It has been agreed that he will be humanely slaughtered and his carcass given to Ben & Jerry, who refuse to say what they will do with it, but I think that’s just a marketing ploy to set us up for a surprise flavor.
Regardless of who did it, a quick research tells me term limits were adopted by Republicans in both Houses at the same time, 1994.
I think you are assuming that Obama was far more altruistic than he actually was.
I thing Hillary would definitely offer Bernie a cabinet post. If he takes it will depend on how frustrated he is with the Senate. Even if the Dems take it back, they won’t be taking back the house (unless there is a total landslide against Trump, and maybe not even then) so getting anything through will be tough.
He’s too old to hold a real 8 to 5 job, what with all the naps and potty breaks he requires.
They’ll find a nice elder care facility that takes old socialist farts somewhere.
I’m not. I think helping her plump her resume was part of mending fences within the party, ie pragmatic.
I don’t think she’ll give him a cabinet post. She doesn’t want a revolutionary running a department.
Calm down. Bernie isn’t Che. Sheesh!
My mistake. I see Sen. Sanders already held a chairmanship - Veterans Affairs - when Democrats were in the majority, even though he was an Independent, so the precedent has been established.
My dream is that he’ll become VP under Clinton. She can bring the establishment votes, he can bring the enthusiastic grassroots youth
The guy will be 77 years old when he’s up for re-election in 2019. Can’t we just let him go retire to a syndicalist commune somewhere?
Of course, politicians dig in like ticks once they make it to the halls of power, so he could pull a Strom Thurman and rant and rave for another 15 years.
On the other hand, if they ever make a live-action muppet movie, he’d be perfect as Statler or Waldorf.
I already have a candidate for Sam, the American Eagle. Technically, not actually an American, but still…
As background, I suspect few Americans have heard of proportional representation. It’s a fringe issue, though it has some support on this board (ok me and Brainglutton I guess).
Oh, and basically nobody wants to get rid of the primary system. Except me of course. Americans don’t want to go back to the bad old days of the smoke filled room, something I have no problem with. They think the current system is democratic while the old system isn’t, which is sort of funny in a way.
They could keep the primary system, just have a constitutional amendment that all primaries have to be simple votes not caucuses, and they all have to be on the same day, say two months before the general election, also all states have to allow absentee ballots for primaries.
That would address all the current issues of tiny states having disproportionate influence on the national election, make it easier for people to vote in the primaries and also shorten your currently ridiculous two year long election cycle. No wonder your voter turnout rates are so low compared to other countries, I’d get sick of it after two years as well.
Having all primaries the same day just makes it a national qualifier. Having one or a few states vote at a time can serve a useful winnowing function, as sets of candidates are tested sequentially against different electorates. The problem with the current setup is that it’s always the same few states out front.
Whats wrong with that?
Setting a national primary effectively eliminates all of the candidates with smaller financing and consequently helps to ensure that the largest donors select the nominee. The current system allows an outsider candidate to catch fire in a smaller market, develop momentum, and attract further financing therefrom. Someone like Bernie Sanders would have negligible impact if he were required to compete in fifty states all at one time.
Yes, that.
Also I think that even with equally-resourced campaigns, there is value in a graduated and differentiated process, where candidates and ideas can be measured in different combinations and contexts. We just get more information that way. This is supposed to be the most important decision the American people collectively make.
Would you force-abolish the conventions too? Otherwise, if all the primaries were held at once, candidates would probably not ever get enough delegates to win (Ted Cruz just “won Iowa” with barely more than a quarter of the votes), so the choice would almost always be thrown to the conventions which might end up choosing compromise candidates instead. So now the guy nobody chose is the candidate, which isn’t exactly an improvement on democratic choice.
So you let two states that are completely not representative of the US set that momentum for you?
The US urban / rural split is 80 percent urban, 20 percent rural.
Iowa is 60/30. New Hampshire is 55 Urban / 45 Rural.
Considering how close elections are you are giving far more power to rural voters than they deserve. Also why the hell does California accept being last in the primaries? Considering how much sway they should have and how liberal they are they should demand to be earlier in the primary season. Just California being earlier would give liberal candidates a much better chance of gaining momentum. Why do the Democrats accept the current system?
I agree that ideally Iowa should not be first, and California should not be last… any more often than any other states hold those positions.
So that justifies having a rotating list of small states in the first position. Rhode Island wouldn’t be bad. Heck, any state outside of the top 10 media markets would probably be ok.
My take is that the public should be making pure policy decisions at election time, and leave electability concerns to the professionals. So go back to the smoke filled room like basically every other democracy.