Open Thread - Thurs 10 Nov 2022 - Stuff
Submitted by Sima on Thu, 11/10/2022 - 5:00amStuff!
Elections, Statues and Cowboys...
Stuff!
Elections, Statues and Cowboys...
“History reproducing itself becomes Farce.
Farce reproducing itself becomes History.”
~ Jean Baudrillard
Seems we lost Every major race that would determine a "blue wave" or not. Every last stinkin' one! Canova?? Please. He got a whopping 5%. A beatdown of epic proportions! Beto?? A dud. Georgia Gov.?? fuhgetaboutit. Rick Scott, Scott Walker?? One's going to the Senate, the other waiting a recount, but likely retains his Gov. seat. Did the Dims win anywhere??
Last Thursday’s Northern Ireland Assembly Elections can be used as an example of Proportional Representation for those who are new to the idea. Both parts of Ireland use a form of Proportional Representation known as Single Transferable Vote where each person has one vote which will generally get transferred to others than their first choice.
STV works as follows.
Each constituency is assigned a number of seats, in this case, each constituency has 5 seats.
Austria and Italy election results
Austrian centre-left candidate wins, 53-47
Italy: NO wins referendum; Renzi to resign.
The Clinton campaign either convinced wavering Stein voters to vote against the Donald, or they got discouraged enough about the whole mess that they didn't bother, but the math is real simple. And the simple math punctures part of the "denial" phase of grief that Clinton supporters will go through, in which they deny that it was Clinton's fault, since if people on the left who oppose a majority of Clinton's policy agenda had just voted for her, why, she would have pulled it off.
Looking at some of my local CA races after voting a few weeks ago, it seems obvious that many Bernie Sanders supporters had no idea who the other legitimate liberals in the downticket races were. Bernie got 45% of the Democratic vote based on official numbers, so I expected that the rare Democrats that supported Bernie would at least capture a decent amount of his voters in their respective areas. Unfortunately, that was the case (at least in my areas).
On June 6, AP and NBC made the call that Hillary Clinton was the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party. This profoundly undemocratic move bypassed the pending primary elections in six states, and is a message to voters: “You don’t matter. We (the corporate media, and corporate lobbyists) are in charge of your elections.”
Why call the election before the voters vote? So they won’t vote, of course.
I've been writing about Bernie Sanders and his quest for the presidency all year. I've written a lot about it actually because I think this race is so fundamentally different from others in our recent history, and so critically important for our future. As I type these words the 2016 New York Democratic Presidential Primary is just days away. As a citizen of New York State myself, I will soon be casting my own vote for Senator Sanders, a man I believe in strongly.