Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[y66]

It Seems Odd That We Would Just Let the World Burn

 

The good news is that the worst of the climate crisis seems less and less likely. We are on track for 3 degrees of warming, measured in Celsius, not 4 or 5. But 3 degrees is still a catastrophe of truly incomprehensible proportions, visited primarily upon the world’s poor by the world’s rich. We are engineering a world that is so much worse than it need be and that will be lethal for untold millions.

[kenberg]

 

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, amongst politicians that about 33% of people will always vote for the same party - no matter who is in it.

 

This looks to be a clear statement but on second thought I am not sure. The problem is with "always". People vote when they are 20 and they vote when they are 80. They vote for presidents, senators, governors, etc. A third of the voters, throughout their lifetime and regardless of the office and regardless of who is running, just go in and vote for the same party always? That would not apply to me and I cannot think of anyone I know that I think it would apply to. But I have been wrong before.

Is there evidence for this? It would seem tough to get evidence.

I guess if the other two thirds are willing to at some point consider something else then there is hope, but I really would have thought most people, at least once in their lifetime, would stray from party loyalty.

Maybe we need a Kinsey report on the faithfulness of voters.

[pilowsky]

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This looks to be a clear statement but on second thought I am not sure. The problem is with "always". People vote when they are 20 and they vote when they are 80. They vote for presidents, senators, governors, etc. A third of the voters, throughout their lifetime and regardless of the office and regardless of who is running, just go in and vote for the same party always? That would not apply to me and I cannot think of anyone I know that I think it would apply to. But I have been wrong before.

Is there evidence for this? It would seem tough to get evidence.

I guess if the other two thirds are willing to at some point consider something else then there is hope, but I really would have thought most people, at least once in their lifetime, would stray from party loyalty.

Maybe we need a Kinsey report on the faithfulness of voters.

 

The problem in the USA is that one-third of eligible voters don't.

This means that the electorate is mainly comprised of two groups of rusted-on die-hards.

Voters at the extremes tend to be as loyal to their party as they are to their football team.

How else can one explain the current loyalty of millions of voters to a man with the intellectual capacity of a prairie ball?

I once stood for parliament in South Australia as the Labor (Democrat) candidate in the safest conservative seat (District) in the State (Bragg - named after the Physicists).

At the time of the election (1993), the State-owned Bank had just collapsed under the Governance of the Labor party. The party vote had never been so low.

There was an 11+ swing against Labor, but I still secured 21.3% of the 92.7% turnout.

State-wide, the result was 30.37% of the primary vote to Labor

So this is where I get the data.

There is more - it's all available on Wikipedia.

The absolute rock bottom vote for each major party is about 30-40% - no matter the election.

A Kinsey report may be a good idea since, in the end, we all get...

There is the additional problem of systemic impediments to voting in the USA - such as polling day being on a Tuesday and the lack of an independent Federal voting commission to ensure lunatics can't prevent the citizens from being enfranchised.

[awm]

While in principle I could see voting for a moderate Republican if the Democrats nominated someone with serious corruption issues, in practice this has never come up for me and the most I’ve strayed from a straight Democratic ticket is to decline to vote in a few races where I really disliked the candidate.

 

So I guess I’m one of these people who always votes the same way! To be honest, the modem parties are a pretty clear sorting (not like 30+ years ago where there was often little daylight between the most liberal Republican and the most conservative Democrat) so people voting on policy basis will often be straight ticket voters.

 

The people who don’t vote are often very disconnected from the race and from national issues and just inducing them to vote might not make anything better.

[pilowsky]

The people who don't vote are often very disconnected from the race and from national issues and just inducing them to vote might not make anything better.

 

If everyone doesn't have a say the risk that loonies will take over is very high.

Anyone with any experience of student politics knows what I mean.

The importance of having all voices heard is that it brings moderation into the body politic.

Apart from disinterest, there are many reasons that people don't vote.

In Australia, there is normally a bit of queue but we don't have to wait more than 20-30 minutes tops.

The images of people waiting for hours at polling stations in the USA is anti-democratic.

The stuff that 3rd world dictatorships are made of.

[y66]

Trump’s ‘Team Kraken’ gets a smackin' by Michelle Cottle at NYT:

 

Monday’s virtual proceedings did not bode well for Team Kraken. U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker expressed skepticism bordering on dismay about some of the evidence and experts from the original case. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen an affidavit that has made so many leaps,” she marveled at one point. “How could any of you as officers of the court present this affidavit?”

 

Generally speaking, it’s not a good sign when a judge is characterizing one’s evidence in terms such as “fantastical,” “speculative,” “bad faith,” “obviously questionable” and “layers of hearsay.” Judge Parker brushed back Ms. Powell’s assertion that the complaint’s 960 pages of affidavits proved “due diligence,” countering, “Volume, certainly for this court, doesn’t equate with legitimacy or veracity.”

 

The hearing ground on for six hours, with so much back talk and smack talk that the court reporter had to ask the participants to tone things down so that she could do her job. At day’s end, all parties were given two weeks to submit additional arguments.

[y66]

re: party line voting - I voted for a guy who ran as an independent for my county board in a special election in 2014 and in two regularly scheduled elections in 2014 and 2018. Here independent = moderate Republican. He won the first two races because he opposed a controversial street car project. He lost the third race in the blue wave of 2018. My observation is that the county board was somewhat more effective when he was on it. He worked well with his Dem colleagues and was able to nudge the board to be somewhat more fiscally conservative. A lot of other Dems voted for him too but not so many as to call into question p's 33% assertion.

[Gilithin]

This looks to be a clear statement but on second thought I am not sure.

 

I am not too sure why you take any of that seriously. There are easy counter-examples to pretty much every statement:

 

 

Voting is compulsory in Australia.

People don't think about it much, but a consequence is that there is a joint sense of responsibility for whoever is in office.

 

There is very strong evidence that women in Australia are increasingly frustrated and turned off by the way politics in the country work. Far from "a joint sense of responsibility", the evidence points towards women being disenfranchised by the entire system. Why would a system that alienates >50% of its electorate be seen as positive?

 

 

The second important aspect of our system is that there is preferential voting - you put a number next to each candidate, and if your first choice is not one of the top two, your vote is given to your number 2 choice.

 

This approach eliminates nearly all of the BS that happens in most jurisdictions around the world.

It would certainly prevent an idiot like Trump from being elected.

 

The country that has used a single preferential voting (more commonly called ranked-choice voting or just ranked voting) system for the longest continuous period is Malta. One of the 2 main parties there is the NP (Partit Nazzjonalista). Although it has moderated somewhat in the last 10 years, this party is still regarded as one of the most extreme from the European Christian Democratic (US: conservative) movement and was even explicitly modelled on Mussolini's PNF. Given that American politics are typically more extreme than Maltese, the idea of ranked-choice voting eliminating the possibility of a populist leader coming to power stretches belief.

 

 

If you don't have universal voting, you don't have democracy.

First of all, while it is often stated that Australia has mandatory voting this is not strictly true. It is true for white Australians of course but indigenous (Aboriginal) voters are exempt. Imagine the uproar if Republican states introduced bills mandating voting for whites but exempting non-whites!

 

On compulsory voting more generally, the largest country currently using it is Brazil. At the last election fully 21% of voters did not vote and a further 9% were null or invalid votes. The result of the election was a win for Jair Bolsonaro. Those who follow international news will recognise the name - his nationalistic, populist policies along with the severe downplaying of covid have earned him the nickname of the "Brazilian Trump" in some quarters. If I were creating a voting system for a new country, I somehow doubt that this would be the one I would choose as a model.

 

 

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, amongst politicians that about 33% of people will always vote for the same party - no matter who is in it.

 

In the USA, only 33% of the eligible voting population voted for Trump in 2020. These people are rusted on - they will never change.

The same is true on the other side.

The problem in the USA is that one-third of eligible voters don't.

 

The absolute rock bottom vote for each major party is about 30-40% - no matter the election.

 

This is the part where I feel like scratching my head. The turnout figures are mentioned and yet, despite this, the 33% voting for Trump somehow get conflated with the 30-40% of the actual voters who turned out for unpopular candidates. The problem here is that 30% of 2/3 of the electorate is 20%. If someone wrote that 20% of the electorate on both sides were die-hards that always voted for their party then this would be reasonable, although even here one would need to address the question of changes in party-affiliation, something that has happened more dramatically in the US than almost any other democratic country in the world. Better to say that 20% of the electorate at any given time will always vote for their current party affiliation but now we are watering down the supposed point being made so far as to be more or less meaningless.

 

 

It seems to me from a distance anyway that entrenched interests (many the children of slave-owners) truly believe that the "right to vote" must be "earned".

When one looks deeper, this "earning" concept usually means being white.

When one looks deeper one sees that the voter suppression goes to any group that the Republican party thinks will vote overwhelmingly against them. This is less about race per se and more about winning. Just as gerrymandering to minimise the impact of massed urban votes is about retaining control rather than racism. It is true that non-whites are one of the easiest groups for Republicans to disenfranchise but there are also specific groups of whites that they try to discourage from voting. While the voter suppression is often couched in racist terms by the Left, it is best not to confuse the two motivations.

 

 

How else can one explain the current loyalty of millions of voters to a man with the intellectual capacity of a prairie ball?

 

The loyalty to Trump is not a strict party affiliation. Liz Cheney is also a die-hard Republican and has much stronger conservative credentials so your logic would assume that she is just as popular. She is not!

 

The thing to understand about the modern Republican party ("modern" being since the permanent shift to the Southern strategy) is that they are less a party of conservative politics and more a party of protest. What they want from their politicians is fight. It matters less what they are fighting about as that they are seen to be fighting for them. Say what you want about Trump's intellectual abilities, his public persona is very much that of a fighter. This is what makes him so popular with the Republican base.

[mycroft]

Voting is compulsory in Australia.

People don't think about it much, but a consequence is that there is a joint sense of responsibility for whoever is in office.

The second important aspect of our system is that there is preferential voting - you put a number next to each candidate, and if your first choice is not one of the top two, your vote is given to your number 2 choice.

This approach eliminates nearly all of the BS that happens in most jurisdictions around the world.

No, instead it introduces all the BS involved with that, and the "helpful" explanations that convince your voters to not actually do it (warning: Australien (sic) attitude to language. There's a PG version around, for those who want to protect their kids from seeing or hearing the words that everybody knows is being said).

It would certainly prevent an idiot like Trump from being elected.

No, like most of the rest of the parliamentary systems, the idiots just become PM after the guy you elected gets turfed out in a "confidence crisis" 6 months in. And since we have a majority, you get to decide if it was a good idea - in 4 years or so.

 

Also see (same warning), or most of the rest of the Honest Government Ads.

 

side note: WTH do you post with? Ubersoft Werd exported to HTML, then cut and pasted into the reply box? It's obnoxious to edit.

[kenberg]

A brief excerpt from Gilithin:

Better to say that 20% of the electorate at any given time will always vote for their current party affiliation

 

Yes, this is closer to my own experience.

 

 

Also, the world changes (yeah, no kidding). Thoughts:

 

I moved from Minnesota to Maryland in 1967. I am pretty sure that in Minnesota I had never registered as a Republican or a Democrat. I also am pretty sure that I voted for the Republican Elmer Andersen for governor in 1960, but even if I am wrong about that I am positive that my choice was in no way a matter of party politics.

Another example: In 1952 my parents supported Eisenhower, a Republican rather than Adlai Stevenson. They also participated in a frequent Friday night poker game with the Es and the Hs. It is absolutely impossible to imagine that their decision to vote for a republican instead of a democrat would have led to them being excluded from the game.

We have gone off the tracks. Again I can say no kidding. We have to worry about having a Trump supporter and a Biden supporter at the same dinner party. Yes, I think it's the Trump wing of the Republican Party that has escalated this beyond understanding, but we have to find a way back.

Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how today differs from the time of my youth. Change happens, I hope we can cope with it.

[mycroft]

Traditionally (okay, 2005, on the 'net, that's "traditional"), it's 27%.

[Gilithin]

Traditionally (okay, 2005, on the 'net, that's "traditional"), it's 27%.

First of all, 91.3% of statistics quoted on the 'net are made up on the spur of the moment, as was this one. Secondly, the two examples from that page are instructive: in the first Keyes got 27% of a 71.34% turnout, which works out at 19.26% of the electorate. In the second, Jones scored 25.92% of the vote; I cannot locate the turnout figure for this district but unless this safe seat, midterm election somehow managed ~75% or higher, it is also going to be under 20%.

[johnu]

Another example: In 1952 my parents supported Eisenhower, a Republican rather than Adlai Stevenson. They also participated in a frequent Friday night poker game with the Es and the Hs. It is absolutely impossible to imagine that their decision to vote for a republican instead of a democrat would have led to them being excluded from the game.

 

The Democrats and Republicans were much closely aligned in the 50's and 60's with the exception of Southern Democrats aka Dixiecrats and Republicans. For example, the 1964 Civil Rights bill.

 

The vote in Congress:

 

The House of Representatives:

 

Southern Democrats: 8–83 (9–91%) – four Representatives from Texas (Jack Brooks, Albert Thomas, J. J. Pickle, and Henry González), two from Tennessee (Richard Fulton and Ross Bass), Claude Pepper of Florida and Charles L. Weltner of Georgia voted in favor

Southern Republicans: 0–11 (0–100%)

Northern Democrats: 145–8 (95–5%)

Northern Republicans: 136–24 (85–15%)

 

The Senate:

 

Southern Democrats: 1–20 (5–95%) – only Ralph Yarborough of Texas voted in favor

Southern Republicans: 0–1 (0–100%) – John Tower of Texas, the only Southern Republican at the time, voted against

Northern Democrats: 45–1 (98–2%) – only Robert Byrd of West Virginia voted against

Northern Republicans: 27–5 (84–16%) – Norris Cotton (NH), Barry Goldwater (AZ), Bourke Hickenlooper (IA), Edwin Mecham (NM), and Milward Simpson (WY) voted against

 

If you are keeping score, the Republican party at the time was more liberal than the Democrats!!!

 

These days, the Southern Democrats are all Republicans, and basically all the Republicans have become radicalized anti-democracy conspiracy mongers.

[mycroft]

Hmm, I throw out a random link in a "the difference between a .200 hitter and a .250 hitter is one hit in 5 games" bunfight, to a site where the end of the introduction is literally "Rogers later stressed that the phrase was a joke, not some serious statistical proposition", instead of actually trying to argue a side.

 

I think "Whoosh" is the current expression (but probably 2 years old by now).

 

Oh, and this number was not, in fact, "made up on the spur of the moment." Stupid though it was, it was a number actually taken from something real.

 

And if you're arguing "only 70% turnout", then unless you're Australian (Hi, Pilowsky!) you know, and you know that your audience knows, that "70% turnout" is what should be *expected* in elections (with off-term elections getting lucky to get 50%). So, arguing that the other 30% don't hold that belief because they didn't vote it is - creative.

 

But I'm still not getting into this seriously; as I said, wondering if it's one person at every table that wants to kill me and my friends so they can make that little bit more money, or whether it's one in two tables, is either a distraction or a bunfight, and I don't need either.

[Winstonm]

On stopping someone like Trump - and Henry Ford?

 

Americans rarely pause to consider just how bizarre the presidential nominating process has become. No other major democracy routinely uses primaries to choose its political candidates, nor did the Founders of this country intend for primaries to play a role in the republican system they devised. Abraham Lincoln did not win his party’s nomination because he ran a good ground game in New Hampshire; rather, Republican elders saw in him a candidate who could unite rival factions within the party and defeat the Democratic nominee in the general election. Today’s system amounts to a radical experiment in direct democracy, one without precedent even in America’s own political history.

[kenberg]

On stopping someone like Trump - and Henry Ford?

Americans rarely pause to consider just how bizarre the presidential nominating process has become. No other major democracy routinely uses primaries to choose its political candidates, nor did the Founders of this country intend for primaries to play a role in the republican system they devised. Abraham Lincoln did not win his party's nomination because he ran a good ground game in New Hampshire; rather, Republican elders saw in him a candidate who could unite rival factions within the party and defeat the Democratic nominee in the general election. Today's system amounts to a radical experiment in direct democracy, one without precedent even in America's own political history.

 

And now quoting myself from a few posts up

"Lately, I have been thinking a lot about how today differs from the time of my youth. Change happens, I hope we can cope with it."

 

Ideas that sound good and perhaps in many ways are good can have consequences, side effects, that are not so good.

 

I mentioned that in Minnesota I did not (as near as I can recall) declare myself to be R or D. Party pros had a lot of influence over who the candidates were. A party pro choosing a candidate asks "How can we get votes from that large bloc in the center? ". Primary voters ask themselves "Who do I like best?" If you think about that, you can see how primaries are likely to produce R and D candidates who are further apart. A D primary will likely produce a candidate well-liked by Ds, but there will be no regard fo the views of Rs, and vice versa. The political pros look for someone with appeal across the spectrum. And we should not underestimate the psychological effect of registering as a D or an R. It becomes my team.In my case, I cannot name a single Raven just as I could not name a single (then referred to as) Redskin. But in my younger years I knew the batting averages of all the St. Paul Saints, the expected batting line-up and so on. The Saints were my team. They should win. (Yes, I do know the Saints played baseball and the Ravens play football, I am not totally dead.)

 

Several posters above mentioned that there used to be less of a gap between Rs and Ds. Yes. And primaries are part of the cause. The effect is predictable.

 

Having candidates chosen by primaries appeals to our sense of letting the people choose. But, well, we see the But.

 

Briefly on a different topic: PBS Newshour has had a series on child care. Apparently, the US is close to last in our provision for this. And it is needed. So I hope we can get a good system going. Such a childhood will be very different from my childhood. But of course, it already is very different.

 

The world has changed in many ways. Almost all change has some good features and some bad features. But change is inevitable. It's a good idea to anticipate the side effects.

 

 

 

[thepossum]

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, amongst politicians that about 33% of people will always vote for the same party - no matter who is in it.

[/Quote]

 

I have no idea where that tribal loyalty comes from

[pilowsky]

I have no idea where that tribal loyalty comes from

 

Usually from their parents - but who knows for sure.

If someone could figure it out they'd bottle it.

[Gilithin]

(Yes, I do know the Saints played baseball and the Ravens play football, I am not totally dead.)

I found this somewhat amusing - for me the Saints play football and Baltimore is associated more with Orioles and Colts than Ravens.

[kenberg]

I found this somewhat amusing - for me the Saints play football and Baltimore is associated more with Orioles and Colts than Ravens.

 

I suppose calling the St. Paul team the St. Paul Saints is a bit unimaginative. When major league baseball arrived we got the Minnesota Twins. At least it wasn't the Twin City Twins.

On the other hand, presumably nobody thinks that either name, Saints or Twins, is an ethnic slur.

And Ravens is even a literary reference. Impressive.

 

I have gone from one extreme to the other. I can still name Saints from the 1940s or early 50s, Eric Tipton and Danny Ozark for instance. I would bike over to the stadium, Lexington Park, on Sundays to watch a double header. Somewhere along the way I just lost interest.

 

Anyway, mindless allegiance to a local sports team can be fun, mindless allegiance to a political party is not a good idea.

[thepossum]

Usually from their parents - but who knows for sure.

If someone could figure it out they'd bottle it.

 

I like to think there is more to it than that

 

Of course it always has its limits and sometimes in our system we can at least sometimes give a preference to somebody else. But in my case I'm voting for something bigger no matter how dire current characters may be

 

Come to think of it and please don't tell anyone, my interests are usually better served by the other lot I will never ever vote for. Go figure

[y66]

I never saw the old Senators team that left DC for Minnesota and I never lived close enough to a major league baseball stadium or pro football stadium to ride my bike to a game. The closest I came was when we lived a few blocks from KU in Lawrence Kansas. On game days, we'd sell parking spaces in the alley behind our house then walk to the stadium a few blocks away.

 

I remember most of the starting line up from the 1968 Senators. That's the year my older sister got her driver's license. She's the baseball nut in my family or was until the players went on strike in the 90s which led her to cancel her season tickets for the Braves.

[pilowsky]

I like to think there is more to it than that

 

Of course it always has its limits and sometimes in our system we can at least sometimes give a preference to somebody else. But in my case I'm voting for something bigger no matter how dire current characters may be

 

Come to think of it and please don't tell anyone, my interests are usually better served by the other lot I will never ever vote for. Go figure

 

Your secret is safe here.

[thepossum]

Your secret is safe here.

 

😂

[Chas_P]

That's the year my older sister got her driver's license. She's the baseball nut in my family or was until the players went on strike in the 90s which led her to cancel her season tickets for the Braves.

I get it. The Yankees were paying Cecil Fielder $9M/year as a designated hitter. And they strike for higher wages? I haven't watched one game since....either in person or on TV.