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United States Politics

Dorothy

My love is stronger than my fear of death
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The United States will elect a new President in November of 2016, with the incumbent Barack Obama unable to seek another term due to Constitutional term limits. Here are the nominees. The first name listed is the candidate, the second is their running mate:

[REPUBLICAN PARTY]*

- Donald Trump (Businessman and celebrity, from New York)/Mike Pence (Governor of Indiana)

[DEMOCRATIC PARTY]*

- Hillary Clinton (Former Senator, Secretary of State, and First Lady, from New York)/Tim Kaine (Senator from, and former Governor of, Virginia)

[GREEN PARTY]*

- Jill Stein (Former Lexington Town Meeting member and physician, from Massachusetts)/Ajamu Baraka (Activist, from Washington, DC)

[LIBERTARIAN PARTY]*

- Gary Johnson (Former Governor of New Mexico)/William Weld (Former Governor of Massachusetts)

[EVAN MCMULLIN] (independent)*

- Evan McMullin (Former CIA agent, from Utah)/Mindy Finn (President of Empowered Women, from Texas)


[CONSTITUTION PARTY]*

- Darrell Castle (Attorney, from Tennessee)/Scott Bradley (University administrator, from Utah)

[AMERICAN DELTA PARTY]/[REFORM PARTY]*

- Rocky De La Fuente (Businessman, from California)/Michael Steinberg (from Florida)

[LAURENCE KOTLIKOFF] (independent)*

- Laurence Kotlikoff (Professor, from Massachusetts)/Edward E. Learner (Professor, from California)

[PARTY FOR SOCIALISM AND LIBERATION]/[PEACE AND FREEDOM PARTY]/[LIBERTY UNION PARTY]

- Gloria La Riva (Activist, from New Mexico)/Eugene Puryear (Activist, from Washington, DC)

[AMERICAN INDEPENDENT PARTY]

- Donald Trump/Mike Pence

[AMERICA'S PARTY]*

- Tom Hoefling (Activist, from Iowa)/Steve Schulin (from South Carolina)

[SOCIALIST PARTY USA]/[NATURAL LAW PARTY]

- Mimi Soltysik (Activist, from California)/Angela Walker (Activist, from Wisconsin)

[PROHIBITION PARTY]

- James Hedges (Former tax assessor, from Pennsylvania/Bill Bayes (from Mississippi)

[INDEPENDENT AMERICAN PARTY]

- Rocky Giordani (from California)/Farley Anderson (Author, from Utah)

[VETERANS PARTY OF AMERICA]

- Chris Keniston (Reliability engineer, from Texas)/Deacon Taylor (from Nevada)

[WORKERS WORLD PARTY]

- Monica Moorehead (Perennial candidate, from Alabama)/Lamont Lilly (from North Carolina)

[AMERICAN PARTY SOUTH CAROLINA]

- Peter Skewes (Professor, from South Carolina)

[AMERICAN SOLIDARITY PARTY]*

-Mike Maturen (Salesman, from Michigan)/Juan Muñoz (from Texas)

[NUTRITION PARTY]

- Rod Silva (Restaurateur, from New Jersey)

[SOCIALIST EQUALITY PARTY]

- Jerry White( Editor, from Michigan)/Niles Niemuth (from Wisconsin)^

[PACIFIST PARTY]

- Bradford Little (Activist, from Illinois)/Hannah Walsh

[INDEPENDENT AMERICAN PARTY (OTHER)]

- Kyle Kopitke (from Michigan)/Nathan Sorenson

[APPROVAL VOTING PARTY]

- Frank Atwood (from Colorado)/Blake Huber (from Colorado)

[LEGAL MARIJUANA NOW PARTY]

- Dan Vacek (from Minnesota)/Mark Elworth Jr. (from Nebraska)

[MISC. INDEPENDENT CANDIDATES]

- Joseph Maldonado (from Oklahoma)/Douglas Terranova
- Lynn Kahn (Doctor, from Maryland)/Kathleen Monahan (from Florida)
- Mike Smith (Lawyer, from Colorado)/Daniel White
- Princess Khadijah Jacob-Fambro (from California)/Milton Fambro (from California)
- Richard Duncan (from Ohio)/Ricky Johnson


* This party or candidate is on the ballot (including through write-ins) in enough states to potentially win 270 or more electoral votes.
^ Constitutionally ineligible due to age, birthplace, or other factors.


General Election Results

tumblr_ogjbpos6UD1qf1kero1_1280.png


Map to be updated as results come in. Red represents states won by Donald Trump. Blue represents states won by Hillary Clinton. Trump won 306 electoral votes to Clinton's 232 and thus won the election, but Clinton won the popular vote by .45%.

tumblr_o4tw8j1NEm1qf1kero4_r1_540.png


A map of the 2012 election, for comparison. Red represents Republican candidate Mitt Romney, while Blue represents Democratic candidate Barack Obama. Obama received 51.1% of the popular vote and 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206, making him the winner.

American Presidential elections work thusly: citizens of 18 years or older who are registered to vote cast their votes at their local polling station. Votes are cast in each of the 50 states as well as the District of Columbia. The candidate with the most votes in a state is considered to have "won" the state; they are then entitled to all of that's state's designated electors, which cast their votes in the Electoral College. Electors are proportioned to states according to the size of their Congressional delegation - 2 Senators and however many Representatives the state has, meaning the minimum number of electors is 3. If a candidate can secure 270 or more electoral votes, they win the Presidency.
 
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My prediction way early before anything happens: your nominees from the big two will be Rand Paul and Hilary Clinton.

I just feel like Rubio is going to blow it somehow... I know it sounds weird, but I just have this gut instinct that he's going to somehow screw up big time. Rand Paul may be new to the national scene, but he's taken over his father's passionate fanbase (and more importantly donor base).

If I were voting today, my vote would go to Rand Paul (unless Jon Huntsman were to run again), but of course there is a long way to go.
 
I just feel like Rubio is going to blow it somehow... I know it sounds weird, but I just have this gut instinct that he's going to somehow screw up big time.

Might have something to do with how he fared the first time the national spotlight was on him :p

Anyway, my support is currently for Sanders. He's unlikely to beat Clinton, but his presence will at least force her to make some promises to progressives.
 
I created a mental ranking of all the major candidates to see who I would pick over who in the general. So far I'll pick Hillary over all the Republicans except Rand Paul. Cruz an Rubio are way too inexperienced and I'm not happy at all about their stance on Cuba. I'm looking out for who has the most pragmatic foreign policy. All wars do is put us in more debt and breed foreign disdain.

I really like Bernie Sanders believe it or not. Takes balls to be a socialist here, yet he doesn't make my skin crawl like most leftists. I'd pick him over Cruz or Rubio as well. Overall this is going to be quite the interesting race.
 
I got Flame winning. No but Hilary, is the powerhouse if not paul gets the house
 
Can't see any Democrat except Clinton getting their party's nomination, unless somebody comes straight out of nowhere and steals her chance like the last time she ran.

Seriously though. What kind of name is "Vermin Supreme"? Is it a nickname or some kind of dumb joke?
 
Seriously though. What kind of name is "Vermin Supreme"? Is it a nickname or some kind of dumb joke?

Vermin Supreme is an activist and performance artist who "runs" for President every cycle to satirize American politics. It's his actual name, he legally changed it.
 
Seriously though. What kind of name is "Vermin Supreme"? Is it a nickname or some kind of dumb joke?

Vermin Supreme is an activist and performance artist who "runs" for President every cycle to satirize American politics. It's his actual name, he legally changed it.

You forgot to mention the fact that he's awesome.

Anyway, I really want Bernie Sanders to be elected, but it probably won't happen short of Hillary somehow screwing up. Keep a Republican out of the White House at all costs.
 
It's 2015. I have pretty much no opinions on all of these candidates. I'm also not registered to a political party so I can't vote in primaries in Connecticut. I'll stop by next year to voice my opinions on the candidates.

Clinton's already won the invisible primary, so getting the nomination shouldn't be a problem. I'm interested in seeing how the Republican primary goes.
 
Ohhhh, ohhhh, ohhh, Carly Fiorina is running for the Republican nomination!

*fingers crossed* Please give us another demon sheep ad, please give us another demon sheep ad...

(What? I need a new traumatizing avatar!)
 
I don't know much about Carly Fiorina's policies (I'm sure Americans will enlighten me) but on paper she seems like a breath of fresh air, someone from a background outside of politics and she had a point in her declaration interview that in the past people elected to office (not just in USA) had other jobs and then acheived elected office. Now we seem to have a political class where you sort of work your way up doing all sorts of shady deals and favours to get ahead.
 
Problem is, most of those other jobs were in business or law.

Typically - especially business- they're the people on the OTHER end of those same shady deals the politicians make.
 
The Democratic nomination is Hillary's to lose. She's the most well-known and will easily get the most financial backing, plus there's no Obama in the shadows to hijack the race at the last minute.

The Republican side is going to be very interesting, if not entertaining, to watch unfold. Cruz will be the most appealing to the conservative base, but he's far too extreme to win the general election. Paul might have to tone down his libertarianism to win support from social conservatives, possibly at the expense of his libertarian following. Rubio will probably get a brief time in the spotlight since there will be an allure of a Republican minority candidate, but I'm not sure he'll be able to make it last. Same for Carson. Jindal has a lower approval rating in Louisiana than Obama, so he's got no chance.

That leaves two Republicans with a realistic chance of landing in the White House: Jeb Bush and Scott Walker. Bush is the closest to the center and the most likely to bring in the moderates who could determine the outcome, however, voters might be turned off by his relation to the former President. Walker's one to keep an eye on - he's won three elections in a state that hasn't gone for a Republican presidential candidate since Reagan's second term. It also looks like he'll have the backing of the Koch brothers.
 
So I started reading about Scott Walker and found out he's controversial because of this right to work law.
Now I didn't know what that was and it turns out, until recently, workplaces where a majority voted to Unionise were then able to go and demand "dues" from their colleagues even if they didn't want to be in a Union, being in the Union became compulsory. He voted against that and Union Membership fell from 63,000 to 20,000 showing actually a 2/3 majority of the unions members didn't actually want to be there.

Now I am supportive of the idea of unions, but not forced membership it sounds to me like they were the Mafia going around demanding protection money, or else you lose your job etc.

Can anyone explain to me the alternate side of the case, f.e why they think union individuals should be able to demand membership fees from people who don't want to be in a union. Surely along with the freedom to join a union which must be protected, should also be protected the right not to join a union?
 
The alternate side of the case is pretty simple: if you're in a workplace with a union, you generally get the benefits of the union whether or not you're part of it. For example, if the union gets workplace safety improved, everyone gets workplace safety improvement (they're not going to add safety railing to ONLY the workstations of union members), whether or not they want to be part of the union. Generally also (because store owners don't tend to want to have fifty different payscales operating at once), if the union get salary increases, everyone gets their salary increased, whether or not they're members.

If you make union fees not mandatory, the all-too-likely result is that people will just say "Why should I pay my fee? The union's going to benefit me either way!". If a few people do it it's one thing, but once the numbers grow the result is weaker unions who can't act as a counter-weight to the power of the business owners in labor relations (and labor relations are extremely one-sided without unions acting as a counter-weight, refer to the nineteenth century for demonstration), and people generally getting screwed over.

In effect, the true intent of the law (as with many other recent laws) is to undermine unions and give business owners more freedom to pay their employees less in less safe work conditions.
 
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The alternate side of the case is pretty simple: if you're in a workplace with a union, you generally get the benefits of the union whether or not you're part of it. For example, if the union gets workplace safety improved, everyone gets workplace safety improvement (they're not going to add safety railing to ONLY the workstations of union members), whether or not they want to be part of the union. Generally also (because store owners don't tend to want to have fifty different payscales operating at once), if the union get salary increases, everyone gets their salary increased, whether or not they're members.

If you make union fees not mandatory, the all-too-likely result is that people will just say "Why should I pay my fee? The union's going to benefit me either way!". If a few people do it it's one thing, but once the numbers grow the result is weaker unions who can't act as a counter-weight to the power of the business owners in labor relations (and labor relations are extremely one-sided without unions acting as a counter-weight, refer to the nineteenth century for demonstration), and people generally getting screwed over.

In effect, the true intent of the law (as with many other recent laws) is to undermine unions and give business owners more freedom to pay their employees less in less safe work conditions.

Ok that makes sense but what if the Union you are forced to join isn't good. It hasn't achieved any pay rises or better work conditions. You are effectively being made to pay for a service they might fail to provide, and you particularly don't want. And in America freedom of choice on what you purchase, is like a cornerstone.

And another seperate thing I don't understand is if 2/3 of previously unionised Wisconsin people (Wisconsinites???) left as soon as they weren't forced to join anymore, surely that means a majority of union workers were in favour of the law. (Admittedly some of that 43,000 could be people who previously liked it, but now don't see the point as it's not mandatory but surely it'd not be enough to become a majority of the workers? Is that maybe why Walker won his re-election?
 
In that case there are laws in place to allow to change unions. I can't speak for Wisconsin specifically, but Quebec uses a similar must-pay formula, and it's always possible for an employee to call for a check on whether or not the union has the support of 50% of the employees it covers. If it does, it stays, if it doesn't, it goes. Likewise there are procedure in place that determine a time when it's possible to setup a new union and demand recognition for it if you have enough support. (essentially, think of it as election season for unions).

Like I said, walking out of unions the moment you're not forced to pay for them is a natural result. Nobody likes paying money, even for things that benefit them. If they can get the same benefits without paying, they're going to do it.
 
Problem is, most of those other jobs were in business or law.

Typically - especially business- they're the people on the OTHER end of those same shady deals the politicians make.

In her particular case, Fiorina is best-known in the business world for being a chronic self-promoter and egotist who was voted the 19th worst CEO of all time.

She's springing out of the gate directly into the list of also-rans.
 
Also, she thought the demon sheep ad was a good electoral strategy.

Having political credentials after THAT...kind of not possible.
 
Please note: The thread is from 7 years ago.
Please take the age of this thread into consideration in writing your reply. Depending on what exactly you wanted to say, you may want to consider if it would be better to post a new thread instead.
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