My Letter to the Editor – Feel free to copy this and send it in to your paper or post it elsewhere on the internet.
I used to think America was a Democracy where the People elected the politicians and our votes counted. But that doesn’t seem to be the case in this year’s election. This year the Democrats and Republicans have rigged their primaries. And that’s neither Democratic, nor the American Way.
In a Democracy the person with the most votes wins the election. On the Republican side that person, at this point is Donald Trump. Personally I despise Trump but if he wins he wins. But what I’m hearing is that party insiders want to give the election, not to Trump, not even to Cruz, but to some unknown person that the party insiders will choose themselves. Maybe someone who hasn’t even run or has already dropped out of the race.
On the Democrat side you have a race in Wyoming where Bernie Sanders slaughters Hillary Clinton by 56 to 44. You would think that Bernie would get more delegates than Hillary, but you would be wrong. When Bernie wins he doesn’t win. Both get half. why is that? Because the Democrat Party rigged the election in favor of Hillary and made the super delegates vote last year before the primary season began. Super delegates politicians electing politicians usurping the vote of the People.
These parties make up the rules and the rules are that the vote of the People doesn’t matter. They are merely giving us the illusion of voting when the elections are rigged from the start. And I’m refusing to participate in a general election that is rigged against Sander and Trump. The people are rising up. We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore. We have had enough of presidents like Bush and Obama and we are telling the party insiders we want someone else. And we are not going to stand by and allow our elections in America to be conducted by the same rules used by the Communists and third world dictatorships.
Jeeeeeebus.
Its been going on from day one.
Its NOT AN ELECTION.
Pros and Cons to all we do.
I stopped reading after the second sentence.
But it’s presented as an election. People are asked to vote, which is something they do in an election, and those votes f0r the various candidates are tallied, as is done in elections.
……………. but:…
Its a given that between ANY two issues you can name, there are similarities and differences.
When you only think about one or the other, as opposed to both and comparing their impact, relevance, and importance, before forming an initial opinion, NOTHING good can come from that.
As you and Marc demonstrate.
Keep on thinking…….its good for what ails ya.
Oh my…
The superdelegates had nothing to do with Wyoming’s split count. It was because there weren’t enough delegates to split. If there had been 100 delegates, then Bernie would have won 56-44.
Instead it was split into groups of 8, 4, and 2, which give 4.48, 2.24, and 1.12 delegates to Bernie, meaning a 7-7 split.
The truth is Bernie doesn’t want to win. If he did, he would have a campaign to target the superdelegates. Many of them are elected, and could be threatened with a primary if they don’t support him.
The Democrats threw out their vice-presidential pick just two years later in a primary, so they can certainly defeat random officeholders.
To put it more succinctly, if Bernie had gotten 56.25% of the vote in Wyoming, he would have gotten an 8-6 win.
He gets this if he flips one Hillary voter at the caucus and another stays home.
Hillary has more votes than Bernie, which is what mattered for Donald Trump. So which is it Marc?
We’ll see if Hillary has more votes after California votes. Also consider that caucus states distort the popular vote. I think caucuses should be eliminated.
Without caucuses, Bernie would be doing even worse.
Even if you adjust caucuses to primary levels, Bernie picks up just 600k votes. He lost by 900k in Texas and Florida alone. Of course if those had been primaries, he wouldn’t have won by such big margins.
There goes another 200k to Hillary’s lead. The only way Bernie takes the lead is if Marc Perkel posts about Hillary’s server lies.
After about lincolns death…
Things seem to have gotten worse and worse over the years..
Do you know, that 70% of the people, generally dont vote?
Look up Voter Fraud on youtube..
Every election in every state, and in the union, gets about 30% to vote.. Which is strange, as all registered demo/reps is about 30%..
In the OLD days…Electoral Votes were SPLIT in each state. NOW if they get 51% in a state they give 100% to that person.
ALL the last bunch of elections:
1/3 of the USA voted…about 100 million..1/2 voted for 1 person, and 1/2 the other..Thats about 17%…17% of the people elected a president. About 1/6th of the USA elected a president..
NOT 1/2….NOT 1/3… NOT 1/4..
If you could get a person to run for president, and get them to Vote.. You would overwhelm the WHOLE process with only 50-60 million people..1/5 of the WHOLE USA..
I dont think that it is ‘totally’ rigged, but agree that it is strongly manipulated … what I mean is … that if most of us here in America, like 3/4 of the population or more actually voted, we would see a big difference i results, and to our favour more. You see guy … we have so many tool’s available that we just dont even utilize as well … Enough from me, Thanx for the read
The Democratic side is not rigged — or at least mostly not rigged — but the media has been trying …
… desperately to “shove Hillary commanding lead” down your throat even back before states started voting.
The Republican side is also mostly not rigged.
The Trumpster winning states with %25-%40 of vote most of the time and rarely cracking that ceiling — isn’t a sign of strength.
I do not think he will get nearly close to 1237.
Trump only made it this far because our corrupt media kept wrongfully attacking him, distracting from the legitimate weaknesses of him as a candidate.
Bernie just kept plowing ahead, was supposed to lose Michigan big. Did he start gaining momentum too late? Probably. We will see.
The Democratic side is rigged in that the alternatives to Hillary were a guy who was too scared to try and one who didn’t want to win. Bernie probably would have been helped if Webb had stayed in.
Mostly not rigged?
C’mon man, what does that even mean. Just a little pregnant?’
“Trump only made it this far because our corrupt media kept wrongfully attacking him, distracting from the legitimate weaknesses of him as a candidate.”
Nonsense. Trump has only made it this far because he is the only one who is even mentioning the real issues that many people are concerned about.
That’s illegal immigration, the economy, corporate outsourcing (jobs), this bullshite PC movement, and unbalanced free trade.
“Trump has only made it this far because he is the only one who is even mentioning the real issues”
I agree with that also.
Although Bernie has raised most of the same issues.
“Mostly not rigged? C’mon man, what does that even mean. Just a little pregnant?’”
Bush and Rubio are long gone.
Ted Cruz was not their plan. Trump wasn’t their plan. Even Kasich wasn’t their plan.
not a election, it’s a private event run by a private RNC
think of it like a corp with 2 members from each state elected in whatever way the party in that state wants to use – they then vote for leadership like a corp would for CEO / board.
the primary is like a non binding straw poll to steer a company’s direction. no real binding power but in the end if our memory wasn’t so short they could risk losing office for supporting it.
So if the private RNC already had their candidate picked …
Are you arguing that was Ted Cruz?
Ted Cruz was their secret plan all along?
Does no one recall that we are a republic not a democracy. We choose representatives who are to make decisions in the way we would like. Then we get to revue and reelect or replace those people.
We do not live in a democracy it is a republic!
elections were rigged to the favor of the movers and shakers from the beginning, two words can prove this, electoral college, the “philandering fathers” were not about to leave the results of elections up to uneducated agrarians to determine. the campaign is merely a marketing tool to align the voters values and opinions, to what the oligarchs want and desire, leaving the peons out of the picture.
If you want the most technical term, our country is a constitutionally limited representative democratic republic.
You’re mad as hell and not going to take it anymore? Really?!
What are you going to DO about it? (As if you could !)
VOTE?!
Coming from someone who probably doesn’t know his polling precinct number nor his local mayor, councilman, etc. and very likely didn’t even attend the last caucus/poll, I find your logic quite humorous. “Mad as hell”? From someone who doesn’t stay informed (nor remember history)? HA!
… you’re a funny guy.
Scott Adams:
1. If you are trying to match a president with a job description, how can you do that without knowing what the future holds? Do we need a war president or a business-oriented deal-maker? Raise your hand if you predicted 9/11. Raise your hand if you knew oil would become cheap. And so on.
2. Candidates lie. A lot.
3. The news you hear is biased, incomplete, or out of context – by design – at least until history sorts it all out. Oh, and historians disagree.
4. Many of the big issues are too complicated for even the professionals to understand, much less the voters.
5. Experts disagree. About everything.
6. We believe we were right when we predicted the performance of past presidents, but only because we see what we want to see. Republicans see Obama as an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions. (Told you!) Democrats see an improved economy and more people with health insurance. (Nailed it!)
Conservatives see Reagan as the greatest of our presidents. (Yay!) Liberals see him as a guy with lucky timing and a touch of Alzheimers. (Burn!) This illusion makes each of us believe we will be good at picking the next president since we got it right the last time.
7. Past performance does not predict future performance. If you believe Reagan was a bad actor but a good president, you see my point. Whatever people were doing in the past, it wasn’t much like being president. (Governor is barely a real job.) And people’s capabilities change over time. In stock investing, the smart people understand that the past does not predict the future. In politics, people have not yet learned that lesson.
I know what you are thinking. You are thinking you CAN tell the difference between a serous candidate and a total clown with no political talent. And then Trump came along and started playing Whack-a-mole with the “real” candidates and made them look like chimps. You probably did not see that coming.
8. Citizens are not supposed to understand all of the security issues of the country. For example, one assumes the Iran nuclear deal included some side agreements on security, Israel, ISIS, and whatever. If you have an opinion on that deal, it is necessarily based on guessing.
9. We think we are good judges of character. But if that were the case, no one would ever get into a bad relationship or hire a bad employee. Humans can usually tell the difference between Godzilla and a squirrel, but that contest doesn’t come up as often as you would wish.
Please describe how you overcome all of those problems and manage to turn bad data into high-quality decisions by voting day.
Well, they are trying to. Here’s the data:
In 2007 Hillary took the most delegate votes. So, DNC Super delegates cast their votes which count MORE than normal delegates. Bill blew a gasket. So, to keep him from blowing the election by coming out against Obamao the DNC promised Hillary the nomination after Obamao was through being a moronic patsy.
Yes, the GOP (DNC lite) is trying to push one of their insiders over Trump. If they pull it off Repubs will stay way from the polls though.