I think the explosion of deficit spending killed the left. It used to be there was a real choice; do you want high taxes and expansive government services or low taxes and minimal government services? There were people supporting both choices (and moving back and forth between them).
Then a new wave of conservatism came along that said you can have everything! You can cut taxes and still have a huge government! Just put everything on your tab. You can have all the stuff you want now and not think about how you’ll have to pay for it in the future.
It’s a really bad policy but it’s popular with people who don’t think very hard.
That has happened at the US federal level, true, but at the state level and in Europe, where budget constraints are firmer either by law or simply economic reality, the right has been a lot more responsible and thus a lot more popular.
I do think that people do lean left on what they want government to do though. One thing about affluent areas of the country is that as people’s incomes rise, they do seem to want a certain percentage of that rise to buy more and better government services. And Democrats are getting better at figuring out what that level of tolerance is. Which some interpret as “centrism” but it’s really just common sense. Seems to me that if a taxpayer is willing to give you $1000 but not $2000, that’s a win for the left, not the right. It only becomes a win for the right when the Democrats insist that it’s the taxpayer’s moral obligation to fork over the $2000.
I think you’re rather out of touch with more recent developments, not only among leftwing parties but also among their supporters. The pendulum has been swinging away from the axioms of 20-odd years ago.
There are very specific criteria that bars one from clearance - it is not arbitrary.
Things like knowing if you have foreign investments, financial difficulties - or the opposite - unaccounted for wealth, criminal record, history of violence, substance abuse, mental issues are all germane to a candidate’s “fitness”.
The word of a disgruntled neighbor does not kill the candidates chances, it just makes the digging go deeper. Bullshit claims are readily sussed out.
And it makes sense. if a potential defense industry worker has to have a clean nose and jump thru hoops to prove being trustworthy, then potential commanders should do likewise.
Not sure what you mean by that. They can spend as much as any other candidate on election in a constituency: but if they’re not part of a party organisation, there’s no point in their attempting wider campaigning outside the constituency.
While there are some matters that are more carefully scrutinized in an SSBI, overall the process of running for President is far, far more intrusive, and more importantly more public, than anything experienced by those applying for security clearances.
No, it’s completely arbitrary on two counts. If it’s not, point me to the piece of the constitution that lays out exactly what is required for a top secret clearance - which you won’t be able to because it’s not there. The criteria for a top secret clearance are not anything objective, but are set by some non-elected agencies that answer to the current president, and are not subject to outside review. Currently they mostly attempt to be reasonable, but there’s nothing that forces that to happen, and making them a political tool to disqualify opponents will almost certainly change that.
The other is that it’s arbitrary in that there are not objective rules for what qualifies you, the decision is made subjectively by a human being (‘are these financial difficulties big enough to worry about’) and not by simple application of objective rules (‘will the candidate be 35 when they would assume the office’). And a lot of the objective-appearing qualifiers, like ‘criminal record’ or ‘substance abuse’ are:
“Substance abuse”, as currently defined, includes recreational and medicinal marijuana use - it’s actually been a significant barrier to the FBI when they’re trying to recruit cybersecurity people. There’s no actual evidence that recreational pot use is worse than recreational alcohol use, and medicinal use is, well, medical.
“Criminal record” prior to Lawrence v Texas in 2003 included such dastardly felonies as having sex with a member of the same sex. Prior to Loving v Virginia in 1967 it included being in an interracial marriage. Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 it included a black person sitting at the front of a bus.
Allowing the party in power to forbid people from running for office if they don’t obey unjust laws (especialy unenforced laws) is just plain wrong, especially if they’re running for office specifically to tear down those laws. I’m perfectly fine with electing gay, pot smoking, interracially marrying anti-segregationists to office, your proposal would outright ban them.
It’s like the old argument about how homosexuals were automatically security risks. Because organizations refused to employ homosexuals and people had to conceal their homosexuality in order to work at the organization. And this need for concealment created the potential that they could be discovered and manipulated by blackmail into betraying the organization.
It took decades for organizations to figure out they could eliminate this vulnerability in their security by simply rescinding the policies that banned homosexuals.
I seem to be in the minority in believing that there should be zero prerequisites on any democratically elected official. That’s the whole point of a democracy, that the people get to chose their representative. The “government” (which is just society - we are the government) should not be telling anyone who they can and cannot vote for.
If we are so stupid as to elect someone like trump, then that’s what we get. You make your bed and you lie in it. I’m in Canada and we’ve elected some doozies as well - though nothing quiet as shocking as trump.
I also don’t believe in term limits - which we don’t have here for Prime Minister because, again, we should have the right to choose our representative.
I think education could minimize the occurrences of voting in an imbecile. Maybe there should be prerequisites on being able to vote. Most people vote without having the foggiest clue as to why they are voting the way they are “I’m a liberal/conservative/democrat/repub/whatever therefor I vote this way” without knowing the first thing about their candidate or even their own party.
I’m not as eloquent or as well-spoken as a lot of people here on the dope but I believe passionately in these two things:
The people are the government and,
We get absolute choice in picking our representative regardless of race/gender/religion/education/place of birth or anything else.
The US Border Patrol sent a guy to interview me as part of a background check because a former college roommate applied for a job on the other side of the country. I’m pretty sure that’s more intrusive than the process that did not result in Donald Trump releasing any of his tax returns.
Don’t sell yourself short: that’s pretty eloquent and well-spoken.
I would just quibble with one point about your description of the Canadian system: you do have to be a Canadian to stand for election, so that’s one limitation on who we can vote for. And, as a quibble on a quibble, your place of birth can be a bar if you’re not born in Canada and haven’t taken out Canadian citizenship.
Getting back to zev’s list: there was one fellow who ticked a lot of the boxes. He had been a Representative, a Senator, and Secretary of State. He’d also been elected to the Assembly in his home state, and been Ambassador to the United Kingdom, and Ambassador to Russia.
Yup, James Buchanan was set to be one of the greatest presidents, based on his qualifications.
For example UKIP has (or at least had, at the last election) wide support, but zero seats because their vote was spread fairly evenly throughout the country. That’s all I’m saying; it’s basically by design.
Sure, but FPTP also helps smaller groups that are more densely packed get into Parliament, like Plaid Cymru and DUP. You can’t make blanket statements that FPTP hinders groups. It’s simply one factor amongst many.
Of course but the general statement “FPTP tends to minimize representation of smaller groups” is widely accepted and not particularly controversial.
As for the point about the DUP and whatever, I’m not sure that FPTP even helps them, since even if we moved to proportional representation, say, it would never just lump all the votes of the whole UK together as there’d be an outcry in Scotland, Wales and N.Ireland. It would likely be proportional for each country.
It’s not controversial, provided you assume that party supporters are evenly distributed geographically. As soon as that assumption breaks down, the conclusion no longer follows. If supporters of one party are regionally concentrated, FPTP helps them elect more members than a strict percentage of votes would get them.
That’s been the Canadian experience: strong regional parties benefit from FPTP. The 1993 federal election was a good example of that:
• the party that came in 4th in the popular vote formed the Official Opposition, because they were regionally concentrated in Quebec.
• the party that came in second in the popular vote came in third in the Commons, because of regional concentration;
• the party that came in third in the popular vote came in fifth and last in the Commons , because their support was more evenly distributed throughout the country.
In that election, FPTP benefitted smaller groups at the expense of a larger group.
That demonstrates that you can’t just look at one feature of an electoral system, such as PR or FPTP. You have to look at the entire system. As soon as you build regional aspects into your electoral system, you can’t make blanket statements about FPTP or PR in isolation.
My basic point is that FPTP benefits small regional parties in the U.K., contrary to the idea that FPTP makes it more difficult for small groups to get elected.
Yes, it benefits small parties with a concentrated local appeal, but is detrimental to small parties with a more general appeal. The result is that it’s next to impossible for a minor party to secure parliamentary representation unless it’s a regionalist party, in which case it has a good chance of securing representation which is disproportianately large by comparison with its share of the vote.
For the sake of the thread, I hereby take back my original statement: “[a party can] start up and gain wide support (and even representation in Parliament, although First Past the Post limits this)”
