The purple states haven't purpled one way or another yet.
The mail in ballots have to be artisanally squeezed, boiled in a mash, distilled, then the heads and tails drawn off. Only then will we know if we've got some old barrel worth stuffing in a warehouse for a few years.
I think an election system should be one of those things that should make sense to an 8 year old. Not that it should be the system that they like the best, but they should probably nod along and come to the conclusion that it does make sense.
@GcL I don't that's extremely unlikely to be possible outside unitary governments (or federal governments in name only). (Ours is unitary but still not 8yo-friendly though.)
@AncientSwordRage not for this election, but it's a potential sign of things changing. But then again, Trump got more votes this cycle so I'm not sure about the direction the country is going.
@kviiri It's legitimate. At least, their claim, if true, is legitimate.
MI law requires that campaign officials be permitted to over see ballot opening and counting, and the Trump campaign is claiming they have been denied access in several places.
@ThomasMarkov Yeah but "claim, if true, is legitimate" is pretty meaningless. I mean, I could claim that you murdered me just now, and that also would be legitimate if true, but there's no reason to think it's true.
@ThomasMarkov Don't know the specifics – this could be a fair point, but personally, I'm skeptical, mainly because these allegations already started months ago.
Even if it is a bad-faith shot at the MI race, it shouldnt change any outcome, obviously.
Here's the quote from the Trump campaign manager:
> President Trump’s campaign has not been provided with meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots and the counting process, as guaranteed by Michigan law,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a statement. “We have filed suit today in the Michigan Court of Claims to halt counting until meaningful access has been granted. We also demand to review those ballots which were opened and counted while we did not have meaningful access.
Yeah, it's not the particular electoral outcome I'm bothered about, I'm more worried about the societal implications of attacking the legitimacy of the electoral process.
@Rubiksmoose How do you feel about the Biden nomination? As a registered 3rd party voter I felt that there were better candidates for democratic ticket.
There were others I preferred for sure. But obviously there was not even a second of hesitation about who to choose between Trump and him (or 3rd party)
I had a couple of candidates I liked better but also,... I was a little scared about at least one of their chances of winning even if they got nominated
in fact really make that two because apparently some people can't stand the idea of a woman president
@ThomasMarkov maybe? but I feel like part of that is that some of the people who really wanted him may have,... literally wasted their votes in protest (I know some people who admitted to writing in people who they knew personally who weren't even running)
and I don't know him personally or his actual views on it but he strikes me as the most likely person who has run for president before to be ok with a system of voting that doesn't favor only two parties
I say it that way too because I don't have as much of a handle on a wide range of other politicians, there may be a few others scattered around who would support a change into a multiparty system as well or even more strongly
I'm skeptical of "systems of voting that don't favor any parties". There are certainly systems that favor different party structures, or different alignments of the party structure, but parties will eventually figure out how to take advantage of any system.
@NautArch yeah, same. I want to return to a politician who acknowledges that other people have good, equally correct views on policy, but that’s probably never going to happen
since there was never someone like that in the first place
I think getting worked up over things is natural but that people in positions of some kind of power or other take advantage of it to whip people into frenzies and fanaticism for their personal gain
by that I mean not only political power but say, being in charge of a media conglomerate or even having a blog that a lot of people pay attention to and take advice from
I think most people don't naturally care about what "them" is doing unless it actually harms "us"
but that people are skilled at social manipulation because we are social creatures
and certain people have something to gain by being manipulative on a large scale
and I don't even mean this to say everyone is being manipulative for the same reason or the same goal
though alliances can occur on purpose or on accident
I mean, look at the Democrats and Republicans, they don't like each other, but they both have stakes in the two party system
and honestly I would almost posit the opposite really
I think people's need to belong to some kind of community is often what get's them to be manipulated into believing the kinds of things they have to believe to have and "enemy" of a different community
I don't have any inclination to antagonize or vilify certain groups of people unless I feel threatened by them
I will admit that I feel threatened by at least a few groups of people
but I don't think that's "ingrained" so much as based off of observation of what those groups do
saying it's ingrained in us is like taking away our choice about whether we fight with or don't like other people, or who we fight with or don't like, or why
@ThomasMarkov Libertarians seem to be more of a 'this subset of us vs. that other subset of us'. E.g. the opposition between capitalist libertarians and socialist libertarians seems tense when they meet (though by this point I probably encountered this more in second-hand accounts than in first-hand observation).
@vicky_molokh-unsilenceMonica Firsthand, I've observed that there is indeed a lot of internal conflict among libertarians. I think some of that is an inherent feature of relatively fringe political factions: they consist of people who are weird enough not to support any of the mainstream factions but also too passionate / concerned to withdraw from the process entirely.
Humanity's pretty smart, and it's becoming increasingly obvious that reactionary factionalism is no longer a useful safety mechanism. It's causing more problems that it's fixing. Someday I think we'll abandon factionalism because we truly understand the unity of humanity and can celebrate our differences rather that be suspicious of them--but first, we'll set aside divisiveness purely out of enlightened self-interest.
The whole world's in a state of upheaval which makes such dramatic shifts possible and, arguably, inevitable.
Partisan politics seems especially inevitable from the perspective of countries and cultures that have made an art of turning everything into for-or-against, but that's a learned cultural quality, not an innate human quality.
I'm making an active life's work to walk away from those attitudes and look for ways to help that build up alternative, collaborative ways of thinking about community.
partly because some people don't know any better/aren't trying to know any better, and partly because some people either actively benefit from it or at least think they somehow benefit from it
'Ingrained' is a word which seems like an insufficient without additional qualifiers. Ingrained in what? In an individual? Probably not. In faction-groups? Possibly, given that it seems to have arisen in different places/environments/&c. all over the world as some sort of convergent evolution. (That does make me muse about the process by which a purely descriptive group turns into a faction . . .)
I don't know if it was character assassination, but I'm certain there were claims about Sanders being racist, it making racist comments?
Learning from Corbyn, on this side of the pond, it's one thing to be a good protester or opposition politician but it's another thing entirely to be a good leader
Corbyn was recently kicked from the Labour party because he couldn't say "anti-Semitism is bad" without adding on a "but..."
Sanders reminds me too much of pre-2019 Corbyn for me to be certain he would have been a 'safe choice'
