US Presidential Election 2012

Halfwise - why is it that the big cities and larger population areas tend to vote blue and the rest tend to vote red?

I don't really like politics because it is just a big ridiculous circus (I don't really know much about my own countries politics... I just vote for who i dislike the least) but I am interested as to why the map always looks the same.

People who are poor and looking for a change either move to cities or tend to stay in them. They vote liberal because they'd like some help. The rich people who vote conservative also tend to congregate around cities, but there are fewer of them. [edit] The more educated and artistic also tend to vote liberal.

Those who live in the country often have been left behind in an earlier era, so identify more with conservative. In Obama's phrase, 'clinging to guns and religion'. Man did that set off a firestorm.

That is the perception the rest of the world gets when a Bush or Romney turn up. Like they are still stuck back in 1960 and can afford to throw aroudn some of the naive, self absorbed rhetoric that isn't tolerated as much these days.

Obama seems to have more of an understanding of where the world is headed and that the US will matter less and less to everyone else if it takes the wrong steps. Whether he knows what to do about that is another question, but at least he seems to get it a bit more.

As much as I don't think it will be in any of our lifetimes, but do people in the US worry about how things will look in 50 or 100 years time? I think in Europe we do, problem we obviously have is we cant manage our own econmies now let alone dealing with repositioning ourselves.

Some people do worry about the future, most are more concerned with the next year or two. When a president like Eisenhower looks to the future and creates something like the national highway system, there are huge benefits. The only major change I can think of since then has been changes in civil rights for minorities. We just haven't had a visionary since the late 1960's.

All of out economies seem to be in a mess. The Eurozone wont fix itself unless all members look passed their own short term interests and go all in, monetary, fiscal and probably political. Unfortunately for people like the Germans, short term pain may well be needed for the longer term prosperity of the area.

The US, well I am not sure what you guys need to do to get yourself back on track. Although I can say another war, or even the ones we are all already in, wont help.

Politicians rarely seem to think beyond the next headline these days let alone years in advance.
However with the Scottish independence vote in 2014 I will actually have a chance to vote on something that has the potential to be very long term indeed, and will effect folks in my country (and the rest of the UK) long after I'm gone.
Its a bit daunting actually!

Keep us together!!

We need a decent tennis player!

My gut feeling (and the poll data) suggests if you lot vote the Tories back in again its all over.

Right now those who want the union are polling 45% and support for independence is 38% with the rest undecided- and Salmond has form here- before the last Scottish election they were further than that behind in the polls and they won a landslide. And he has two years to convince folks still. Plus the polls also show if people think the tories will get back in those numbers reverse.
This really could happen (and I'm not convinced England is really taking that possibility seriously yet).

Watching the Independent candidates debate tonight but I'm not sure how long I'll last. Should be interesting though.

http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/

WHY are they starting by asking the candidates what they think of the two-party system?

They're fucking third-party candidates! Of course they and their supporters don't like the two-party system. Discuss the issues, goddammit.

I have no idea who decided that Larry King is relevant in the media, though he is a better moderator than Jim Lehrer.

Gary Johnson is far and away the best speaker of the bunch.

Must be all the weed.

Lancebloke wrote:Keep us together!!

We need a decent tennis player!

Then start practising. Some friends of ours came here from the Czech republic and they had two sons Petr and Tomas who were playing with my Desiree. The father , a very industrious man started building all their furniture, usually on sunday morning when all the neighbors wanted to kill him, but it was awesome. Then in the spring he bought a couple of okay tennis raquets and started taking the boys to the park and made them practise. And practise and practise. First Petr and then Tomas started playing amateur winning everything. Then the Canadian national tennis competion for youth. And on and on. Now baby brother Vasec is in world class competition. All because Mr.Pospisil made the boys do something with their time instead if just playing. The wife , totally beautiful made buckets of money because she was the best cook and the best nanny. What a family. If Eldorion continues to shine with his awesome intelligence, information and rhetoric on this site and moves up, he could be the best president in the future. We would have manga day and star trek day and camping day and eating the coolest food day, and all statuatory holidays, with time and a half. How wonderful.

Don't give me nightmares, Leelee!

Um Eldo are thing so bad in the US that to hear what anyone else other
than the main two parties have to say you have to go to Aljazeera to
hear them? (Not that there is anyhting wrong with Aljazeera as a news
station but seems a bit odd for America).

I don't know how many sites were streaming the third-party debate (though YouTube was conspicuously not; I'd watched the presidential ones there) but I like Al Jazeera so I went with their stream. I do know that this debate did not get the sort of TV coverage the "real" debates got, though. Many (perhaps most) Americans take a pretty dismissive attitude towards most third party candidates.

In th UK there are rules about equal air time for parties. I take it the US has no such rules then?

Isn't it whoever has the most money buys the most coverage?

Instead of buying football clubs, maybe those Russian/Chinese/Middle Eastern billionaires should start pumping money in to some third party candidates campaigns and see if they can win one of those?

Pettytyrant101 wrote:In th UK there are rules about equal air time for parties. I take it the US has no such rules then?

I'm not familiar with all the ins and outs of the situation, but there are a lot of exemptions to the rules that are in place. This allows the news to mostly ignore third-party candidates, which is what the rest of the political system does most of the time anyway. Heck, the two major parties openly try to block third-party candidates from getting on the ballot in some states and no one gives a shit. The system here is designed to be two-party only and most people don't care.

Anyway, details on the equal time laws: Wikipedia

And more on third-party exclusion: New York Times

That NY Times article is not very pleasant reading. Perhaps a solution to the two party system would be a PR voting system- as this gives smaller parties a much more honest and representive result of the vote. It would also force the two main parties to be more concillatory and to have to seek broader coalitions to get policy through.

There are a lot of potential benefits to proportional representation but I don't like to think of the massive clusterfuck that would be involved in trying to implement such a system. It would require sweeping constitutional amendments, plus amendments to state constitutions if you want the system implemented at all levels of government, and there would be huge pushback. Besides, the parties have become so entrenched not just in politics but in culture that I'm not sure how much of a difference changing the system would actually have.

The advantage to PR is becomes worth voting for smaller parties. In a first past the post sytem is pretty pointless voting outside the main parties.

Yeah, I know. I think giving smaller parties more of a chance would force the larger parties to become more responsive to voters, instead of being the entrenched, largely non-ideological institutions that they are. On the other hand, that happens sometimes already, and it's not always for the best. Look at the Tea Party and the 2010 Congressional elections.

Pettytyrant101 wrote: It would also force the two main parties to be more concillatory and to have to seek broader coalitions to get policy through.

I don't disagree, but don't underestimate the influence of third party candidates. Third parties and independent candidates in national elections play the role of spoiler, which can be very influential on both parties' policies.

If Ross Perot hadn't gotten 8.4% of the vote in 1996, many Republicans feel Bob Dole would have had a close shot at the presidency instead of Clinton's second term.

Four years later in 2000, Ralf Nader got 2.74% of the vote, which many Democrats feel could have been enough to put Al Gore into office and spare us 8 years of Bush.

In 2008 the Tea Party influence gave us Sarah Palin as a VP candidate and arguably tipped the election towards Obama.

With a growing percentage of independent voters, I expect this influence is going to continue to increase as dissatisfaction with Congress increases.

I hadn't considered that aspect David. I can see how that could be effective and your right about it tipping the elections, especially Gore.
I suppose probably because its a matter of scale it didnt occur. UK Wesminister elections are First Past the Post- but the UK population is small compared to the US and spoiler votes are often wasted. However what you do get sometimes is tactical voting.

In Scottish elections we only have a population of 5 million and a PR system so people vote for smaller parties because they genuinely want to and believe in them over the others rather than as a protest and this translates directly to seats in the Chamber so its worth doing, as it does directly effect law making and the passing of bills and budgets. Even the Tories have 15 of the 129 seats.