Presidential debate October 18th Las Vegas

[Takeda Shingen]

Might want to remake the poll so that you can only select one option.

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by Two Bears

Might want to remake the poll so that you can only select one option.

I don't know how to do that, but your right ... can Steve or Jim do that?

[Oberon]

I think Trump will close the gap, providing he's able to dodge any more disastrous past mistakes coming up to haunt him before it does. But it's probably not going to be enough, if he was going to turn this ship around it would have to have been done in the last debate, and he made an effort but it just wasn't enough. I mean, I have to give him his due in the last debate, he didn't flip out, but he did drop enough soundbites to be used against him, promising to jail Hillary for example, which coupled with the Make America Grope Again campaign, it was enough to give the point to Hillary, especially when a great deal of his own party were deserting him, and he threw his own running mate under the bus as well. I maintain that if he had gone worse that debate then Pence would have handed in the towel, but he managed to see it through, and land some good solid hits on Hillary, so Pence stayed clinging to the mast.
So unless he wins this debate by an absolute blinder, or Hillary gets a slight cold, then I don't think it'll matter, but...again...Dewey vs Truman, so, who can be sure.

[Torplexed]

Will Donald even show up if Hillary doesn't take the pre-debate drug test he demanded? Apparently, the drugs work in conjunction with the Parkinson-suppressing, back-straightening, cough-fixing, quick answer-giving apparatus she wears under her pantsuit, so she certainly needs them.

[Catfish]

I keep asking myself the same questions again and again.

- Why is there no other candidate than those two?
- How is it possible that an obviously crazy candidate even gets so far - in a "democracy"?
(then thinking of Bush senior and Bush junior ... were there no other candidates, so that just of all the son of a forner president becomes the new one ?? This looks more like a royal descendence, than an election)
- 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
- 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
- So there are only two parties, which now even have become one fraction?
- Is there no rational reasonable person who can do better, as a new president for America?
- 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.

?

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.

[Commander Wallace]

Originally Posted by Catfish

I keep asking myself the same questions again and again.

- Why is there no other candidate than those two?

This question has been asked a number of times in various political arenas. Former Minnesota Governor, Jesse Ventura has said that there really is no democratic process if your choices are limited to one of these two parties.

One could argue the Libertarian party is a viable 3rd party. However, They can't be a viable 3rd party if not invited to the presidential candidate debates.

[August]

Originally Posted by Catfish

I keep asking myself the same questions again and again.

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.

Democrats made the same accusations at the end of both Bush presidencies and Reagan's before that. Remember you can find somebody to make any outlandish claim. It's the corporate media who decides which claims see the light of day and since they favor the left it's only the right's crazies who make the "news".

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.

Reasonable has not been a word i'd use to describe him. Obama had a chance to bring both sides together but instead chose to exacerbate and deepen the divide among Americans. Significant numbers of Americans believe race relations have gotten worse under this reasonable and intelligent president.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...er-obama-poll/

Why is there no other candidate than those two?

Actually there are two other candidates in the election. The one i'm voting for, the Libertarian parties candidate Gary Johnson, and the Green party candidate Jill Stein. Gary is currently polling around 7-9% and Stein around 3%. But to both the Dems and the Republicans i'm "throwing my vote away".

[AVGWarhawk]

It's gonna be great! I got people. Amazing, totally amazing. Crooked Hillary!

It is my belief Trump will unleash because he has nothing to lose. Hillary will do her best to make the viewing audience believe the world is full of rainbow farting unicorns that live in the land of money trees. The rich will pay for it all!! She will go to win the debate with vomiting out the same crap we hear every 4 years. We have a plan(no we don't) to make us stronger together...vomit...

I think I will be watching re-runs of Thomas the Tank Train instead.

[Mr Quatro]

Originally Posted by August

Actually there are two other candidates in the election. The one i'm voting for, the Libertarian parties candidate Gary Johnson, and the Green party candidate Jill Stein. Gary is currently polling around 7-9% and Stein around 3%. But to both the Dems and the Republicans i'm "throwing my vote away".

What your really saying in effect is that the loser can blame the parties you speak of ... due to the 4 to 5% margin of error. The loser of the POTUS can blame these third party candidates or the winner can thank the third party persons for their participation.

[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.

[Catfish]

Originally Posted by Platapus

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

Wow thanks! I read a bit here and there on the web, but this is the first time i come to understand how elections are done in the US, especially this thing with the "Super delegates"
And all states by themselves..

Seems s lot is based on historical events, and evolved out of understanding what works and what not. And yes, how it is described it is not a real democracy, but as you said a direct one for all aspects of decisions would probably screw up a country - you need at least some education, knowledge and experience.. even in Switzerland direct democracy is only applied seldomly, for certain decisions, and carefully.

Otherwise a lot of democracies would suddenly have the death penalty back, a lot more nationalism/chauvinism, and do their way of 'Brexit'

Will read this again thoroughly this evening, thanks again Platapus!

[August]

Originally Posted by Oberon

promising to jail Hillary for example

He didn't promise to jail her. That's just the corporate medias pro-hillary spin on it. He said he would have his AG appoint an independent council to look into it. The "You'd be in jail" comment was referring to the fact that it's pretty obvious to anyone not already drinking the Democrats Koolaid that had Obama administration not put the fix in she quite likely would be prosecuted and jailed for mishandling classified material like everybody else does.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by August

He didn't promise to jail her. That's just the corporate medias pro-hillary spin on it. He said he would have his AG appoint an independent council to look into it. The "You'd be in jail" comment was referring to the fact that it's pretty obvious to anyone not already drinking the Democrats Koolaid that had Obama administration not put the fix in she quite likely would be prosecuted and jailed for mishandling classified material like everybody else does.

There's a lot of kool-aid being drunk around here, and it's not just democrats drinking it.
Quite frankly, if you're having to decipher and put in special clauses to what a candidate is saying then the candidate should not be saying it. Trump is a gold mine to spin, and you can blame the 'liberal media' and all the other Alex Jones boogey-men if you like, but at the end of the day Donald Trump is a very poor candidate for President, even more so than Hillary Clinton, to the point where the party that he's running for is regretting deeply everything that has happened. Now, you can say that this is exactly what you want to happen, that you want the 'establishment'™ to be shaken up, but quite frankly the only thing it has shaken up has been the Republican Party and it's damn near broken it. If you wanted to make the GOP even more toxic, then congratulations, electing Donald Trump to be its representative for President has done it.

[August]

Originally Posted by Oberon

There's a lot of kool-aid being drunk around here, and it's not just democrats drinking it.
Quite frankly, if you're having to decipher and put in special clauses to what a candidate is saying then the candidate should not be saying it. Trump is a gold mine to spin, and you can blame the 'liberal media' and all the other Alex Jones boogey-men if you like, but at the end of the day Donald Trump is a very poor candidate for President, even more so than Hillary Clinton, to the point where the party that he's running for is regretting deeply everything that has happened. Now, you can say that this is exactly what you want to happen, that you want the 'establishment'™ to be shaken up, but quite frankly the only thing it has shaken up has been the Republican Party and it's damn near broken it. If you wanted to make the GOP even more toxic, then congratulations, electing Donald Trump to be its representative for President has done it.

OK but why congratulate me? I never vote in party primaries and intend to vote for Johnson next month and would have even if the Republicans had run a better candidate than Trump.

In any case that doesn't take away one bit from the fact that a Democrat administration, abetted by the corporate media, was going to do whatever it took to keep the Democrat nominee from answering to her crimes including holding secret meetings between the AG and the defendants husband. Nor does it take away from the fact that the same biased corporate media would have minimized and excused what they are crucifying Trump for doing if he was a Dem just like they are doing with the steady stream of incriminating emails from Clinton and Co.

[Oberon]

Originally Posted by August

OK but why congratulate me? I never vote in party primaries and intend to vote for Johnson next month and would have even if the Republicans had run a better candidate than Trump.

In any case that doesn't take away one bit from the fact that a Democrat administration, abetted by the corporate media, was going to do whatever it took to keep the Democrat nominee from answering to her crimes including holding secret meetings between the AG and the defendants husband. Nor does it take away from the fact that the same biased corporate media would have minimized and excused what they are crucifying Trump for doing if he was a Dem just like they are doing with the steady stream of incriminating emails from Clinton and Co.

Sorry, bad choice of words, I meant the people who elected Trump to be Republican candidate, not yourself personally.
Absolutely, the Democrats have pulled very sleezy tricks, although I'm not sure in the most recent wikileaks emails exactly what is meant to be so devastating, the fact that it was Russian government activities that brought these emails out is perhaps a bit more concerning than the contents of the emails themselves which only serve to confirm a lot of what we already knew or suspected, that Hillary will think one thing but say another (just like most politicians) that she wants open borders and open trade (I can see open borders being a problem for Americans these days, but open trade is one of the founding principles of the free market system which America has always campaigned for), and that she will do anything to win. Now, imagine if this had been Mitt Romney, not Trump, running...now unless the Dems were able to pull up some kind of massive Mormon conspiracy, he would be making absolute hay with these emails, and you can be sure that the GOP would be at full capacity on pushing everything they had to keep anything dishonest or troublesome about Hillary on the front pages. But it's not Mitt, it's Trump, and he's a walking headline generator. It's a man who is more newsworthy than his party, and the fact that his party is not, and has never been, fully unified behind him only underlines the fact that the GOP has thrown this one. It let Trump get that momentum, because let's face it, if the GOP fact-checking hounds were anywhere near as competent as they claim to be (and indeed normally are) then these sex allegations and pussy comments would have come out during the Republican primaries and we would have Ted Cruz running against Hillary most likely, but the GOP stepped back because part of it wanted Trump, they wanted that strong man, that non-politically correct man, they wanted his power, his 'charisma' and they wanted that image, to court the 'Alt-Right', the Breitbarts and the 4chans. Trump was trendy, so they gave him a pass, when really all of the warning bells should have been ringing, when all of their senior members were shuffling their feet and saying "Well...errm...this might not be a good idea." Now all the chickens have come home to roost, and sure the Democrats have had a part in that, they've played some strong cards, but the simple fact is, Trump has played weak hands in return, he's blustered and bumbled from one soundbite to the next, and given his enemies absolutely everything they could have wanted. He's a perfect gift to the Democrat party, any other competent GOP candidate would have wiped the floor with Hillary, who is one of the most hated women in America, even her own voters are not fond of her, and Trump could have made hay with that, he could have split their party in two, brought chaos to the Democrats, but he's not the person to do that, instead he pretty much quotes from Alex Jones, attacks SNL, and basically bumbles around like an idiot.
I don't blame you for going third party, I think that I would still vote for Hillary if only to vote against Trump, but that's probably because I got burned badly with a third party in 2010 and that third party got vaporised in 2015. I hope that this doesn't happen with your third party, but I imagine that they've got more political acumen than Nick Clegg.