I think rUK should have had the vote as to whether Scotland should be allowed to stay. The way it was run, only a minority was given the opportunity to vote on the union, and that's hardly democracy. It's all a matter of perspective, init?

The U.S. "Democratic" process, for as good as it might be in some respects is exceedingly flawed which is why Lucy crticises it and is quite right in doing so.

Basically in the U.S. we have two kinds of people that are a combination of several factors: voters and non-voters; relatively informed and relatively uninformed; emotional and logical; pro-union (as in labour) and anti-union; and so on.

The categories could be endless and there are commonalities in the combinations that sort of define the typical Democrat and the typical Republican. Where it becomes a problem is when the low information voters use a single issue to define their entire vote. Politicans cater to this and try to appear to be the most appealing to the most number of people on single issues; it isn't as simple as it seems because they have to try to do it in such a way as to not really tip their hand for total support or rejection of a topic. Nobody lays out their entire platform becasue they'd lose votes that way. Then they do as much as they can for themselves to stay in power and try to bribe their constituents with their own tax money in the form of projects.

If we called city inhabitants Democrats in Scotland and suburbanites Republicans in Scotland, that would fairly accurately show how the vote went in America for prezbo. That's why he won, appeal to large population centers. Also, prezbo won much more of the young, idealistic vote (against young idealists voting republican) which is probably similar to the demographic voting for secession. In the Scottish scenario I see their vote as probably more defining and beneficial (potentially) in end results than defeat would indicate. At least I hope so.

 

Did you ever see such a messed up situation in your whole life, son?