough.

 

Guess who got fired:

https://aattp.org/slut-shaming-101-kissing-congressmans-staffer-fired-congressman-keeps-his-job/

And whose advise is helping this douchebag:

https://aattp.org/busted-kissing-go...from-duck-dynasty-fauxbilly-willie-robertson/

 

What's with the slut-shaming meme? She got fired because he's the boss and he's trying to save his ass. If the genders were reversed, then the female boss would fire the male employee.

 

At some level, some people think that the staffer was a temptress. If the roles were reversed, the congresswoman would be characterized as weak-minded and meddling with a married man by the same people.

 

Not sure who these "some people" are. When Jesse Jackson got caught dipping his stick a quarter century ago, the common reaction was not "she is a slut." It was "he is a clown." That temptress boat sailed about 50 years ago, I should think.

 

Well, that's a black man.

The ship is leaving harbor, but hasn't sailed. For some parts of the country, it seems shipwrecked on the docks.

 

If the genders were reversed, the congresscritter would already have resigned. #maleprivilege