Comments by "wvu05" (@wvu05) on "Why Joe Biden Should Be Our Last President" video.

There is also the fact that abolishing the Senate requires every state to go along. This is an interesting thought experiment, but nothing more.
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All term limits do is increase the power of lobbyists and unelected staffers. If the people of Vermont wanted to give Bernie a third term, what is it to the other states?
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@linuxd It's not 9% of the population. The sample size was likely voters, so it is really closer to 12MM. Nothing to sneeze at, but when you figure that there were over 100MM who thought that he was a dumb distraction at best and a total idiot at the worst who has an unrealistic notion of government and human nature. He didn't get close to the debate stage, and his support was much lower in polling averages, so that the 4% he got wasn't much of a surprise at all.
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All a republic means is that there is no monarch. I get that you don't like democracy because your side has unpopular ideas and only wins by making it harder for people to vote, but you open with a logical fallacy that begins with the equivalent of "it's not a grape, it's purple!"
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If you get rid of parties, the rich will just control everything. A party is a way of people with similar views to organize, nothing more. There is a reason why the Founders didn't like parties but it only took them three years to form them.
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@nathandrake5544 Indeed. And the people who are in it for the money cash in after they leave office, anyway. What made Hillary Clinton so rare is that she took the speaking gigs before her second run for the White House. Perhaps the most egregious example of the Pennsylvania Avenue to K Street pipeline was Dean Barkley, who was appointed to fill the last two months of Paul Wellstone's term in office who got a big money lobbying job after he left as a "former Senator."
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@FXDLS-ot1wq All a republic means is that there is no monarch. That's the equivalent of saying, "It's not a grape, it's purple!"
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And look at Israel where they had three elections in a year because they couldn't get a governing coalition. Switching to a Parliamentary system doesn't mean that people like Mitch McConnell would never find a way to exploit that for the perpetuation of their personal power.
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@FXDLS-ot1wq Show me where a simple majority can change the Constitution. Giving the minority power despite their lack of desire to build support is what leads to dysfunction in the first place.
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Pretty much. The Constitution requires a 2/3 vote in each House and ratification from 3/4 of states, except for one thing: the US Senate. Abolishing the Senate takes approval of every state, and there is no way any small state would go along with it. The only other way would be a Constitutional Convention, where everything is up for grabs. This is a nice theoretical argument, but does anyone really trust Republicans to allow freedom of religion, the press, equal protection, etc.? I don't.
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@nathandrake5544 And you'll end up with elections like Texas School Board where people like to vote for candidates baled Roy Rogers or some goofy name without an examination of policy. A lot of the "we really should do this" crowd seem to be people who haven't thought things through. Like when people talk about term limits without realizing that such a move gives the power to unelected staffers.
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@evolvedape3341 What the Republicans have been doing for decades is changing the system to benefit them. Biden won by 7MM votes, but a shift of 44,000 votes in the right places would have shifted the election to Trump. Did Republicans respond by asking why they have only won the popular vote once in the last eight elections? No, they responded with 165 bills to try to make it harder for people to vote to freeze their power in its place because they have abandoned democracy. I think that a Parliamentary system is not going to fundamentally change anything, but I don't pretend that the party that doesn't want people to vote isn't trying to change the rules of the game, either. Let's be real about what is happening here.
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Bartleby O'quinn There were two third party candidates who got attention in 2000. One only went to safe states because he wanted the candidate closest to his views to win. The other lied to his biggest supporters and exclusively went to swing states. According to exit polls, a net of 16-26% more of his voters preferred one of the major parties than the other. If you look at his total in the deciding state, and you add the smaller estimate to the candidate his supporters preferred, Gore would have won Florida by 15,050 votes. Yes, Katherine Harris and the US Supreme Court stole it, but without Nader, it wouldn't have been possible.
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@simplicitylost Not every member, but every state. Here is the relevant section in the Constitution: "And that no state, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate." That's the end of Article V, and it has usually been interpreted to mean that all states would need to agree to abolish the Senate.
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@linuxd How do you define "almost"? It took 15% in multiple polls, and Johnson peaked at 9% in one poll.
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It takes approval of every state to do that, so it will never happen.
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@FXDLS-ot1wq And what you want is three people going to dinner and one lording over the two for the menu.
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@FXDLS-ot1wq And having a democracy with the protection of the Constitution guarantees that. Certainly far better than opposing democracy.
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@FXDLS-ot1wq And you could just as easily have a system where a majority gets to govern with basic rules requiring a supermajority to change those rules. You don't need a system of minority rule to do that.
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@FXDLS-ot1wq The system is not set up well, because one side can win without even trying to appeal to a majority, and the other side can't get what it wants even when it has the majority.
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NotJohn Brown Do you think John Garner Nance would have done it? That's who it would have been in a Parliamentary system.
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@koushiro86 Hence, why I don't think it's going to happen.
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@seanshameless0 It would take agreement from every state to get a unicameral legislature. A Constitutional Convention means everything is up for grabs, and do you really trust Republicans to allow anything like the First, Thirteenth, or Fourteenth Amendment?
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@FXDLS-ot1wq The Electoral College doesn't "protect minorities," it provides a tyranny of the minority. As long as we have the rural/urban divide, one side needs to win 52% of the vote in order to win national elections and the other only needs 48, how is that fair?
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@FXDLS-ot1wq As opposed to the 48% that is already imposing its will on the 52% in totalitarian ways?
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@FXDLS-ot1wq It happens now. What are you talking about?
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@FXDLS-ot1wq The entire Trump Presidency.
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@FXDLS-ot1wq And for good measure, Democratic Senators represent 41MM more people than Senate Republicans, who can get their way with the filibuster. Also, three of the nine Supreme Court Justices were put their directly by a President who lost the popular vote, and two more were put there by someone who lost the first time around according to the well of the people.
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@FXDLS-ot1wq The mere fact of a Trump Presidency is an example. Three million more people supported the other candidate, and he got to be President. If by "stopping the majority from invoking their will," you mean requiring supermajorities to get any legislation passed in a way counter to the Constitution, then, sure, I guess the majority can't get living wages or health care.
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@FXDLS-ot1wq He won because the system gives a voter in Wyoming 23 times what a voter in California gets. 66>63. You can try to dress it up however you want, but any system where a minority of voters gets to lord over the majority is tyranny of the minority. Therefore, you are defending a system where three people want to go out to eat and the two have the third dictate their options.
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@FXDLS-ot1wq What would you do with the bigger number who voted for Gore and Clinton? You don't take turns. If we had a more democratic system for electing the President, and one party went decades without winning, it would respond to the people in ways that mean actually having appeal. You want people to take their ball and go home. I want people to reach out to the people instead of making it harder for people to vote.
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@FXDLS-ot1wq English translation: you ultimately want a civil war. Got it.
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