[Cough, cough] I voted for Nader in 2000. In Florida.
I was in college in 2000. We were into experimentation - lots of crazy shit; LSD and everything. And Nader was the only candidate to actually show up to my University and give a speech, and spoke of progressive and practical ideas for the future of America.
And you know what? I still don’t regret my vote. Even though W was easily the worst President of my lifetime (born in '78), and one of the worst of all time. Because Ralph Nader was who 22 year old me judged was best for 22 year old me.
You want to blame somebody for Bush? Blame the millions of idiots who voted for Bush. Blame the confusing ballots that had old Jewish people voting disproportionally for Buchanan instead of Gore. Blame Jeb and his administration. Blame a patently biased Supreme Court.
And, if it makes you feel better, blame me.
But I got better. And today, I support Clinton. And what annoys me about Sanders supporters is that they complain about how corrupt the rules are and how the superdelegates aren’t fair when those are choices of the Democratic Party.
Which Sanders was never a part of. Until he chose to join. So if you join a party, you have to follow their rules. He could have run as a Green. Nader did; Sanders didn’t.
See, what I was alluding to was that someone who voted for Bush might well say to me “Yeah, I voted for Bush.” And folks who were old and confused might well say to me “Well, I wanted to vote for Gore, and tried my hardest to do so.” And Jeb and the Justices might well say they stand by their decisions.
And some Nader voters might, even today, stick to that “not a dime’s worth of difference between 'em” line.
If we start from any of those premises, I maybe can’t argue with any of those people. But I’m in a situation where I do see a difference between Trump and Clinton; and I do want to vote against Trump; and I do want to cast a vote that has the best chance of stopping Trump. And so – assuming Clinton gets the nomination – I intend to vote against Trump by voting for her.
My situation isn’t analogous to someone who wanted to vote for Bush, or tried their hardest to vote for Gore but failed, or who didn’t see a difference between Bush and Gore. My situation is analogous to someone who pondered voting for Nader and then came to realize, hang on; I don’t want Bush to get the presidency because people like me – including me! – chose to desert Gore!
In 2000, I was probably more of the “not a dime’s worth of difference between 'em” line. I like to think I was wrong.
But by 2004, I was happy to vote for Kerry largely on the basis that he was Not Bush. I feel similarly today, as Trump is such a horrible choice, but I also happen to like Hillary Clinton as a potential president.
I don’t know what bizarre contortion of logic led from point A to point B here. I honestly could not care less. If you refuse to back a candidate who supports none of your positions, why the hell would you prefer Trump over Clinton? That makes no sense.
Look.
If you support Bernie Sanders for his positions, then there is a lot to support coming from Hillary Clinton. There’s really no rational denial of this. Their platforms? Ostensibly very similar. Unless you’re voting on an extremely specific and fringe set of issues and you don’t care about anything else, Clinton has something to offer you.
Seriously. You can’t look at that list and pretend that these people have this huge ideological gulf. Hillary is slightly more hawkish than Sanders. Okay, fine. She’s slightly less liberal when it comes to health care, university, and the banks. Okay, fine. There are little differences peppered throughout the list. I’ll give you that.
But even if there weren’t enough similarities to completely falsify the first sentence I quoted, you want me to give you a subtle metaphor of the difference between the gap between Sanders and Clinton and the gap between Sanders, Clinton, and Trump?
If the difference between Sanders and Clinton is akin to the difference between Obama and Gore, the difference between Clinton and Trump is the difference between Gore and Mecha-Hitler.
Come on people. We’ve been here before! I think it’s fair to say that I’m definitely in the younger half, probably even younger quarter of posters on this message board, and I remember how disastrous Nader’s role was in 2000! Yeah guys, great plan, let’s pretend there’s no difference between Bush and Gore. How well did that work out for you?
Except it’s not even that. Back then, you could almost make a case that there were more similarities than differences between the two. Bush seemed like a dope, a typical right-wing suit whose ideas were bad and was probably going to do a lousy job. Gore seemed like a continuation of the thoroughly middle-of-the-road Clinton policies. They were at least to some degree similar. Trump? Are you kidding me? This isn’t Nader vs. Gore vs. Bush. This is Nader vs. Gore vs. Shit-Slinging Racist Howler Monkey!
The #NeverHillary movement is intellectually bankrupt. They fundamentally do not understand how our democracy functions. You don’t vote for the guy you want, you vote for the guy who has a shot at winning who comes closest to the policies you want, and against… uh, well, against the Shit-Slinging Racist Howler Monkey. And that would be the case even if Clinton was a milquetoast moderate. But she’s not. She’s close enough to Bernie’s platform that there is likely to be very little functional difference between the two. Clinton is now further to the left than Obama ever was. And Trump is perhaps the single scariest thing to happen to American democracy since the burning of Washington.
If we end up electing Donald Fucking Trump as the next president, you know why.
No! Because I understand how politics in this country works! If the main party choices are Trump and Hitler, then I pull up my belt, swallow my pride, and vote Trump. Because guess what: anything else? Waste of my vote. If I vote for Jill Stein (whose recent tweet on the candidates would be the stupidest thing I have heard this entire election cycle if it weren’t for literally everything else related to Donald Trump; it’s as though the stupid is infectious) and I don’t have anything resembling half the electorate on my side, all I’m doing is pulling votes away from the viable candidate closest to my interests, and making it that much easier for the guy I’m really afraid of to win.
My conscience will survive voting for the lesser of two evils. It won’t survive not voting for the lesser of two evils and letting the greater of two evils win. We had this in 2000! It’s really not that long ago!
I think the biggest reason that I have seen for why Bernie Sanders supporters hate Clinton is that they don’t trust her to abide by her platform. They seem to base this on either her reputation for being crooked (which is illusory) or her fund-raising (which is necessary).
I got the impression it was the other way round, that she would stick by her most recently stated platform of maintaining the status quo. But what you say is the reason I don’t trust her.
Here’s an articleby a former Nader supporter. I think it is valuable insight for those of you who are thinking of your futures and how betraying your values may be reflected upon in the future.
Excerpts:
We have similar choices here. Bernie supporters may see only the differences between him and Hillary when deciding who to vote for, but they fail to notice the difference between Clinton and Trump.
Trump will definitely get us into a war in the ME. He’s pretty much said so already, he intends to bomb anyone he doesn’t like. He wants to shut down media which opposes him. He wants a religious and race war between Christians and Islam, and between white Americans and Hispanics. He thinks climate change is fake. He has the endorsement of the NRA. He’ll try to punish women who have abortions.
No matter what you think of Clinton, she will do none of that. She’ll defend Roe v. Wade. Yes, she voted for war, but as we’ve already established, GWB lied about intelligence and showed false data to everyone. And as much as some people attack her over Libya, I have to ask: are we keeping a hundred thousand troops there? Have we killed a million Libyans? Because that’s what GWB did in Iraq for like 8 years. If the worst you can say about Clinton’s foreign policy was that she made a mistake in Libya, then compare that with what Bush did and imagine Trump sending tanks into Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq all over again. For the next 8 years, we’ll have hundreds of thousands of troops there. Do you really, seriously, truly think its comparable to Libya?
Clinton is most likely going to oppose Trump in the general. They are not the same. One made some speeches. The other is the oligarch who would have paid for the speeches. One voted for a war that she was lied to, the other will happily bomb swaths of the ME indiscriminately. One will continue Obama’s policy to not torture, the other thinks waterboarding is not torture enough and will bring back harsher methods. One will take seriously the most important climate issue to affect mankind, the other will fire scientists and close schools who don’t pretend the same as he does. There is no comparison. Hillary will get you Bernie supporters like 75% to 90% of what you want, Donald will get you less than zero percent, in fact he’ll probably take away some of what you already like (health care, voting rights, pot, etc.)
And if even that doesn’t convince you? Look at the list of Donald’s SCOTUS nominees. They may serve for 30 years. The next president is guaranteed one. Do you wish any of those people are there out of spite to Hillary? Do you think Bernie wants any of those guys in there instead of anyone else? Vote Clinton, its a vote for your values, Bernie will probably say so himself at the convention. Then you’ll have no excuse
Hillary Clinton was a household name, so it stands to reason that people voted for her – excuse me, “bought into her inevitability.” I mean if that doesn’t typify the condescension and arrogance of some of the Bernie Bros, I don’t know what does. :rolleyes:
Yeah, you can afford to be choosy, but don’t say “we”. You’re voting for the next one or two justices to the supreme court, federal reserve policy, treasury policy, tax policy, military policy, interior policy, and God only knows how many other policies. If Trump gets elected and if the Republicans continue to maintain their advantage in congress and at the state level, the next opportunity to reverse the damage will be when you have a lot more gray hair than you do now. And those who already have gray hair (and really ought to know better than to fall for this goofy binary nonsense) probably won’t be around at all. I would’ve thought George W Bush would have made this point abundantly clear.
Yes, as President, Trump would treat the earned benefits of seniors with the same respect he’s shown POWs and the disabled. He would quickly sign any bills a GOP Congress sends him that would gut Social Security and Medicare. Why should those free-loading old people continue to live the good life?!?! (or live at all).
I voted for Nader. I thought, with the Electoral College, voting for Gore or Bush would mean less than helping the Greens get on the ballot in future elections. But my state was actually pretty close.
I feel bad about not working to get Gore elected, and even saying some mean things about Gore. Whatever flaws I thought he had, Bush had most of those same flaws and more.
So I get what you’re saying.
And I still think you’re being obnoxious with this post.
If all the Nader voters had voted for Gore, and all the Buchanan voters had voted for Bush, who would have won? I don’t know, because *no one *talks about the Buchanan voters.
Gore was a good candidate who ran a bad campaign, and he lost a bunch of states at nail-bitingly close margins. I blame his inability to convincingly defend his positions on certain issues, not a goofy small-party campaign. I blame Janet Reno for his loss more than Ralph Nader. I think even Hillary Clinton owns more fault for it than Ralph Nader.
Would Trump be a disaster? Yes. But the beauty is, this time even the oilmen who own the GOP believe he’d be a disaster. It’s not the same situation as 2000 and the crowning of George Bush II.
Yeah, that line is a sticking point for most of the posters in this thread. I could say it was a bit of angry hyperbole, which it was. But that said…
Politicians are not positions. Not really.
Am I voting for Donald Trump? I think the wall is a terrible idea. I don’t want to deport 11 million persons. I think Trump is an amateur in over his head. So, most probably not, although it’s hypothetically possible that my inner would-be Hari Seldon could decide that Trump is an immediate evil to preclude a greater later evil.
Am I broken up about Trump winning if I don’t campaign for Hillary? Eh, not so much. In my opinion the Democratic Party would do well to see the backs of the Clintons, their elevation of their personal careers over the major concerns of constituent parts of the Democratic coalition, and their politics of demonization. I’m sad about the mass deportations and the incompetent foreign policy to come. But if she wins, I’ll be sad about the Dems being saddled with this particular leader for years.
(Is Bernie less ballot box poison? Is he less of a giant fundraising boon to the GOP? Maybe not. But at least he seems to care about working class people; Hillary so far seems to be sticking with the pivot toward Wall Street. Maybe after four years of Trump, the Democrats will nominate someone willing to go hard for working-class voters.)
I’ll “take” Trump because I’m stuck with him. I can’t stop him winning by supporting HRC, because even if I vote for her, I personally can’t campaign for her. I can’t defend her. I’d just look like a brainwashed Democrat. Sorry, she probably will lose my state; chauvinism sells, protectionism sells, and NAFTA Woman is going to have a hard time. This year I might actually accomplish more voting third party.
Yeah. We, collectively, could have gone with Sanders, or O’Malley, or any of the three other guys who ran whose names I bet you don’t even know because nobody cared about them. We didn’t. Instead, a large number of people got together and gave Hillary Clinton their vote. Not just because of “inevitability”; it’s a primary, not the general election, and voting for someone other than Clinton ain’t gonna saddle you with Trump or Cruz for the next 4 years. They voted for Clinton because, big shocker, they liked Hillary Clinton. And now we can’t really go back and redo the entire primary. So now it is a matter of “inevitability”. You either stand behind our candidate, or you refuse to stand against a Shit-Flinging Racist Howler Monkey with a bad haircut. Because if everyone who supports Sanders now writes him in, here’s a very rough estimate of how the vote distribution will look in November:
Sanders: 25%
Clinton: 35%
Trump: 40%
And I really hope you’re smart enough to recognize that a Clinton presidency is a lot, and I mean a lot less awful than a Trump presidency.
Hey buddy? The last three democratic tickets had someone in the president or vice president slot who voted in favor. Kerry and Biden both voted in favor of this resolution. I guess they’re both “the enemy”, then? Is that why Obama enstated Kerry and Clinton in his cabinet (in foreign policy positions, no less!) and Biden as his VP? And never mind what Clinton said during the vote:
My vote is not a vote for any new doctrine of preemption or for unilateralism or for the arrogance of American power or purpose, all of which carry grave dangers for our Nation, the rule of international law, and the peace and security of people throughout the world.
But then again, I guess one vote 14 years ago made with good intentions that turned out to be a huge mistake (that she freely and openly admits) makes her the “enemy”, moreso than the guy who currently wants to invade Iraq again for the sake of plundering their oil, and explicitly wants to target innocent civilians in doing so.
Your priorities are so skewed that it hurts. Oh, you’d hate to see the Dems saddled with a particular leader? Moreso than see everyone saddled with Donald Trump?
Just to name the most obvious example: Trump’s shortlist is full of people who want to overturn both Obergfell and Roe v Wade. He essentially has one guaranteed slot, with not bad odds he’ll get another in the next 4 years (Ginsburg ain’t getting any younger). Electing President Trump very well may mean the end of a woman’s right to choose and the end of marriage equality in America. Now, I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of anything that’s so horrible about Clinton that makes that worthwhile - and literally any criticism you could throw at her, Trump is worse.
Or are you just afraid that she’s going to “damage the brand”, and make the Democratic Party even more unlikeable? To who, exactly? There’s a huge subset of the population for whom “liberal” is already a four-letter word. They’re called republican voters! The rest are unlikely to see this as any kind of disaster, or are already too shocked that Donald Trump has rose to prominence in the republican party to pay much attention to a democratic candidate who might have some ostensible problems.
No, you are not. You, are, however, willing to stick all of us with him just because your own personal animosity for Clinton outweighs the outright evil that a Trump Administration would bring on us. If you really don’t think there’s a difference, then it’s really time to go outside and get some fresh air.
You don’t have to campaign against Trump, you just have to vote for the candidate who can help prevent his gaining power. Yes, not voting Clinton does mean supporting Trump. At this point in the process, yes, it’s that simple.
How, exactly? What are the possible outcomes? Hint: Either Clinton or Trump will win, and nobody else will matter.
Wow, BPC. You really think that’s the line you want to lead with? He might overturn Obergefell and Roe?
One, that’s obvious Democratic Party boilerplate for any GOP candidate, and exactly as ridiculous as the campaign spots my US Senator is running claiming that Hillary wants “European-style” socialized medicine. Two, if that were even true, for many of your countrymen, those would be reasons to vote* for *him!
This is not your trust fund baby hippie-dippy free love paradise. Let Obergefell go, let *Roe *go. Talk about Lochner. Talk about Marquette. Get your head out of your crotch and talk about income and opportunity, or you are going to lose.
Hopeless cases.
Yeah, you don’t get it. And neither does Hillary, she never did. That’s why Trump will win.
Yes, thank you, foolsguinea, I’ll be sure to tell one of my oldest friends, whose marriage to his longtime boyfriend I attended a few weeks ago, that his happiness is irrelevant and he’ll have to sacrifice all the tangible benefits, financial and otherwise, of marriage and be satisfied with being a second class citizen in the name of your idea of economic justice.
He and his concerns are just not important to you, so I understand.
What state do you live in foolsguinea? What is your age, ethnic background, gender and socioeconomic status? Are any of your friends or family recent immigrants from Mexico, Central or South America? Do you have any foreign friends or family members who are Muslim? Have you ever felt the direct effect of any Supreme Court rulings (watched and waited for the ruling because it would change a part of your life)?