Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to " We bend so that we never break."

The steamroller
Robert — (archived)

The League of Women Voters is a private nonpartisan political organization that's almost a century old. It's been highly respected because it's maintained its independence over the years, and it's put a lot of its energy into education and motivating participation in politics. "Women" in its name signifies that its original purpose, soon after women finally got the vote in the US, was to assist their entry into politics. I'm pretty sure you no longer need to be female to join.

The League for a long time sponsored the Presidential debates and set the groundrules. The groundrules reflected their values and were meant to promote vigorous and open debate, but those rules have always conflicted with the Party machinery's desire to control debate and to present their candidates in the best stage-managed light. The parties have kept up the pressure on the League over the years, gradually reducing the number of debates to limit the exposure of their candidates to unscripted environments. In the last couple of elections the League had to pretty much cave in and hold the debates to suit the parties, otherwise the parties would simply have refused to participate.

This wasn't directly about corporations or other third parties. It was about the machinery of politics and and a naked exercize of power. I view the fight between the League and the Parties to be one of the battlegrounds on which the politicians have fought to illegitimately expand their power at the expense of the power of the people. We no longer get honest answers from Presidential debates, only timid questions and scripted soundbite answers. And that is a shame.

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