I got a solid 10 hours of sleep last night — I’m hoping that has cleared the last wisps of fog from this chaotic week out of my brain. I have decided I’m also not going to worry about this election any more: it’s out of my hands because I know who I’ll be voting for, the monstrous orange nincompoop has been wrecking the support of minorities and women, and they’re the ones who are going to decide this year, and most importantly, I have learned that Beyoncé is campaigning for Clinton. Game over, man.
I will worry about the aftermath later, but I think our homegrown candy-floss Hitler has effectively put a bullet in the brain of the Republican party, and there may be long-drawn-out and furious thrashings to come (it never used that brain much, so it’s not an insta-kill), but we’ll deal with those as they arise. Not even going to try and guess what the world will be like on Wednesday.
For now, I’m going drink some coffee and retire to my happy place. Even though that happy place is full of papers I need to grade.
Other than what the news cycle will be “covering”, I’m thinking not much different than any other day. Frankly, I don’t see either one of them getting much done, at least at first.
Yeah, the endless “cliff hanger” that isn’t really a cliffhanger… Sooner or later my adrenal glands just hang there like empty flaccid sacs.
Right now my wife and I are discussing whether to take her mother to the polls on Tuesday. She’s 78, has Alzheimer’s and resides in a nearby assisted living facility. In her day she was a fierce civil rights fighter and die-hard liberal. She would’ve been the first in line to vote for a female presidential candidate. Alas, she’s a shadow of her former self. I doubt that she’s even aware that HRC is a candidate. And then, I have to ask myself whether it’s even ethical for a person who is nearly non compos mentis to vote at all. I suppose I could print out a sample ballot and take her to the polls and hope she had wits enough to fill in the right circles. If she suddenly had a lucid spell, which sometimes happens, and she called and asked to be taken to the polls I’d definitely do it, but barring that I guess I’ll just let it go. There are very few upsides to growing old.
The problem is, with the GOP, any head wound is merely a flesh wound.
Although, I do wonder what the upcoming week’s entertainment from the FBI will be, now that they’ve fully moved into politics. Something that I consider a symptom of an excessive budget.
He has ignited the long-term civil war that has been simmering within the party since the GOP decided to embrace the Southern Strategy of thinly veiled racism and theocracy. The social conservatives versus the economic conservatives versus the nationalists and racists (with a great deal of overlap among all three groups). Whether this tears the GOP apart or they just finally embrace the xenophobia is up in the air.
Should be entertaining. In the same way that watching a truck carrying toxic waste colide with a truck carrying untreated sewage would be entertaining. No matter what, though, the cleanup will be long and expensive.
I’ve predicted the demise of the Republican party several times. So far, I’ve been wrong. It’s like the Zombie Party.
It is interesting to reflect on the fact that for the third election in a row, the far right wing conservative base of the Republican Party has failed to nominate a far right wing conservative candidate. Trump has given voice to many of their dissatisfactions, but in ideological terms, he’s no Ted Cruz.
So, whatever the state of the Republican Party after Tuesday’s election, if the Republican base finds a staunch conservative candidate who has the populist appeal of Trump but without the many personality flaws, there is every chance of them putting him (and you know it’s going to be a him) in the White House.
Either way, Hillary Clinton will need to have a good four years behind her if she wants to win re-election, especially given the stakes are probably even higher than they were in 2010. If the Republicans do well in 2020, they will be able to further consolidate their grip on power through redistricting.
No wonder President Obama has made the issue of gerrymandering a personal post-presidency priority.
I too will be glad that this election will be over we are trying to make major a change but the resistance is phenomenal but predictable. I sure don’t expect things to move very far from the status quo one way or the other but I could be surprised
it’s only one election regardless of the hype
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8htuXIav1E
uncle frogy
Candyfloss Hitler? Nah, at best he’s a Candyfloss Mussolini. Probably more of a Berlusconi to be honest.
I’ve had enough of this abyssmal election*. Instead, this evening I’m going to take a couple of steps up the ethical ladder and go watch the latest episode of Z-Nation.
*Fortunately I don’t have a vote and will only be expected to deal with the global aftermath.
At least I don’t have to worry about any thugs at the polling place on Tuesday. (not that would have to anyway being correct demographic in the thugs criterion.) Don;t even have to make time or even find polling place as my votes [sic] is already in place. Early voting for the win (FTW). I can spend the whole day glaring at the incoming results with no need to move or do anything. I only dread talking to my distant family members who are Drumphists after Drumph is dumped. Yes I assert my optimism will come about. *crossed fingers superstition*.
“Worry” is futile.
I’ve predicted the demise of the Republican party several times. So far, I’ve been wrong. It’s like the Zombie Party.
As a non-Usian, it has looked to me like the Democrats and the Republicans are “official” parties. So how do you kill Republican party off? It looks institutionalized
What I mean, and I really have almost no grasp on how the system works, there seem to be registered Democrats and Republicans—registered with whom?—and, if I understand correctly, some states actually pay for party primaries (as long as they are Democrat or Republican).
I come from a British parliamentary system and the US system seems totally incomprehensible.
What am I missing here? Trump is only 3 percentage points behind and it’s going to come down to Florida – yeah, remember that flaccid tackle of a state? We certainly haven’t been here before.
Where do I find this courage not to worry?
You know Trump’s going to Minnesota, right?
Well, you do basically get it, as incomprehensible as it is. Neither party is going anywhere any time soon, and one probably isn’t going without the other. I guess it’s not so different from what your system would be like, if it had a bout of constipation which lasted almost two centuries, with all the sweating and spasms and groaning and such that you might expect. Not to mention the civil war … uh, yeah, it’s a terrible analogy.
They’re registered with the party in question, which doesn’t carry much legal weight in some cases. However, some states have “closed primaries” and other equally-unnecessary gradations of openness (see this wiki article) which determine how you’re able to vote given your registration status.
I don’t know how public funding for primaries might work in various places. Some costs are associated with regulating them, since the state/federal governments are so involved in the process (a “party” in this sense is a long way from any old collection of people assembling to pick a candidate, as it happens with many “third parties” you never hear about). Any other public expenses beyond that are something I’m much less clear about. Anyway, there are certainly a whole lot of ways they’re entrenched in our system. The whole two-party system won’t change without a bunch of legislation at state and federal levels, and maybe a Constitutional amendment or two (which are not easy to come by).
@14 SC
Sorry, was that for me? I’m not referring to whatever state they’re currently stumping in. It’s pretty clear to me that Florida is going to be the swing state to watch in this election.
You don’t. The Republican Party is too powerful as an institution to be killed off. They control the entire conservative political establishment (worth billions) in what is still very much a conservative friendly nation.
I guess you could use demise in the sense that the Republicans could become the minority party for a few decades (it’s happened before) but I really don’t see that happening either. There is simply too much at stake in terms of power, money, and influence for the Republicans to shoot themselves that badly in the foot.
The electoral system simply doesn’t allow for mass defections to a new party. Dividing the conservative vote into two simply hands power to the Democrats, and as much as Trump supporters claim they would love to see the Republican establishment destroyed, they’re not going to do that if it risks a permanent left-leaning majority in this country.
So the only realistic scenario I see is the continued internal strife that started with the Tea Party in 2010, and unless they can get that under control before 2020, the Republican primary process will be as chaotic as this time around.
But it is always worth remembering, if somehow they manage to nominate a charismatic populist candidate in 2020, he could carry the entire Republican party back in with him, and then we (the nation) are back to square one.
The latest polls have Trump winning Ohio and Florida, with Clinton’s lead narrowing to statistical negligibility in Colorado. More worryingly, Trump’s numbers have been regressing to the mean for weeks now, making this election, pessimistically, a toss up.
I agree that there’s nothing anyone can do about it any more, that door closed before the primaries even began, but nonetheless I’m worried half out of my mind and I don’t even live in the US.
I suppose I just have to console myself by remembering that no matter who is president for the next four years we’re all going to be worse off.
No, for PZ. He’s in Minnesota.
@ 15 consciousness razor
Well, you do basically get it, as incomprehensible as it is
Well I may understand the existing facts albeit poorly,, but I don’t have a clue about how the system works, is supposed to work, or what ever.
Thanks for the link but it is just as confusing as any other “explanation” of the primary system. It seems to assume a knowledge about why one would hold primaries that just escapes me.
RE Registered voters
They’re registered with the party in question,
And this is public knowledge? Why?
Apparently one does not pay a membership fee to be a registered XX?
@jkrideau
Sorry to not quote everything I’m answering, but it would be too confusing for me, and possibly you.
The USA has voter registration done with the state that one lives in. It is public knowledge, basically because the people with money want to know who they should be sending funding requests to and who to send attack ads to, etc. It’s because those in the political business want to know who is registered and where they live. You can go to https://floridaresidentdb.com and search for names to find everyone’s voter registration, address, etc. I assume there are similar websites for other states.
Knowing this, and the fact that other countries do not publish voter registration info, it makes little sense to me that this data id available. Oh, and the state keeps track of who has voted and who has not, even though voting is supposed to be secret and all that. So, since I didn’t return my mail-in ballot more than 30 days in advance, I was getting calls and text messages telling me how important it is for me to vote, and that I should vote for their candidate. I don’t know how that is legal with the do not call list in the USA, but I’m not pushing it at the moment.
As for the primary system, it is a leftover from how the Constitution stated elections would run. It’s mainly because of the horrible logistics of counting all votes across a sparsely populated country in pre-electronic times. Most of our voting laws have roots, if not full laws, in pre-1900 conditions. This is even why we vote on Tuesdays; it’s because people couldn’t be expected to vote on the Sabbath (Sunday) and they needed Monday to travel to the polling place, so actual voting was done on Tuesday. The primaries are similar. When counting hand-written ballots takes time, and communicating the information to Washington DC took even longer, it made sense to have multiple rounds of voting.
That is even why we vote in November and the President doesn’t take office until January 20th. It could take up to two months to count and recount the votes when the total was close. There were even a few times over 100 years ago (IIRC) that the President wasn’t even decided until the week before the inauguration. That makes it even more asinine that in 2000 they couldn’t wait until the third week of December to finish recounting votes in Florida.
So, in all, the whole system is completely incomprehensible to anyone, and the political elites want it that way because it makes it easier to fudge numbers and get the results they want. This is true of both major parties in various districts around the country.
Oh, also, for your last question, no, nobody pays to be registered as a party affiliation (at least, if they are, they’re getting ripped off). But you have to be registered to vote, even if you register with the party affiliation of No Party Affiliation (yes it’s technically a party affiliation).
In a general election for president (the “real” one deciding who will win the office), there are certain candidates listed on the ballot. The reasoning is that there should not be many, for that would be bad. The two major parties (with the help of those they’ve put into state legislatures over the years) have set up a peculiar system for themselves, which determines how they select their nominees and how those make their way to the actual ballot. Libertarians and Greens do something similar now, but any other third-party candidates may follow a totally different process.
In order to know that the Democratic party has come to some sort of “legitimate” decision about who it wants to be president, state governments hold primary elections for them, sometimes based on your registration with that party and sometimes not. (But party-run “caucuses” also play a role in quite a few states…. this is becoming too complicated to explain.) That’s basically why it is done: so the government knows which name with a (D) and which name with an (R) it should print on the ballots. It’s certain to have those, at least for the foreseeable future, while it may not have any others from some other party.
The president is a national office, and there is an extremely convoluted way (determined by each party each election) of “calculating” the individual primary results from the states and coming to a single conclusion (at the “convention” held by the party) about which candidate has been “selected by voters” (but not directly by voters) to appear on the ballot on behalf of that party. Somewhere in that mess, the vice presidential candidate will eventually be chosen by the candidate/party and comes as a package deal with the president, as far as electors are concerned.
The states have the right to vote for the Pres/VP combo ticket, through their 538 electors (mostly winner-takes-all for each state’s portion of electors). But if that doesn’t work, the House of Representatives (if they feel like doing anything) convenes to slaughter a goat and read its entrails.
Yes. Because everyone must send you emails, asking for money and offering you penis-enhancement pills.
No, I don’t think any would do that. A fee would have to be small for anyone to be willing to pay it for the “privilege” of “voting” in this absurdity, and they would rather see you be generous with your donations.
consciousness razor said it much better than I, but unfortunately it probably still makes no sense. It’s basically like the US is an assortment of countries that can’t really decide how to work together. Sort of like the EU, but it makes less sense (at least that’s how it feels to me at the moment).
I’ve been listening to >a href=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK631u3d_n8″Mas Que Nada”
It calms me and I smile and feel like dancing. Unfortunately, my mind wants to wander and I start to think of the time when this music was produced, but that’s just me. Your experience might differ.
What is this new-fangled internet thingy anyway?
Mas Que Nada
Is there an easier way for an addled old fool, like myself, to do these things?
I have a need to share.
a href'”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEY2EhOKSqI<Bobby Mcferrin
Crap.
<a href ="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEY2EhOKSqI"<I'm so sorry
Also, Mcferrin…I hope.
There are just some days…
Trump talking about refugees in Minnesota.