The Next President is...

[brabus]

20 minutes ago, herkbier said:

Ranked choice voting would help to relieve the stranglehold the extreme candidates hold in the parties..

No it would not. RCV is another “magical unicorn and rainbows!” sales pitch that may sound great at first contact before any scrutiny. See Article 1. Here’s an excerpt from a Columbia professor’s article:

”So how could any decent, intelligent person not support IRV? One answer is that situations can arise in which IRV results are clearly unreasonable. For starters, what would you think of a system that chose C as the winner in a 3-candidate race where majorities of the voters expressed a preference for A over B and for A over C? In the IRV election of Example 3 below, this is precisely what happens!

Example 3.

4 CAB              4 CB 
3 BAC ---------->  3 BC ----> C wins
2 ACB   drop A     2 CB

In the first round, A is eliminated. C, second choice of A supporters, gets 2 more votes in round-2 and therefore beats B 6-3. But notice that 6 of the 9 voters placed A ahead of B and 5 voters placed A ahead of C. So, altho A would have beaten both rivals in 2-candidate elections, C comes out on top in this 3-candidate race. Putting it another way, if there had been a 2-candidate election between A and C, A would have won, but the entry of B into the race mysteriously makes C the winner. Not good!”

That’s just one example of many. I too thought it sounded good at first hearing, until I did my own research. 

Edited September 13, 2024 by brabus

[Lord Ratner]

34 minutes ago, brabus said:

No it would not. RCV is another “magical unicorn and rainbows!” sales pitch that may sound great at first contact before any scrutiny. See Article 1. Here’s an excerpt from a Columbia professor’s article:

”So how could any decent, intelligent person not support IRV? One answer is that situations can arise in which IRV results are clearly unreasonable. For starters, what would you think of a system that chose C as the winner in a 3-candidate race where majorities of the voters expressed a preference for A over B and for A over C? In the IRV election of Example 3 below, this is precisely what happens!

Example 3.

4 CAB              4 CB 
3 BAC ---------->  3 BC ----> C wins
2 ACB   drop A     2 CB

In the first round, A is eliminated. C, second choice of A supporters, gets 2 more votes in round-2 and therefore beats B 6-3. But notice that 6 of the 9 voters placed A ahead of B and 5 voters placed A ahead of C. So, altho A would have beaten both rivals in 2-candidate elections, C comes out on top in this 3-candidate race. Putting it another way, if there had been a 2-candidate election between A and C, A would have won, but the entry of B into the race mysteriously makes C the winner. Not good!”

That’s just one example of many. I too thought it sounded good at first hearing, until I did my own research. 

But that's a dumb hypothetical. There is no two candidate election between A and C, or A and B. Why worry about what would have happened in the hypothetical election, that isn't in fact happening. 

In that example a got the fewest "top" votes, So they either would have lost in a three-way election, or been eliminated from the runoff. 

 

That's exactly how the system is supposed to work.

 

And this dude is a professor?

[brabus]

21 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

But that's a dumb hypothetical. There is no two candidate election between A and C, or A and B. Why worry about what would have happened in the hypothetical election, that isn't in fact happening. 

In that example a got the fewest "top" votes, So they either would have lost in a three-way election, or been eliminated from the runoff. 

 

That's exactly how the system is supposed to work.

 

And this dude is a professor?

It’s retarded because you end up with a lot of votes not counting (e.g. “exhausted ballots”) and you end up with a too high of risk of people weaseling their way into victory when they would have had no chance in a traditional primary to general election system. I’m a fan of every vote counts and I’m not a fan of a person getting elected who a plurality of the voters did not want. 
 

Here’s a humorous Op Ed regarding AK’s RCV and how that’s working out…cliff notes: a dude who got 621 votes (out of 108,407 cast) is going to the general election on the Dem ticket as one of the “top 4” from the primary. Now I don’t think it’ll work out for him for multiple reasons, but it does showcase the absurd outcomes that occur with RCV. 

 

Edited September 13, 2024 by brabus

[Lord Ratner]

2 minutes ago, brabus said:

It’s retarded because you end up with a lot of votes not counting (e.g. “exhausted ballots”) and you end up with a too high of risk of people weaseling their way into victory when they would have had no chance in a traditional primary to general election system. I’m a fan of every vote counts and I’m not a fan of a person getting elected who a plurality of the voters did not want. 

I don't think using the traditional primary election system as evidence of ranked-choice's faults makes much sense at all. The whole argument is that the traditional primary and election system is broken. 

 

Point in case, we have two absolutely ridiculous candidates, specifically because no one is willing to risk "throwing away their vote." 

 

Ranked choice voting allows you to vote for who you actually want. The example above is evidence of why rank choice voting works, not why it doesn't work. The only way A wins is to break every 3+ candidate election into a series of 2-way matchups. No one does that anywhere. 

 

There might be convincing arguments for the status quo, but that link isn't it.

[SurelySerious]

I don't think using the traditional primary election system as evidence of ranked-choice's faults makes much sense at all. The whole argument is that the traditional primary and election system is broken. 
 
Point in case, we have two absolutely ridiculous candidates, specifically because no one is willing to risk "throwing away their vote." 
 
Ranked choice voting allows you to vote for who you actually want. The example above is evidence of why rank choice voting works, not why it doesn't work. The only way A wins is to break every 3+ candidate election into a series of 2-way matchups. No one does that anywhere. 
 
There might be convincing arguments for the status quo, but that link isn't it.

Well…no one even voted for one of the candidates. You know, from the party protecting democracy.

[brabus]

37 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

The whole argument is that the traditional primary and election system is broken. 

I don’t necessarily disagree with that statement, I just don’t think RCV is the solution.

[ViperMan]

2 hours ago, brabus said:

No it would not. RCV is another “magical unicorn and rainbows!” sales pitch that may sound great at first contact before any scrutiny. See Article 1. Here’s an excerpt from a Columbia professor’s article:

”So how could any decent, intelligent person not support IRV? One answer is that situations can arise in which IRV results are clearly unreasonable. For starters, what would you think of a system that chose C as the winner in a 3-candidate race where majorities of the voters expressed a preference for A over B and for A over C? In the IRV election of Example 3 below, this is precisely what happens!

Example 3.

4 CAB              4 CB 
3 BAC ---------->  3 BC ----> C wins
2 ACB   drop A     2 CB

In the first round, A is eliminated. C, second choice of A supporters, gets 2 more votes in round-2 and therefore beats B 6-3. But notice that 6 of the 9 voters placed A ahead of B and 5 voters placed A ahead of C. So, altho A would have beaten both rivals in 2-candidate elections, C comes out on top in this 3-candidate race. Putting it another way, if there had been a 2-candidate election between A and C, A would have won, but the entry of B into the race mysteriously makes C the winner. Not good!”

That’s just one example of many. I too thought it sounded good at first hearing, until I did my own research. 

It's not a unicorn. It's a different paradigm for weighing peoples' choices and preferences. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

The author of that Columbia article has chosen a very particular way in which to count votes. He successively eliminates candidates based on multiple rounds of who gets the least number of votes. That is not the only way to count votes in such a system. He certainly knows this fact, and that he neglects to address it, and show other ways of counting and perhaps different outcomes, betrays his bias against such a system. i.e. he's pulling the wool over his readers' eyes.

Take his example which you provided:

4 CAB              4 CB 
3 BAC ---------->  3 BC ----> C wins
2 ACB   drop A     2 CB

It's a totally contrived example. In the majority of cases, the extreme candidates will be represented on the "ends" of the choice spectrum - put differently, the middle candidate will in almost all cases be the same (for example, most people would vote 1. Trump, 2. Kennedy, 3. Harris OR 1 Harris, 2. Kennedy, 3. Trump). In the constructed example provided by the author, the middle candidate is A, A, and C - this is not a likely outcome in our currently hyper-polarized political reality. Even still, I'll take him at his word that such an odd outcome is possible: this contrived example still relies on and requires a unique counting scheme to result in a nonsensical outcome.

Suffice it to say, there are multiple - better - ways of executing the counting system in a ranked-choice voting scheme which that article side-steps. Opponents point to issues like this usually because they have some predilection against it - it is very difficult to exercise fear-based politics in such a system. Understand though, there are more fair and optimal ways of weighing votes, eliminating candidates, and settling on a candidate who is satisfactory to the majority of voters - which is the ultimate test and purpose of a democracy (republic).

Look at it this way: we currently have ranked-choice voting, it's just a 1 or a 0. I'd much rather have a choice between a 6 or an 8 at the end of the night...and that's the purpose of the ranked-choice scheme: to eliminate the other people at the bar from choosing who you have to bang at the end of the night.

Under our current system, you either get to bang the 10, or are forced to bang a dude...

Edited September 13, 2024 by ViperMan

[Lord Ratner]

9 hours ago, brabus said:

It’s retarded because you end up with a lot of votes not counting (e.g. “exhausted ballots”) and you end up with a too high of risk of people weaseling their way into victory when they would have had no chance in a traditional primary to general election system. I’m a fan of every vote counts and I’m not a fan of a person getting elected who a plurality of the voters did not want. 
 

Here’s a humorous Op Ed regarding AK’s RCV and how that’s working out…cliff notes: a dude who got 621 votes (out of 108,407 cast) is going to the general election on the Dem ticket as one of the “top 4” from the primary. Now I don’t think it’ll work out for him for multiple reasons, but it does showcase the absurd outcomes that occur with RCV. 

 

Did you read that article completely? It has nothing to do with ranked choice voting. They go to a top four, and two of the top candidates decided to drop out. So two of the lower candidates moved up. The article gives no indication that there were additional candidates that got votes between the dude with 621 and the top vote getters. The real headline of this article should be "nobody wants to serve in elected office in Alaska"

 

The only thing that article shows is that Alaskans continue to be, as they always have been, batshit crazy.

[herkbier]

9 hours ago, brabus said:

No it would not. RCV is another “magical unicorn and rainbows!” sales pitch that may sound great at first contact before any scrutiny. See Article 1. Here’s an excerpt from a Columbia professor’s article:

”So how could any decent, intelligent person not support IRV? One answer is that situations can arise in which IRV results are clearly unreasonable. For starters, what would you think of a system that chose C as the winner in a 3-candidate race where majorities of the voters expressed a preference for A over B and for A over C? In the IRV election of Example 3 below, this is precisely what happens!

Example 3.

4 CAB              4 CB 
3 BAC ---------->  3 BC ----> C wins
2 ACB   drop A     2 CB

In the first round, A is eliminated. C, second choice of A supporters, gets 2 more votes in round-2 and therefore beats B 6-3. But notice that 6 of the 9 voters placed A ahead of B and 5 voters placed A ahead of C. So, altho A would have beaten both rivals in 2-candidate elections, C comes out on top in this 3-candidate race. Putting it another way, if there had been a 2-candidate election between A and C, A would have won, but the entry of B into the race mysteriously makes C the winner. Not good!”

That’s just one example of many. I too thought it sounded good at first hearing, until I did my own research. 

I said it would help relieve the stranglehold the extremes have on the parties.. which it would. 
 

Your example is confusing the feature with the bug. Political strategies will change due to the new voting system, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The current system doesn’t seem to be among anyone but the elites happy..

I really haven’t done much in depth research on RCV.. seems to be working in Australia alright, I understand they have implemented it differently than Alaska has, but I’m not sure in what way 

[Lord Ratner]

7 hours ago, ViperMan said:

Under our current system, you either get to bang the 10, or are forced to bang a dude...

I'd take those odds. The dude is probably Biff anyway, he looks soft. 

 

But seriously, under our current system you either get to bang the bartender's wheelchair-bound grandma, or a dude. 

It would be a refreshing change to have "the 10" running for office.

[SocialD]

This thread is a great reminder of some words I received from a rather wealthy dude many moons ago.  I don't have near enough time, money or energy to get my preferred candidates into office.  So I prefer to spend my time, money and energy in figuring out how to legally pay as little tax as possible.  How I do that may change from administration to administration, but there is always a way.  It appears to be working for him and he's one of the happiest people I know lol.  

Edited September 13, 2024 by SocialD

[brabus]

26 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

Did you read that article completely? It has nothing to do with ranked choice voting. They go to a top four, and two of the top candidates decided to drop out. So two of the lower candidates moved up. The article gives no indication that there were additional candidates that got votes between the dude with 621 and the top vote getters. The real headline of this article should be "nobody wants to serve in elected office in Alaska"

 

The only thing that article shows is that Alaskans continue to be, as they always have been, batshit crazy.

I did. The point is the guy made it in the first place, which would have never happened in a “normal” system, even with people dropping out.

 GOP primary example: I RCV Desantis, Vivek, Trump. Of total votes,  Desantis gets 49.5%, Trump 30%, Vivek 20.5%. Thank God, we have Desantis as the nominee! Oh wait, he didn’t get 50%, so now we have to do a runoff and Vivek is out. Now we end up with Trump because he bests Desantis in the 1v1 runoff. Desantis won a massive plurality in the first round, but doesn’t matter, and now I got my 3rd choice when my first choice “won” (in a standard election) the first go at it. We have now watched someone win who objectively did not have the most support amongst primary voters and many votes did not count in the end (e.g. someone who went Vivek, Scott, Haley). That’s bullshit in my opinion.

While not RCV, look at how Kamala is the dem nominee with zero votes. Not one person gave her a primary vote. It’s not the same, but RCV promotes a similar issue: you end up with people like Kamala making it when there were overall better candidates who were more liked, but because of a severely imperfect system, they’re out and she’s in.

 

Edited September 13, 2024 by brabus

[herkbier]

Your GOP primary example.. is this:

49.5% Dxx

30% Txx

20.5% RTD

There are zero RDT voters? Math in public, but you just need 0.6% RDT and Desantis wins.
 

And.. if that’s not the case, it just indicates that DeSantis, in your example, is more extreme than Trump. 

[Lord Ratner]

11 minutes ago, brabus said:

I did. The point is the guy made it in the first place, which would have never happened in a “normal” system, even with people dropping out.

 GOP primary example: I RCV Desantis, Vivek, Trump. Of total votes,  Desantis gets 49.5%, Trump 30%, Vivek 20.5%. Thank God, we have Desantis as the nominee! Oh wait, he didn’t get 50%, so now we have to do a runoff and Vivek is out. Now we end up with Trump because he bests Desantis in the 1v1 runoff. Desantis won a massive plurality in the first round, but doesn’t matter, and now I got my 3rd choice when my first choice “won” (in a standard election) the first go at it. We have now watched someone win who objectively did not have the most support amongst primary voters and many votes did not count in the end (e.g. someone who went Vivek, Scott, Haley). That’s bullshit in my opinion.

While not RCV, look at how Kamala is the dem nominee with zero votes. Not one person gave her a primary vote. It’s not the same, but RCV promotes a similar issue: you end up with people like Kamala making it when there were overall better candidates who were more liked, but because of a severely imperfect system, they’re out and she’s in.

 

Once again it's a misanalysis of how RCV is supposed to work. 

 

You can't apply the rules of a traditional election to an RCV election. People voted differently (for their first choice) specifically *because* they were voting ranked choice. 

However your scenario is perfectly illustrative, because if they didn't have RCV they would have just voted Trump in the first place to not "waste their vote," just like many of us are in this election. So we get Trump either way, but in your example because the minor candidates simply didn't have enough popularity (as minor candidates I'll add) to beat the candidate with the most support.

This also ignores the fact that many of the examples as to why RCV doesn't work are incredibly contrived. That professor's article creates a series of ballot examples, but only provides three of the possible six voting combinations in a three candidate election. 

You also can't say that someone doesn't have "the most support" just because they didn't get the most first place rankings in an RCV election. Again, the entire purpose of an RCV election is to allow minor candidates, who are in fact the primary choice of a voter, to get the first position.

But that doesn't equal the most support in RCV. In your example above, it is highly likely that Donald Trump would be the second place choice of a vast majority of conservative voters who simply prefer one of the minor candidates more. If Donald Trump doesn't get a single first place vote, but the entirety of the second place vote, he absolutely has more support than 4 other candidates splitting the first-place votes.

The second example of gaming the system also assumes complete control over the vote. Which no one will have. It also assumes that problem is somehow not inherent to any voting system. But we have that now.

Your last paragraph has no basis. She didn't receive any votes, and a candidate who receives no votes in rcv is not elected. There is no comparison between what the Democrats have done with Kamala and *any* voting system, because no voting system was used to select her.

 

Yeah, a weighted system as suggested in the professor's article would be better. But it is completely impractical to expect a population to be able to understand that and do the necessary math. Rcv is a simple system that solves 95% of a complicated problem. The metric for whether or not it is successful is not if it is perfect, only if it is better than what we have. And that's easy.

[brabus]

13 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

because if they didn't have RCV they would have just voted Trump in the first place

Invalid statement. Desantis had a massive plurality, and if all the the voters who had originally not put him in their ranked choices been allowed to re-vote for just Desantis vs. Trump, they likely vote Desantis because they detest Trump and won’t vote for him out of principle (but that’s not an option, so their ballots are shredded and they have zero say).

Here’s the bottom line, you’re OK with a candidate clearly beating everyone, yet failing to achieve 50%, and then a different person ultimately winning the election in round 15 of vote tabulations. Cool, I’m not. 

And none of this is to say I think our voting system is smooth sailing, just that I think there are too many pitfalls in RCV for it to be the best solution.

13 minutes ago, Lord Ratner said:

Your last paragraph has no basis.

Then you didn’t read what I wrote. It wasn’t a direct comparison, it was highlighting how RCV is another way you end up in a similar position as the Dem party has currently, albeit via very different ways. 

Edited September 13, 2024 by brabus

[Lord Ratner]

18 minutes ago, brabus said:

Invalid statement. Desantis had a massive plurality, and if all the the voters who had originally not put him in their ranked choices been allowed to re-vote for just Desantis vs. Trump, they likely vote Desantis because they detest Trump and won’t vote for him out of principle (but that’s not an option, so their ballots are shredded and they have zero say).

Here’s the bottom line, you’re OK with a candidate clearly beating everyone, yet failing to achieve 50%, and then a different person ultimately winning the election in round 15 of vote tabulations. Cool, I’m not. 

And none of this is to say I think our voting system is smooth sailing, just that I think there are too many pitfalls in RCV for it to be the best solution.

Then you didn’t read what I wrote. It wasn’t a direct comparison, it was highlighting how RCV is another way you end up in a similar position as the Dem party has currently, albeit via very different ways. 

You are still, once again, missing the point. And making a pretty massive assumption at the same time. Also, what do you mean "not put him in their ranked choices?" Rcv allows you to put all of the candidates in the order you prefer them. If you leave a candidate out, it implies that there is no scenario by which you support them. So why on Earth would any of those hypothetical voters vote for DeSantis if they left him out of their first ballot?

They are allowed to "revote." That's exactly what their ballot does. If their preferred candidate gets knocked off, then their second choice, which in your scenario would absolutely not be Trump, gets the votes. That would go to DeSantis, giving him a majority and the win. 

There are only shredded ballots under the current system, which gave us Trump despite disantis's plurality. 

It's still possible under rcv that Trump would have won, because a lot of DeSantis voters very likely would have gone to Trump as their second choice. Just like a lot of Vivek voters would have gone to Trump as their second choice. That's not a fault of RCV, it's a reality of politics. Both DeSantis and vivek had supporters who liked them as a "polished" version of trump. And yet neither viveks voters or DeSantis's voters were likely to vote for the other, and instead supported Trump. Rcv would have just made that process transparent, as we would be able to see the second third fourth choices of the voters. 

If they didn't put DeSantis anywhere in their ranked vote, then they obviously didn't want him under any situation. That is, again, the entire point. 

It requires very unrealistic and fabricated situations to make rcv do the things you think it can do.

 

(I'm using voice typing, so please excuse all the typos and grammatical errors)

[Lord Ratner]

28 minutes ago, brabus said:

Here’s the bottom line, you’re OK with a candidate clearly beating everyone, yet failing to achieve 50%, and then a different person ultimately winning the election in round 15 of vote tabulations. Cool, I’m not. 

Correct. Aside from demonstrating that you do not understand RCV, or even a present system where a runoff would not help the candidate "clearly beating everyone" when the new votes come in, what you are saying is that you are okay with the system where people don't vote for who they actually want because everybody is simultaneously trying to game the election to get the "least bad option."

Your way gets us what we have now. A lot of us are over that. 

 

Also, did the 615 vote guy win in Alaska? The detractors of RCV always seem to have hypothetical problems with it, yet those problems never manifest. That's a problem entirely independent from trying to apply traditional voting logic on RCV ballot logic. 

Edited September 13, 2024 by Lord Ratner

[lloyd christmas]

Why are you guys even debating this?  The 2 party system and our voting process isn’t going anywhere.  It’s the superhighway to keeping those in the deep state in power.  

[dream big]

11 minutes ago, lloyd christmas said:

Why are you guys even debating this?  The 2 party system and our voting process isn’t going anywhere.  It’s the superhighway to keeping those in the deep state in power.  

Right? Just like debating term limits is futile as those who can enact it don’t benefit from it. 

[Lord Ratner]

I don't think the conversation is as useless as you suppose, though I agree in the in the short term it won't change. But there are periods of great conflict that usually are accompanied by great changes. These could be social like the civil Rights movement, since we are in fact in a country where many people thought it inconceivable that black people would be treated equally. Or it could be economic, such as coming out of the Great depression where the government took on power that most people thought impossible. Or it could be political. 

 

When it happens, time will not be taken for the debate it deserves. It rarely is. The most prominent idea on the table will be adopted. Having ranked choice voting take hold at the local and state level makes it a visible and viable alternative should we encounter the type of Great conflict that will motivate change to the political system. And the next generation of politicians are almost certainly spending their younger years on forums and social media conversations just like this one.

 

Change is not a process. It's an explosion. I think we can pretty easily tell that the fuse is lit, but no one knows how long it is.

[disgruntledemployee]

16 hours ago, brabus said:

Kamala can’t articulate a single policy - she beats trump by a landslide on word salads and platitudes. I agree with you trump (and many politicians) just say words/“catch phrases” and don’t articulate policy well, but Kamala is way worse than Trump in that sense. So I don’t think that’s the thing that’s going to sink him, at least for any voter who doesn’t already have their head planted up the DNC’s ass. 

Did you watch the debate?  Did you read some transcript (below) on this topic?  I would rather you say, neither one can articulate a single policy, and Trump really cannot articulate a single idea in a complete sentence.  And platitudes, Trump can't finish a brain fart without saying someone or something is the best ever.

On 9/11/2024 at 9:43 PM, SpeedOfHeat said:

Additionally, I keep seeing Trump voters retreating to the justification of his “Policies.”  "I'm not voting for him, ....I don't love his character or personality, but I'm voting for his policies," they say.  

Sure.

My question is, …..what policies?  How on earth can you decipher what his policies are when he himself can’t tell you?  I’m sure many have seen this recent gem:

When asked, “can you commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable? And if so, what specific piece of legislation will you advance?”, here’s the transcript of his answer:

Quote

"Well, I would do that. And we’re sitting down – you know, I was somebody – we had – Sen. Marco Rubio and my daughter Ivanka were so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about, that – because, look, child care is child care. It’s – couldn’t – you know, it’s something – you have to have it. In this country, you have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to, but they’ll get used to it very quickly – and it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us but they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care. That – it’s going to take care – we’re going to have – I – I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country. Because I have to say with child care – I want to stay with child care – but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just – that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars. And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people, but we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first, it’s about Make America Great Again. We have to do it because right now we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question."

Expand  

And here's his answer last night to a question about his plans for health care:

Quote

"Obamacare was lousy health care. Always was. It's not very good today. And what I said, that if we come up with something, we are working on things, we're going to do it and we're going to replace it. But remember this. I inherited Obamacare because Democrats wouldn't change it. They wouldn't vote for it. They were unanimous. They wouldn't vote to change it. If they would have done that, we would have had a much better plan than Obamacare. But the Democrats came up, they wouldn't vote for it. I had a choice to make when I was president, do I save it and make it as good as it can be? Never going to be great. Or do I let it rot? And I felt I had an obligation, even though politically it would have been good to just let it rot and let it go away. I decided -- and I told my people, the top people, and they're very good people -- I have a lot of good people in this -- that administration. We read about the bad ones. We had some real bad ones too. And so do they. They have really bad ones. The difference is they don't get rid of them. But let me just explain. I had a choice to make do I save it and make it as good as it can be or let it rot? And I saved it. I did the right thing. But it's still never going to be great. And it's too expensive for people. And what we will do is we're looking at different plans. If we can come up with a plan that's going to cost our people, our population less money and be better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it. But until then I'd run it as good as it can be run.

LINSEY DAVIS: So just a yes or no, you still do not have a plan?

FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I have concepts of a plan. I'm not president right now. But if we come up with something I would only change it if we come up with something better and less expensive. And there are concepts and options we have to do that. And you'll be hearing about it in the not-too-distant future."

Expand  

 

[ViperMan]

9 hours ago, SocialD said:

This thread is a great reminder of some words I received from a rather wealthy dude many moons ago.  I don't have near enough time, money or energy to get my preferred candidates into office.  So I prefer to spend my time, money and energy in figuring out how to legally pay as little tax as possible.  How I do that may change from administration to administration, but there is always a way.  It appears to be working for him and he's one of the happiest people I know lol.  

We should start a thread that covers this. When I looked at my July tax bill I almost shit myself. Something must be done.

[brabus]

12 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

The detractors of RCV always seem to have hypothetical problems with it, yet those problems never manifest.

Problem is that’s a false statement. It’s not hypothetical - the negative, unintended consequences of RCV actually have happened. Read this: Maine Policy.

Highlights on their study (not just Maine, but other elections):

- 11% of ballots are exhausted on average

- Eventual winner has a “false majority” 61% of the time

- The basic point that a vast majority of voters barely understand the policies or ideologies of 2 candidates in a plurality election, but magically they’re going to understand that for 6-9+ candidates and rank them accordingly? You’re high if you believe that.

The first two are the major non-starters for me. It’s not a bad idea on the surface, but there are too many negative, unintended consequences for me to support it. I understand you’re not going to change your mind, and that’s cool. I do understand the points you’re trying to make, but unless there’s a way to fix the two major problems as I see them, RCV is not something I will get on board with.  

 

Edited September 14, 2024 by brabus

[ClearedHot]

The best reel I've ever seen showing Kamala's lies and the media bias.  Why wasn't she fact checked?

 

 

 

[cragspider]

1 hour ago, ClearedHot said:

The best reel I've ever seen showing Kamala's lies and the media bias.  Why wasn't she fact checked?

 

 

 

CH that is the best video yet. Or the one of the cops arresting the migrant in Springfield for eating the cat. But ABC didn’t want to fact check a single thing she said due to the fact they are in on the whole shill of the propaganda machine for her.