(04-13-2022, 09:33 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote:

(04-13-2022, 07:27 PM)mikesez Wrote: I don't disagree!
Now we are actually getting down to brass tacks instead of chasing ghosts or trying to nail jello to walls like we typically do.

How can we get more and better candidates to run?

How can we encourage the candidates who do run to win by making us happy, rather than win by making us slightly less angry than the other guy?

The political realm can be separated into ideals and materials. Western society has a lot of upcoming challenges in the material realm. Climate change, an aging population, rapid worldwide diffusion of game-changing military hardware such as drones, we could go on.

In the realm of ideas, the internet has rapidly challenged old narratives and created 10 new ones for each old one. No one believes that this is reversible. The only ways to cope with it are by finding and implementing the best possible answers to the two bolded questions above.

You pay a lot of attention to the realm of ideas, and you continually point out to us how dangerous you think some of these new pieces on the game board are. But you can't just kick certain pieces off the board. You can't defeat them with logic or arguments.  In a world with single choice, single winner elections, everyone has to join one of two parties, and each party from here on out forever will have to cater to at least some of these new and dangerous narratives to win.  But in a world with many choice, many winner elections, the loonies run in the open and are clearly separate from the mainstream parties. They gain seats and platforms but never power. This is much more resilient in a pluralistic realm of ideas.

I'm open to other voting methods, especially in the primaries. I am not open to changing our federal electoral system. Here's a compromise. Party primaries get standardized rules that binds their convention to choose the party winner as decided by the people. Primaries adopt a ranked choice style. Candidates are ranked and the person with the most votes wins. For the national election, we follow the constitution and use only the nominees from parties that are recognized in at least 3/4s of the states. That seems simple enough.

That's a pretty good start. 
We agree that their should not be a direct national election for President.  Unfortunately that's a popular idea, mostly Democrats who want to avenge 2000 and 2016. 
We agree that the way parties pick candidates is where the problem starts.  The states have a lot of authority to change this.  Florida could decide tomorrow that they won't do Presidential primaries at all, or do them a totally different way, but would it mean anything if the other states don't take similar steps? I have read Article II and Amendment 12 many times and I don't think the federal government has the authority to create a new primary or nominating process for President. Would you be open to amending the constitution to allow for that? Or would you be open to an interstate compact for that?

Separate but related, do you agree that we need to improve how we pick candidates for other offices, not just President? Did you vote yes on the Amendment to give Florida top two primaries? It didn't have enough support to pass, but did you vote yes?

---