>I don't have much faith that the other major candidate was any more honest, so what really is the general public to do?
Not wait until there is a candidate President to be presented to them, but join the parties they are interested in, and push and vote themselves for the kind of candidate they want to have?
If people only vote at the last minute (just who will be president from 2 ready made choices by the Republican or the Democratic party) then it's not really a democracy, it's merely a popularity contest about two people put in front of you.
There's no "representative democracy" without mass active participation. Voting every 4 years and the ocassional "letter to your Senator" doesn't count at all.
>Yeah yeah, technically we vote for people, not for platforms...
Well, in a democracy you're supposed to vote for the platform, not for the people. It's not about chosing a random leader that seems nice, it's about picking the representative to best move forward the kind of policy change (platform) you'd like to see.
Making elections about individual people and their character (and even personal morals or looks) is, to my European eyes, a regression to non political attitudes.
> "Not wait until there is a candidate President to be presented to them, but join the parties they are interested in, and push and vote themselves for the kind of candidate they want to have?"
In a country of 300million people, I don't think that "get to know the person that you want to be president, so that you can personally endorse them" is a scalable solution.
For most citizens, that would play out as "join a party, receive the newsletters in the mail, feel good about the direction the party is going, and get lied to every two years."
>In a country of 300million people, I don't think that "get to know the person that you want to be president, so that you can personally endorse them" is a scalable solution.
It's not about getting to know them as people. It's about getting to know their platform, and pushing for this or that platform inside party processes.
>For most citizens, that would play out as "join a party, receive the newsletters in the mail, feel good about the direction the party is going, and get lied to every two years."
Well, then you ain't gonna have a democracy. It's an off the couch thing. You cannot have a democracy if you're not concerned with whats going on and voicing that as part of a power process every day.
Not wait until there is a candidate President to be presented to them, but join the parties they are interested in, and push and vote themselves for the kind of candidate they want to have?
If people only vote at the last minute (just who will be president from 2 ready made choices by the Republican or the Democratic party) then it's not really a democracy, it's merely a popularity contest about two people put in front of you.
There's no "representative democracy" without mass active participation. Voting every 4 years and the ocassional "letter to your Senator" doesn't count at all.
>Yeah yeah, technically we vote for people, not for platforms...
Well, in a democracy you're supposed to vote for the platform, not for the people. It's not about chosing a random leader that seems nice, it's about picking the representative to best move forward the kind of policy change (platform) you'd like to see.
Making elections about individual people and their character (and even personal morals or looks) is, to my European eyes, a regression to non political attitudes.