Poll of the Day > I actually want Oprah to become the next president just to show everyone...

(+) Yeah! (+)

... that the presidents job literally requires zero qualifications, and has no real power or meaning. President became a figurehead position like the monarchy in U.K.

I meant with Trump we actually complain when he doesnt deliver on his promises. With Oprah we will be like Oh, well - our government is a TV show now..
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It's not like Oprah knows more than Trump about managing a first-world country, does she?
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EclairReturns posted...

It's not like Oprah knows more than Trump about managing a first-world country, does she?

But shes a black woman - that even beats Obamas black man election platform.
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PowerSurgeX posted...

EclairReturns posted...

It's not like Oprah knows more than Trump about managing a first-world country, does she?

But shes a black woman - that even beats Obamas black man election platform.

She'd curbstomp Shillary, but the presidency would be debased at that point all around.

We shit all over the electoral college, but it was established to prevent mob rule by idiots to begin with and we seem to forget that.
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What policies has Oprah even gone on about? Does she know anything about economics? Class warfare?

She'll just listen to the guys in the black suits and go, "Yeah, I guess the war in the middle east really is necessary and these drone strikes are just fine. These guys really know what they're doing and I don't so I better step aside."

If she's actually considering this, it's almost insulting that she hasn't told us what her views are.
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PowerSurgeX posted...

... that the presidents job literally requires zero qualifications, and has no real power or meaning. President became a figurehead position like the monarchy in U.K.

lol
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Is this an actual thing, or are people just making ridiculous claims for a point?

id vote for Oprah
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shadowsword87 posted...

Is this an actual thing, or are people just making ridiculous claims for a point?

As far as I know, she hasn't directly said anything yet, just second hand information.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/08/media/oprah-golden-globes/index.html

oprah lost all her power once she quit her show. she has no chance at winning
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She's overqualified tbh.
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rjsilverthorn posted...

shadowsword87 posted...

Is this an actual thing, or are people just making ridiculous claims for a point?

As far as I know, she hasn't directly said anything yet, just second hand information.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/08/media/oprah-golden-globes/index.html

The Democratic race for president won't officially begin until after the 2018 midterms

What the fuck.
How does it always start this early? Jesus christ.

CyborgSage00x0 posted...

PowerSurgeX posted...

... that the presidents job literally requires zero qualifications, and has no real power or meaning. President became a figurehead position like the monarchy in U.K.

lol

Right?
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Krazy_Kirby posted...

oprah lost all her power once she quit her show. she has no chance at winning

She can win, but maybe she shouldnt.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

PowerSurgeX posted...

EclairReturns posted...

It's not like Oprah knows more than Trump about managing a first-world country, does she?

But shes a black woman - that even beats Obamas black man election platform.

She'd curbstomp Shillary, but the presidency would be debased at that point all around.

We shit all over the electoral college, but it was established to prevent mob rule by idiots to begin with and we seem to forget that.

Except it just changes who the mob is, honestly.
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PowerSurgeX posted...

maybe she shouldnt

I mean, just because she may be more popular than Trump, doesn't really make her any more qualified than him. I don't think either has had experience in a political office.
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Do people even care about policies outside of "Who's the best speaker" or "Who do I like the most"?

Policies, politician, politics

It's sort of their job
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PowerSurgeX posted...

President became a figurehead position like the monarchy in U.K.

Except it could literally never work that way. Either the presidency would be phased out in favor of a near-identical office (ie, no president) or the president would always have the same role.

Yellow posted...

What policies has Oprah even gone on about? Does she know anything about economics? Class warfare?

Not sure why you'd mention class warfare, but Oprah has been very public with her endorsement of various charities so we wouldn't need to look far to see her policy. She'd likely be very strongly anti-poverty, although how she'd achieve that might be murky (probably benefits, though)

shadowsword87 posted...

What the fuck.
How does it always start this early? Jesus christ.

Because the early bird gets the worm, as they say.

Krazy_Kirby posted...

oprah lost all her power once she quit her show. she has no chance at winning

She quit a show to run a network. Kind of a step up.

EclairReturns posted...

I mean, just because she may be more popular than Trump, doesn't really make her any more qualified than him. I don't think either has had experience in a political office.

In theory, she's actually less experienced because she comes from the entertainment sector. That means she's been less affected by policy and had to deal with less government bureaucracy.
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PowerSurgeX posted...

... that the presidents job literally requires zero qualifications

You mean how it was intended by the constitution?

WhiskeyDisk posted...

PowerSurgeX posted...

EclairReturns posted...

It's not like Oprah knows more than Trump about managing a first-world country, does she?

But shes a black woman - that even beats Obamas black man election platform.

She'd curbstomp Shillary, but the presidency would be debased at that point all around.

We shit all over the electoral college, but it was established to prevent mob rule by idiots to begin with and we seem to forget that.

Or, you could say it was prevented to allow the actual populace the voice it should have in elections. When someone can lose the popular vote by such a large margin, and still win, you have a problem.

Not saying our First past the post, seats system is any better, though at least the public in general have some sway.
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Identify the 'problem '.

You can't always trust the general populace. That's also a problem with people voting for someone :
-Just because they from same party
-because it's their turn (lmao)
-because it's time for female president (lmao)
-emotionally rather than rationally

Changing the rules just because you lost at a game, even though you've been playing for longer and should understand what it takes to win more than a newbie.
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Babbit55 posted...

Or, you could say it was prevented to allow the actual populace the voice it should have in elections. When someone can lose the popular vote by such a large margin, and still win, you have a problem.

>Such a large margin
>2%

Keep in mind that the margin of error in political polls at the time was 5% and the margin of error in surveys tends to be 2-5% depending on the sample size. (And, of course, given that political polling pretty easy to manipulate to get the response you want -- as seen in an interview with Frank Luntz -- they aren't particularly meaningful in the first place.

Amuseum posted...

Identify the 'problem '.

You can't always trust the general populace. That's also a problem with people voting for someone :
-Just because they from same party
-because it's their turn (lmao)
-because it's time for female president (lmao)
-emotionally rather than rationally

Changing the rules just because you lost at a game, even though you've been playing for longer and should understand what it takes to win more than a newbie.

Yes, the biggest single problem with voting will ultimately always be the voting public. However, a lot of "problems" aren't so much "problems" as they are one side not getting what they want.
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Zeus posted...

Not sure why you'd mention class warfare, but Oprah has been very public with her endorsement of various charities so we wouldn't need to look far to see her policy. She'd likely be very strongly anti-poverty, although how she'd achieve that might be murky (probably benefits, though)

Anyone who thinks "class warfare" is something for government to solve, is either instigating it and/or perpetuating the concept as a rallying cry, or actually believes in some sort of Harrison Bergeron type of compulsory "equal outcomes" public policy and/or bringing out the guillotines.

Quite honestly, the latter scares me more. Much more.

She would never do it because as soon as she runs she gains hatred from half the country.
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DrPrimemaster posted...

She would never do it because as soon as she runs she gains hatred from half the country.

I dunno. Get the message and platform just right, and it could be a 1980-style landslide.

i've been saying that since 2012 when obama ran for his second term and won.

But honestly i don't know what her platform will be, but i would probably vote for her.

the main problem is that she will need to fill her cabinet with people if she wins. Trump is having a real hard time with that.
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ernieforss posted...

But honestly i don't know what her platform will be, but i would probably vote for her.

This is exactly why we have the Electoral College. Ready to cast a vote without even hearing the platform. Lol.
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WhiskeyDisk posted...

This is exactly why we have the Electoral College.

No, that was the idea behind the electoral college.
Insisting on a popular vote is why The Rock and Oprah are viable candidates.

Saying politically correct slogans can only take you so far.
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Prez has a lot of power. The position doesn't literally require no qualifications, it literally has a list of qualifications, IE being a citizen, age, etc.

Which party gets a president in office all depends on how each party hussles in the interim between presidencies to fill up all the possible elected positions which are in the pool used by each individual state to choose their electoral college members from, with each state having different stipulations as to how those people are even chosen (iirc most often the governor chooses from a pool). Usually it's "the more people elected for your party the better off" with only so many states even being worth the time for either party, and limited scenarios due to swing states. I don't follow sports whatsoever but it reminds me of the way people talk about the NFL playoffs. Trump won because his team played the game like chess and did exactly what they were supposed to. Hillary tried to do that but in reality the only way she was going to win is if the other side slipped up and she also played a perfect match.

*Shrugs*

BTW my political standing is: I'm an independent voter who voted for Bernie and I don't absolutely hate Trump.

My observation is that in between presidencies every party becomes complacent and forgets to vote for the little guys in between. If you really cared about who was president (and ultimately which party is elected, because that's really what this is about) you'd pay attention to the elections in between, vote your ass off, and not talk about nonsense like voting in Oprah.
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Babbit55 posted...

Or, you could say it was prevented to allow the actual populace the voice it should have in elections.

Based on what the Internet has spent the last 20 years repeatedly showing me, most of those people probably shouldn't have a voice. About anything. Ever.


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She's a black woman who used to give free shit away to people for years. And she's had her fair share of struggles before that if I'm not mistaken.

She's arguably had the presidential momentum going for longer than anyone in history.
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I watched The Late Show with Stephen Colbert - the guy blames Trump for everything under the sun, but even he thinks voting for Oprah is a bad idea.
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PPPPLAASSUMA posted...

Prez has a lot of power. The position doesn't literally require no qualifications, it literally has a list of qualifications, IE being a citizen, age, etc.

Fundamentally speaking, those are *requirements* rather than qualifications. Qualifications implies ability or skill, whereas the requirements pertain to age, residency, and country of origin.

However, it's not like there aren't *some* qualifications to get the job considering you need to have some public speaking ability, some leadership skills, etc, just to secure the nomination.

PPPPLAASSUMA posted...

Which party gets a president in office all depends on how each party hussles in the interim between presidencies to fill up all the possible elected positions which are in the pool used by each individual state to choose their electoral college members from, with each state having different stipulations as to how those people are even chosen (iirc most often the governor chooses from a pool). Usually it's "the more people elected for your party the better off" with only so many states even being worth the time for either party, and limited scenarios due to swing states. I don't follow sports whatsoever but it reminds me of the way people talk about the NFL playoffs. Trump won because his team played the game like chess and did exactly what they were supposed to. Hillary tried to do that but in reality the only way she was going to win is if the other side slipped up and she also played a perfect match.

Technically irrelevant because states honor a winner-take-all system for electoral votes.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

Babbit55 posted...

Or, you could say it was prevented to allow the actual populace the voice it should have in elections.

Based on what the Internet has spent the last 20 years repeatedly showing me, most of those people probably shouldn't have a voice. About anything. Ever.

I've flipped back and forth on the issue of who should be allowed to have a say in government. In general, I think democratic societies would benefit from a bare minimum of a simple multiple-choice political literacy test so votes from people who know absolutely nothing about the candidates' policy and history can be excluded. The only drawback is that it would inevitably become politicized because, well, power likes keeping power.

While the biggest problem with government is people -- both the voters and officials -- if people were competent, naturally industrious, and kind, we'd hardly need government at all.

RedPixel posted...

She's a black woman who used to give free shit away to people for years. And she's had her fair share of struggles before that if I'm not mistaken.

She's arguably had the presidential momentum going for longer than anyone in history.

For reasons of discrimination, I don't believe anybody had really considered her a presidential contender until more recent times. Compare that to Donald Trump whose name was being floated around for the presidency even as early as the 1980s.

PowerSurgeX posted...

I watched The Late Show with Stephen Colbert - the guy blames Trump for everything under the sun, but even he thinks voting for Oprah is a bad idea.

Because it probably would be a bad idea. While I'm sure we'll have another president who held no previous office, I'm not sure that it'll happen for quite some time considering that Trump is being frequently lambasted for his lack of political experience. Granted, if *anybody* can do it, Oprah would be at or near the top of that list.
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Zeus posted...

I've flipped back and forth on the issue of who should be allowed to have a say in government. In general, I think democratic societies would benefit from a bare minimum of a simple multiple-choice political literacy test so votes from people who know absolutely nothing about the candidates' policy and history can be excluded. The only drawback is that it would inevitably become politicized because, well, power likes keeping power.

It's also somewhat anathema in the US because of the use of similar poll tests and the like post-Civil War to repress black voters, so any suggestion of "requirements" to vote in the US almost always trigger a visceral negative response.

And to be fair, requirements WOULD disenfranchise a segment of the voter base (it would have to, considering that's the entire point of having those requirements), and it wouldn't be a random sampling (ie, the tests would almost certainly skew towards higher education levels and higher affluence, which goes right back to the idea of the lower class being discriminated against by "the rich", not to mention scenarios like with the SAT where the argument is that the questions skew culturally to older, whiter families and bias against more ethnic communities and newer immigrants). And then you'd almost certainly run into the problem of activist groups who are opposed to the idea of such poll tests going out of their way to steal or access poll questions in advance and distribute them digitally so voters could cheat their way to passing grades to get the vote, which opens up entirely different cans of worms.

As terrible as the current system is, it would be hard to do anything other than a representative government with universal democratic suffrage to elect representatives without a massive backlash in the current environment. If anything, we're more likely to swing the other way, what with so many cries from people to do away with the Electoral College (and most of those cries coming from people who don't actually understand the Electoral College, sort of ironically demonstrating the entire point of the Electoral College).



Zeus posted...

While the biggest problem with government is people -- both the voters and officials -- if people were competent, naturally industrious, and kind, we'd hardly need government at all.

As much as it became the "trendy Internet hipster/angsty teen" thing to quote/reference George Carlin for a while, his observation on the political system in still fairly apropos. "Garbage in, garbage out" is a fairly succinct analysis of why we always seem to wind up with terrible politicians and broken systems.

Which is part of what makes actual democracy (not the fake smoke and mirrors representative democracy we currently have in the US, in spite of so many Americans not seemingly realizing that fact) such a hard sell when you seriously consider it. Even aside from the sort of arguments like about how democracy is essentially two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner, you're still expected flawed, broken, ignorant people to make decisions, and somehow have those decisions be the best possible decisions that can be made. Especially once mob mentality comes into play, and you effectively have large groups of people making emotional, visceral, peer-pressure-influenced decisions without any real understanding of the issue or its wider ramifications.

For all the corruption and incompetence of the current system, direct democracy would almost certainly be catastrophically worse.


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If anything, the one sweeping change that might actually improve the political morass that would be acceptable to a majority of the populace might be to outlaw political ads and campaign tours, in an attempt to minimize the influence of pure propaganda on elections, with each candidate being required to submit their credentials, qualifications, and official political stances to public scrutiny, so that people can intellectually evaluate and compare candidates without the existing PR spin machine turning the whole mess into a popularity contest more than a political race.

It would also, in theory, open candidacy up to potential candidates who can't afford to spend $80+ million on ad campaigns (or allow themselves to be bought and paid for by lobbiests and PACs who help pay for those campaigns), which might help break up the parade of terrible either/or choices we keep being asked to choose between.

The downside there is that rich candidates would still be able to propagandize by astroturfing online, with "supporters" stumping for them via social media and so on, so you'd probably be right back in the same boat.

Other "cures" would include breaking up the two-party system so every issue doesn't automatically become an either/or extremist vote, or altering the system to discourage "career" politicians in favor of successful private sector individuals who serve a term or two and then return to their former lives, but those also come with their own new unique problems as well.

Basically, the system is broken as fuck, but most proposed solutions either wouldn't work, or would cause a ton of new problems even if they fixed some of the old ones.


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ParanoidObsessive posted...

And to be fair, requirements WOULD disenfranchise a segment of the voter base (it would have to, considering that's the entire point of having those requirements), and it wouldn't be a random sampling (ie, the tests would almost certainly skew towards higher education levels and higher affluence, which goes right back to the idea of the lower class being discriminated against by "the rich", not to mention scenarios like with the SAT where the argument is that the questions skew culturally to older, whiter families and bias against more ethnic communities and newer immigrants). And then you'd almost certainly run into the problem of activist groups who are opposed to the idea of such poll tests going out of their way to steal or access poll questions in advance and distribute them digitally so voters could cheat their way to passing grades to get the vote, which opens up entirely different cans of worms.

However the chips fall now, I'm relatively certain that once a system went in place nearly everybody would make more effort to inform themselves and thus that alone would lead to a dramatic shift in our government. Keep in mind that the questions *only* evaluate a basic understanding of the candidates rather than something like an IQ test.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

If anything, the one sweeping change that might actually improve the political morass that would be acceptable to a majority of the populace might be to outlaw political ads and campaign tours, in an attempt to minimize the influence of pure propaganda on elections, with each candidate being required to submit their credentials, qualifications, and official political stances to public scrutiny, so that people can intellectually evaluate and compare candidates without the existing PR spin machine turning the whole mess into a popularity contest more than a political race.

I'm not sure that campaign ads really have the impact they once did, considering the influence of things like social media and agenda-driven news outlets which are more trusted sources. However, given the current state of things, campaign ads might be the *only* time when an echo chamber is invaded since under ordinary circumstances all of the opposing opinions can just be ignored. In theory, anyway, it could cause somebody to re-evaluate a position.
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