Reminds me of the sore losers who supported Clinton in 2008 and when Obama won, bolted to McCain just out of spite.
So it is your position that a GOP primary supporter of Kasich is ethically obligated to vote for Trump if he is the nominee in November even if (s)he finds the prospect of A Trump presidency to be catastrophic for the country and the world?
My ethics tell me that my vote should be first motivated by what I feel is the best for the world and for the country. If “my party” ended up, after a nominating process that participated in, putting up someone who was not merely a candidate that I did not particularly like, but one who I thought would be worse for the world and the country than the “other party’s” standard bearer, then no question I vote based on that assessment, not on party.
I personally find the concept of doing otherwise as offensive.
Dangerosa feeling that she personally should not vote in a primary if she is not willing to vote for whoever wins that process however odious (s)he may be? I agree with her - it is a strange position. But I respect what she has decided makes ethical sense for herself, even if it is strange.
Believing that others should follow her strange standard, being offended that most of us do not accept that there has been any such agreement even implied? A bit beyond strange, sorry.
Slacker the analogies you offer have nothing to do with the circumstance being discussed.
If Bernie were winning, there would be Hillary supporters who said the same. Heck, Sarah Palin came into public awareness because McCain’s team thought they were serious eight years ago. Fortunately, Nader was still in everyone’s brain.
The idea of party unity is what is making the GOP fun to watch right now. “Of course we will support the nominee (how in the hell do we make sure it isn’t Trump - and shit, if it isn’t Trump its that lizard Cruz).” Lindsey Graham is particularly amusing. The idea of party unity isn’t unique to me, I drive it down further to an individual level than most people who aren’t serious about party politics. I hang with a bunch of die hard Democrats - and a few Republicans, including people who have put people in national office - they have very similar beliefs.
If Trump can co-opt the GOP there are a lot of Republicans that shouldn’t be Republicans…and the party platform needs to change to address the concerns of the middle class white people Trump is appealing to. That may mean that the party implodes and something else rises to take its place.
And it doesn’t have anything to do with Caucus states. Its the idea of party unity.
One could modify Dangerosa’s position to possibly broaden its appeal. You could say that you shouldn’t vote in a primary unless you are voting for the best candidate and have a certain requisite amount of party loyalty. In most cases that loyalty would imply voting with the party during the general. But under exceptional circumstances you might vote for the opposition, if you preferred the opposition’s candidate despite the loyalty you had to the party.
You might question your loyalty moving forward though.
Alternatively, a Republican might vote for Hillary over Trump in November if he recognized that Hillary is actually a fairly centrist politician, while a Trump Presidency could do for the Republicans what Carter did for the Democrats. Only worse, much worse.
I agree that it’s ethically questionable to try to sabotage the other party. But that’s not necessarily what we’re talking about here. Someone might rank the candidates as something like this:
10: Jesus Christ
2: Kasich
-1: Clinton
-4: Sanders
-5: Cruz
-10: Trump
They see a tremendous difference between Kasich and Trump, and they think it’s really important to give Kasich any advantage they can; in addition, they think Kasich is the actual best candidate for office. They think Trump is terrible. So they vote in the Republican primary for Kasich.
If Trump wins, what in their actions ties them to voting for Trump? The Republican party hasn’t demanded that sort of loyalty, even though they certainly could. That sort of loyalty leads to worse results from their viewpoint, and from mine. The only people it benefits are the overdogs; it exacerbates differences in power rather than smoothing them out. It puts unnecessary constraints on the functioning of a democracy in which people choose their leaders.
If it violates your etiquette, okay. I also eat pie with my entree fork. But to suggest it’s unethical is very strange.
Again, gaming the system to try to fuck over opposition is a different ball game, and not what I’m talking about here.
Slacker at this point is descending into analogies too foolish to deal with. Those pub buddies in his first analogy, swapping rounds? Every drunken alcoholic barfly I’ve ever met who pontificated about politics would tell him to get the hell out of her with that weak shit.
I don’t know if this is supposed to be some sort of snark aimed at me. I will note that I voted for and donated to Obama in the 2008 primary season, and I was very critical of the PUMA faction. But Hillary, to her credit, never encouraged this kind of attitude the way Bernie did in the interview.
This is a little watered down from my ideal position, but unlike certain people I don’t insist on my way or the highway. I could be open to this as a compromise position.
In some sense you are right, but as I noted upthread I’m getting fed up with gritting my teeth and turning the other cheek. What I am honestly hoping is that as demographics continue to change, the hard left faction will be increasingly irrelevant to mainline Democrats’ chances of winning elections and we can just tell them to sod off and play with their no-hope third parties like the Greens. But we may, as I’ve said, need to take more explicit steps to keep them from interfering with the Democratic primary process.
Reince Priebus said something interesting today on ABC This Week. Namely, that the pledge to support the GOP nominee in the fall was required as a quid pro quo in exchange for data and use of the party infrastructure. This is exactly the kind of point I have been making. But a few months ago, I would have said it was a sad commentary on the GOP that they needed to explicitly ask for such a quid pro quo. Democrats, I had thought, understood this trade-off implicitly. But maybe we are actually the stupid party, handing over the data and infrastructure support without getting such an agreement.
This is your “ethical” argument? :rolleyes:
Unless he’s ratfucking for the other side.
I don’t believe others need to follow my standard - its a little like an ethical vegetarian who thinks the world would be a better place if other people did, and doesn’t like seeing meat on other people’s plates. Not that big of a deal.
I suspect that most people follow these ideals, actually. I think those that bother to vote in the primaries vote in elections. And don’t switch parties - right now there isn’t really a centrist position that draws people to move parties - unless you are simply anti-establishment in which case either Trump or Bernie seems anti-establishment.
But no one apart from SlackerInc has proposed or condoned such deceits.
I don’t cross party lines, because I have never been affiliated with any party to begin with. I want the Democrats and the Republicans to put forth their best candidates. Because that’s what’s best for meaningful debate, for democracy, for the country.
Suddenly I’m glad I’m an independent. I don’t get to vote in the primary, but I don’t run into any ethical issues with voting for whoever I determine is the best candidate in the general. 
What about state, county, and municipal offices? Are you saying that I’m under a mild moral obligation to either become an independent – which means not voting in any Pennsylvania primary – or always press my party’s big button?
That seems to me a little extreme.
If you are thinking it just applies to federal offices, why the distinction?
Where I live, school board candidates often run in the primaries of both parties. This seems to send a pretty strong message that, at least in my state, there is no such agreement.
I think the reason Bernie should endorse the eventual Democratic nominee rather than the Green Party has little to do with loyalty considerations. He should do it because Hillary agrees with Bernie’s positions more than do Trump or Cruz, and because a strong Green Party performance would give the election to Trump or Cruz.
I think you’re usually right, but I think people do it not out of loyalty, but because they’re trying in both cases to advance a specific agenda. For myself, as the sort of hard lefty that sends Slacker into such apoplexy, I advance my agenda by voting for the farthest left candidate in both the primary and the general. That’s likely going to mean Sanders primary, Clinton general.
But there are other people out there who are, say, soft libertarians who value conservative fiscal policy slightly above abortion rights. Such a person might vote for Kasich in the primary and Clinton in the general. There are other people who value anti-establishment candidates, who think that career politicians are awful; they might vote for Sanders in the primary, Trump in the general.
I’d disagree with both sets of people. But I see nothing wrong with their voting strategy; their lack of loyalty to the party they voted in initially is a virtue, not a vice, inasmuch as an overreliance on loyalty can cloud voters as to what would actually be best for the nation and the world.
I am the sort of person who values social liberalism and fiscal conservatism. So I get your point, but I don’t think I have a right to drive candidate selection from where I sit because there isn’t currently a party that values both those things. If the Democrats were to go too far left, and the GOP came back to a more sensible center, I’d be voting Republican.
I was a Republican. This strange ethical belief I have partly comes out of having been part of a party that left my kind behind. In the meantime, the Democrats moved center. But was there ever an election where I had to hold my nose as much as I did for Bush/Dukakis? Both choices were horrible.
And Slacker may be the only person who has suggested crossing party lines to get the worst candidate, but he isn’t the only person who has come up with the idea.
I guess I don’t get the advantage of your ethical code. You have the right to drive candidate selection because the parties explicitly give you that right, and they use your tax dollars to facilitate the primary elections in which you get to exercise that right. There’s no etiquette issue involved; they don’t want you to buy them a round afterward; they don’t need you to not sleep with their boyfriend; whatever other absurd analogies anyone can come up with, that’s not what they ask. They just ask people interested in their policies to help them choose the best candidate.
If you, as a moderate, voted in a primary, that would be to that party’s advantage. If they promote the candidate you prefer for the general, they’re likelier to win the general, likelier by one vote. Abstaining from the primaries doesn’t help anyone.
As for Slacker’s sabotage idea, I agree that it’s not nearly so in the clear, ethically speaking. I’m setting it to the side not because it’s rare, but because the problems with it have less to do with loyalty and more to do with whether subverting someone’s attempt to choose a good candidate is wise.
I think you are describing the base and EC is describing the leadership.
Sanders’ supporters are trying hard to do the latter. And SlackerInc rejects that enterprise as somehow illegitimate.
Registering D to vote for Sanders is neither interference nor distortion, it is simply participation. And so is any voting decision (other than not voting at all) that those same voters will make in November.
PhillyGuy, the moral obligation is not about whether it is federal vs. state, but about whether you voted in the primary. I say that you shouldn’t vote in a primary if there are candidates on that ballot, with a significant chance to win, whom you would not vote for in the general election.
Perhaps that you cannot in fairness peg every Congresscritter who voted for the AUMF as a warhawk or warmonger for that reason alone.
I most certainly do not. But I don’t believe you are “within” the party unless you will support its duly elected nominee in the fall even if it’s not your favorite. To change it from within would be to keep trying to get your preferred nominees, to try to persuade others in the party of their merit, but then still supporting the party while you work on that change. I hope that is clarifying: I think your raising this false accusation has actually helped me to state my position more clearly.