Politics The Donkey in the room...the Democrats today

Glass houses, with skeletons in the closets.

The overlaps between the groups, and individuals, making up The Powers That Be. I'm not a conspiracy nut, but I am convinced there are people who reach to other people who reach out to other people to make very important things happen, or not happen, & we never know about it.

 

It's built into the system.

Some of it is simply impossible to avoid.

I think I think would help if eliminating First Past The Post voting and maybe adopting something like a parliamentary system. Right now, in the US our minority political groups can only wield influence by bending one of the two parties, and those parties win power by Winner Takes All on a state-by-state basis. That means millions and millions are effectively disenfranchised in every election.

My vote in SC will not mean shit. I will have 0 representation of my beliefs, or anything close to it, at a national level and very little at the state level.

I can understand the logic there in the horse and buggy days. In a modern world where we have communication and travel the way we do, it's simply a mechanism used by the powerful to minimize how much they have to be pragmatically accountable to the population.

 

In Texas somebody in a top position with say HEB grocery stores, or Academy Sports & Outdoors, could quietly influence the Texas Education Board by suggesting they might withhold or increase donations to local school districts. With just one discreet yet very powerful phone call.

A Crown Prince in Saudi Arabia can make a small nation in Africa bend to his will.

Etc, etc.

The power of my vote in Texas is as weak/meaningless as the power of your vote in SC. Locally, in Harris County & the city of Houston, my vote does count in a few races.

I think the Electoral College system needs to go. Why should state voting giving one candidate a narrow 52% to 48% victory give that candidate every single Electoral College vote? That IS NOT how the people voted. And we could go into the unfair advantage it gives large states over small states (for example TX can make SC nearly meaningless).

 

The quickly called Vote of Confidence has its positives & negatives. The big negative I see is it's way too easy to bounce a person and/or a party before they have a chance to get things turned around. Can you imagine if the Repubs were able to call for a VOC on Biden after say one year?

I'm about to go out for lunch,
will return to this.

 

Yawn. Wake me up when the Dems have enough control to get some meaningful legislation passed, and the SC won't shoot it down.

To repeat myself, most of these moves should've been started on Janurary 07, 2021.

 

I think Kamala should have held some town halls, debates with the other Democratic candidates in the race, and flood the zone in media/podcast interviews. She could have gotten a lot of free media attention and really defined who she is for herself, rather than let the memes and right wing media do it.

But Biden had a plan to hold out until after the RNC, which worked out well. I'm not sure why he picked Sunday afternoon instead of a weekday though.

 

I'm not sure Harris, as VP before the Biden withdrawal movement going strong, was in the position to do much what you suggested. Biden was Pres, the star, & Harris played the traditional role of understudy.*

Also a lot of unusual, and meaningful, activity by Harris would've drawn attention, and raised concerns about Biden.


*My thinking is Harris actually had a more active role than many previous VPs.

 

I actually meant from earlier this week when Biden dropped out until the Democrat Convention in three more weeks. She is going up agains the guy who likes to dominate the media, she needs to define herself to the American people before the other side can. Well, more than they have so far.

 

I wondered about that. The explanations I've read & heard Harris needed to line up the delegates, unofficially but definitely, before pushing forward too much.

I'm actually impressed with the relative smoothness of the transition.