For those of us that enjoy the American spectacle every leap year and the fulfilment and joy that comes with it. Who's in, who's out? Who'll win and who'll claim it's all rigged? Who'll have the best party and who the longest hangover?

Doesn't matter who is in the White House the massive poverty numbers in the country the jail records regular school massacres, violent police and the world corporate imperialism will continue. Wish our television news dealt much less with the nutjob corner. Might as well put another damn star on their flag!

Rjhowie's got a point, depressing as it is.
But maybe things they are a-changin...

What's the other star for?

No idea. Maybe Puerto Rico?

I honestly wish they would change Macallan. Having visited the place twice years ago. I met a couple from Philadelphia when I was returning from a day rail trip to DC. Moved a bit so the husband could sit with his wife in the waiting room and they appreciated that. So we got into a great chat and before they got off at Philly said if I was ever there again to contact them. Two years later I was back based in NYC and phoned them and went down staying with them for 2 nights. Both enjoyed each other's company and they were full of questions .Both were retired professionals although I did nearly scratch my head when asked if there was coloured tv in Scotland (honestly!).  Also wondered if i knew what French Toast was for breakfast. They dug out a book of Robert Burns poems and asked me to repeat a couple due to the Scots accent into a tape recorder. On my trip down to them I got into chats with people travelling to Florida on the same train and ended up teaching kids Scots songs. Getting off at Philadelphia meant I had to weave off a crowd at the windows!

So I am aware of the decents and sensibles in the ex-colonies and there is one from the early days of the forum when on the Opera corner where we both keep in touch from both sides of the pond. It is just so damn sad that although there are plenty of decent and intelligent folk over in the USA they are tragically saddled with a very unfortunate system and that includes the political system which I still say is flawed, controlled and lacking. Two parties are the thing and if outside of them no chance. Sad really.

Two parties are the thing and if outside of them no chance. Sad really.

Yes. I recall when the Republican Party had no chance... How'd that work out?

I honestly wish they would change Macallan.

I think I owe you some context.
I grew up ( for small values of 'grew up' ) in eastern Germany. When the wall came down I was 15. After finishing school I ended up in West Berlin. Then, after some university and such, thanks to shenanigans at the old Opera Forum, I ended up in Florida, and then Tennessee. I've been living in the US for 14 years now, married to a fellow former Opera Forum user.
I had no idea how fucked up and downright ridiculous things are around here. A lot of what I thought of as eastern bloc propaganda Way Back When actually turned out to be true, at least since the 1980s, and especially since 2017.
That said, a lot of younger Americans just about had it with the old crap. And hopefully they will vote.

AfD country in other words, with Berlin/Brandenburg and some other exceptions.

How is Mynx doing, long time no post?

Yes. I recall when the Republican Party had no chance...

I am pretty sure nobody said "no chance", by the way the election system goes they had and have a pretty good chance, also in 2020.  What I did say, and would be happy to repeat, is that if Trump were elected there is a good chance that would destroy the Republican party. Were that to happen I would say good riddance, they are clearly putting partisan interest over anything else (which may be the case with the Democratic party as well, but we are not yet in the position to know).

The Republican party has tied themselves to the mast of the Trump ship, and will go down with it.  This mix of fear, hate, lies and blinding stupidity is not serving America well, and the reaction is likely to be harsh, but probably not that well thought out.

Well Macallan , I do hope to be frank that younger Americans do try and get by the two-party control freakery and much else that is not positive or good for the future.

That they inherited from the British. The American separatists, after winning the war of independence, revolutionised about everything else, but kept the British election system. Furthermore, the reforms they added exacerbated the weaknesses of the British system. The system very strongly favours two parties, and those parties in power will have strong advantages in the system remaining just as it is. Even if the Republican party collapses the Democrats won't change the system, and neither would whatever successor party to the Republicans that would emerge.

To see how hard this system is to change, look to Britain. When the once-in-a-blue-moon event of a hung parliament happened, forcing a coalition with a third party, and the third party set an electoral reform referendum as a requirement, still this baby step reform failed badly. 

Oh for goodness sake what a load of codswallop saying that they inherited our system. It was corporates who created the revolution and cobbled a system to ensure it stayed the way they wanted. The new "democracy" was well controlled and two-faced. The founders included slave owners  like the people I have mentioned here before so you are not being balanced at all but warping history to pat your intelligence on the head. It is not accurate it is guff.

"It was who created the revolution and cobbled a system to ensure it stayed the way they wanted."
You might briefly explain that statement.

Oh concisely,  it was the upper money class that organised the Revolution and as principled as little (!). They even included slave owners and the basis for the future corporate control of the country.  So a bit of unfair continuiyt there dear man.

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Indeed.
Anyway I doubt that the next elections will bring any better results. Probably Trump again, if not, something even worst.

America has initiated a divergent course from Europe and there's no way they will ever return back.
Like lemmings, they run into their own catastrophe.

And finally the race for 2020 is fully on. From now on it will be all election all the time, and now we can dispense with all this civility nonsense. This is going to be deep and dirty.

Yea it is.

To think of it, just two years from now we may have President-Elect Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Hillary is by now an emotional and physical wreck, ripe for retirement. She would survive another campaign only if she got the right drugs at the right time, a lot of them, even though I guess there is an overdose threshold for her too. She needs constant attention by handlers. She is unpresentable as a president of any country, in a different way than Trump, but not in a better way.

Hillary is by now an emotional and physical wreck, ripe for retirement. She would survive another campaign only if she got the right drugs at the right time, a lot of them, even though I guess there is an overdose threshold for her too. She needs constant attention by handlers.

Enough for the the Land of Freedom.
Very strange things are happening in such Land but no ones speaks about it. Except here and a few places more.

Anyway, Europeans have to pay attention to USA, Russia and China. The three at the same time.

WA Supreme Court Upholds Fine Against Presidential Electors Who Failed To Cast Vote In Accordance With Popular Vote

In this latest episode of electioneering in American politics, [three presidential electors in Washington State] took it upon themselves to decide who they believed deserved election and not support that of the common voter. In this case, three electors reportedly perceived that then Candidate Donald Trump would win the election and to at least in a hail Mary type of stunt forestall this by casting their vote for Colin Powell instead of Hillary Clinton who won the state's popular vote.

[...]

Strangely, the penalty afforded was only civil in nature and in a comparatively weak fine....

Here a third of the electors (four of twelve) delegated to Washington abandoned their duty to elect the Clinton ticket. Had instead all twelve voted for the Powell ticket they would have effectively disenfranchised the entirety of the Washington electorate and collectively suffered in total twelve thousand dollars.

Yes, the fine is small compared to the blatant act of spitting at ordinary voters' decision, but why institute a political office where the function is to simply reaffirm what the voters already decided? Since the voters already decided it, it should move on to implementation. The fine is ludicrously small and weak, but the whole presidential electors thingie, as instituted in Washington State, is completely unnecessary.

Background Facts:

... The people of the state do not vote for presidential electors. Rather, they vote for presidential candidates. The nominees of the party that wins the popular vote are appointed by the legislature to be Washington State's presidential electors....


... Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine won the popular vote in Washington State....

... Appellants did not vote for Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine, as required by their pledge, but instead voted for Colin Powell for president and a different individual for vice-president....

That dated idea needs replaced.

It is an additional ambiguity. How independent are the electors? If the choice is "not at all", why have them?

This is a constitutional crisis waiting to happen. If once presidential candidate wins the most electors, but sufficient electors switch side so that another candidate wins, what happens next?

Abolishing them before that happens would be the sounder choice.

This is a constitutional crisis waiting to happen. If once presidential candidate wins the most electors, but sufficient electors switch side so that another candidate wins, what happens next?

From what I understand to allow for exactly that scenario is basically the entire purpose of the electoral college.

It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any preestablished body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. A small number of persons, selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass, will be most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.

Yes, there are two interpretations: The electors as a safety valve and the electors as an obsolete elaboration. As long as there are many of one and many of the other, a LOT of people are going to be really, really, really unhappy and angry if this situation occurred. This situation would be worse than Trump, and harder to manage. 

Complicating the picture state legislations have their own rules for their electors. It could be Republicans vs Democrats, states vs federation, courts against Congress.

The electors as a safety valve

Its common use for that today is a retcon. That it's meant to muddle up some sort of totalitarian power grab seems counter-intuitive. Laws requiring electors to follow popular votes are meant to ease peoples minds about that being used for the exact opposite result. Tho, the stipulation still predated the necessary analytics that make manipulation of voting districts so rampant nowadays.

In its purest form it's meant to keep the election process from breaking down. When hijacking a wagon carrying the vote or , more likely, an Indian raid could inadvertently prevent a tally in D.C. the electors could still act on behalf of, and in accordance with, their understanding of their regions likely outcome. So they'd not even have a vote to reference in cases where constitutional necessity was applied. Other than that following the popular vote was the expected and an understood responsibility.

Add 200yrs of band-aids to the understanding of it and look at the mess we have now. Removing it never seemed the be a solution tho. (smh)           

Political history is a sequence of retcons, but US political history is particularly creative. I think it is because of the need to combine two things:

• Invoke the wisdom of the founding fathers
• Account for that today's political system and realities are very different to 200 years ago

The role of the president is very different from expected, and the early electoral colleges were appointed. The differences are larger than the similarities. But "the electoral college was designed so as to handle whatever issue people care about in [year]". The electoral college was not about small vs large state, or state vs federation, though those were important issues of the day, and still matters. 

Could be instructive to compare with the EU, a far looser organisation where the member countries call the shots. In our case we have no founding fathers to worry about, we are clearly making this up as we go along. Similar issues though, except that nobody cares very much who are going to become presidents of the EU, up for (s)election now. In a way the EU presidents are closer to the original intent than the US president is.