To most posters, there exists this impatience with so many candidates that after each debate there was clamoring for culling. Well we are culling. We have lost Delaney, Marianne Williamson, Inslee, Gillibrand ,Harris, Ryan, O'Rourke, Cooker and Gabbard from these debates already and Yang won't be hanging around much longer,and it isn't even 2020. We still have Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, and Bloomberg with at least remotely plausible options. Having watched these debates religiously, I heard every one of them make some impact either by bringing forth an issue dear to them others did not, or taking a position nobody else expressed or by asking a pointed question of another candidate that taught me something I would not overwise have been exposed to. Even if their only contribution was to allow me to see another candidate put on the spot, squirm and having to defend themselves or fail to they serve a purpose. Now we have two progressives, two moderate/centrists and one driving between those groupings. I sure hope they all stay at least through mid February, so that we have a progressive spare tire and a centrist spare tire if one of them hits a nail. If I am nervous about any of them impacting the race in a negative way simply by continuing, its going to be Bloomberg. I get nervous with that kind of outrageous personal money able to spend limitless amounts of cash while his adversaries all having to devote countless hours of time, just rubbing elbows for donations and sponsors to be competitive in enough states to survive Super Tuesday. The man has yet to show his face in a debate so he is not getting the vetting under fire, the rest do. Are there any candidates you want to drop out still and why?
Everybody except Biden, Sanders, and Warren should drop out. After Super Tuesday, whoever (Between Sanders and Warren) has the least delegates should drop out (and endorse the other). Unless that happens, Biden will be unstoppable for the nomination.
Well if your worry is Biden victory, you probably want one or two non-progressive to hang around and divide the moderate/centrist vote to improve the chances of the one progressive (either Warren or Sanders) who gets to merge all them progressives. If everyone who is not a progressive coalesces behind Biden, its not going to do Warren and Sanders any favors as they brawl over progressive donors, and progressive voters.
Who said I was "worried" about a Biden victory? But, the scenario that I described in Post #2 is the only way that the Progressive wing can stop Biden. Assuming that they want to. Personally, I think that most Democrats would prefer Biden to Sanders or Warren. Biden clearly gives Dems the best chance to flip back the Big 3 (PA, MI, WI) Rust Belt states.
And yet Bloomberg is entering the race without even participating in the debates....wtf is that? So much for "culling".
The dnc will tell all you dems who you are voting for ! Why do you guys even have debates and primariea? Just a waste of time ! Right?
My prediction: Total chaos, not clear winner, if dems insist on an impeachment trial in Senate, Biden gets exposed for corruption as VP and he faces investigation by what we hope might possibly be a somewhat fair and unbiased FBI this go around, so he is gone, leaves them with two communists, Bernie and Tomahawk and a rich white dude Bloomberg. A contested convention and riding in on a limp grey horse is the great white dope Hillary. She steals the nomination, pissing off all Bernie and SquawRunningMouth supporters that will just get high and skip the election and Trump wins 47 of Obama's 57 states. GOP increases Senate seats, Takes back the house and all yes all democrats end up better because of it. yes, ALL DEMOCRATS lives are better with another 4 years of Trump. This is the fact that grates on them the most.
Oh, glad you asked! A Ranked election system is essentially just any system that allows voters to rank candidates on a ballot by preference rather than being forced to choose one and only one as most of our elections are set up now. There are several methods for tallying results of a Ranked election, with the following among the most popular: Instant Runoff - Just imagine a series of normal runoff elections in which candidates with the least votes are eliminated one at a time, except in this version, the voters need only go to the polls once, and the final tally occurs...well... instantly,... based on the ballot rankings. Ranked Pairs - a Condorcet method, which basically means that the winner of this method would necessarily beat out any other candidate in a one-on-one election contest. Considered by many to be a 'perfect' election method when it comes to most accurately representing the wishes of the collective electorate...though, that said, it will more often than not result in the same or similar results as the above method which is a bit easier to understand. For an election where a whole body of members needs to be chosen, e.g. the United States House of Representatives, or one in which there can be more than one winner, the above two methods would also work well, though there is one more method which is specifically for that type of so-called multi-member election: Single Transferable Vote (STV) - Similar to Instant Runoff, with candidates being eliminated one by one, though here candidates need to also achieve a certain percentage of the vote to secure one of a number of seats. Once a candidate achieves that percentage, any additional unneeded percentage that the voters gave that candidate will transfer to those voters' next choice in their respective ballots, with that process continuing until all the seats are filled. The benefits of these sorts of Ranked methods are numerous, from the complete elimination of Gerrymandering in that last one, to all three's ability to reduce and or eliminate things like spoiler candidates/the need for tactical voting, such as what @btthegreat and @Andrew Jackson were discussing in this thread. And I can definitely elaborate a whole lot more on some of the many other benefits if you want. Ideally, we would set up methods like these at a governmental level (local, state, federal, etc.) but in lieu of that, having one or both of the two main parties adopt a Ranked system for their primaries is going to be the next best thing. Just a matter of getting more folks to recognize the need... -Meta
all of this is due to there being only a two party system in place... basically, we only have two choices (blue or red) and all the vying is to become one of those two choices... what we need is a mandate that has at least two candidates from each faction on ballot on election day, and everyone gets equal airtime/advertising and zero donations/personal funds allowed. this will put an end to the two-parties primaries (they aren't needed), instead a year of debates amongst them all in each state (one debate per state), then the election with all their names on the ballot under which faction they belong (conservative, liberal, moderate, socialist) and eliminate the democrat & republican monikers...
According to a recent USA today poll, Trump beats any one of them. The DNC would like to have Biden since he is an insider supreme but he is also a gaffe a minute joke. It would be child's play for Trump to trip him up.
And remember the Hilldebeast is waiting in the wings for her curtain call as the "savior" for the convention that stymies. Wait for it... LOL
Bloomburg is spending huge amounts of money in Mississippi. He's either totally insane or totally serious. I don't think there's anyway of stopping his commercials in a free country on private TV stations. It's his money, his own personal decision to make.
You vote by ranking the candidates, so instead of just voting for one choice, you would rank the choices. Like you might want Biden as your first choice, Warren your second, etc.
Yes, there are point-based variants of Ranked Voting, such as what you described, but while a point-based system is better than our current Plurality system,... imo, its still among some of the least effective systems, as a point-based system doesn't do all that much to significantly reduce pesky things like spoilers and tactical voting. The better systems, rather than assigning points to candidates, have voters simply rank them in order. So for instance, a voter on the ballot might place a 1 next to their first choice, a 2 next to their second choice pick, a 3 next to the third, and so on and so forth. There are other ways too... Then the tallying method would take care of the rest. Tallying for Instant Runoff for example simply involves counting up all of voter's first choice picks, just like you would in a traditional Plurality vote... before eliminating the lowest scoring ones and continuing with the rest of the process. At the very bottom of the post in the following link, I explain in a bit more detail two of the three methods I mentioned in my other post; Instant Runoff and Ranked Pairs, as well as a third option (non-ranked) called Approval Voting. http://www.politicalforum.com/index...sfunction-in-politics.529608/#post-1068884281 There are also actually examples of votes right here at politicalforum that have taken place using some of these methods. These two are pretty good examples: What are your Favorite Vegetables How To Finally Resolve the Abortion Debate A full list of Ranked Votes at political forum can be found here: Ranked Vote: Discussion Thread -Meta
Also, there's a pretty good walk-though for Instant Runoff in that Vegetable thread. See the spoiler tag labeled, "Spoiler: Instant Runoff Process Walk-through" at the link below: http://www.politicalforum.com/index.php?goto/post&id=1068992191 -Meta
Any of them are still potent contenders for the Presidency, considering that the we are presently deeply divided in terms of political perspective. If the DEMS could play the impeachment just right to discredit Trump and make it public there's a possibility that voter preferences would shift to their side.
