It's going to be an interesting Presidential campaign, no matter what. All plausible candidates have glaring flaws in them.
The idea of the Lincoln-Douglas debates are deeply ingrained in the American psyche, but I think it's time to face up to the fact that that era of the debate has passed.
Instead, I wish the candidates would do a written debate. I don't just mean "Send them each a bunch of questions and publish both responses", I mean an interactive series of answers and rebuttals. Randomly choose half the questions to send to the one candidate first, half to the other. Set some word limit. (And if were up to me, I'd tell the candidates that it's a hard word limit; send me 600 words instead of 500 if you like, but I'll just cut you off mid-sentence...) Stop at two or three iterations. In the internet era, I'd give them as many hyperlinks as they wanted and not count them against their word count, and invite the candidates to continue after the official debate on their own websites, if they like, giving both of them the last word.
Merit has nothing to do with America; it’s all about white male privilege. Do not be fooled by the rise of Hillary and Obama; put them together, and what do you have? White. Male. - Bleat
Oh, and what's up with this "true conservative"/"true liberal"/"true libertarian" crap?
Is there anybody who uses this phrase and doesn't simply mean "truly agreeing entirely with me?"
I have a sort of mental translation table I use to decode what people really mean; my classic example is "free" -> "paid for", which works pretty well. I've recently added "X is not a true Y" -> "I am an arrogant twit which can't conceive of the idea that I might not be entirely correct in my views", and it seems to be working out pretty well too.
Ignorance is bliss.
Therefore, political ignorance is bliss.
The Internet has brought us a high level of political coverage and punditry available at a click. With that, many more people now have detailed dossiers on every political candidate in the nomination process. And what has this knowledge brought us?
