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  #21  
Unread 04-19-2017, 03:21 PM
David Anthony David Anthony is offline
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I think Trump's campaign was more tactical than Clinton's.
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  #22  
Unread 04-19-2017, 03:29 PM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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Yes, and one of the tactics was to target voters whose vote counted more than other voters. Legal, as I said, but I was agreeing with John on the principle that everyone's vote should count equally.
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  #23  
Unread 04-19-2017, 05:01 PM
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Douglas G. Brown Douglas G. Brown is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by John Whitworth View Post
Making the system fairer is not gerrymandering, Douglas. It is the opposite.
Sorry, I misread your statement. The American parties may give lip service to making the system fairer, but in reality they strive to rig it. Basic human nature.

Last edited by Douglas G. Brown; 04-19-2017 at 05:15 PM.
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  #24  
Unread 04-19-2017, 05:12 PM
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Douglas G. Brown Douglas G. Brown is offline
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Originally Posted by David Anthony View Post
I think Trump's campaign was more tactical than Clinton's.
I agree;

Trump figured out where the winnable electoral votes were (in rural states), and did not waste time and money in big-city Clinton strongholds. It is the electoral vote that counts, not the popular vote. Hillary may be Miss Congeniality, but she's not Madam President.

General MacArthur used essentially the same strategy against the Japanese in the Pacific theater of WW2; not that Trump probably knows who MacArthur was.

Come to think of it, the Germans went around France's Maginot Line in WW2, avoiding getting slaughtered in the process.

I assume that British politicos have sufficient guile to figure out how to game their electoral system so as to garner the most votes per pound spent. Effective tactics are an important part of winning.

Last edited by Douglas G. Brown; 04-20-2017 at 08:50 AM.
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  #25  
Unread 04-21-2017, 01:19 AM
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John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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I must say te EU tactics seem very odd. Their bellicosity pays into Mrs May's hands. Now they are saying we can't leave without their say-so. But we have left. What are they going to do about it? Then they say we must pay untold billions. And if we don't pay a red cent? What are they going to do about it?

Is invasion their strategy? With two man and a dog? Invasion didn't work out too well for the last European leader who tried it. Or the one before that.
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  #26  
Unread 04-21-2017, 01:48 AM
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Ann Drysdale Ann Drysdale is offline
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They could impose trade sanctions that would cripple many of our smaller businesses.
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  #27  
Unread 04-21-2017, 03:09 AM
John Isbell John Isbell is offline
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I think an ongoing mistake of Donald Trump's as president is the belief that only hard power counts. Witness his treatment of the State Department. That belief maps imperfectly onto political reality.
And because it bears saying, one of his campaign's tactics - it was indeed tactical - was to play footsie with the Russians as they sabotaged the democratic process.
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  #28  
Unread 04-21-2017, 03:35 AM
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John Whitworth John Whitworth is offline
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What woud those trade sanctions be exactly, Ann? Tariffs? They work two ways.

Last edited by John Whitworth; 04-21-2017 at 07:47 AM.
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  #29  
Unread 04-21-2017, 04:55 AM
Nigel Mace Nigel Mace is offline
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It seems that the popularity of the Scottish Nationalist Party peaked shortly before the Scottish independence referendum. In the subsequent Scottish parliamentary elections they failed to win a majority. I believe the early general election will be bad news for the SNP because the Scottish Conservative Party and unionism are resurgent. Sorry, Nigel.
Ah.... David, what you seem to see and believe are the stuff that Tory dreams are made on. The facts are actually these.

Just before the independence referendum in 2014, the SNP had six MPs out of 59. By May 2015 it had 56 out of 59. The only party ever to win a majority in the Holyrood elections was the SNP in 2011. In 2016 the SNP achieved the highest proportion of the popular vote that any party has ever done and an overwhelming majority of 59 of the 73 ''constituency members" - also the highest such percentage ever. The combined pro-independence parties, SNP and Greens, also secured a handsome majority in the Holyrood parliament and the SNP was returned to government for the third successive time - a feat unequalled by any other party.

As to Scottish Conservatives being "resurgent", I don't know where you get your news from, but I'd change your source(s?) immediately.

Again the facts are as follows. The Scottish Conservatives (who llike Scottish Labour are merely a sub-office of the UK party) have seemed to 'rise' because of the collapse of Labour, from 15 Holyrood seats to 31, but their percentage performance is actually lower in UK General Elections than at any time since records began in 1832, a mere 14.9% of the vote - even the hated Mrs Thatcher did better at her worst, with 24% three decades ago in 1987. In Holyrood's 2016 election they only managed 22% against the SNP's 46.9%.

This right-wing, 'coup-type' election called by May with the pathetic connivance of the Labour Party is yet another chance for Scotland to show that we are a totally different polity and that our democratic right to self-determination must be respected. The overwhelming mandate that there already is for a new independence referendum will merely be reinforced. Personally - and I suspect that the party will not do this - I would turn the election into a clear 'independence election', for the SNP would win with a substantial majority and even by Mrs Thatcher's test the way would then be clear for the negotiation of our establishment as an independent state. That outcome is, however, now only a matter of time, for the issue in Scottish politics is independence, combined with establishing our place in Europe.

The Tories are attempting to corall all the 'unionist' votes and are welcoming to their ranks, even as candidates in the local elections, people from whom earlier Tory leaders would have kept a very clear distance They will no doubt garner some more 'orange' votes (still a diminishing 'tribe' of rather unsavoury social attitudes) and will be hoping to prize from the rubble of Labour's support some of the footballing unionist persuasion. Good luck with making that combination appeal to more than the crazy and disreputable fringes. For the rest, they remain mired in their xenophobic, Brit-nat 'nasty party' image as the oppressors of the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled and, increasingly, women. Their toxic attitudes to refugees are actively loathed, their leader's defence of the 'rape clause' has shocked the public and their enthusiasm for vast investments in England accompanied by constantly rubbishing their own country are increasingly despised even, as my own campaigning experience attests, in places and among people who might be expected to be their traditional supporters.

Plus, the SNP government's performance in such key areas as health, education and housing enjoys a huge amount of public confidence and with good statistical reason. The SNP keep getting elected because they provide good, fair and respected government - not perfect, of course, but way the best we've had in decades and decades of past mismanagement, neglect and hostile exploitation. The rise of the wider YES movement has this broad base of fairness, respect and confidence on which it has been able to build - and against this the Tories have nothing to offer but prejudice, greed for the few and isolationist xenophobia. They are going nowhere - except to losing yet again.

Last edited by Nigel Mace; 04-22-2017 at 06:52 AM.
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  #30  
Unread 04-21-2017, 07:51 AM
Nigel Mace Nigel Mace is offline
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This is a separate post in order to deal with a totally separate point.

The Tories' new-found obsession with 'fair' constituency boundaries should fool nobody.
The reasons for odd and numerically non-standard constituency sizes is entirely the product of their own (shared by Labour) attachment to the supposed 'virtues' of MPs as representing particular 'real' communities/places - a concept which, however, they have always been willing to ditch in joint negotiations to 'create' marginals intended to damage third parties, my own constituency being a classic case in point.
IF the basis for First Past The Post (FPTP) is real constituency representation, then all sorts of oddly sized constituencies become an inevitable consequence. To spatchcock that into a system of 'fair and even' sized units on the basis that all votes should have equal value is a dishonest nonsense.
IF, on the other hand, the 'votes of equal value' argument was taken seriously there would have to be a proportional voting system of some kind, for FPTP is well-known to provide the exact opposite of all votes having equal value - most votes have no value at all in a FPTP system.
The Tories' 'reform' is actually a cynical and utterly dishonest jerrymander - and if people, not of my party's persuasion, would like to contemplate how unfair it is, just consider what the make-up of the Holyrood parliament would be if run on FPTP - almost certainly a ludicrous SNP 115 seats, Tories 7, Labour 3, LibDems 4 and Greens 0, instead of the current reality in a semi-proportional system of SNP 63, Greens 6, Tories 31, Labour 24 and LibDems 5 and Independent 1.

Ironically, the Holyrood system - 73 FPTP constituency members and 56 regional list members elected on a d'Hont system - was intended as a jerrymander that would ensure that no one party (and the intended, though carefully unspoken, target was the SNP) would ever get an overall majority. (This makes the SNP's 2011 majority all the more spectacular.) However, despite the system's grubby origins, it has proved to be a remarkably good one - not perfect of course - for encouraging voters to vote only for what they really want, as the system cannot be 'gamed' by manipulations of 'tactical voting' etc. It manages to combine two measures of local responsibility/connection (constituency members and a regional base for list members) with a degree of proportionality. The SNP has always supported proportional voting and in the light of experience over almost two decades is now re-examining its views as to which systems - STV/d'Hont/mixed - it should now press for in an independent Scotland. Personally - and for its encouragement of only positive voting - I will hope to see the Holyrood system, or some adaptation of it, become the democratic standard in our independent nation.

Last edited by Nigel Mace; 04-21-2017 at 07:59 AM.
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