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Welcome (back) to P115, Veritaria and Dadui!!!

RIP, City of light and Maretamia.

My socio-political evolution was markedly similar to yours, Central Kadigan, except I started critically looking at those precepts sophomore year at Furman and fully blossomed in my time at Yale.

Yes, so long as the GOP nominates certifiable nuts for president of the USA, I will always vote for Team Blue, too, not that my vote makes much difference in ruby red SC. I may like Sanders, but a 72 y.o. man as "sexy"? I DON'T THINK SO! LOL

I only watched the first half hour of the Sanders/Clinton bout on MSNBC and it was a doozy! I loved it! It was so heated. Anyone notice when Hillary pulled the gender card when Sanders pressed her for being part of the establishment? lol. I'm a Trump fan myself, but I respect Sanders for his views. I don't like Clinton at all.

Dr george wrote:

I'm not a big fan of the Electoral College, either; it harkens back to the days when undemocratic state legislatures appointed electors. Rather than state-by-state proportional voting, for the presidency, I would like simply 1 person, 1 vote. That would be similar to the proportional votes of the states, but would absolutely guarantee a democratically-elected candidate.

The problem with this "fix" is that it would require a Constitutional amendment (Article II, Section 1). In today's political climate, you would not be able to pass a Constitutional amendment stating that the sky was blue.

The benefit of moving to a proportional, rather than winner-take-all EC is that it does not require such an amendment since the manner in which EC votes are allocated is left up to the states.

Another possible issue with eliminating the College altogether and going with a straight popular election is that all of the focus would immediately collapse into heavily populated areas. 99% of all campaigning would be done in New York City, Los Ángeles, Chicago, Houston, &c. No candidate would care about less-populated states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida. At least the EC attempts to level things out a bit.

The problem with the current EC is that roughly 40 states are pretty much ALWAYS going to vote the same way, leaving the outcome of elections in the hands of the 10 or so "persuadable" states, like Ohio and Florida, which then get massively disproportionate attention from the candidates. IMHO, it would be better for democracy for the candidates to focus moreso on the largest cities in all 50 states rather than taking for granted some 80% of the states and lavishing attention on the persuadable states.

One way to get around the EC in today's political climate is for a majority of EC votes of the various states could be pledged to the winner of 1-person-1-vote, regardless of how their own populations voted. So if CA, TX, NY, VA, IL, and several other big states (and some small ones would probably want to join the effort, too) voted to pledge their electors to the winner of the popular vote, it would de facto abolish the EC. This would be something not dependent on the national government, but a coalition of states, which I think makes it more likely.

Most of you know that the USA is in the middle of a massive demographic change, which is slowly changing the way certain states usually vote. In short, we are becoming massively less white every year and likely will become white-minority in the lifetimes of most of us here, even as whites would remain the single largest group for the foreseeable future. This has tremendous implications especially for the Republican Party, which almost exclusively appeals to certain segments of the white population. The Dems have won the popular vote in 5 of the last 6 presidential elections; clearly depending on angry old blue collar white men is a losing strategy. The GOP has rather actively pushed away the black vote with opposition to a long string of anti-poverty initiatives, civil rights advances, and voting reforms. Blacks currently vote about 90% of the time for Democrats. Rather than changing their policies to become more black-friendly, the GOP has promoted voter suppression among the poor and minorities. The situation is not yet quite so stark for Hispanics, but such vociferous opposition to immigration reform and demonizing immigrants plays poorly in Latino communities. Being "the party of stupid" has pushed away many better-educated white folks who would otherwise be inclined to vote GOP. Texas is already majority minority and there are efforts on the Dem side to register and encourage voting in the black and Hispanic communities. If this single effort (actually one of many) comes to fruition and nothing else changes, the GOP will automatically lose every presidential election, as TX is the only really large state that has been dependably in their column. They can't win without TX. In 2008, Obama pulled VA, NC, and IN into the Democratic column and VA is likely to stay there with the massive number of progressives moving into northern VA. For now, we will consider it a swing state, as perhaps the right Rep candidate could still take it. It's possible states like NC, IN, GA, KY, MO, and others will shift from reliably red to swing states or even Team Blue.

Even if the composition of Congress doesn't change radically for some time, having a string of Dem presidents will inevitably affect the Supreme Court. Currently 3 progressive and 2 conservative justices are relatively young and likely to be on the court for decades, barring something unforeseen. However, 3 conservatives and 1 progressive are rapidly aging and visibly approaching the ends of their careers. Justices tend to retire under presidents of like mind so their seat will remain in ideologically similar hands, but if we keep electing Dem presidents, the justices will be forced to retire because of mental/physical health concerns or will die in office, which could lead to a radical realignment of the Supreme Court, reversing the composition of the court for the first time in decades, reversing the current court's pro-(big)business, anti-government, anti-regulation, skeptical of civil rights and political freedoms positions. No longer would there be serious worry about the court's overturning a woman's right to an abortion, Obamacare, gay marriage, and a host of other causes. Instead, Citizens United, the hamburger laws, anti-environmental protection decisions, and other conservative decisions will be in the cross-hairs. I'm sure we have people in this region who fear such a change, some who embrace it, as well as some who don't particularly care. Assuming both major parties nominate their current front-runners, Trump and Clinton, I'll go out on a limb and say that Clinton would win in a landslide and we would probably have yet another Dem president for at least the next 8 years. I think President Clinton would get to nominate at least 2 justices and perhaps all 4 aging ones. Her replacing Justice Ginsberg would not affect the balance of power, but replacing even 1 of the conservative justices would change the balance of power from 5 conservatives and 4 progressives to 5 progressives and 4 conservatives. As they say about the SCOTUS, "you only need to be able to count to 5." All of the controversial decisions of the past many years have been 5-4 (with sometimes Justice Kennedy showing centrist tendencies) and perhaps that much wouldn't change at first other than most progressive causes would win and most conservative causes would lose. There are several possible scenarios where you could have 6-3 or even 7-2 in favour of progressives.

The times, they are a-changin'!

Dr. G,

What are "hamburger laws"? I did not find a Google search helpful.

Update posted at: http://z7.invisionfree.invalid.com/Philosophy_115/index.php?showtopic=271&view=findpost&p=22053116

Happy Chinese New Year!

As a woman, I am finding the elderly feminists comments about the need for women to stand with Hillary or go to hell quite offensive. Also the one that younger women only like Bernie because the "boys" like Bernie.

They raised the younger generation - do they think they failed to teach them how to think on their own? Or does that mean they expect women to march in lockstep with whatever the first feminists dictate? Seriously, we are failing to give an entire generation credit for being able to think things through and come up with their own decision.

And who calls young men "boys" anymore? Besides the same women who were offended at being called "girls" forty years ago?

Vote for whoever you deem best - think it through - but don't vote just because someone else told you to do it!

Dr george the Melody of Hera has CTEd. Please fix this situation, thanks!