The ones in your local elections work. It's shame that no one shows up to even try, though. Except old people.

Try telling that to a gay person.

I have gay friends and most of them agree, what about trying telling that to a poor person? elections are -on its current form- a very unrepresentative way of democracy.

There are concrete issues that can be addressed by electing certain persons but generally speaking, change and elections(especially with money involved) it's like the traffic buttons... you think the light changed because you pressed it.

Hi. I think he's right. But that's beside the point. Whether I think he's right or wrong, I can say so, or not say so, for myself. You don't need to worry about it. Thanks for the thought, but I've got it covered.

I think I'm out of the loop. Is this a reference to anything?

Gay marriage, would be my guess.

I assumed as much, but I don't understand how gay marriage was affected by voting for either of the two parties. As far as I could tell from an outside perspective it was a Supreme Court decision that followed a long series of changes in state law in large parts of the US.

It was my understanding that these kind of "contentious" issues are generally only resolved by the Supreme Court when there is already a de facto majority decision in state laws making it a "safe" decision. I'm not sure how much impact the president can even have on these, seeing how the Supreme Court is supposed to be impartial and non-partisan.

Pretty much, although the Court tends to be a bit further ahead of the curve than you suggest.

While I can't speak for 'aaronbrethorst, based on his recent commentary here the theory appears to be that a Republican president will "pack" the Supreme Court with nominees who will then proceed to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges.

Under our system of rule, this is plausible, and Obergefell was decided by a simple majority of the nine-justice panel, with five concurring and four dissenting. A single retirement or death among the five justices concurring in that opinion, therefore, would open an opportunity for a justice of a different opinion to be empaneled, following which a sufficiently savvy court challenge to gay marriage would give the Supreme Court another opportunity to rule on the matter, possibly with a different result.

As I said, this is plausible. It is not, however, likely. Historically speaking, the Court has been extremely conservative in its actions - not "conservative" in the sense of the modern US political faction, but in the proper sense meaning "cautious and hesitant to overturn the status quo without extremely good cause". Gay marriage is now the law of the land. Whether or not that is a good thing, and whether it should've been made so in the fashion it was, are questions worth discussing, but they're also immaterial to the fact of the matter, and there is very little in the history of the Supreme Court to suggest that even a panel which would have ruled differently in Obergefell will act to overrule it after the fact.