I don't care what Ds or Rs do internally, FYI. I do wish they'd find a better way to get nominees & spare us the nonsense of primaries.
Trump loves him some Putin and Xi. You really are missing the mark here as it is the magas who seem to have an affection for the enemy. I don't have a party, pubs left me behind when they got on the maga train
Prediction: There are going to be a lot of Republican candidates absolutely furious over how the RNC will be spending its money and none will have the courage to complain publicly.
The RNC and NRA are broke and Trump has lots of trials coming up. He needs to personally soak up every dollar out of the right wing grift machine to his legal bills.
Indeed the parties are private, so it seems they should be able to operate their business and pick their representatives however they want. We can just feel free to ignore their candidates when they do a poor job. At the same time, it does seem like the parties have some unhealthy hold on our collective psyches. I have no idea what to do about that. I would suggest maybe to try to reduce the barriers to entry for competing parties, but it would seem those barriers themselves are more social than legal.
Man, what did Whatley do to draw this "job"? He'll be a continuous RW target by summer to clear the runway for Lara.
I like rank choice voting as well, as it seems lots of information is lost when voters are only allowed to choose a single candidate in a field. However, I do take Ben’s criticism that rank choice voting would likely result in a ton of attempts to game the system by intentionally voting down competitive candidates, potentially leading to some ironic outcomes. I am not as sure about removing the party affiliation from ballots. Certainly seeing the R or D by the candidates’ names stimulates our minds’ tendency to stereotype. On the other hand, what else is left when there is just a name? It would seem that any even meagerly responsible voter would track down the candidates’ affiliations as they tried to learn about what each represents. And the choices of the voters that wouldn’t even do that hardly seem like they would be superior either.
When FA Hayek wrote The Road to Serfdom, he dedicated it to the “socialists of both parties.” I think it’s worth considering what one of history’s foremost critics of socialism and communism might have meant by such a statement. What might his conception of socialism entailed? I think it would have included any time that private competition was replaced by state authority. While I think it’s clear he would have included pushes for national student debt relief under this umbrella, I think he would have also included a presidential administration single handedly levying large tariffs, promoting the goods of some companies, such as Goya, over others, such as Bud Light, and a governor punishing a company for criticizing his legislation. I think he was right that both parties ascribe to their own versions of communism.
The closest anyone has come to being an American version of Baghdad Bob is the guy who lost the 2020 presidential election and constantly claims that he really won and that election was stolen from him through fraud. About as credible as the real Baghdad Bob's assertions that Saddam Hussein was defeating the Americans.
You’re a bit lost, and you make fun of Biden’s acuity old man. You made up some urgent needed political pushback against a slide into communism. I simply asked where is the government taking private property and nationalizing industry. You then called me a name and then I called you a deep thinker. Do your caretakers know where you are right now?
Love the meme. It's one of the best graphic symbols I've seen describing supporters of the defeated indicted former president.