California Electoral News
I’ve been wondering what sort of tactics would be applied to candidates for national office in order to get them to pay attention to states assumed to be in the pocket of one party. I should have known it would originate in California, where so much of our political change has originated. I find it a bit creepy at first read, but they are attempting to tinker with something that hasn’t seen much tinkering in a very long time. I did not follow the link because the LA Times requires information in exchange for reading the full article. We’ll certainly hear more about it as time goes by, particularly if it frightens potential candidates and the political parties, which it should. If California succeeds and gets other states to follow suit, campaigns will change considerably or risk losing votes thought secure.
I still think the best thing that could happen in American politics would be creation and viability of more political parties whose candidates can win some elections. The American electorate, from all appearances, is not especially interested and prefers to keep it simple: ie, two parties that strongly resemble each other when you take a critical look. Most Americans appear to limit themselves to reacting only to emotionally charged issues and reacting only with emotion. This is easy to manipulate because it doesn’t require much by way of data, rather it requires only a few images, key words & issues to crank up the emotions of those you wish to manipulate. I keep hoping this state of affairs will change. I’d love to see the “country club” and “bible thumping” Republicans split into two parties for a start. The Democrats probably have so many divisions that they could split into 10 or more parties. That would certainly liven up political discourse and our range of choices among candidates.
June 4th, 2006
Multi-party systems still require coalitions to get through legislative deadlock, which makes them end up looking a lot like 2 party systems…
June 5th, 2006
I wonder who will team up with the paedophile party…
June 5th, 2006
Have you tried BugMeNot for Mozilla?
After all Bush (or Rove) drug out gay marriage this week (AGAIN). Which naturally makes me wonder which real event is not being reported in order to get this annoying distraction back in the mainstream. Maybe they had to drag out the dead whipping horse to prevent people from noticing Chavez coming close to skewering us in the soft bits via OPEC. Maybe it was so some bunch of indebted politicians could vote in laws favoring their buddies at the RIAA and MPAA. Maybe the administration needed to distract us from the fact that all the money spent to fight illegal immigration on the Mexican border since the 90’s has been flushed down the toilet, and they want to send some more down just to hear the whoosh when it goes….
My current cynical state makes the following truth to be self evident. We will not get any meaningful legislation in the areas of : Tort reform, Tax reform, The patent system, Illegal immigration law or prevention, Lobby Reform
Campaign finance reform, Privacy Protection,Identity theft, Consumer rights for fair-use (a nearly dead term I believe), Credit/Lending practices, and many many more.
I wonder how long it will be before abortion gets drug out of the closet again?
Or better yet, what made me get out the “Rantbox”.
June 6th, 2006
Good rant. I had very similar thoughts when I read about this yesterday. It feels as though they usually only bring out the emotionally charged issues when there is some seriously bad shit going down behind the scenes. The American public is so easily distracted by shiny things.
June 6th, 2006
Thanks for the reply, Gordon. The difference between our two party system and the regular outcome of two major players in coalitions is that nothing gets done in the latter until some compromises have been made about what will be done and how it will be addressed. Our system, for most of the 20th century, and into the current century, seems to consist primarily of hegemony on the part of Demcrats or Republicans, depending on which has control of the federal legislative bodies. Many times, coalitions will take the form of more than two major players, as has occurred often within Israel’s Knesset.
June 6th, 2006
Thanks for the reply, Evil Tyrant. My opinion is that President Bush and his fellow Republicans in Congress are making noises about gay marriage in order to stir up one of their most reliable sources of votes, the so called Christian Right. They’ve been mostly very disappointed by non-delivery of executive and legislative wishes they made in exchange for their political support. So called faith based initiatives are gaining some headway thanks to friendliness on the part of the President. Abstinence only sexual education is gaining ground as method for the same reason. Abortion remains legal. These are big issues for the “CR” and they aren’t happy. The Republicans haven’t got a particularly good record to run on this election season, and their “CR” wing is angry at what they perceive as being taken for granted. People may put Democrats back in the majority in one or both houses of Congress out of frustration and disgust with their Republican counterparts. The Democrats, from what I’ve seen & read have no unifying message or strategy so I can only wonder at how they’ll thrash and lash out should they regain majorities.