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Trump is being urged by some advisers to formally address the nation and call for calm, while others have said he should condemn the rioting and looting more forcefully or risk losing middle-of-the-road voters in November, according to several sources familiar with the deliberations.
[...] During a staff call Friday, Trump's top domestic policy aide Brooke Rollins argued for a measured response to riots the night before, advice that was echoed by Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner. Several advisers feared, and hoped to avoid, another Charlottesville moment, when Trump was criticized after declaring in 2017 that "very fine people" were among the Nazi mobs that descended upon Charlottesville, Virginia.
[...] While aides like Kushner have pushed for a more restrained response, Trump is also hearing from several advisers who warned that by not condemning the protests after the death of Floyd, an unarmed 46-year-old black man, that turned into rioting and looting, he is risking losing some demographics that will be key to his election victory in November, like suburban women voters.
As Protests and Violence Spill Over, Trump Shrinks Back
The president spent Sunday out of sight, berating opponents on Twitter, even as some of his campaign advisers were recommending that he deliver a televised address to an anxious nation.
how the George Floyd protests left Donald Trump exposed
“Americans watching this address tonight have seen the recent images of violence in our streets and the chaos in our communities. Many have witnessed this violence personally, some have even been its victims. I have a message for all of you: the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon – and I mean very soon – come to an end.”
These were the words of Donald Trump, not in May 2020 but July 2016, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination at the national convention in Cleveland.
[...] Not even Trump’s harshest critics can blame him for a virus believed to have come from a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, nor for an attendant economic collapse, nor for four centuries of slavery, segregation, police brutality and racial injustice.
But they can, and do, point to how he made a bad situation so much worse. The story of Trump’s presidency was arguably always leading to this moment, with its toxic mix of weak moral leadership, racial divisiveness, crass and vulgar rhetoric and an erosion of norms, institutions and trust in traditional information sources. Taken together, these ingredients created a tinderbox poised to explode when crises came.
Antifa: Trump says group will be designated 'terrorist organisation'
"It's ANTIFA and the Radical Left. Don't lay the blame on others!" Mr Trump tweeted on Saturday.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 05 2020, @02:17PM (9 children)
So are we just supposed to live with it and chose between D and R forever? Frankly, I'm not convinced.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday June 05 2020, @02:47PM (3 children)
Instant Runoff Voting (or some other proportional/ranked choice voting reform)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 05 2020, @05:09PM
IRV is actually a pretty horrible voting system. Someone did a mathematical analysis of it a while back, comparing to other voting systems, and it comes up with some bizarre results in many scenarios. I'm all for switching to another voting system, but IRV would be the last of my picks there.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday June 06 2020, @12:11AM
IRV has the advantage that it's easier to explain, and it *is* better than the current system. My preference is Condorcet, but it's rather difficult to explain.
There is *NO* perfect voting system. Every single one will, under some circumstances, produce an undesirable result. But IRV is a lot better than plurality rules.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @12:11PM
As long as that means it's a vote for which candidate gets to instantly run off a cliff, I'm all for it.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 05 2020, @04:50PM (1 child)
Yes, that's really the only thing you can do as long as you have a Plurality voting system. The only way to fix this is to change the voting system. Somehow, I don't see Americans staging mass protests demanding an Approval or Condorcet voting system anytime soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 06 2020, @08:56PM
Fortunately, you don't have to stage protests [wikipedia.org]:
If you can get it in the ballot, people *will* vote for it.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Friday June 05 2020, @05:13PM (1 child)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by dry on Saturday June 06 2020, @06:06AM
In my Province, the right wing party has died a few times, they just move to the new party and take it over. The current right wing party is the "Liberal Party of BC", in no way related to the "Liberal Party of Canada" as a few elections back, a lot of people voted 3rd party. The time before that, we actually had proportional representation for one election, the old Conservative party got replaced by Social Credit, who immediately went back to first past the post and replaced the Conservative.
Federally, there has been mergers, way back the Progressive Party managed to come in 2nd at one point, eventually they merged with the Conservative Party and became the Progressive Conservative Party (PC). More recently, the Reform Party appeared on the far right and eventually merged with the PC's to become the new Conservative Party of Canada and governed for a decade.
The left seems to splinter and stay splintered here, with 3 Federal parties that Americans would call extreme left and one right wing party.
One thing that helps here is that the Provincial elections are divorced from the Federal elections, so new parties can and do appear at the Provincial level and sometimes move into the Federal level.
(Score: 2) by VacuumTube on Monday June 08 2020, @02:22PM
Not at all. But the cost of taking a stand this year is far too high.