>>> Hitler never commanded a majority vote, and his party was not majority
>>> party when he became PM.  He was simply the only one who put together
>> a viable coalition.
>> That is how parliaments work. Coalition governments...
> the point is that Hitler did not become Chancellor as the result of an
> electoral mandate.  Put more simply, Hitler was not elected into power.

        Germans think of their chancellors as getting (popularly) elected
        even if done via intermediaries, i.e. their elected (and party
        appointed) representatives in parliament.  If you have a problem
        with that, tough!

        Americans much the same way think they elect(ed) their president(s),
        even when they actually vote(d) for "electors" -- representatives
        who are only more or less bound to a mandate... and sometimes those
        presidents end up looking more "annointed" (by the supreme court,
        though actually by big business) than actually voted into office
        by a majority (that's 50+%) of the voters... (I heard said that
        fewer than half of US presidential elections ended with a winner
        achieving more than 50 percent of the actual popular vote...)

        whatever, that's democracy as good as we can hope to get...

        (and one gets this feeling of impending doom every time "the
         powers" start to screw around trying to change things...)


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