Those Other Elections
by David Sirota
A month after Barack Obama's triumphant victory, we are still celebrating America's only authentic national religion, and it isn't Christianity — it's presidentialism, the worship of the president as an all-powerful, all-knowing deity who is the only important political actor in our country.
This theology explains why both the public and the press corps seem far more interested in the Obama family dog and the Obama daughters' choice of elementary school than what happened down ti ...
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Posted by: michael nola
Comment: #1
Sat Dec 6, 2008 9:27 AM
Re: Scot Penslar
You mean earned it like the guys on Wall Street who gamed the system, ended up by screwing everyone, including themselves but get a free bailout by their frat boy buddies at the Federal reserve and the Treasury? These same people have gotten trade deals which have destroyed the American working class and enriched themselves and where did those jobs go to, Scot? To COMMUNIST CHINA AND COMMUNIST VIETNAM. I don't know your age, Mr Penslar, but I'm 61 and remember an America where people who had a decent educatiuon and worked hard could support their families , when the average CEO made 40 times, not 400 times the pay of his average worker. There has been a massive wealth distribution and it's gone from the working class to those at the top. If that's your idea of America, then keep voting Republican or DLC Democrat, they'll be only to happy to keep shoving it where the sun don't shine.
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Posted by: Scot Penslar
Comment: #2
Thu Dec 4, 2008 9:34 PM
So "addressing rampant wealth inequality" is a legitimate purpose of government? Horror of horrors, some people actually have more money than other people! Does it ever occur to the so-called "progressives" (read socialists) that a good many of the rich may just possibly have made their money the old-fashioned way -- by EARNING it?
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Posted by: dlw
Comment: #3
Tue Feb 24, 2009 10:58 PM
I agree that we worship the office of the presidency way too much and would be smarter to spend our time and energy more so on more local offices and local third parties, like WFP or even Progressive Dane.
But we don't need fusion voting to make this happen, we need to change folks habits to vote strategically together in local third parties and push for PR or PR-STV to be used in local legislative elections.
I also think that even "top two" could be made to work better if say the number of candidates in the "top two" primary for a single member office was limited to eight and then every primary voter got to endorse at most three of the eight candidates, so it's the two candidates that get the most endorsements that proceed on to the general election. Think about how if that were used for many elections(apart from municipal and state-house of reps where PR or PR-STV general elections would be used) it would change the dynamics of elections!
I think we'd see more interest and more interesting primaries and closer general elections, in which local third parties, now contesting only the elections with PR voting systems, would be able to leverage their strategic voting to win influence with the more moderate and less ideologically pure main party candidates.
dlw
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