Hear hear. As a relatively recent transplant to Philadelphia I find it hard to take seriously anyone who would actually want to be involved in a political system this backwards. As far as I can see none of the candidates are actually offering concrete plans for what they would do to improve this city, and that seems to be because they don't have to; each of them is just working on turning out their core supporters, hoping that's more than 20% of the party base, and counting on the Democratic hegemony to land them in office.
Whatever you think of either party, I think it has to be clear that multi-party competition, involving candidates from opposing parties offering competing visions and concrete plans for the city, could only be beneficial. Hwe achieve that when the Democratic party machine is so corrupt and pervasive is another story entirely. Mike On Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:06:54 EDT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said: > I agree with your post about this mayoral race being an unprecedentedly > interesting "five pony"one, however I believe that it also demonstrates > how > dangerous a one-party town can become. What I mean by that is that the > Republican > party has become so irrelevant in this town that the Democratic primary > is > effectively the mayoral election. > > Unless one of the Democrats (or Sam Katz) splits off after the primary > and > runs as an Independent then the current Republican candidate stands to > lose the > November election by something like a 70-30 margin (approximately the > margin > the Republican candidate that ran against Rendell for his second term > lost > by). The Republicans have effectively become the "Washington Generals" > (the > team that would lose nightly to the Harlem Globetrotters) or > effectively the > alternate candidate against an Idi Ami or other third world dictator. > > The result of this is disastrous. Using Tony's math that 21% of the > Democratic primary voters could elect the Democratic mayoral candidate > (the amount > of primary voters is substantially less than the general election). > Further > dilute this amount by the fact that Democrats are about 70% of the > City's > population and the result is that a candidate with a large machine could > easily > buy or steal this election. Restating this math is that the mayoral > winner > could have won over less than 10% of the City's eligible voters and > become the > mayor. > > No matter what anyone thinks of the national Republican party, our nation > works best when it has two parties that offer different approaches to the > same > problem. A strong argument could be made that our City has gone > backwards > and has lagged substantially behind the other major cities for about > forty > years primarily because we have operated in a one-party system. > > Guy Laren > > > > ************************************** See what's free at > http://www.aol.com. ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the list named "UnivCity." To unsubscribe or for archive information, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>.
