An observation...
 

I was going to post this in the Hillary for Veep but decided it was a threadjack and wanted to see this as a thread on its own...

Please don't read this as an attack on the American system. It isn't. It comes from the fact that Canada has just been through a Federal elections... it took all of 38 days from election called to election day. Little fuss or muss and it's over.

The US system is just so painful and drawn out... It seems that you are perpetually on the campaign trail. It makes me wonder just how any governance gets done.

The Hillary thread (and others) are rife with talk of "hatred" and "partisan politics". It is amazing to me that the wheels of your nation keep spinning. Listening to the rhetoric it always seems there is a civil war just brewing on the horizon.

Thankfully your two party system favours a national approach to policy. If it were to ever fall into regionalism that civil war would quickly come into focus...








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Interesting that you should mention civil war, Charlatan. There was a piece in the news a couple of weeks ago about a fundamentalist Christian faction wanting South Carolina to secede from the union. According to the story, they were urging supporters to relocate there from other states in order to influence the vote in their favor. I'll see if I can dig up a link when I have time. I honestly don't think their movement will get anywhere. The Federal government squashed a much larger rebellion of this sort in the Civil War of the 1860's, and the military capabilities of the two sides were more or less equal then. The government has far greater military might than any citizens' group now. The only thing secessionist extremists can hope to accomplish is to give a paranoid government an excuse to take more of our freedoms taken away.

Somthing similar to what SinisterMotives said about SC; for years now, the Libertarian party has been encouraging party members to move to Vermont so that they'll band together and have more power in congress and the electoral college.

Granted, that doesn't have too much real impact on anything, but that people are starting to think along those lines is a little disconcerting...

see...
you people really have no idea at how far SC would go to make a point...

you've really gotta live here to see that up close and personal.

On a serious note, it won't happen, there aer a few of us "Sane' people who buck the religious right whenever we can...

For the better or worse, the issue of a State's ability to succeed has been decided for almost 150 years.

That is exactly why the wheels keep spinning.

The wheels would screech if we couldn't have heated debates (a few take it too far, but it really is not the norm--the "haters", from both sides, have a habit of sticking out.)

Gawd, I love it here....

Nothing stirs the sense like a good debate (based on facts, not emotions).

I can't participate in antics like you describe, nobody wins.

Same here. Unfortunately, it's hard for many people to separate politics from emotion. I think it's mostly egoism. People have a certain amount of emotional energy invested in their political views, and consequently they take an attack on their worldview as an attack on their person.

well, people knit big parts of themselves across thier understandings of the world and how that world functions....they are invested both in the fact of their frame of reference and in the results the frame generates, so it isnt really surprising that political arguments often get heated. i like to think that i can participate in political debates like they were a chess game, but it obviously breaks down on occaision.

as for the idea of secession, the militia movement--which i used to track as a side interest--- (in its various parts) is often not far from that, but in a reverse kind of way--they often argue(d?) that the "real" america has been invaded by some phantom outside force (the u.n., the zionists--all interchangable, all derivatives at one level or another from such antisemitic "classics" as the "protocols of the elders of zion") and often dream (maybe plan, maybe train for) some kind of right revolution that will return the states to the white ultraright chrisitan types who in their minds are the "Real Americans".......

Re: An observation...
 

I could not agree more. The system sucks, simply because of the time involved. Most voters (maybe 60%) will vote along party lines. It's my belief that you need to be educated in order to vote, but that should not take a year. 90 days should do it. The 40% that both parties are after can make up thier minds in 90 days or they should probably sit it out.

Probably should be a different thread, but...

There is validity behind the theory of party trumping person (a school of thought I belong to, I must admit).

Hey, I just might start a thread on this one......

The operative word here being "should". When have candidates ever put aside the muckraking and ideological bickering and laid out a coherent plan that voters can follow in ninety days or less though?