The examples of the UK and Canada say otherwise.

The problem in the U.S. is that the districts determining the presidency (and thus the whole executive) are identical with the states and therefore far too large. That's what's forcing the presidential races to become two horse races, and since the presidency is so important, this in turn causes the entire political system to gravitate towards a two-party system.



Imho, you need a large, bipartisan majority of legislators who are interested in good faith negotiations and finding common ground, but you also need some ideologically more radical members to inject fresh ideas into the system and question the purported truths of the center.
I agree, however, that this is more a thing for the House than the Senate.

wait a second, weren't you the person who suggested that people are stupid and majorities could be ignored because politicians knew better? i guess that only applies if what they 'know better' is what their donors and the dnc want, huh?



which 'far-left lunacy' do you think he will be a door-opener for? do you have ANY specific examples of 'far-left' policies we could reasonably expect to see him push for, and what do you base that on? where exactly will that come from? who will steer him to the radical left fringe?

i 100% agree that he will be just a puppet, but his main influence (as it has ALWAYS been) will be his donors, and the corporate democrat establishment.

Some things I'm afraid might come out of a Biden presidency (many, but not all of them falling into the "far-left lunacy" category):

- the green new deal as envisioned by AOC
- enabling gun grabbing measures on the state level
- defunding the police, limiting the ability of the police to do its job by political correctness
- making diversity quotas mandatory in a lot of areas
- defunding or otherwise weakening border enforcement
- large-scale amnesty for illegal immigrants
- being supportive of conservative voices being silenced online, in the media and in the public sphere in general
- being supportive of the more delusional aspects of transgenderism
- being open to Democratic power grabs like packing the Supreme Court or granting DC and Puerto Rico statehood without counterbalance
- advancing the recent trend that the interests of 'big business' and 'big government' are increasingly aligned
- being too naive and lenient on China
- further expanding the scope and power of the federal bureaucracy
- setting the stage for his VP, who's all but guaranteed to be significantly to his left, to become his successor and the new leader of the Democratic party going forward
- replacing RBG and Breyer with young, liberal judges on the Supreme Court, guaranteeing a liberal block of 4 judges for decades to come. Coupled with Roberts breaking ranks and siding with the liberals on every truly important decision, this would prevent conservative majorities on the big issues for decades to come.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 14 2020 05:23am

i specifically asked for the 'lunatic' and 'fringe' policies because i want you to define what exactly you consider a fringe policy and who you think will realistically push biden to support it.

i did NOT ask you to give me a list of policies that are generally (and often without any basis in reality) fearmongered about in your political bubble, which is what you did there. as a 'totally reasonable' guy you would surely agree that not everything you disagree with is 'far-left' lunacy, right?

the green new deal as envisioned by AOC, gun grabbing, diversity quotas, "abolishing ICE", "defunding the police", large-scale amnesty, court packing and some aspects of transgenderism ARE fringe policies, even if they're not seen like that in your political bubble.

who will push for this stuff? the "squad", younger black leaders (the Stacey Abrams types), and also progressive whites (say someone like Warren or Beto). And of course liberal media like the NY Times with its 1619 project, to name just one example.

wrong on both accounts. those groups have an extremely limited influence on DNC policy making (you remember a certain senator sanders who championed progressive ideas and was attacked harsher than any corporate republican by the establishment), let alone on joe biden, who always put his DONORS first in all of his major political decisions. also, most of those are not at all fringe ideas, as they have widespread popular support.

you know who has been packing courts with activist political judges? trump. obama's pick (merrick garland) was already a concession and was still obstructed for a record time (!) by bitch mcconnell. trump's picks to the scotus and the lower courts could not have been any more political. replacing the minority of democrat appointed judges with centrist candidates is in no way a shift to the 'fringe left'.

gun grabbing is a myth, why not mention fema camps and death panels as well? it's funny how you people have no shame perpetuating that kind of propaganda, no matter how often it has been demonstrably wrong. you're once again just going down the list of fear mongering topics, and not at all addressing any even remotely realistic outcomes - as expected.

obama's environmental policy could be generously described as 'insufficient', and he was supposed to be the radical reformer and hope of progressives. so in which world will joe biden, who has strong connections to the fossil fuel industry, and already took their side regarding one of the most exploitative and unpopular practices, suddenly implement aoc's green new deal? you know as well as me that's complete BS, you're being dishonest there, not stupid.

defunding the police is only a 'fringe' position if you deliberately misrepresent it. 77% of americans understand it how the vast majority of those advocating for it mean it ( https://www.monmouth.edu/polling-institute/reports/monmouthpoll_us_070820/ ): de-militarise, re-focus on its core objectives, while using the freed up money to fund experts (social workers, mental health experts...) that can address things that police used to deal with (often entirely unsufficiently and violently to the detriment of everyone). and AGAIN it's an issue even campaign biden (who tries to pander to progressives) outright dismissed, so in how the fuck are you suggesting that's even remotely a possibility in the right wing version (just cut all funding and outright abolish police) after the election? madness or dishonesty?

it couldn't be any clearer, you're wrong on what you try to label 'fringe', and wrong on what you pretend joe biden would realistically do after being elected president. you're a blatantly dishonest fearmongerer, a hack.

This post was edited by fender on Jul 14 2020 07:19am

tcock and black xisten having a normal convo and the wannabe warmonger henirch wakes up at 3 pm local time to start launching e-blitzkriegs

I don't think the two contradict each other. Often times, the majority goes against their own interests!



Right and I think that's one thing that's admirable about parliamentary democracies. Radical voices are fine in order to shift the Overton window. Here in America, I think they do far more harm than good.

That's not a feature of your country's political system though, it's an unintended consequence of partisan gridlock which has rendered Congress dysfunctional. When the silent reasonable majority in Congress cant get anything noteworthy done anymore, the radicals take over the news cycles and the public discourse.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Jul 14 2020 12:12pm

Americans form governments and then have elections to pick which government, And the spoils system dictates that there is no power sharing or working together.

European systems have elections and then form governments out of the winners which often forces different parties to work together and share power.

Its very different.