Jim Parsons Explains Political Terms
On January 20th Sirius XM published a video featuring Jim Parsons explaining different political terms. The video is a promotion for Jim Parson’s new talk show Jim Parsons Is Too Stupid For Politics. He was given a few general political terms and asked to define them. Read his answers and see if yours compare.
The Electoral College
Jim Parsons said, “Electoral college is whoever gets a state, gets those electoral votes. Whoever gets 270 votes is the one who ends up winning the presidency.” He also added, “Actually that’s not a terrible answer, although the electoral college is confusing to everyone.”
photo by twitter.com
So What Did He Leave Out?
Although Jim is right, he didn’t explain how the number of electoral votes gets calculated. There are 538 electors, and each state gets a number of electors equal to their number of senators and representatives. Those allocations are based on the census. Essentially, population drives up electoral voters. The Electoral college was put in place as a compromise between a vote from congress and a vote from the people.
Did you already know that? See if you know more than Jim Parsons about this next term…
Filibuster
Parsons defines a filibuster as “when a senator takes the floor and keeps talking in order to stop a vote from happening on a particular issue that they don’t want to have voted on.” He added… “which already sounds confusing to me.”
photo by thewrap.com
Cloture
Again, he’s right…but not thorough. A filibuster can be stopped with “Cloture” which is a term for a 2/3 majority vote that will end the filibuster and cause the vote to occur. The longest ever filibuster was 24 hours and 18 minutes long, by J Storm Thurmond in 1957.
You’ll be shocked at the term he had no idea how to define…
Caucus
Jim Parsons definition of the word caucus; “It’s a group of people…and I don’t know what they’re doing.” That was it.
photo by newslocker.com
Factcheck.org states, “In presidential campaigns, a caucus is a system of local gatherings where voters decide which candidate to support and select delegates for nominating conventions. A primary is a statewide voting process in which voters cast secret ballots for their preferred candidates.” Basically, caucuses differ from primaries because they aren’t one-stop cast your ballot and leave events. At a caucus locals discuss their decisions and talk about what’s to come; typically votes are out in the open, sometimes by a show of hands.
So what do you think? Will you be tuning into Jim Parson’s new talk show? Do you already know more about politics than he does?
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