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US elections

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Peter:
1. I see in dutch newspapers often something about american elections. Becouse of this, it got a little of my interest.

2. I am a little bored.

3. I just found the poll option, and now I want to use it.
gh[strike][/strike]

So what party would you choose.

The elections for the final president is overall just between democrats and republicans. But I decided to just put in the rest.

There are possible some missing, I just took these off the dutch wiki.

EricL:
It's an unfortunate reality in the US that you cannot get elected unless you:

1) Are the nominee of either the democratic or republican party.  The way campaign funding, the press and the special interests work here, any one else has bascially no chance of being heard above the noise.  So voting for anyone else is usually wasted effort.  In the US, we vote for the lessor of two evils.

2) At least profess to be a fairly fundemental Christian which includes catering to the creationist ID crowd.  Sadly, publically embracing evolution would be viewed as a negative thing in the eyes of most of the US voting public .  There has never been a non-christian US president, at least no president has ever professed otherwise.  Similarly no president to my knowledge has ever publically embraced evolution.  They may do so privately and through policy, but there is little to gain by doing so publically so the topic is avoided.  Given the sad and sorry of education, rationality and open mindedness in this nation, a candidate that does not visably attend church on Sundays and conclude every speech with "God Bless the USA" is viewed as suspect and immoral.   Jews, Hindus, and other religions don't have the population base but members of any theist sect are still viewed by the public as better than atheists.  Publically stating that you are atheist is the best way not to get elected in this country, to any office.   Even specific christian sects like the Mormons are generally viewed as unacceptable candidates.

Peter:
I hope you're exaggerating at this. I can't really believe there would be that much people not voting at someone becouse he/she doesn't believe in god?
I know there are some in the Netherlands that vote for a party becouse it is christian. I know more christen that would vote for any party then those who would vote only for a christian party.

Our current premier is a christen. But many before him where atheist.
I don't know the number of christen people that are in the dutch chambers. I haven't seen any polician widely announcing that he/she is a christen and proud to be one.  

No, you're really hard to believe.

EricL:
I am not exaggerating.   Not even a little bit.    Richard Dawkins and others have written and spoken extensibly about this and how it is impossible for someone publicly atheist to be elected.  

Only 28% of Americans "believe" humans evolved through natural processes.    42% believe humans have always existed in their current form and another 18% believe in deity-directed evolution.  The balance don't know.

44% of Americans take the bible literally and think the world was created in 6 days.

Americans are the most religious (and IMHO, ignorant, self-centered, sheltered and gullible) people in the first world by any measure.   As you might imagine, I am greatly embarrassed by this.  IMHO, it is one reason (perhaps the primary reason) this country is in steep decline.

Poll Data.

Numsgil:
The US is more religiously minded than other countries.  I'm not so sure about the whole evolution topic (while some hard liners might care, I can't imagine the vast majority of Americans would).  But believing in God is a big one (note that believing in God and believing in evolution are not mutually exclusive like Dawkins and other hardliners on the other side would have you believe).  America was founded by a bunch of religious nuts who got kicked out of Europe for not partying enough.  That's bound to color our politics.

Ironically, though, you almost never hear politicians actually quote the Bible.  Using the parable about the vineyard owner to support amnesty for illegal immigrants would be a powerful argument, but I've never even heard a hint of it.  Most probably can't even name more than a few of the ten commandments (there was a Stephen Colbert interview where he tried to get the politician who wanted the ten commandments in from of courthouses to name 'em all.  He got like 3 )

My guess is that while most of Americans say they're Christian, none of 'em actually pick up a Bible and read it, because they just don't really care.  Might as well be illiterate.  Just believe in Jesus and you're saved, sort of mentality.  No effort required!  Most just latch on to a charismatic preacher and have him tell them what to believe.  Far less effort that way.

On to actual politicks, McCain was my choice on the Republican side.  I liked him before, and I like him more during the republican debates.  Everyone else was having a pissing contest to see who wanted to torture the most detainees.  McCain says flatly "no torture", and he has a good perspective on it since he was, you know, tortured.  He's principled, which I like.  And I think he was shrewd to name Palin as his VP.  Old white guy + Old white guy would have been sooooo 20th century.  All that said, I think I'm leaning Obama.  A thin majority of the country also seems to be leaning that way.  Obama's a better speaker, and I think on economic terms Obama will cause less deficit than McCain.  Republicans haven't been the party of fiscal responsibility for decades.  The way Bush is throwing money at the housing market you'd think he was a New Dealer!

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