Colbert Ballot Bid Shot Down 501
wizzard2k writes "Some of you may have seen Stephen Colbert's bid for the South Carolina Presidential Primary, however it seems his hopes to appear on the ballot as a candidate for the Democratic Party have been shot down. From the report: 'Stephen Colbert's bid to get on the ballot for the upcoming Democratic primary in his home state was shot down on Thursday (November 1) by the executive committee of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Colbert's bid was voted down 13-3 ... Using criteria such as whether the candidate was recognized in the national news media as a legitimate candidate and whether they'd actively campaigned in the state, the committee put the kibosh on the Colbert bid.'"
The real reason they quashed it... (Score:4, Interesting)
There's Ron Paul (Score:3, Interesting)
Please take the hint (Score:5, Interesting)
Somehow I doubt the Republicrats and Democans will listen to this warning, though. I remember in college when a local comic-strip character (Hank the Hallucination, no less) won the student government presidential election (beating Paul Begala who went on to serve Clinton). All the budding young politicos were incensed that their resume-padding ambitions were being damaged by the will of the student body. But it didn't really change anything then and a fear Colbert short-lived candidacy won't change much now (but I can hope!).
How to get on the ballot? (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps he can get on a third-party primary? As an independent? How hard is it to start your own party? Is running as a write-in the best option?
This was funny... (Score:3, Interesting)
Independent (Score:3, Interesting)
Colbert bumped (Score:4, Interesting)
Colbert has handled this poorly, and while I'm dismayed he won't be on the political stage, I think it's his own fault.
I think he would have taken the place by storm if he'd gone out of character when off his show and dealt with people as a regular person, instead of making any attempt whatsoever to be funny. It would have put people off guard and left him the upper hand to control the political stage.
Nothing would have shown modern politics for what it is better than to have people show up to debate with him, armed with one-liners so they could compete one what they imagined to be the called-for level only to find that he was armed with complete thoughts on issues that he surely knows about but does not normally speak of.
That he has left people unsure about what he's doing is not the fault of the people he's confused. He's the one with the savvy to have overcome it, and his entire point is that people are not good about setting serious agendas. They're waiting for someone else to do it in lemming-like ways, and then instead of him doing it, he's leaving it to others to figure him out.
I love his show, but I think he has botched this. He could still recover, I think, but the only way I see him doing is stepping out of character. And to be honest, I think he's afraid to do that, which bodes ill for him as a candidate.
He wants to orchestrate things, but the US situation is not something that needs orchestration right now. It needs plain honesty. Honesty we know he's capable of. But it needs it straight up, not confusingly presented.
I don't care what he says on his show--I'll still watch the show. I care a lot that off the show, if he's going to do this, he do it as a regular guy, not a persona.
Re:The real reason they quashed it... (Score:3, Interesting)
Its absolutely pathetic when a satirist making a parody of the election process process has more credibility than the average 'legitimate' candidate.
Re:So Sad (Score:3, Interesting)
Doesn't mean, however, that he can't run for president on his own.
Re:Now here's where the hope comes in (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bloomberg/Colbert '08. (Score:4, Interesting)
The Daily Show gets people interested and in fact cynical of politicians where they otherwise would not have even cared.
I won't however defend colbert, I've seen him bring too many guests on the show with important things to say, only to have him run his mouth and waste time as if its all a joke. It may be mocking political pundits, but his guests are real and were brought on for a reason, and he talks over them like a moron.
Re:There's Ron Paul (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Now here's where the hope comes in (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Colbert bumped (Score:5, Interesting)
I love his show, but I think he has botched this.
I think you are confusing what he was trying to do with what you wish he had been trying to do.
Re:Mainstream Media Decide WHAT? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:genius (Score:2, Interesting)
Maybe I just run with the 'wrong' crowds, but I think almost every person I've ever met has complained about the fact that a third-party candidate can't win. People know about the problem, they just don't know what to do about it. They're too scared for the most part to vote for something other than D or R because it will likely not matter. Hell, I don't know how to fix it and vote according to the same reasoning.
I wish, at least, there were four parties though:
Liberal Social Issues/Liberal Economic Issues
Liberal Social Issues/Conservative Economic Issues
Conservative Social Issues/Liberal Economic Issues
Conservative Social Issues/ Conservative Economic Issues.
That way I could vote to lower taxes WITHOUT voting for torture and censorship. But they'll never do it because if one of them splits up (say Rs split into those for gay marriage and pro choice and Rs that are against) essentially it'll just hand the election to the Ds. It's bloc voting and you can't get around it unless everybody splits at once.
ESSENTIALLY, I think what I'm saying is that it's a monopoly, but I DON'T think anti-trust laws apply to elections (though it seems like they should...right?). Free internet for the first senator to bring THAT up in Congress...
They have to do something though. People get a little cocky about the US, but we weren't exactly big shots a hundred years ago and in another hundred (50, 20, 5..) years a lot could go wrong. Nations need to adapt and change. You can't just keep building up frustration and diverting it with a new scapegoat enemy every few years.
Cheers to the US, let's hope you make some wise decisions to admit your faults in the next few years. You can only repaint something so many times before it begins to rot inside.
Re:There's Ron Paul (Score:3, Interesting)
You are correct on your numbers. I'm a "southern" democrat in terms of my overall political stances (socialist libertarian), not the old hat Southern Democrat (thus the "" in my original post) There was no strong republican party in the South prior to the Civil Rights Act. Afterwards, the 'racist' part of the SDems steadily moved over to the Republican party.
Am I wrong to identify myself in that frame of reference?
Cheers.
Re:Mainstream Media Decide WHAT? (Score:3, Interesting)
I probably failed 3 times before I started my first company that took off and became successful. If you ask many other business owners, you will see that they admit to have failed in the past too. It may not be their fault it failed but failing is failing. And it definately isn't jumping and attempting to grab the moon.
Re:These quotes appeared in Ron's newsletter (Score:4, Interesting)
-metric
Welcome back to high school folks. (Score:3, Interesting)
The Democrats (not to be confused with the democrats, small d) are thrilled to have someone like Steve on their side as long as he's not rocking the boat within their party. The second that he tries to cross the line from being the king's jester to trying to be a king he gets smacked down by the same people he supported for years and years. He's good enough to be their goof because he makes them laugh and be brings them free PR but he's not truely one of them. He's simply not a Democrat. He doesn't have the money nor does he do the same goosestep. He's the class clown that all the preps and jocks laughed at yet wasn't good enough to sit at their table during lunch. He has no chance within their exclusive socio-political structure to make any real headway. His role is defined and his attempt to leave that role is what really got him beat down. If he makes further attempts on this he'll find that those who use to laugh at him and praise him for being a stooge are going to be more than willing to feed him to the wolves. They're hoping that they've made their point and that Steve will go back to his old role. Otherwise he'll be doomed.
You see, both of the big political parties have this going on. Either you're a Republican or Democrat or a republican or a democrat. If you're not among their power elite they'll humor you into thinking that you're part of their structure but if you try to advance in their structure without being the power elite you're going to get flogged for being a bad dog and getting out of line. Their affluence and exclusivity are not to be questioned or approached. Especially within the ranks. As outsiders we can scoff but if you're inside there is a consequence for this. Stevie is finding that out. I'd like to think he's smart enough to have already known it. It'll be a dark day for him if he decides to rock the boat more.
The really sad thing is that the lemmings of the Republicans and Democrats are the ones who let this structure exist and regardless of how discontent these people are in their role they refuse to start supporting people who'd be willing to support them. This isn't to say that third parties could not fall into the same ruts but only having two choices makes it easy to stay in power when you're in the rut.
Re:These quotes appeared in Ron's newsletter (Score:3, Interesting)
It's probably an exaggeration, yes, and but (provided we limit ourselves to young black men, and make the assumptions outlined above) it's not an obscene one. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the actual figure is in the vicinity of 75%, perhaps even higher. And before you peg me a racist, let me hasten to say that I am against the war on drugs, and the majority of those crimes are likely nonviolent drug crimes. Just because someone is a criminal does not make them a bad person; there are such things as unjust laws. Also, I don't believe that black people are in any way genetically predisposed to anything; any statistical discrepancies are most likely the generations-old leftovers of post-slavery (and post-discrimination) poverty.
On the Israeli note--it is a very sad thing that people cannot criticize Israel and Zionism without being accused of anti-Semitism. While I applaud many progressive Israeli policies, the Zionist movement really picked the worst possible location in the world for their homeland. I suppose it's now far too late to think about doing it elsewhere, but in the 60+ years since their sovereignty was declared, their government has done some horrific (and more than a few extremely stupid) things, which has just gone on to destabilize the region even more. Israel is kept alive in no small part by the United States' willingness to supply them with state of the art weaponry, including (as is widely assumed, but cannot be absolutely proven) nuclear weapons. On the whole I think that Israel has been a hell of a lot more civilized than their neighbors have been, but that doesn't mean we should continue to support them unilaterally--doing the "right" thing isn't right if it means destabilizing the region even further and pushing us closer to World War III. That's my own view of the matter--Paul's was about pro-Israel lobbyists having too much power. That may or may not be true, but simply putting forth the argument doesn't make him a racist. I agree, it *could* be an initial warning sign that he harbors deeper, more generalized (and crackpot) Jewish conspiracy theories, but it could also be a very sane and straightforward observation based on the fact that the United States is ONLY country (of any significant size) that consistently and usually unequivocally supports Israel in the UN.
Re:Complete re-wire (Score:3, Interesting)
We don't necessarily have to abolish political parties. I'm not sure that's even possible in practice. What we do need is a system without the property that only one Democrat and one Republican have any shot at any given political office.
The best suggestion I've heard so far is this: Move to approval voting for the president and senators and to proportional representation for the house of representatives.