American Presidential Campaign 2016 Opens in the Press.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

U.S. 2016 Campaign for President Opens.

 

The timing is just about right.  Now the high-profile pols will spend the next two years with this waste of time instead of doing whatever jobs they were elected to do.

 

BBC take on gubernatorial results.

[Fatherted 129]

This. Is. SO. TRUE.

Two (or is it three?) years of nonstop BS bringing the failing country to a halt.

Good job double terms are rare in Britain after the Iron Lady.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Britain very nearly had a deadlock after the last election, but what they got was a coalition. 

 

When you have a two party system that has evolved in the U.S. this is a distinct danger because the whole thing is built on having adversaries not opposition.  Since both are parties of sweetness and light, only demagoguery can be used to differentiate them.  The minor differences between the party of wealth (GOP) and the party of everyman (Democrats) are actually slight.

[Easy Bakes 253]

its still  3 years away.

 

they should not be allowed to start till March 2016

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Canadian campaigns are limited to 44 days before the ballot.

[Mr Saturn64 742]

You got to be kidding me.

I'm tired of nonstop political crap being shoved in my face every October, and then every four years it gets always shoved in my face to the point of some guy showing up at my house asking who I'm voting for. Ugh. One year ago Obama vs Romney was all the talk, because it just ended in Obama's favor. In3 years the '16 election is happening. 3 YEARS. We still have those little elections in 14 and 15. Ugh.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Electoral reform in the U.S. is only one of its crying needs.  Too much bally-hoo and snake oil now being served up by the networks, none of whom are unbiased reporters.

 

The recent behaviour of Congress has pointed out another deficiency.  Once they are in office, there is no way to dismiss the whole pack of hoods and boodlers and send them to the hustings.  I'm sure the founders never thought that their neat package would devolve into a cast-in-cement, plutocratic oligarchy controlled by the party of sweetness and light and the party of light and sweetness.  There needs to be a handle on all those Sweet Old Boys.  This is what you get when you chuck the Crown when you could have had a constitutional monarchy.  There is nobody with the power to dismiss a misbehaving Congress, so they just run rampant over democracy and do what they damned please.  This is in accordance with the Harvard Law of Animal Behaviour.

[APSMS 1,892]

This is what you get when you chuck the Crown when you could have had a constitutional monarchy.  There is nobody with the power to dismiss a misbehaving Congress, so they just run rampant over democracy and do what they damned please.  This is in accordance with the Harvard Law of Animal Behaviour.

Actually, this is the purpose of the 2nd amendment; to provide the people with that ability. Of course its current practicality isn't very high, given US defense spending, but who could have forseen that in 1790?

[Cobraroll 138]

Looks like the media loves a good fight more than focusing on reporting what's going on.

 

That's the problem with two-party politics. It's portrayed as an X vs. Y "game", where making sure the opponent doesn't run the country is more important than actually running the country.

 

While the headlines might say that "the healthcare reform thing was voted down again", the implication or focus is always "One more point to the GOP! Looks like the Democrats are falling behind! What will they do next?". It's portrayed as a battle, an argument, or a contest, where the participants are always trying to come out on top of the other, and the public are encouraged to cheer for their favourite side because the other side is the bad guys, rather than trying to understand what the politics are all about. As such, Democrat voters oppose Republican propositions only because the propositions are Republican, as accepting them would mean "that the wrong side wins". Likewise, Republicans block Democrat proposals to make the Democrats "lose a point" in the game. One great, big game, with two easily identifiable sides, where you root for your side and mock the other. They even have team colours and mascots and spokespersons and everything. This is great in sports, where winning and losing is all the very purpose, but in politics, running the country efficiently should be the main priority. Who says what shouldn't have anything to say, it's the content that should matter.

 

A presidential campaign is the ultimate embodiment of this way to view things. Like when a football match ends in a penalty shoot-out, the final rounds of Some Country's Got Talent or when the Seekers are racing for the golden snitch in quidditch. An election is a "winner takes it all" scenario, where things are at stake and the most charismatic candidate goes away with the prize, while the losers go home sullen. And you wouldn't want the wrong side to win, do you? An election period is to the media like Advent is to shopping malls. It's exciting, you only have a few names to remember (instead of congressmen this-and-that and senators so-and-such, it's all about the battle between Candidate X and Candidate Y) - and one of them is your hero, the other is an evil crook, right?

The winner will even get the big price and gets to live in that fancy house and be on TV constantly for four years. An actual long-term consequence of politics! Man, isn't that something to be excited about! Also, somewhere in the background, the Department of Mundanity is debating the Act of More Boredom, but that's not important. Focus on the Battle, people! Your side could be losing!

 

No wonder why they are so eager to start election reports as early as possible. It's like stores selling Christmas decorations in August, or online games being Halloween decorated all through October. It's a festival of sorts, the period where the stakes are higher, the "battles" are more intense, and exciting and fun stuff could be happening at any moment - what if Candidate Y is found to have evaded tax, and has to pull out of the election forfeit the Battle? What happens to Y party then? How fun wouldn't that be for you if you're siding with Party X? Hey, in case something like that happens, you should pay extra attention to the news. Watch the TV channels, buy the newspapers, visit the websites. They bring you the latest news from the Battle.

 

Of course, it's entirely coincidental that whatever channel you chose to pay extra attention to will get more revenue. Fighting for the attention of the viewers/listeners/readers, the various forms of media have to try to make their coverage as interesting as possible, not necessarily as informative. Scandals sell better than reports, but reports can be interesting if they imply that one side is gaining (or losing) the advantage. Said change in advantages might be a fraction of a percent or so, and prone to fluctuate wildly from one moment to the next, but they are portrayed as a definite change of course, a turn of the tide of the Battle. Because obviously, it's more important to declare a winner than trying to understand the game the participants are playing.

 

 

Not that a multi-party system makes the media more informative and less "sports-like" in their reports, but at least it means less polarization. In a multi-party, parliamentary system, an alliance of several parties might overpower a single large party, and cooperation between parties is almost always required for a government to form. With only two parties, there tends to be two sides doing their best to distance themselves from the other, whereas this is a clear losing strategy in a game with more players - the loners won't get any support from the remaining ones. A medium or news organization catering to only one party will marginalize their reader base, seeing as the vast majority of the voters will always vote for a different party. They have to appeal to readers of several parties, in order to be big enough to stay relevant. Of course, when elections are coming up there tends to form two large blocs, mostly consisting of the two biggest parties and their respective supporters, but the differences within those blocs will be big enough that any obvious pandering to one party will turn off a lot of potential viewers/listeners/readers. Internal disagreements can (and have) split and overthrow many a coalition government.

 

Anyway, I might be blabbering wildly now (just realized it's half past one in the evening/morning here). To sum it up, this polarization of politics coverage is certainly not healthy. It takes the focus away from the actual running of the country, which should be the main priority of any politician. The campaign and election period, while exciting and all, shouldn't be stretched out for so long as it is. The politicians have better things to do than try to win the next election. At some point, they have to consider the present as well.

[AkemiAzula 280]

Naturally election campaigns should be short and sweet. And of course there must be an above government authority such as her majesty in order to break those eho overshoot the platform.