[Platapus]

Originally Posted by Catfish

I keep asking myself the same questions again and again.

Legitimate questions. And questions that deserve a serious answer. Here are my explanations.

- Why is there no other candidate than those two?

There are other candidates. Through more tradition than any other reason, the two major political parties nominate only one candidate for POTUS.

- How is it possible that an obviously crazy candidate even gets so far - in a "democracy"?

It is because of our democracy that these candidates were nominated. The way candidates were nominated has changed several times in our history.

In the first "real" election between Addams and Jefferson, each was nominated by their respective party members of congress.

in 1832, the first national conventions were used to nominate a candidate. This was the start of the "smoke filled backroom deals that continued to the 20th century.

From 1901-1906 various states started passing laws where the citizens of a state directly voted for delegates who, in turn attended the convention and voted for the nominee. This system mimics the electoral college method of voting for POTUS. This system caught on and by 1912 pretty much all the states had similar directly elected delegate systems.

President Wilson asked the state legislators to enact a unified national presidential primary law where the citizens would directly vote for the nominee. This did not go over well with the states. In addition to a prohibitive cost, there was actually a low voter turnout for these types of primaries. The political parties were also reluctant to allow citizens to make this decision and not the political party officials. Low voter turnout is hardly a new concept in the US. So little by little, the states either repealed or just ignored and the states went back to various forms of delegate elected state conventions. The result was that "Party Bosses" generally ran the conventions and not surprising, the people being nominated tended to be the people the political bosses wanted.

With the Depression and WWII, there was little interest in reforming the primary systems and everything stayed the same until 1944. This is one of the reasons FDR was able to be nominated four times.

From 1944-1968, voter participation increased and more interest in the nomination process resulted in the states adopting a more representative form of nomination.

The Democratic Party was the first to overhaul their nomination process but it slowly evolved over 20 years with no less than six separate committees working on this problem. Just like when this country was formed, there was disagreement about the number of representatives each state would have in the Congress, there was much disagreement about how many delegates would each state have at the Democratic National Convention.

The O'Hara Commission '69-'72 established a compromise system where a combination of the states total population and the number of popular votes for the previous four elections would be used to determine the number of delegates that each state could send to the convention. These rules were modified by a few more committees over the years.

All went well until the Hunt Commission '80-'82. There was a problem. With giving the citizens so much power over who would be a delegate and therefor the nomination process, the political parties of each state were seeing their power diminish. Remember that the political parties are a private organization and really have no official standing in the government. As a private organization, the officers feel that they should have more of a say of who gets nominated. The Hunt Commission solution? A new separate category of delegates called Super Delegates. The number of Super Delegates would be 14% of the total number of delegates. These delegates would be elected by party officials and would represent the party's desire. Super Delegates are not as bad as some make them out to be. Since the 1980's there has been no nomination that has been turned by the vote of the Super Delegates.

How about them Republicans? Well they were doing pretty much the same thing at the same time. Slowly revamping the nomination process albeit a bit slower then the Democrats did and they were not breaking any speed records. Political changes happen slowly.

The Republicans even considered their form of Super Delegates, but instead opted for their own system of unbound delegates, meaning that even though the citizens may elect a delegate based on their desire for a specific candidate, the delegates are not bound by this. It gets very complicated in that each state has its own system of designating which delegates are bound (have to follow the citizen vote) and unbound (can vote how they wish).

The bottom line is that both the Democrats and Republicans have the same types of delegates that are not bound to the citizen's wishes. The Democrats get more publicity because they are more open about it by identifying the Super Delegates, while the Republicans are more private with a complicated system of designating numbers of bound and unbound delegates. Neither side really has the right to criticize the other.

So after all that almost interesting history, the answer to your question is that both parties have nominated losers, because of the democratic way the nominees are chosen these days -- by popular vote.

Popular vote, as we all know, can be highly influenced by the media, the PACs, the political parties, and the candidates committees. But in the end, it is the people electing the bound delegates and if the Super Delegates/unbound delegates either agree or do not have enough votes to override, the popular vote carries the nomination.

Incidentally, this is why we elect the present by electoral college and not by popular vote. A popular vote does not guarantee a quality candidate.


- Why is H. Clinton so absolutely hated (apart from the republicans who automatically hate everything democratic), i mean there are other US presidents who got away with much worse stuff

Well, in my opinion, it is because she has been a politician for almost all of her life, but she is not a good politician. She is crocked like other politicians but is not very good at hiding it like more successful politicians.

She is, of course, suffering for the sins of her husband. Because of her husbands political career dating back to the state days, she has been in the spotlight so there has been more time to discover dirt about her than time to discover dirt about other politicians. Most people have known about Hillary since the mid 1980's. That's 30 years. How long has the public known about the other candidates? Familiarity breeds contempt and 30 years of spotlights tends to show all the flaws and Hillary has many flaws.


- Is this even a democracy or is it not like the good old middle-ages-feudal "election" system, where the nobles/rich elected their leader -> "Kurfuersten"-system

Well we are a republic where we democratically elect our representatives. We are not, never have been, and hopefully never well be a democracy. We like to call ourselves a democracy but that's only because it sounds nice. An actual democracy the size of our country would be a disaster.

- So there are only two parties, which now even have become one fraction?

Well, there are about 15 parties actually. Not all of them participate in all the elections. But for pretty much all practical purposes there are two political parties. It is, unfortunately a vicious circle. A lot of people won't vote for a third party because they think that a lot of people won't vote for a third party. Since that mindset makes people think that voting for a third party is "throwing away their vote" they vote for one of the two main losers, thereby reinforcing the understanding that there are only two viable political parties.


- Is there no rational reasonable person who can do better, as a new president for America?

Cynically, anyone who is truly qualified for the job probably does not want it. but not so cynically, considering the political environment for the past 40 years, would you want to be president? it used to be a pretty powerful position but now, with the advent of the Internet Tubes where anyone can share their bitches and complaints to everyone else, who would want the job. With Congress pretty much evenly divided, anyone who becomes president will be blocked by the opposing party.

It would be foolish to think that the Democrats won't take the same blocking attitude that the Republicans have done if a Republican became president.

Personally, I think that the publicity elected delegate system is flawed. A popular vote tends to elect people who are popular and not necessarily the right person. I wished I had the right answer as I could then sell it to the DNC and RNC and retire. Like any other political system, it requires a delicate balance and compromise between often conflicting ideals. As our history has shown, it is not an easy straightforward problem to solve. Either extreme is bad, but exactly where is the right balance between popular votes and party nominations?

I also believe that there should be no open primaries. Since the primaries are to communicate to a private organization (DNC/RNC), I feel it is appropriate for those private organizations to limit participation to registered members. Yes that would mean that independents like me won't be able to vote in a major party's primary but that's the disadvantage of being an independent... and the advantage.

- Why do republicans (but maybe not only) always talk of tyranny, accusing the president of not leaving when the period is over - not one president in the US has ever remained in place, after the period he was elected for.

First of all, it is not just republicans and certainly not all republicans. Don't fall into a common fallacy of taking the actions of a minority and generalizing it to the whole set of population. Neither the Democrats nor the Republican parties have ever tried to cancel an election nor accused the other party of doing the same. Members of the DNC/RNC have made such comments, but there are idiots in any population set.

If my memory serves me, I believe that it is the Republican Presidents that have been falsely accused of wanting to cancel elections more often than democratic presidents. It does not really matter. There is no way any US president would ever be able to pull this off.

The conspiracy morons often reference some sort of "emergency power" that allows the president to continue past his or her term. These emergency powers are always not defined.....because they don't exist. There is NO presidential power that would allow a president to suspend elections and continue past the term. Not in times of war. Not even in times of civil war. It does not happen in the US.

Once Congress tells a president to "git", they gotta git. The outgoing president does not have to participate in the inauguration of the new president.

Apart from that i think (personal opinion) that Obama has been the most reasonable and intelligent president of the US, since a long time. I still wonder how it was possible that he was elected.

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion as are other people. I tend not to deal in hyperbole. He is neither the best nor the worst president we have had. Anyone who claims that he is the worst president we have ever had needs to read up on their 19th century presidential history. We had some doozies back then.

I hope that helped you understand the situation better. These were all legitimate questions.