Wednesday, November 05, 2008

KO

One of the over-tired people on MSNBC, when discussing the electoral map results, just said "red and green" (when he meant to refer to "red and blue" states).

Olbermann: The seven members of the Green Party just looked up and said, "Whaaaaat?"

Posted by bjkeefe at 1:42 AM
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5 comments:

Agnostic Monk said...

Brendan,
Spoke to a friend of mine last night who is a big wig in the Wisconsin Greens. The election didn't pan out as he hoped. Cynthia did not get the 5% for federal funding as they had hoped. But I could sense the joy in his voice at the Obama victory. It was a nice feeling.

7:01 PM, November 05, 2008
bjkeefe said...

Thanks for checking in, rishigarjria. I'm guessing from similarities in your handle that you also hang out over on BH.tv. Have I got that right?

Hope you weren't offended by the implied belittling in my repeating KO's joke. I can't say anything about the Green Party for sure, but I imagine I'd be sympathetic to most of their platform and goals.

I am unsure how to feel about third parties in general. In the abstract, I'm all for knocking down the barriers they face when trying to compete in the American electoral system. Along these lines, I would have been happy to have 10% of Wisconsin Republican voters vote the Green ticket instead.

;^)

In all seriousness, though, do you see what I'm saying?

3:05 AM, November 06, 2008
Agnostic Monk said...

Yup, RGajria from the BHTV forums.
Nah, Friend of mine is in the Green Party. I do not think too highly of them even though I like some of the things in their platform. Same friend emailed me yesterday that his girlfriend and her son changed their vote at the booth and cast it for Obama.
You know I am a little of reading all these third party and multi party fetishists. As if having a third party is some kind of magic cure for America's problems. Nations that have multiple party system usually have 2 or 3 large parties and coalitions form under them. At the worst of times such as in Israel or India, coalitions fight, nothing gets done, and you have elections every few months.

3:23 AM, November 07, 2008
Agnostic Monk said...

I meant - I am a little sick of reading all these third party and multi party fetishists.

But I do support the removal of barriers in state wide races to allow multiple parties to compete.

But I do not see too much value in contrarions gaining affections of voters by their talk. Ross Perot never ran anything against government so he could easily rail against it. Ralph Nader hasn't really run anything in government either so its easy for him to criticize it. But I do not think folks like that should benefit because of contrarion rheotoric that promises what isn't possible.
In short I think of the two party systems as quite good for the United States.

3:28 AM, November 07, 2008
bjkeefe said...

We're pretty much in agreement here, Rishi. I sometimes have felt, especially in the past, that the two parties didn't offer clear enough differences, and that our system shut out too many voices.

However, I think there is no doubt about the choice between Dems and Reps now, and all of the arguments against more parties apply more so. It does seem to me that in countries where many parties compete at non-trivial levels, you just end up with whoever won the plurality having to reach out to some fringe party to build a majority coalition, with the result that the fringe groups get disproportionate say.

At the same time, I don't think it's right for the two parties to place unreasonable hurdles in the way of third parties, as seems to be the case.

Also agree that lately, the third party candidates mostly seem to be made up of cranks who run on little other than being against everything.

6:45 AM, November 07, 2008

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