One of the greatest progressives of our time, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was vehemently against the national popular vote. He gave a famous speech on the Senate floor which I believe all progressives should read. He explains it much better than I could ever.
I just don’t know what to say about this. Yes it sucks, but I’m not sure what to say.
Law of unintended consequences?
Obtuse shortsighted thinking?
Lemmings?
Or another piece in the plan for the far left to take over the country by making it easier for them to do so? Same day registration is a part of it. With popular vote they don’t have to care about the whole country. Just organize and fool enough poor and marginalized people and then add the up the numbers. Screw compromise. Screw working among all Americans. It worked for Castro. Get the poor and marginalized behind you. Then when you win, fuck them all.
What’s worse is we have the lamest bunch of politicians who are for this because it is the flavor of the week and if they back it 100% and don’t ask questions they will still be able to hang with the cool kids. The Socialists have used Florida and Bush to stir up our lame and small minded Democratic politicians.
…the presidency isn’t the only office elected? Your implied concerns about the tyranny of the majority are easily neutralized by the existence of the House and especially the Senate. As it is, the urban populations aren’t paid enough attention to, I believe at least in part because of the current method. I for one do believe that our elected officials should be seeking the greatest good for the GREATEST number.
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p>hmm, who should we kill. Hmmm? 2008 America? Illegal aliens perhaps?
1900 America? the Blacks perhaps/
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p>1930s Germany?
Come on, what you are proposing is SOOOO evil that it outweighs any “good” you could possibly imagine for anyone else. These examples do NOT come anywhere close to constituting the greatest good for the greatest number in my book.
One of a handful of congressmen responsible for denying millions of Americans health insurance, and even declared, “there is no health care crisis in this country.”
not a socialist.
Fidel Castro-type Progressive
haven’t seen you for a while.
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p>someone can say there is no crisis in health care (meaning quality is generally good) and that there is a crisis in health care costs (which moynihan did say).
There’s a whole lot of founder-worshiping in that speech. The founders hade foresight, but they were a product of their time and most certainly fallible, particularly with respect to their generally elitist attitude. They allowed only white, property-owning males to vote. They didn’t allow direct elections of Senators. Hamilton, who Moynihan quotes, wanted President to be a lifetime appointment.
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p>The Electoral College was designed in part to prevent “we the people” from directly choosing the President. It was also a compromise with slave-holding states, desired in part because the founders also chose slaves to be worth 3/5 a vote.
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p>Even the founders themselves weren’t thrilled with their Electoral College system. They were running out of time and the system they ultimately chose was a slightly tweaked version of an idea they had just earlier rejected.
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p>With the Electoral College, the candidates only have to care about a tiny handful of swing states. With a popular vote, we’ll finally see presidential campaigns gunning for every single vote nationwide.
when they wrote the EC rules originally, we had a bad provision that didn’t separate the Presidential ballot from the VP ballot, and Aaron Burr, who’d run for VP, tied Jefferson, and contested the election for President.
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p>The current system does discriminate against American citizens in Puerto Rico, and a popular vote would fix that.
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p>(However, I still think the pullout-in-June provision in the current NPV bill is bad law)
My understanding is that the Electoral College was written to allow people to at best winnow down the choices. They expected many candidates on presidential ballots, and winning a state (and securing electors, not then a guaranteed process as it is today) would clear some threshold. Those candidates would advance to the next round, where the House (voting as state blocs) would decide a president. What they did not include in their planning was the idea that political parties would quickly unite along ideological rather than geographical cleavages, and quickly establish a system where only two “serious” candidates would run.
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p>As for Puerto Rico (and its brethren Guam, USVI, etc?) I’m surprised they’d be eligible to vote under NPV. I guess the short version presented to me has always been that in return for not voting for president, they don’t have to pay federal income tax. Is it written into the law that votes of all American citizens would count?
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p>I’ve long held the conclusion that no topic excites polisci geeks quite as much as electoral systems.
First, elections can be stolen with or without NPV. Diebold election machines work pretty damn well.
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p>Second, the neocon conservatives have nearly wrecked the country – 180,000 or so new federal employees {Homeland security, which as an agency name has always had a Nazi ring to it for me] and doubled the deficit.
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p>Your leftist conspiracy hasn’t done well.
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p>That all being said, I agree with Rep. Will Brownsberger of Belmont, who was one of the sane votes against NPV because i feel it would weaken the Union and lead to a resurgence of the worst in the states right’s movement. Not exactly a fear of NPV strengthening the left {LOL} but of strengthening the RIGHT and marginalizing small states.