Here in AZ there used to be bumper stickers that said, “MLK had a dream, AZ has a nightmare.” All because our former Mormon Gov. Ev. Mecham wanted to keep Columbus day and left out MLK day.
I thought Evan was a pretty good gov. just for the fact that he was actually doing something about wasteful state spending.
I remember the days when that was in the news. Nobody ever reported the reasons for opposing MLK Day. I figured out a good reason for that years later. We have 2 holidays devoted to a single guy. Jesus is the philosophical pillar of Western civilization. Columbus was the most significant catalyst to geopolitics since AD 33. Two legacies far more earth-shaking than MLK’s, or just about anybody’s.
MLK is just one guy in a long line of reformers. It slights all the others to have a holiday dedicated to just him. Hey, we have a President’s Day for all of our presidents. Why can’t we have a Civil Rights Day for all our civil rights pioneers? We can schedule it on MLK Day just to hat-tip the guy responsible for indirectly sparking the idea.
Around here, the opposition was that the money to pay for a state holiday would have to come from somewhere and it was obvious that it wasn’t gonna come from Rainbow/PUSH. We lost a day of Easter holiday to cover MLK Day, and while I view the man as a great American I’m still kinda annoyed.
We need MLK day and Kwanzaa because our holidays must be “separate but equal” since we’re not allowed to participate in Columbus Day, Christmas Day or International Talk Like a Pirate day, those holidays being for White people, or something.
NPV prevents the scenario outlined above, in which an electoral college tie turns throws the election to Congress. With NPV the winner of the popular vote is guaranteed 270 electoral votes.
It also fuzzies the result (something I realize you are for.) It means people will end up not getting the result they expect. It disenfranchises those that are more inclusive to those that are more polarized so that it actually gives more room to game the system. It’s just another way to use a third party candidate to siphon off votes from the other side resulting in more fringe winners.
I actually think that that’s a good idea, Jim. Of course, the civilized (i.e., European) nations that elect a president by popular vote also don’t give him power to do anything but sneeze, or maybe blow his nose if he has an order countersigned by the right minister; the head of government is selected — not elected! — by the lower house of the national legislature.
So let us re-elect The Newspaper, and allow him to get on with the serious (to him) business of perfecting his golf swing. The real power can be given to, and the real work done by, Prime Minister John Boehner.
I don’t think that’s correct. Some European countries have mostly ceremonial presidents, but I think they are the ones where the presidents are elected by parliament, rather than the ones that elect their presidents directly. The directly elected President of France is much more powerful than the indirectly elected presidents of Italy and Germany for instance.
But even the president of France (which has very much the outlier among political systems) isn’t elected by a narrow plurality of a single round of voting, the way Jim’s National Popular Vote scheme envisions.
(Of course, as a compact between states without the consent of Congress, the NPV itself is blatantly unconstitutional, and it’s hard to imagine even the voices in John Roberts’ head voting to uphold it if it were ever litigated. And it would be, by the winner of the electoral vote, the first time the various states signatory to the NPV tried to invoke it.)
We’ve never had a national popular vote as close as Florida in 2000 (which makes sense: as the total number of votes grows, the likelihood of the candidates being within X votes goes down).
Popular vote is good enough to elect Senators and Members of Congress, it’s good enough to elect Presidents. We currently have a bizarre situation where the whole country votes, but only voters in 9 swing states have any impact on the outcome. Candidates ignore huge swathes of the country, and the issues that matter to those areas.
A vote in Utah should matter as much as one in Florida. A vote in New York should matter as much as one in Ohio.
Why not? Federalism can be respected by letting voters directly determine the same number of votes their state currently has in the Electoral College. The method of doing so (proportional, winner-takes-all) could still be determined by state legislatures.
If you are going to have a powerful president, I’d want that person to be directly elected by the population, and in a way that ensures it is not just by a plurality.
If you want the states to cast votes directly (decided by the executive, or maybe the legislature), that’s fine too, but then the president should be much less powerful.
Because it’s a pure political power grab by the Dems — they want it so they can have the POTUS office in perpetuity (they plan on always winning the popular vote by any means necessary or else they wouldn’t be pushing for it). I could see where that would be appealing if you want to be ruled by “progressives” forever like in the USSR but otherwise…
Titus, are you trying to suggest the founders chose a republic for some reason? How silly. Obviously we should just let Britney or Paris choose our ‘leaders’ and be done with it.
Biden as a ceremonial president wouldn’t be too harmful. I’m sure he’s good at things like cutting ribbons. More seriously, I think it would be good to divide the powers of an all powerful President between a much less powerful and more ceremonial President and a Prime Minister who is accountable to Congress, or maybe just the Senate to strengthen the federal character of the USA.
Another intriguing possibility would be if both Obama and Ryan got 270 votes in their respective elections in the Electoral College. Ryan could then insist on presiding over the Senate, attending Cabinet and the National Security Council. Maybe he could even insist on receiving the daily intelligence briefing, though that might be the exclusive prerogative of the President or Acting President.
On reflection this direct scenario is only possible in the case of faithless or unpledged electors or in the implausible scenario of a slate of electors pledged to a split ticket. I don’t think the latter has ever happened and I doubt a slate of electors pledged to a split ticket has ever been on a ballot.
And if Ryan were subsequently to become Acting President, he would be enormously powerful, because he would exercise the full powers of both the presidency and vice presidency. For a brief period he would be even more powerful than if he succeeded as President, especially if there were to be a Republican majority in the House. Imagine a situation like that with Ariel Sharon, where for a while it seemed as if he might regain consciousness. During that period it would be unacceptable for him to succeed Obama outright. Ryan would then have every reason to piously declare “we hope and pray for the recovery of President Obama”.
If Ryan succeeded to the presidency by any path, he would no longer be allowed to preside over the Senate. That would fall to the Senate president pro tem until he appointed, and both houses of Congress confirmed, a vice-presidential successor.
Probably, and not without reason since it goes against the spirit of separation of powers. Still, I think it would be valid according to the letter of the law. All very theoretical of course, but I like a good academic civics discussion.
I thought a second term for President Obama was the nation’s nightmare
We’re a great nation. We can have more than one nightmare.
How about Obama as President and Paul Ryan as VP with a Democratically controlled House. Would that qualify as one
More of a dark fantasy.
Obamacare lets you choose your own nightmare.
Here in AZ there used to be bumper stickers that said, “MLK had a dream, AZ has a nightmare.” All because our former Mormon Gov. Ev. Mecham wanted to keep Columbus day and left out MLK day.
I thought Evan was a pretty good gov. just for the fact that he was actually doing something about wasteful state spending.
I remember the days when that was in the news. Nobody ever reported the reasons for opposing MLK Day. I figured out a good reason for that years later. We have 2 holidays devoted to a single guy. Jesus is the philosophical pillar of Western civilization. Columbus was the most significant catalyst to geopolitics since AD 33. Two legacies far more earth-shaking than MLK’s, or just about anybody’s.
MLK is just one guy in a long line of reformers. It slights all the others to have a holiday dedicated to just him. Hey, we have a President’s Day for all of our presidents. Why can’t we have a Civil Rights Day for all our civil rights pioneers? We can schedule it on MLK Day just to hat-tip the guy responsible for indirectly sparking the idea.
Around here, the opposition was that the money to pay for a state holiday would have to come from somewhere and it was obvious that it wasn’t gonna come from Rainbow/PUSH. We lost a day of Easter holiday to cover MLK Day, and while I view the man as a great American I’m still kinda annoyed.
We need MLK day and Kwanzaa because our holidays must be “separate but equal” since we’re not allowed to participate in Columbus Day, Christmas Day or International Talk Like a Pirate day, those holidays being for White people, or something.
That is a way for Hillary to become VP.
One more reason to support National Popular Vote.
What would that reason be, Jim?
NPV prevents the scenario outlined above, in which an electoral college tie turns throws the election to Congress. With NPV the winner of the popular vote is guaranteed 270 electoral votes.
What stupidity.
What a rebuttal!
Here’s a rebuttal…
It also fuzzies the result (something I realize you are for.) It means people will end up not getting the result they expect. It disenfranchises those that are more inclusive to those that are more polarized so that it actually gives more room to game the system. It’s just another way to use a third party candidate to siphon off votes from the other side resulting in more fringe winners.
If Jim supports it, it ain’t gonna happen.
I wish that were true, but Obama happened.
America has learned a lot in four short years.
Wow, still butthurt that Gore lost, huh?
I actually think that that’s a good idea, Jim. Of course, the civilized (i.e., European) nations that elect a president by popular vote also don’t give him power to do anything but sneeze, or maybe blow his nose if he has an order countersigned by the right minister; the head of government is selected — not elected! — by the lower house of the national legislature.
So let us re-elect The Newspaper, and allow him to get on with the serious (to him) business of perfecting his golf swing. The real power can be given to, and the real work done by, Prime Minister John Boehner.
I don’t think that’s correct. Some European countries have mostly ceremonial presidents, but I think they are the ones where the presidents are elected by parliament, rather than the ones that elect their presidents directly. The directly elected President of France is much more powerful than the indirectly elected presidents of Italy and Germany for instance.
But even the president of France (which has very much the outlier among political systems) isn’t elected by a narrow plurality of a single round of voting, the way Jim’s National Popular Vote scheme envisions.
(Of course, as a compact between states without the consent of Congress, the NPV itself is blatantly unconstitutional, and it’s hard to imagine even the voices in John Roberts’ head voting to uphold it if it were ever litigated. And it would be, by the winner of the electoral vote, the first time the various states signatory to the NPV tried to invoke it.)
Florida 2000, conducted as a nation wide recount, complicated by each state having independent election methods.
We’ve never had a national popular vote as close as Florida in 2000 (which makes sense: as the total number of votes grows, the likelihood of the candidates being within X votes goes down).
Popular vote is good enough to elect Senators and Members of Congress, it’s good enough to elect Presidents. We currently have a bizarre situation where the whole country votes, but only voters in 9 swing states have any impact on the outcome. Candidates ignore huge swathes of the country, and the issues that matter to those areas.
A vote in Utah should matter as much as one in Florida. A vote in New York should matter as much as one in Ohio.
No one’s vote should matter. There is no reason for individuals to be voting for president at all.
Why not? Federalism can be respected by letting voters directly determine the same number of votes their state currently has in the Electoral College. The method of doing so (proportional, winner-takes-all) could still be determined by state legislatures.
If you are going to have a powerful president, I’d want that person to be directly elected by the population, and in a way that ensures it is not just by a plurality.
If you want the states to cast votes directly (decided by the executive, or maybe the legislature), that’s fine too, but then the president should be much less powerful.
Because it’s a pure political power grab by the Dems — they want it so they can have the POTUS office in perpetuity (they plan on always winning the popular vote by any means necessary or else they wouldn’t be pushing for it). I could see where that would be appealing if you want to be ruled by “progressives” forever like in the USSR but otherwise…
Titus, are you trying to suggest the founders chose a republic for some reason? How silly. Obviously we should just let Britney or Paris choose our ‘leaders’ and be done with it.
I think you know very well that the votes in Utah wouldn’t count and are totally cool with that sort of oppression.
Biden as a ceremonial president wouldn’t be too harmful. I’m sure he’s good at things like cutting ribbons. More seriously, I think it would be good to divide the powers of an all powerful President between a much less powerful and more ceremonial President and a Prime Minister who is accountable to Congress, or maybe just the Senate to strengthen the federal character of the USA.
Another intriguing possibility would be if both Obama and Ryan got 270 votes in their respective elections in the Electoral College. Ryan could then insist on presiding over the Senate, attending Cabinet and the National Security Council. Maybe he could even insist on receiving the daily intelligence briefing, though that might be the exclusive prerogative of the President or Acting President.
On reflection this direct scenario is only possible in the case of faithless or unpledged electors or in the implausible scenario of a slate of electors pledged to a split ticket. I don’t think the latter has ever happened and I doubt a slate of electors pledged to a split ticket has ever been on a ballot.
And if Ryan were subsequently to become Acting President, he would be enormously powerful, because he would exercise the full powers of both the presidency and vice presidency. For a brief period he would be even more powerful than if he succeeded as President, especially if there were to be a Republican majority in the House. Imagine a situation like that with Ariel Sharon, where for a while it seemed as if he might regain consciousness. During that period it would be unacceptable for him to succeed Obama outright. Ryan would then have every reason to piously declare “we hope and pray for the recovery of President Obama”.
If Ryan succeeded to the presidency by any path, he would no longer be allowed to preside over the Senate. That would fall to the Senate president pro tem until he appointed, and both houses of Congress confirmed, a vice-presidential successor.
…and if he assumed the powers of acting president he would be too busy to preside over the Senate, even to cast a tie-breaking vote.
Yeah, acting president is what I was thinking of. I agree he’d be too busy to do both jobs, but I’m not sure about a casting vote.
If he did it, you just know a Senator on the losing side of the vote would raise a stink.
Probably, and not without reason since it goes against the spirit of separation of powers. Still, I think it would be valid according to the letter of the law. All very theoretical of course, but I like a good academic civics discussion.
@mmeijeri And at that level no court would touch it, considering it a political question.