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posted by martyb on Monday March 11 2019, @10:02AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-line-up-the-sights-on-your-toe-and-squeeeeeeze dept.

Here in the U.S., the presidential election season, like Christmas, seems to start earlier and earlier each time.

In keeping with this, the Democratic National Committee is making waves by announcing that it will exclude Fox News, which has the largest viewership of the major cable news networks by a considerable margin, from debate coverage of DNC presidential candidates.

Thomas Lifson outlines a number of reasons this may not be a good move.

One is that from a historical and strategy perspective:

Presidential debates inevitably favor the challengers. Trump can push them in that direction by agreeing to debates only if Fox News is included. That forces them to either accept FNC or have no debates at all. If they accept, that makes FNC the debate worth watching. The rest are discredited as Democrat "safe spaces,"

And it appears he has pounced and done exactly that from his twitter account:

Democrats just blocked @FoxNews from holding a debate. Good, then I think I’ll do the same thing with the Fake News Networks and the Radical Left Democrats in the General Election debates!

Really all either party has to do is A) not be crazy and/or B) keep their idiot mouths shut to win.

Neither of these seems to be in the cards dealt to either side, so it should be a heck of a ride.


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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Oakenshield on Monday March 11 2019, @07:11PM (4 children)

    by Oakenshield (4900) on Monday March 11 2019, @07:11PM (#812870)

    Nah. We have it due to 18th century political horse-trading, to get the pissant states that nobody lived in on board with the Constitution. Being as there weren't any plans at the time to let people actually vote for the President (your state legislature would take care of that, you dumb peasant) it doesn't have anything to do with "tyranny of the majority".

    Did you even read what you wrote? Why do you think those "pissant" states that nobody lived in wanted these particular horse-trades? To prevent the "tyranny of the majority". Representatives are fielded based upon population. Why would they cede self determination to a populous state just to be a part of this new Constitution? I'm guessing logic was not in your curricula.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 11 2019, @09:20PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 11 2019, @09:20PM (#812917)

    Come now, please don't try to induce critical thinking into rote learning dude/dudette, heads will explode...

  • (Score: 3, Informative) by number11 on Monday March 11 2019, @11:26PM (2 children)

    by number11 (1170) Subscriber Badge on Monday March 11 2019, @11:26PM (#812972)

    To prevent the "tyranny of the majority". Representatives are fielded based upon population. Why would they cede self determination to a populous state just to be a part of this new Constitution? I'm guessing logic was not in your curricula.

    You seem to think that "self-determination" is for governmental units, rather than for humans. I dunno, maybe that made sense in an era where citizens were not permitted to vote for the President anyhow. Are you suggesting we go back to having state legislatures elect electors, who then get to vote on who'll be President? Are you that afraid of what the will of the people is?

    Electoral votes are not based on population. California has one electoral vote per 719K inhabitants. Wyoming has one electoral vote per 193K inhabitants. So a Wyoming citizen's vote counts the same as 3.7 California citizen's votes in a Presidential election. Sounds more like "tyranny of the minority" to me. Granted, those two states are the most extreme cases.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:42AM

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:42AM (#813004) Journal

      Electoral votes are based on the closest approximation to the population of each state, given the conditions that each state always gets at least one rep, and the total number of reps is set at 435, AND each state gets two votes because of Senate representation (the latter distribution in the upper house is what really skews things).

      Had we continued following the scheme the founders expected we'd have a much, much larger lower house legislature with better approximations to population.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @04:08AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 13 2019, @04:08AM (#813581)

      California has an unfairly large share in proportion to the number of US citizens living in California. Basically, the state is cheating by welcoming illegals. That gives them a couple dozen undeserved electoral votes and members of the house.