are there really 2?

[boracay]

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Our ruling clerics, i mean corporations, choose our candidates and policy of the country. If a candidate is not in favor of corporations, they are not taken seriously.

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That's a reality since media, top elected officials and both political parties are directly bankrolled by corporations.
Wouldn't it be great if for a change a president would be a representative of average Americans and not a representative of haves and more haves or corporations?

[Jamougha]

It's an almost inevitable consequence of first-past-the-post systems that you end up with two parties that look pretty similar. If you had runoff voting with a proportional legislature and a condorcet vote for president then things would be very different.

[One Outer]

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The government would get bigger under Hillary.


Is that an incorrect statement?

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"The government gets bigger" is a correct statement.

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QFT. If someone wants to confirm this that would be awesome, but I'm pretty sure that the every president since FDR has set a new record for government size.

[One Outer]

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does it not seem that the right is both misrepresented and unrepresented in the last 8 years?

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head asplode. The largely socially liberal libertarian sect of the right (like what you see around these parts) is horribly underrepresented if that's what you mean. But the radical right wing that most of our elected Republicans comes out of is vastly overrepresented in the public discourse.

[One Outer]

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Our ruling clerics, i mean the media, choose our candidates. If a candidate cannot raise tons of money and that candidate challenges corporate interests, they are not taken seriously.

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FYP

Even Ron Paul challenges corporate interests, so don't get all bent out of shape.

[One Outer]

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never posted here before, but this will be fun. How does the community here feel about the party system in America? To me, it seems more like there is really only one party, half believe abortion should be legal and the other half believe gay's shouldn't get married.

I learned when i was very young that the left wing was about big government, while the right was more into self governance. Do we really have those choices? seems like both "party"'s are increasingly similar and both spend more and more money every year. As a clear example, as far as policy goes, what's the difference between Hillary and Bush?

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"In the United States, the political system is a very marginal affair. There are two parties, so-called, but they're really factions of the same party, the Business Party. Both represent some range of business interests. In fact, they can change their positions 180 degrees, and nobody even notices. " - Noam Chomsky

"I mean, what's the elections? You know, two guys, same background, wealth, political influence, went to the same elite university, joined the same secret society where you're trained to be a ruler - they both can run because they're financed by the same corporate institutions. At the Democratic Convention, Barack Obama said, 'only in this country, only in America, could someone like me appear here.' Well, in some other countries, people much poorer than him would not only talk at the convention - they'd be elected president. Take Lula. The president of Brazil is a guy with a peasant background, a union organizer, never went to school, he's the president of the second-biggest country in the hemisphere. Only in America? I mean, there they actually have elections where you can choose somebody from your own ranks. With different policies. That's inconceivable in the United States." - Noam Chomsky

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Or Morales in Bolivia. Latin America (outside of Mexico, of course) is surprisingly dynamic in it's politics.

[iron81]

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QFT. If someone wants to confirm this that would be awesome, but I'm pretty sure that the every president since FDR has set a new record for government size.

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Inflation adjusted spending decreased under Clinton and Nixon and held approximately flat under Carter.