Help me vote in the California 2012 primary election

I don't get the whole business with the primaries, because it seems as though it gives the voters of certain states a lout more influence than others. It seems like people have to see which way the wind is blowing before they make their mind up.

i prefer our system in that respect. We all vote at the same time and find out who did what at the same time. All our votes are equal (in theory.)
 
There's only one race for which this criticism applies, because there is only one national race: the President. Nobody would deny the truth of what you're saying.

But, there are many other races within each State for which there is no such harm. The principle is sound: If we're going to have political parties, then they need a method for picking their respective one candidate to put against the rest.
 
That was not ranting. This is ranting:
The republican party consists of the selfish, evil rich and the deluded simpletons that vote for them, and you should be ashamed to have them on your list of people you're considering voting for. 'level of analysis'? It's politics, not rocket science. It's hugely simple. Them=evil, us=good.
 
So do you have primaries when you elect your local senators and representatives? (or whatever the ones in the House of Representatives are called.) Or do the parties just choose the candidates and you vote for whoever you want to vote for?
 
That ALSO describes the Democrats ----> you are a hypocrite if you can't acknowledge that.

Them = evil, and us = good? What? Nothing is that simple. If that's how you really think, then I'm sorry for you. You have a very small mind.


Yes, we have primaries for those offices. That's how the Parties choose the candidates. We've got some of those races are on the June ballot, too.
 
No, no, you're getting your sides confused again. It's the right wing that have small minds. And the democratic party might not be perfect, but it's the only real opposition to the rich, selfish and evil party. Vote for anybody else and you are either hopelessly naive or actually part of the problem.
 
I always used to think that the two main parties were virtually indistinguishable. The Democrats slightly less to the extreme right than the Republicans, but that was about it.

But the more I've seen of US politics (albeit in a very superficial way) the more it seems to me that the Democrats are the party of the relatively normal people and thye Republicans are the party of the loonies.

I don't pay much attention to the presidential elections until they're over, but it always strikes me that the Democrats select a fairly normal person to stand and the Republicans usually have some kind of village idiot.

You'd think that in a country the size of the USA, they could come up with TWO normal people to stand (or at least normal as politicians go) but the Republicans manage to find such buffoons as Nixon, Reagan and Bush jnr. And their vice-presidential selections would be an embarrassment even at a Village Idiots Convention: Agnew, Quayle, and Palin spring to mind.

I just don't get it.
 
The insanity of the Republican party is a very recent phenomena. Even 15 years ago, they were fairly sensible about candidate selection, but now; holy crap, they vote for some wackos.
 
Have you forgotten Dan Quayle? And you're probably too young to remember Spiro Agnew. People that no sane person would vote for if they ran for a position as the local dog-catcher.

I agree that they did once have decent candidates, but I think Lincoln might have been the last one.
 
It's important to be fair. There are a lot of good Republican congressmen and women, but they're getting badly bullied by the tea party, which is causing chaos. If there was an equivalent movement on the left, then the Democrats would be just as badly affected.
 
It's attitudes like these that insure that there are only 2 relevant parties which are locked in a race to the bottom. If the US didn't have so big an impact on the world financial market, I'd happily cheer you on and watch from the sideline with popcorn.
 
I daresay you are right. I don't follow US politics closely, so I'm really only familiar with some of the presidential and vice presidential candidates.
 
Naw, that's not being fair. Reagan was a great candidate, and regardless of how you feel about his economic theories (that's a polarizing issue) he was a great leader. I don't think anyone can speak against his leadership in the White House. The first Bush was also a great candidate: director of the CIA, professor at Rice University, ran a bank in Texas, director of the CFR. That's a legit candidate. Bob Dole, too, though arguably a Democrat in practice, was a nationally respected a Senator.

The Democrats ran Mondale/Ferraro against Reagan. Bad idea. Hopeless cause. They never had a chance. The Democrats ran Dukakis against the first Bush. Again, hopelessly poor choice.
 
It's always been my theory that Sarah Palin got the tap for VP because they knew they were going to lose anyway, and that way they wouldn't burn a real candidate who might have a shot in 2012.

To quote Chris Rock: George W was so bad, he made it impossible for a white man to become the next president
 
They picked Palin because they thought they could pick up a load of Hillary Clinton supporters who were still hurting after the Dem primary - they were correct. If she hadn't turned out to be an idiot, the strategy might have worked.
 
Don't get me wrong, I think the democrats are probably just as bad as the tories are here. In an ideal world, I'd want Americans to vote for somebody sane with a genuinely leftwing ideology. But we have to deal with the world as it is, and you're blaming the wrong people. The two party system is not a product of voter attitudes. It's the other way around, in fact.

Not that I hate America, either. At the time of its founding, it was one of the few countries with an explicitly democratic and to some extent a liberal agenda. I applaud the fact that the majority of Americans believe in freedom and choice, and I believe that America's traditional democratic values should be defended against reactionary idiots.
 
I agree. Don't you think it's ironic that those who seem to shout the loudest about 'American values' are also those who stridently denounce anything they see as being 'liberal', when in reality the USA was founded upon traditionally liberal values such as representative government, religious freedom, free trade, etc, etc.?
 
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