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Credit where credit is due. Trump may be a horrible president overall but he has done more to foster peace with N. Korea than Obama ever did. Obama's policy of not even talking to hostile dictators was a horrific policy that did nothing to advance diplomatic relations.
@freemo Tulsi Gabbard is the Democrat who is anti-war.
Unfortunately, it is unlikely that the establishment democrats would allow her to be the candidate to run in the election, even if it meant allowing the republicans to win.
@TheGnuMaster I really really hope the democrats get their shit together and offer up someone half decent this time. But given their recent track record that seems unlikely.
@freemo If America was a Democracy they would have Mixed Member Proportional like Germany, or at least proportional representation like Netherlands and Italy.
The same reasons that the Weimar Republic was a failure for democracy is why the US system is.
Too much power is given to the President, and the people don't really get a choice when it comes to who represents them over all in society.
So whilst more than 75% may vote for different parties and people, only very tiny percentage get seats and wield power.
@TheGnuMaster I have always been a choice of ranked-choice voting or similar schemes. But I do agree about your remarks about the Weimar republic in fact I often state as much. But I disagree it is due to the president having too much power, in the USA the president has very very little power everyone just thinks he does. The issues are more around abandoning many personal rights, a broken voting system, and fear being the dominating factor among the public.
@TheGnuMaster The thing is, he cant. The president sending troops to invade without congressional approval is and always has been illegal under the constitution. We just stopped enforcing it.
Thats just it the president has very little power, we just sit back and do nothing when he goes beyond that power.
The rest I agree with though.
@adrint @TheGnuMaster It was rightfully ruled unconstitutional in Federal district court. So it cant be enforced nor should it.
@freemo I forgot to add the link to the results of the last Australian election. https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseStateFirstPrefsByParty-24310-NAT.htm
@freemo When talking about the president having too much power.
I mean where a president can send troops and an invade another country without congressional approval.
There may be aspects which limit the presidents power, however for the most part they have a lot of power that exceeds that of prime ministers or chancellors like in Germany, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia etc.
Rank Choice voting is good for eliminating the lesser of evil campaigning, however it fails to address the representative issue.
In Australia look at the percentage of 1st preference votes and compare it to how many seats the political parties get.
The Australian Green Party gets 1 seat if they are luck however got 10.40% of the national vote.
In MMP, they would get atleast 10.40% of the seats.
Australia has 150 seats, and by the model that both Germany and New Zealand have adopted with MMP they should have a minimum of 300 which can get bigger depending on how many extra seats need to be added based on the electorate seats and party totals.
10.40% of the vote would mean approximately 15.6 seats out of the 150 (in the current parliament) or 31 seats if there were 300 altogether.
Even with ranked choice voting, which Australia has, the Green Party only achieved 1 seat, with 10.40% of the national vote.
The Australian Labor Party (centre left - centre right) got 33.34% of the national vote, however doesn't get reflected in the arrangement of the seats.
Basically, regardless of how the country voted, if you don't win an electorate, you don't get representation.
In a Mixed Member Proportional system, it combines electorates and national total votes to make sure that the parliament represents the population in the best known way possible in terms of voters.
It is complicated to explain in a toot, but very effective and Germany supports it overwhelmingly.