Political signs at a business

[James Duffy]

Now how do we get it changed??

We don't. The primaries are extragovernmental affairs controlled by private entities, the two main political parties. If you wish to change the process, you must become involved in party politics at a national level, and have a monumental amount of influence within that organization.

James

 

[Zeus-cat]

We don't. The primaries are extragovernmental affairs controlled by private entities, the two main political parties. If you wish to change the process, you must become involved in party politics at a national level, and have a monumental amount of influence within that organization.

James

I bet the vast majority of people don't realize that political parties are non-government things. They are private entities and run by people that have nothing to do with the government. If they want to select a candidate in a smoke filled room they can change their nominating rules and do that. I assume the Green Party and the Libertarian Party did something like that as I never heard of any primaries for them. Hmmm... well, the Libertarians might have done that, but the Green Party almost certainly is smoke free (and probably gluten free too - not that there's anything wrong with that)

 

[James Duffy]

... the Green Party almost certainly is smoke free...

Well, the Green Party is probably cigarette smoke free, but seems to revel in smoke from other sources. And, of course, Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson has been known to twist up an occasional fattie...

 

[tmacklin]

We don't. The primaries are extragovernmental affairs controlled by private entities, the two main political parties. If you wish to change the process, you must become involved in party politics at a national level, and have a monumental amount of influence within that organization.

James

Wait a minute! That sounds a lot like the two non-governmental rocketry organizations...the NAR and Tripoli. Anybody else is a "write in".

 

[Winston]

We don't. The primaries are extragovernmental affairs controlled by private entities, the two main political parties. If you wish to change the process, you must become involved in party politics at a national level, and have a monumental amount of influence within that organization.

James

From the groundbreaking 2014 Princeton University study which got virtually no mass media attention here in the U.S.:

Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites...testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf

Excerpts:

A great deal of empirical research speaks to the policy influence of one or another set of actors, but until recently it has not been possible to test these contrasting theoretical predictions against each other within a single statistical model. We report on an effort to do so, using a unique data set that includes measures of the key variables for 1,779 policy issues.

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.

In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

...the preferences of economic elites (as measured by our proxy, the preferences of “affluent” citizens) have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do. To be sure, this does not mean that ordinary citizens always lose out; they fairly often get the policies they favor, but only because those policies happen also to be preferred by the economically-elite citizens who wield the actual influence.

------

“Now [the United States is] just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congress members." - Jimmy Carter, former president, in 2015.

“Allowing people and corporate interest groups and others to spend an unlimited amount of unidentified money has enabled certain individuals to swing any and all elections, whether they are congressional, federal, local, state … Unfortunately and rarely are these people having goals which are in line with those of the general public. History well shows that there is a very selfish game that’s going on and that our government has largely been put up for sale.” - John Dingell, 29-term congressman from Michigan, in 2014 just before he retired.

“When some think tank comes up with the legislation and tells you not to fool with it, why are you even a legislator anymore? You just sit there and take votes and you’re kind of a feudal serf for folks with a lot of money.” - Dale Schultz, 32-year Republican state legislator in Wisconsin and former state Senate Majority Leader, in 2013 before retiring.

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

Regarding the original question, I don't see very many local businesses around here displaying campaign signs. I don't really have a problem with a business owner showing support for a candidate or party. But it does seem like it's a risky move from a business point of view, especially in an environment of polarized partisan politics. It seems like the potential downside is greater than the upside. In other words, if you are in a business that normally would draw customers from across the entire political spectrum, then by taking a strong political stance, you risk pissing off more customers who feel you are supporting the "wrong" side than you can make up for by attracting customers with similar views. It might be different if you are in a business that appeals primarily to people with a particular political leaning.

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

But look at what we put these people through to get the nomination and then run for the office. Almost a year and a half of ridiculously intense scrutiny. How many people would tolerate 10% of what the two major candidates have to put up with. Would anyone here put up with this? And I will remind you that most of us use screen names to post here so we don't know who you really are.

Really try to imagine that people are listening and recording almost everything that you say and do all day for a year and a half. Are you going to say something inappropriate during that time? Who wouldn't. There is no way that I would put up with it. And I bet well over 99% of people here wouldn't either.

By the nature of the beast you are only going to get people who are narcissists. And we created the beast so we are getting what we deserve.

I would absolutely never run for office at any level of government. The process is brutal and degrading. It does take a special type of person to even consider going into politics, and those kinds of people are not necessarily always the ones you would want in leadership positions making policy.

 

[ThirstyBarbarian]

And say what you want about the big money donors....but these are generally people who have experience selecting candidates for high level executive decisions. But there is a tendency to try to discredit candidates backed by big donors.

The real failure, on both sides, is that party leadership were afraid to make adult decisions about who would actually be able to govern effectively. If that means you need to go against rank and file members for the greater good, we'll, that's leadership.

While that's true to some extent, the rank and file still get to vote, and both of the current candidates won more votes than their competitors. Unless you're going to go back to a smoke-filled room method of deciding the party's nominees, the rank and file gets the last word. There's a theory that the Republican race would have been different if there were fewer candidates, but I'm not sure that's really borne out by facts. I know I've seen some info on this (I think on 538), but I'd have to go back and dig it up. Will do that if there's demand. There were only two serious candidates on the Democratic side, and Clinton won both the party leadership and the votes.

As far as the candidates being narcissists, I like what my brother said about that last cycle. You have people who are trying to become the leader of the free world. They'd have to believe they're better than anyone else to even think that they're qualified!

I listened to a radio show a few months back and they were saying that both major parties are trying to get further away from the smoke filled room concept. They want the rank and file to decide the nominee. I don't know; I have to believe the muckity-mucks in both parties are thinking that if they only had a more appealing candidate the election would be a slam dunk. Regardless of which side you are I think you have to agree that these two are the most polarizing candidates we have had in a long time.

I read an interesting article on this topic earlier in the campaign. Its main point was that a lot of the reforms that have been designed to bring greater transparency and democracy to party politics and to government have had unintended consequences that have made our politics more polarized and our government less functional.

Back in the "smoke-filled rooms" days party bigwigs selected the candidates for president and also up and down the ticket for congress, senate, and state-level and local government too. There was a lot of horse-trading and shady deal-making that was out of public view. Primaries were beauty contests and really didn't count for much.

That system was seen as corrupt and non-democratic, and for the most part has been replaced by much more open and democratic primaries where citizen voters have a lot more influence. The only real vestiges of the old systems are things like super-delegates who are party insiders sent as delegates to the national conventions, and in this election we saw how even that relic of the old days is now seen as corrupt and in need of reform.

But what has been lost is that the smoke-filled room of party insiders served as a moderating and mediating influence on politics. Party insiders knew how to pick moderate, electable candidates with broad appeal that would have a good chance in the general election. They knew to avoid fringe candidates or extremists who would polarize the general electorate. Also, those candidates owed the party establishment more when they got into office, so they could be held in line a bit better. Now, candidates tend to run toward the extremes in order appeal to the hard-core base of primary voters needed to win primaries. That doesn't tend to select the best general election candidates. Also senators and congressmen aren't as beholden to the party, and they fear being "primaried" by a more ideologically extreme challenger more than they fear party discipline, so it's harder to maintain cohesion in the ranks, and the system tends to reward individualistic grandstanding and gridlock, rather than results.

The article also described how other reforms like banning earmarks and rooting out porkbarrel spending have also led to more gridlock and disfunction.

My instinct is to say that greater openness and transparency is best, but the article did make a pretty good case for how some of the mediating tools for moderation and compromise have been taken away.

 

[mkadams001]

In 2010 California Prop 14 changed how the primary process for state elections. Everyone votes off of the same ballot and the top two move on to the general election regardless of party. Our choice this year is between two democrats and, on multiple races.

So they meddled with the system and now there is no choice between party's.

Be careful what you wish for.

 

[cwbullet]

Quite complaining and either stop buying from the business or live with the signs.