Election

[Ben]

Personally, Ben, I think the Romney-Ryan duo at the White House would be an absolute catastrophe. The four years of the Bush administration led America in a position Obama has to fight the Republicans to get it out of. Imagine a government more to the right for 4 more years if not 8!

I, personally, don't see a lot of difference between the two parties. Albeit Dems are more moderate. And much better on social issues, gay rights, abortion rights etc., etc. (But: I would've voted for Ron Paul. If he were my congressperson. As I like a lot of what he stands for. But I don't embrace the Republican Party. Nor do I embrace the Dems. Although I like someone like Dennis Kucinich.) So, there are some politicians I like on either side of the political aisle, as it were.
Again, there isn't a profound difference between them.
Both support so-called free trade agreements. They aren't really free trade agreements. More investor rights agreements, as it were.
Both support propping up the big banks.... Which are bigger than ever. And, too, another banking crisis is bound to happen. It's inevitable. There is simply too much volatility in the system.
Only thing Romney will do: give massive tax breaks to the super-rich. Meaning: himself and his buddies. Call it: a simple gift --
Anyway, forget all that bullshit. And focus on Derrick Barry --

[Prospero]

Ben wrote: "I, personally, don't see a lot of difference between the two parties."

You may not but Wall Street certainly does - which makes it pretty clear which of the two contenders has the interests of the rich and successful at heart, as opsed to the broader mass of the American people.
From the UK Independent newspaper today....

Why Wall Street is starving Obama of funds
The big money men are riled by what they see as banker bashing from the President and have switched to his rival Romney, says Nikhil Kumar



Money talks, goes the old cliche, and seldom does it boom more loudly than during the quadrennial battle for the White House. Every donor counts as the candidates scramble to fund their way to (or back to) Pennsylvania Avenue.

Wall Street, with its deep pool of billionaires and millionaires, is a key pit stop. In 2008, it was leaning left. The-then Senator Barack Obama had successfully charmed the sharp-suited throngs of lower Manhattan into backing him, lock, stock and chequebook. Goldman Sachs, no less, was his second-biggest contributor, based on donations from the firm's political action committee and those individual donors who listed the investment bank as their employer, according to the Washington-based Centre for Responsive Politics.

But four years on, riled by what many of them see as excess regulation and banker-bashing rhetoric from the President, Wall Street types have changed their minds and they are voting with their bank accounts.

With less than a week to go until the ballots are cast, donations from the securities and investment sector have netted over $19m (£12m) for Mr Obama's Republican rival, Mitt Romney, who has said he would "repeal ... and replace" the Dodd-Frank financial oversight law backed by the President and so disliked in the high-rises of New York.

Goldman ranks as his top contributor, based on the parameters above, with Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan and Credit Suisse making up the remainder of Mr Romney's top-five backers, according to CRP figures. In total, the finance, insurance and real sectors have contributed nearly $61m to the Republican camp.

Mr Obama, meanwhile, has received just under $6m from the securities and investment sector during the 2012 election cycle. The only vaguely financial name in the top 10 contributors to the Obama side this year is Deloitte, the accountancy firm. Wells Fargo is the lone bank in the top 20.

The trend is repeated in the CRP tally of donations from the hedge fund business and from Mr Romney's former colleagues in private equity. The Republican co-founder of Bain Capital has booked $5.7m in cheques from the two sectors, against $1.3m for Mr Obama.

Rewind to 2008, before the President called bankers "fat cats" who don't get it, and Mr Obama had Wall Street locked up. The securities and investment cabal gave nearly $16m to the Democratic candidate, against $9.2m to Senator John McCain, the Republican standard-bearer. Hedge funds and private equity, meanwhile, backed the soon-to-be President to the tune of $3.47m. Mr McCain, in contrast, received around $2m.

The shift this year matters, given the cost of securing office. By the time this year's race is over, the Obama and Romney campaigns, along with their parties, would have raised around $2bn. And though individual contributions are capped at $2,500 per candidate per election (the primaries and general election are counted separately, adding up to $5,000) and $30,800 per party per year, deep-pocketed donors have, under a 2010 Supreme Court ruling, been funneling millions more to outside groups allied with their preferred politician.

Wall Street's enthusiasm for the Republican ticket was in evidence the other week at a New York cocktail reception with Mr Romney's Vice-Presidential candidate, Paul Ryan. For $1,000 per person, guests from the city's financial elite were invited to hob-nob with one half of the Republican ticket at the Hilton hotel. Another $5,000 bought them a snap with Mr Ryan.

The names of the event's co-chairs was telling. According to The New York Times, the host list featured a number of hedge-fund notables, including John Paulson of Paulson & Co, and senior Blackstone group executives Michael Chase and Prakash Melwani. John Mack, the former boss of Morgan Stanley, was also reported to be on the list, along with ex-Goldman chief John Whitehead.

Not that Mr Obama hasn't tried, despite his commentary on bankers, to win back Wall Street. Earlier this year, for instance, his campaign manager Jim Messina convened some of the finance world's biggest hitters, including Ralph Schlosstein of Evercore Partners and Eric Mindich of Eton Park Capital, to stress that the President was running against Mr Romney, not against the industry, according to Bloomberg reports. But nothing, not the closed-door meetings, nor an array of glittering New York fundraisers, appears to have worked.

As one Mr Obama donor told The New York Times earlier this year: "This administration has a more contemptuous view of big money and of Wall Street than any administration in 40 years. And it shows." Given the numbers, it certainly does.

[trish]

During Bush Jr. the difference was an entire war (in Iraq), a tax cut for the wealthy that gave away a projected ten year surplus and a banking collapse of the likes we haven't seen since the Great Depression.

During Obama the difference was an entire war (ending the war in Iraq), the decimation of the higher echelons of Al Qaeda, the affordable health care act, the Lilly Ledbetter act, the rebounding recovery of wall and the slower ongoing recovery of housing and jobs.

The difference between Obama and Romney is the difference between a president and a boss.

We have a system of checks and balances. The two houses are a check on each other and on the White House. If the one house are occupied by a party steadfastly opposed to the occupant of the White House and the other house can't pass anything without a supermajority, very little change is possible. If you want change compatible with at least some of your progressive ideals, vote for Obama and give him the Congress. If you want kick dirt on your progressive ideals and bury them, vote Romney. Seems pretty clear to me.

An aside on Checks and Balances: It's of no surprise that I lean liberal, however when it comes to practical issues I'm quite conservative. I don't think it's wise to change everything all at once. My preferred modus operandi is to tweak a variable or two or three and watch what happens. Then tweak again. I like a system of checks and balances. However there is a danger in the system that has started to reveal itself at least since the appearance of the teaparty. If a party (or a coalition of parties in a multiparty system) values their own political power over and beyond that of the nation, they can uses the system of checks and balances to hold the well being of the nation itself hostage. We've seen this mechanism put into play quite blatantly over the last four years, but it's also being utilized on the sly as well. It's another reason to give Obama the house he needs.

[Odelay]

If a party (or a coalition of parties in a multiparty system) values their own political power over and beyond that of the nation, they can uses the system of checks and balances to hold the well being of the nation itself hostage. We've seen this mechanism put into play quite blatantly over the last four years, but it's also being utilized on the sly as well. It's another reason to give Obama the house he needs.

I agree. Part of the checks and balances, in my opinion, is to have 2 or more parties that have the health and well being of the country as their primary objective. Right now, the Republican Party is completely out of whack. The only way I see them reforming is if they lose over and over again. As long as voters keep rewarding them with a win here or a win there, we're never going to see reformation and a more reasonable conservative party in the mold of Canada or the UK.

I don't know if our British participants on this board will see the humor in this, but I would kill to have a conservative like Cameron leading the opposition party here.

[robertlouis]

I agree. Part of the checks and balances, in my opinion, is to have 2 or more parties that have the health and well being of the country as their primary objective. Right now, the Republican Party is completely out of whack. The only way I see them reforming is if they lose over and over again. As long as voters keep rewarding them with a win here or a win there, we're never going to see reformation and a more reasonable conservative party in the mold of Canada or the UK.

I don't know if our British participants on this board will see the humor in this, but I would kill to have a conservative like Cameron leading the opposition party here.

It's funny, because the present government in the UK is operating in a massively socially regressive way, introducing largely unwanted market reforms into our cherished NHS - one of the things that makes me proud to be British - and is also taking away social benefits from large swathes of the vulnerable. Marxists would call it class war, and they wouldn't be far off.

But when I look across the pond at the bunch of fundamentalist nutjobs which comprise the GOP these days, even I mutter a silent prayer in thanks for Call Me Dave. Things could be oh so much worse.

[Stavros]

I agree. Part of the checks and balances, in my opinion, is to have 2 or more parties that have the health and well being of the country as their primary objective. Right now, the Republican Party is completely out of whack. The only way I see them reforming is if they lose over and over again. As long as voters keep rewarding them with a win here or a win there, we're never going to see reformation and a more reasonable conservative party in the mold of Canada or the UK.

I don't know if our British participants on this board will see the humor in this, but I would kill to have a conservative like Cameron leading the opposition party here.

I think what happens is that when a party loses an election, the next leadership re-defines its 'values' and vows to take the party in a new direction to gain victory at the polls -Reagan did it after the debacle of the Nixon Presidency which was supposed to roll back Johnson's great society programs and mark a new dawn for conservative America, yet sank in the mire of Vietnam and White House lies and criminality. The Conservatives after Thatcher could not decide if they wanted to move away from her divisive policies, or reinforce them -the Cameron band have argued that they can 'humanise' the legacy of Thatcher, which is why the party is led by her admirers, from Cameron himself, to Chancellor George Osborne and education secretary Michael Gove. The difference is that the Conservatives have to rule with the Liberal Democrats because they didn't win a majority in the commons -and by US standards are not as 'extreme' as the new Republicans who couldn't bear to lose the White House to anyone let alone Obama.

In other words both parties have reinforced their conservative values; the big difference here is that invoking the authority of almighty God is a vote loser where for a hard core of Americans, not just Tea Party drinkers it is their libation morning , noon and night, even as they wave their Constitution around as if it were an extract from the Bible. The question is, does this polarisation win votes? I think it can if enough people are convinced the country is in a crisis, which the US is not.

The other big difference, as Trish pointed out earlier, is that the US has a 'checks and balances' system where determined cliques in the House can prevent Congress from passing legislation, whereas in this country that sort of thing just isn't done. Because the Liberal Democrats are facing annihilation at the next election, having been exposed as a party of liars and cheats -which is what people like me knew all along anyway- they cannot afford to prevent the coalition from functioning, or the government will fall and there will be that conclusive election.

However, if you really want him, please do invite David Cameron to emigrate and lead your Republican Party; as long as he takes with him Michael Gove, Eric Pickles, Liam Fox, George Osborne -well, the whole shower of 'em. Give them West Virginia and see what happens next. And the best of British luck to you.

[Odelay]

However, if you really want him, please do invite David Cameron to emigrate and lead your Republican Party; as long as he takes with him Michael Gove, Eric Pickles, Liam Fox, George Osborne -well, the whole shower of 'em. Give them West Virginia and see what happens next. And the best of British luck to you.

Sure no problem as long as we can send Bachman, Romney, Gingrich, Palin, Herm Cain, and God o God - Rick Santorum, back to you in exchange.

[Prospero]

Erm.... that's not a fair and balanced offer Odelay

[Stavros]

Sure no problem as long as we can send Bachman, Romney, Gingrich, Palin, Herm Cain, and God o God - Rick Santorum, back to you in exchange.

Interesting point would be, should they be here, would any of them get elected to Parliament? Gingrich possibly, but I doubt the others would make it. Nevertheless, its already cold enough here without sending more chills into my draughty dwelling!!

[martin48]

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