Election 2012: America decides the world's future!

[Toph]

You guys are further ahead in the future than we are. Who won the presidential election?

But seriously, I want this thing to be OVER WITH!
We've been stuck on election season since Obama was voted in in '08, because the republicans hate him so much, trying to get someone to replace him has dominated our political news none stop since them.

I mean, they *really* hate him. Republican governers have even created laws that are directly geared to supress voters who would vote for Obama. (Mainly poor, hispanic, black, and women. Everyone who's not an angry rich white racist)
Voting in many states this cycle literally is like voting in a dictoral third world country.
Even republicans who stood up to say these laws are wrong would get immidiately fired.
Even known idiots, like Jeb Bush (Dubya's brother), when they were in charge, would not do stuff like this.

What they were doing, is they would purge the voter registration systems, and get rid of everyone who has even a remotely ethnic sounding name. (Texas tried this, and I'm surprised I didn't get dumped, due to my last name sounding hispanic to white idiots, even though it's norwegion, or something). Florida purged several hundred thousand american citizens. Ohio tried desparately to purge 700k people, but were courtblocked. And then tried to do it anyway.
Amongst these purges, several states tried to pass Voter ID laws, making it illigal to vote without a Driver's Liscense, or a valid state issued picture ID. This was geared to get rid of the poor and elderly. People who could not easily get this.
When the courts blocked this (Pennsylvania actually passed it. They were the first, and they BRAGGED ON THE NEWS that it was intended to deliver the state to Romney), many states, including Pennsylvania went on ahead with an advertising campaign telling everyone it is illigal to vote without a valid photo ID. This lasted a few months, before the courts told them to take down the ads and put up new ones saying there is no such law.
They took down the ads, but they never really bothered to tell everyone there is no such law.

This sunday that just passed... in florida's MiamiDade County... they announced to everyone "Come vote today, we have a way around the early voting laws!" And when people showed up to vote?
Because, you know... they were told to come vote? When they showed up to vote... they CLOSED AND LOCKED THE DOORS and told them to go away. When they voters turned into a protest crowd, they started having their cars towed away!
Florida this year, people had 4-8 hour waits in line to vote.
Ohio, people were camping out over night.

I cannot fathom in this day and age, in the so-called "Greatest country in history of the universe!!!" how this shit can happen!

So I am telling you right here and now... if you turn on the news and see that Mitt Romney is our new president, it is literally because they cheated and stole the election. They lied, they cheated, and they did everything they could to get rid of any woman, any eldar, anyone of color, or anyone who's poor, and remove their god-given american right to vote.

I swear, these people need to be tried for high treason. Because that is exactly what this is. an act of treason.

With every election, I want to move to Canada more and more.

[Marc Graham]

At the risk of a lynching - I'm guessing this should be on have your say.

America is a big country with complicated issues and more diverse opinion than many people outside may think.

But the two party system gives you a fairly narrow range of choices in my opinion.

The spend required to get elected reduces the candidate pool drastically and includes frankly many folk completely out of touch with reality not to mention the common man.

Whilst I come from the politically dysfunctional place known as Northern Ireland I don't envy your system of government.

But it seems Obama won, so maybe there was some IQ test or something involved. (*ahem*)

Marc.

[Fortmax2020]

He appears to have one both the popular vote (just) and (thankfully) hammered Romney at the Electoral College level. Never been a huge Republican fan, even less so so since the Religious Right became so dominately influential in it (unseating their own seating representatives in many States with their own more extreme candidates for example). As well as disagreeing with many of Mitt's policies (when he stuck to them) he always came across to me as someone who *really* wanted to *be* President, rather than wanting to be President to then *do* something helpful and good.

Will be interesting to see how the anti-Obama sentiments now play out practically. In four years at the next election the difference between the general American demographic and the Republican party demographic is going to be larger as well given that they are increasingly relying on older, rural whites to win them seats and America as a whole is shifting rapidly away from that.

[Shockprowl]

Nov 7, 2012 8:34:39 GMT Fortmax2020 said:

(Mitt) always came across to me as someone who *really* wanted to *be* President, rather than wanting to be President to then *do* something helpful and good.

This perfectly sums up how I've come to think of ol' Mitt, well put.

As an Americano-phile I've been following the elections closely. It's been a very interesting tustle. I'm glad obama won.

[Toph]

Sorry I put it in the wrong forum.

I too am extremely happy Obama won. I'm not happy with him, and at this point wish ol' Bill Clinton was back... or at least Hillary. But Obama is vastly superior to Romney and the failed Bush policies, and his tax plans that would literally take from the poorest americans to give to the richest.
Though Romney's concession speech was surprisingly graceful, and came off sincere. If Concession Mitt had been the Mitt we saw from the start, I don't think Obama would have stood a chance.

Anyone who loves to be apathetic about mitt should look up Jimmy Fallon's Mitt Romney sketches. They're probably on YouTube, and hilarious. You know how SNL once in a while comes up with a brilliant political impersonator? This is on that level.

But to the elections, not sure how some of the non-president elections last night were covered, but we've had some doozies.

It seems a good chunk of the Tea Party Darlings were thrown out. Scott "You can't get pregnant from rape, and if you do that means you really wanted it, thus it's not rape" Murdock got his ass handed to him sorily.
So did Richard "Rape babies are God's gift to women" Murdock.
I think Governor Ultrasound would have been thrown out pretty handidly if he had been up. Looking forward to when he is.

Scott Brown lost to Elizabeth Warren. This is noteworthy because Warren is native american. But she's also white. So his entire campaign pretty much hinged on "Don't vote for her because she's not native american, and I can tell!"
This was a real debate argument he had! He even sent his aids to her office to do a highly racist "Tomahawk chop" dance.

Another noteworthy race was Tammy Duckworth vs incumbant Joe Walsh
Duckworth is a double amputee iraqi war veteran.
Walsh's entire campaign against her was based on how she's not qualified because she talks about her service too much. And one of his crown pieces was producing a photo he had a stalker take of her. Showing her buying a dress to wear to the democratic convention. This supossedly deligitimized her and made her less than him, because while he was giving speeches for his republican convention, she was buying dresses for her's. Thus he was better than her.
I'll give you one guess who won last night.

Now the interesting thing will be how His Jowelliness, Turtle-American Mitch McConnel (I think that's how his name is spelled?) handles this. He's in charge of the republicans of the senate,a nd he's the one who last election said "Our only job is to make sure Obama is a one-term president, by any means nessisary." He's been one of the biggest obsticales, and one of the worst obstructionests over the last four years.
He's not predicted to keep his seat when his reelection comes up again.

[Philip Ayres]

Nov 8, 2012 0:11:30 GMT Toph said:

Sorry I put it in the wrong forum.

No problem. Gave us God Mods something to do and we got to find out what happened when two of us moved a thread at once!

[dyrl]

Only American citizens can vote in America. It is common sense to require proof of citizenship to vote. It is all the more sensible when 11 million illegal imigrants are immersed in the population. Requiring ID has nothing to do with race. All natural born citizens have birth certificates at the very least. All legal immigrants who are naturalized citizens have a certificate of naturalization. If a person is too poor to acquire proof of citizenship (pay the fees at the county clerks office), the state ought to fund this to secure the rights of all legal voters. More opportunities should be made available for people to legally immigrate to the US if they are willing to become good citizens. The fate of those illegals who are already in the US ought to be determined by local citizen review boards, but generaly law ought to be enforced and illegals deported. States trying to pass voter ID requirememts were trying to save the integrity of the democratic system, not stop old people or poor people from voting.

But doing nothing and letting millions of criminal aliens skew the election is a disgrace. Citizenship is the highest honor a political community can bestow. It is sovereignty. Letting non-citizens vote is treason.

Pete

[Toph]

Nov 8, 2012 22:11:01 GMT dyrl said:

Only American citizens can vote in America. It is common sense to require proof of citizenship to vote. It is all the more sensible when 11 million illegal imigrants are immersed in the population. Requiring ID has nothing to do with race. All natural born citizens have birth certificates at the very least. All legal immigrants who are naturalized citizens have a certificate of naturalization. If a person is too poor to acquire proof of citizenship (pay the fees at the county clerks office), the state ought to fund this to secure the rights of all legal voters. More opportunities should be made available for people to legally immigrate to the US if they are willing to become good citizens. The fate of those illegals who are already in the US ought to be determined by local citizen review boards, but generaly law ought to be enforced and illegals deported. States trying to pass voter ID requirememts were trying to save the integrity of the democratic system, not stop old people or poor people from voting.

But doing nothing and letting millions of criminal aliens skew the election is a disgrace. Citizenship is the highest honor a political community can bestow. It is sovereignty. Letting non-citizens vote is treason.

Pete

The situation is not like that at all. That's all right wing propaganda.
There *is* no voter fraud. The actual cases of in-person voter fraud on record, since these sorts of records began is barily over .0%
And getting an ID over here is a lot different than just "paying the clerk." Different states have different laws, most of them requiring you to go to the hospital you were born at, and aquiring a copy of your birth cirtificate. If you live in pennsylvania and was born in arizona, but moved as an infant through no fault of your own, you're in a pickle.
It was a pain in the ass getting my driver's lisence because of this, and I live in the same state I was born in. (Granted, Texas is larger than most countries)
The rules and regulations that existed before hand did a great job of keeping voter fraud from happening, given no one has ever managed to come up with a creadible example of why we need the newer ID laws.

The ID laws are on top of the laws and ways that are already establish to confirm your elegibility to vote. Not to mention many of the ID laws were being put in place illigally.
These ID laws in particular absolutely are intended to disenfranchise the democrat base. Messing with and restricting the early vote absolutely is intended to disenfranchise the democrat base.
Because statistically, it is democrats who vote early, while the republican base usually shows up almost entirely on election day. The Democrat nominees usually gain anywhere from a 30-60% lead from early voting. You cut that time in half, and you cut that lead by 20-50%
One of the single biggest voting days is Sunday before election day. This is "Souls to the Polls" day. A day where church groups and other non-profits will gather up their parish and other people who can't get to the polls on their own, and bring them out to vote. And that is the number one day that got cut out this year.

On top of that, the Pennsylvanian governor said in a national speech, proudly I might add, that the intended effect of the voter id laws he passed were to deliver this election to Romney.
To quote: "Voter ID, that will deliver the election to Mitt Romney... done!"

If there is a need for new ID laws to be put in place, then it is something we need to have a national discussion over. Not to be put in place, only by teaparty governors in the dead of the night.
Only to put up billboards in poor neighborhoods broadcasting "Voting is a felony" when they don't get their way. (This billboard was found in Ohio)

Thanks to all this, (And Florida who STILL HAS NOT TURNED IN THEIR RESULTS) there's now talk of *finally* creating a national non-partisen bureau to oversee elections, and take it out of the hands of the individual states, taking examples from Canada, Austrailia, the UK.
Most democratic countries do it this way, but we don't. We leave it up to the states, who put loyalists and partisens in charge on a state level.
If you got someone who respects the vote (Republican or democrat. There are republicans who are as furious over what's going on as dems are), then you're in good shape. But if you end up with people like the Pennsylvanian and flordia governors who have a partisen agenda, then you get clusterf****d. You get people forced to stand in 8 hour lines. You get ballots that take 30 minutes to fill out hoping it will discourage people from turning out. You get billboards and websites threatening people not to vote. You get "independent" groups (All have been found to be teaparty) showing up to "oversee" election lines (The reality is they start bullying people and trying to force them to go away).


But I'm with you on Immigration reform. It's the teaparty who wants to force them to "self deport." The same people who're behind the phoney voter ID laws, and all of the voter supression acts this year are the ones who want to close the borders altogether.
IMO, it's anti-american to want to keep people out. Immigration reform would make it easier for people to become true, productive citizens, instead of hiding in the shadows funneling untaxed money out of the the states into Mexico or south america, where we'll never see it again.
It lets people have the same opportunities that all those immigrants from europe got.
When people started turning up on Ellis Island from Ireland, from Italy, from Germany, and from all over... we did not slam the doors and say "Go away!" We did not put up big walls and electric fences. No. We put up a statue to light their way home. We said "Give us your weak, your poor, and your disenfranchised."
That is america. That is what we're all about. What we should be all about. That is what makes me proud of this country, and what makes me ashamed of it when we get caught up in all this xenophobic, racist, and classist bullshit that we've decended into.

[dyrl]

America is a federation of states, and as such the states have the right to organize and conduct elections. Article IV, section IV of the Constitution notes that the Federal government shall guarantee to each state a republican form of government, and thus far it has done just that by and large through the constitutional branches of government. We have had supreme court decisions upholding voting rights, legislation upholding voting rights and even executive action on the issue. If Jim Crowe could be over-turned without uprooting federalism, then the far milder problems with voting rights today can be dealt with without federal control of voting which would be equaly unconstitutional as Jim Crowe, since federalism in the spirit of the IXth amendment is a part of the republican form of government that article IV sustains in each state. When a need for more enrgetic action arises, constitutional mechanisms are not lacking (President Eisenhower's use of federal troops in a somewhat similar matter is a point in case). Congress can and has also passed laws to this effect. The disturbing practices you cite of voter intimidation happen from time to time and are a manifestation of extreme partisanship. They are not limited to the Tea Party. Note the nightstick wielding black panthers outside of polling places in Philladelphia. Media exposure and local police dealt with them just fine. These excesses are part of the process and marginal. Voter ID laws might indeed be uswd to limit rights - the supreme court would decide that. But letting everybody vote with no ID, given the millions of illegals, is just asking for voter fraud. The "too poor to get ID argument" also kind of makes me wonder at the degeneration of civic virtue. With all due respect, but come on. The Founders limited the vote to property holders so that only those who paid taxes could vote. The idea was to prevent elections degrading into people voting to take from others what they had not earned and to encourage people to become self-reliant so that we would have citizens concerned with the public good, not their self interest at the expense of the public. Now it is true that these restrictions were lifted and discarded as time went by, under the theoreticaly sound pretence that no artificial barriers to the exercise of voting rights could be allowed, there is something to be said for the Founders intentions. Has America really become so poor and weak that the simple request to come up with ID is beyond the ability of citizens? Fine - remove the controversy by making it free to those who are on unemployment or disability, but in the end - as much as our selfish democracy resents it - the people ought to make some effort to be citizens rather than demanding that they should pay nothing for their government and recieve everything.

Pete

[Toph]

But there are rules and regulations in effect that prevent voter fraud from happening. Million and millions of "Illegals" as you put it do not flood the polls to vote. It just doesn't happen. It's just right wing lunacy, lies, and extreme partisen propaganda spewed by the most vile people like Rush Limbah, Karl Rove, and Fox News that believes this happens.
And only the most uneducated Fox News viewers even come close to buying it.
The only fraud in the republican voter ID laws are the voter ID laws itself.

You cite ancient and out of date laws as an example of what we should do. Well, the constitution once protected a man's right to own another man. But we changed that. Just because the founding fathers wrote it, doesn't mean it still works.
The electoral collages we go through are a system designed for the 1800s. We can do better now. We have the technology to make every vote actually count, instead of partisen officials deciding what state votes for what candidate.
The very concept of Election Day, where the better part of a billion people are expected to take the day off of work, file into a handfull of locations within a 12 hour period is vastly out of date and frankly rediculous. The concept worked when there were only a few thousand people across the entire country who would vote, but it doesn't work now. That's why early voting is so important, and why even mucking with that is supressive.
The whole thing is broken, and the voter ID laws only serve to break the system even further. The rules and regulations we have in place already to prevent in-person voter fraud is one of the few things about the electoral process that actually works. The ID laws don't do anything but suppress legal citizens. And the voter purges are by far the most repulsive and disgusting things to happen.

We need massive reform, and I think we just might finally get it after this year's fiasco. At least, I hope we do.

[dyrl]

You cite ancient and out of date laws as an example of what we should do. Well, the constitution once protected a man's right to own another man. But we changed that. Just because the founding fathers wrote it, doesn't mean it still works.

The Constitution never "protected a man's right to own another man." The Founders made all possible provisions to ensure the orderly and peaceful extinction of slavery. On the contrary, the Constitution secured the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. Only decades later, when the ethos of the Declaration was threatened did we get the Dread Scott decision and the "positive good' theory that held negro slavery to be moraly proper. The Republican party was born to stop this view and the rest is history. The Constitution does not work because the founders wrote it, but because it is a wise instrument for good government.

The electoral collages we go through are a system designed for the 1800s. We can do better now. We have the technology to make every vote actually count, instead of partisen officials deciding what state votes for what candidate.

America was never meant to be a pure democracy; it is a republic. The democratic sentiment of the people was to be reflected in the House of Representatives, the Senate was originally elected by State Legislatures, and the President was to have popular support, but be elected via the Electoral College to ensure that no one region or state dominated over others.

The most populous states cannot dominate the smaller states. If they did, the United States would cease to be a Federation and become a tyranny of the popular majority.

The Electoral College is a wise instrument.

The very concept of Election Day, where the better part of a billion people are expected to take the day off of work, file into a handfull of locations within a 12 hour period is vastly out of date and frankly rediculous. The concept worked when there were only a few thousand people across the entire country who would vote, but it doesn't work now. That's why early voting is so important, and why even mucking with that is supressive.

Just how early are people supposed to vote? Are you proposing "election week" instead of "election day" - or election year? In theory, I suppose there is some merit to your argument here, but it's a risky thing because - quite frankly - voting is not that hard and modern technology tends to be able to take care of it.

That and - just a point of interest - but the population of the United States is not "a billion people", but 320 million - of which the voting population is just over 70 million.

Pete

[Toph]

Nov 10, 2012 15:38:20 GMT dyrl said:

Just how early are people supposed to vote? Are you proposing "election week" instead of "election day" - or election year? In theory, I suppose there is some merit to your argument here, but it's a risky thing because - quite frankly - voting is not that hard and modern technology tends to be able to take care of it.

I think a month is more than enough time. Because no one should ever have to wait 6 hours in line to vote.
As is early voting when left up to the states is a total mess. I'm fairly lucky here in texas, even though it's red. Voting is indeed easy here, any time. I've never had to wait in line. But this is one of the few things Texas is genuinely smart about.
Some states will only let you early vote if you have what they deem to be an "acceptible excuse" as to why you cant show up on election day (Such as being out of country), and if they don't like your excuse, then you're not allowed to vote.
Florida , pennsylvania, and ohio are prime examples of what you get when you leave stuff like this up to partisen extremists.

There should be no partisen officials overseeing anything, and there should never be allowed any outside groups to attend voting location, tea party, black panthers, or otherwise, unless they are there as citizens to vote just like everyone else.

That and - just a point of interest - but the population of the United States is not "a billion people", but 320 million - of which the voting population is just over 70 million.

Pete

Please reread what I said carefully before putting words in my mouth. I never said the population was a billion people. I did say far more ambiguously that it was the better part of a billion people, as I didn't know the exact number off hand. Perhaps I over estimated, as I thought it was over 500m.
But that doesn't change the fact at all that election day assumes and desires the entire population of elegible voters to turn out and pile into a handfull of locations in a 12 hour (or so) period.

We'll just have to agree to disagree, because I pretty much disagree with everything you've said. I know it may not be perfect over where ever you are, but stateside, our election system is about as broken as it can get. Every election cycle, it gets worse and worse.

[Marc Graham]

Ah, I'm always surprised how much debate can be got from a 2-party system where both parties are leaning in the same direction (from my point of view both US parties lean to the right, one center right the other further right).

The vastly most important thing that keeps democracy going is the ability to get rid of the current government regularly and without issue - whereas is other systems the system in power will resort to violence to stop being over-turned. That's why I think it works better, the fact that checks and balances exist to limit power by having it divided up in separate chunks (whether its local/state/federal levels) also helps, whilst reducing efficiency in some ways it effectively keeps a revolving door of power mongers and the churn keeps things from getting to extremes.

My only concern about western democracy would be the vast amount of money required to campaign - in particular for the US. Deep pockets are so important for campaigns, its the weakest point in the US system in my view.

Of course I'm writing this from Northern Ireland so we can hardly cast stones....

[Toph]

The money issue is hotly debated over here. It really doesn't cost as much as they make it out. Obama won, and less money was spent on his campaign than Romney's.

Not sure at all how well this is known outside of the US, but in 2010 our supreme court passed a very bad law that basically says corporations are people, and money is free speech, ironically named "Citizens United."
This allows privet companies to spend as much money as they want on political elections. And largely without disclosure of who this money comes from. (There are laws that say they have to, but there are giant loopholes that can be exploited to keep the donars privet)
As such, we saw the effect of this for the first time in this election, where corporations and CEOs donated nearly $4 billion USD to concervative superpacks to dump on republican campaigns.
While Democrat superpacks and groups spent about as much as previous years.
So liberal groups got outspent by concervative groups by around 70%.
And supossedly only 3 of the republican candidates that were being supported by these concervative superpacks got elected. Meaning all of this was a massive and hilarious failier, and one major victory for democracy.
(I say supossedly, because they never mention Ted Cruz, a texan teaparty nominee who won his senate seat by outspending his regular republican opposition. So I think there are more examples like this, that the national media overlooks)

Before '10, all of this was illigal. Hopefully it will be again. But then, it may not matter, as the corporations may get stengier with their donations since it didn't work. To me, that was the real victory of this election.

As for the two party system? I largely agree. Problem is, the right wing has been taken over by a minority of extremists, and they paint anyone who believes in gay rights, or women's rights, or any simular social issue as being a hardcore liberal extremist.
That tends to polarize things far more than they really are, or should be.
The real layout currently is centerleft, and extreme far right. That extreme part will not allow anyone from their party to be moderate or centrist, or else they'll turn on him/her.
I consider myself a centrist, but I dispize stupidity, class warfare, and biggotry so much that I can't stand what the republican party has become.

On a side note, we actually have a multi-party system, not a two-party. Besides republicans and democrats, we also have the libertarian party, the green party, Independants, and a few others. There was talk for a little while that the teaparty would actually become one of it's own (Wish they had), but they just managed to hold the republican party hostage instead. There was also talk for a little while of the Occupy Movement becoming a party, but they couldn't get their acts together.
The problem is, both of the big parties have geared laws to make it really hard on these small parties. They do... okay... on a state level, and sometimes even get elected to congress. But after Ross Perrot (He ran both years Clinton ran), the dems and republicans created regulations and rules to keep any of them from having an easy time on the presidential ballot. Even if someone like Perrot was able to get the same exposure that the dem and repub nominees get, he/she wouldn't be allowed in the debates, or to be in the same spotlights as them.

[Marc Graham]

I am aware of the minority parties in the US - but they make up such a small minority that they barely count in what I'd term a party. Here in Northern Ireland we have 4 major, 1 minor party and probably a dozen other smaller parties that I wouldn't really count. None of those are the same as the parties in the mainland UK or the Republic of Ireland (okay 1 party is actually North and South, but has different strategies in both).

The 2-party system reflects itself in debates - in the UK where they have a sort-of 3-party system, the 3rd party managed to appear relevant in the debates (and was in the election as they formed a coalition government). In the US that aint going to happen anytime soon.

[Toph]

Unfortunately, you're right. Definately won't happen anytime soon, if ever. More's the pity, as for congress you get one view, or the other, and the president only works if he/she is centrist (Dispite what the parties have you believe).
There's nothing for you if neither side represents what's important to you.

[dyrl]

The problem was not the supreme court, but the original campaign finance reform bill which limited individual contributions to candidates to 1000 dollars. Not surprisingly, this led to the rise of PACs. Since it became illegal to contribute to candidates you supported in the amount you chose, citizens were forced to funnel their money to groups that indirectly supported the candidates.

Contrary to Jetty, I agree with the court in this: it is a free speech issue. The whole point of representative democracy is that the people choose and support candidates who represent their views. If the government limits my ability to donate to candidates of my choice, it has limited my ability to support the free expression of political opinions I support, thereby limiting free speech.

It is also, as an aside, a limit om my right to use my after tax property. I can still spend lavishly in Las Vegass, but I can't participate in democracy? Isn't that the Chinese model?

I agree that the amount of money in political campaigns is absurd, but its cause is cultural. Compulsory public education has been lowering educational standards for decades, and instead of being an instrument of enlightenment for citizens, it has created a generation of highly dependent and uncritical people.

Just look at the Lincoln-Douglas debates. It now takes a well trained university professor to make sense of them, yet they were attended by farmers with little formal education. Tocqueville noted that a copy of Shakespeare's plays could be found in practicaly every pioneer hut. Nowadays you will find cliff notes, dumbed down text books, and the like.

In the past, what mattered was program and character. Now, slogans and personality.

Finally, the omnipotence of government also attracts a lot pf money which wouldn't go there if government were limited in sce instead of in control of everything.

Pete

[Toph]

I only have two things to add. I really have no problem with an individual donating however much they wish, however deep their pockets. And to the best of my knowledge, that was never really an issue before.

What the Citizens United did was allow faceless corporations to donate an unlimited amount to supporting candidates, and do so anonymously. That's where I have my issues.
And in the above, it's strictly the corporate aspect that I'm railing on.

(And on top of that, there's now a loophole the owners of the superpacs can exploit and make the money completely vanish, funneled into anonymous unnamed pacs and then into their own pockets, completely free of the IRS and taxes. That's just flat out wrong.)

Otherwise, I pretty much agree.

On a side note, I am genuinely interested to see how the superpacs work in the '14 midterms, and the '16 presidential elections, assuming they're still allowed to be around by then.
Given how badly Citizens United worked out this year, the first election they were in play.
I can't see these people being so willing to dump small economies worth of money into this again when their return was so aweful this go-round.

As for this:

In the past, what mattered was program and character. Now, slogans and personality.

I would agree... but happily this election seems to have proven that wrong. Doesn't say as much for Obama's slogans and such, as much as Romney pretty much shot himself in the foot every day. He was rejected for his lack of programs, and his lack of character.

So, I'd have to say that fortunately, programs and character still play an active role today. Even if not as powerfully as they should.