I’d put this thread in Elections except that that forum is now too cluttered with all the “March Madness” threads:
Fast forward to October 2020: Trump is running for reelection as the Republican nominee and the Democrats have nominated someone like Kamala, Biden, Beto or Warren to oppose him.
Now, suppose that some major scandal came to light about the Democratic candidate. How bad would it have to be for you to not vote for him/her? (This question obviously is irrelevant to Trump-supporting Dopers.)
Presumably it would have to be something a lot worse than blackface or a racist comment. What would it take for you to either vote Trump, vote 3rd party, or abstain from voting entirely?
Absolutely nothing could stop me from voting against the current president.
Once he/she gets in the Dems would have the balls to impeach him/her and the Repubs would be happy to help.
My first vote was in the 1972 General Election. Excepting 1980, when I voted for Libertarian Party candidate Ed Clark, I’ve voted Republican consistently in the Presidential race. Further, I’ve never missed another election of any kind for which I was a qualified voter.
The day after the General Election in 2016 I remarked to several close acquaintances to the effect that “we now have a small chance”, to which all of them agreed. I don’t see that chance as holding any water at this time.
But for me to cast a ballot for a Democrat/progressive/socialist/whatever is utterly repugnant in my imagination, so I expect to sit out next years primary, any runoff, and the General, insofar as the Presidency is involved; Representative, Senator, locals, well, that will be a different story.
“The only winning move is not to play.” – “Joshua” (WOPR), “War Games”
High treason, constant pathological dishonesty, and at least one case of locking children in cages. That’s the bare minimum it would take for the candidate to be as bad as Trump.
Seriously, I feel like we constantly fail to give this the shrift it deserves. The Trump administration followed a deliberate policy of separating young children from their families, locking them in cages, refusing to do any work to bring those families back together, and handing those children off to Christian adoption agencies. This is a humanitarian tragedy. A fucking disgraceful policy on par with such classics as Japanese internment camps - indeed, Trump flunkies keep on trying to rehabilitate the Japanese internment camps, I wonder why.
It’s hard to imagine any individual scandal that’s more disqualifying than that. The democratic nominee could be convicted of murder, and I would vote for them, because the harm of a single murder is nothing on an intentional policy of separating children from their families, locking them in cages, and giving them away to adoption agencies. CharmaChameleon, how do you feel about locking children in cages? :mad:
If Trump wins in 2020, I’d expect four more years of bluster, incoherent policies, and mediocrity. So it’d have to be something worse from the other side. None of the listed Democratic candidates are particularly odious, so I think it would take either a display of incompetence, or proposed policies that the majority of voters would believe would cause severe economic or social damage. On the incompetence side, if a candidate appears genuinely senile, that would cause him/her to be voted against. Policy side, left-wing proposals that might sound good, but that would quickly prove unpopular might be a wealth tax or a corporate revenue tax. Or the Democratic candidate could go full-blown left and back universal health care, universal basic income, AND full open borders.
I don’t think any amount of scandal in the candidate’s personal life would do it, but I do have a nightmare scenario in which I would probably abstain from voting: a noticeably crazy and / or incompetent candidate captures the Democratic nomination after having their signal boosted and their opponents torn down by a flurry of anonymous Internet trolls, so that I have to conclude that THEY are now the preferred candidate of Putin or some other malevolent power.
Like, a history of deceit and sexual misconduct, combined with a long record of fraud, disgraceful public statements, incompetence, and being generally surrounded by people under indictment or actually having been convicted of felonies.
And if the candidate didn’t release their tax returns, that would be sad.
2020 may be a case where Dems end up being grateful for the Electoral College, if the purity wing doesn’t manage to fuck things up. There is no such thing as “bad enough” for them, anything is bad enough, especially the ones obsessed with sex and gender shit.
I don’t actually think it would be my view of the scandal itself that would be the deciding factor, but rather how that scandal affected the Democratic oppoenent’s viability as a candidate against Trump. If the scandal was so bad that it would be mathematically impossible for the Democratic opponent to win, so that it is a lost cause, then I might as well vote third party and retain my dignity.
It would have to be something worse than what Trump’s done – worse than spending years spreading a racist conspiracy theory, bragging about violating the consent of women (along with over a dozen allegations), praising white supremacists, greatly harming American national security by pulling out of international agreements like the Iran nuclear deal and the nuclear deal with Russia, rhetorically aiding and abetting American white supremacism almost continuously, in addition to whatever is ultimately concluded by the Mueller investigation (and Democratic congressional investigations).
I would pretty much have to see the Democrat nominee feeding puppies and kittens into a wood chipper on the news every night for weeks on end all the while running on the platform of “I’m gonna tax you bastards back to the stone age!” and eating pizza with pineapple on it.
The XXXhole casserole we have in Washington right now is bad enough but there are limits.
Nothing that fits into the category of ‘scandal’ could get me to vote against the Dem nominee.
What could get me to vote against the Dem nominee: they’d have to demonstrate somehow that, as President, they’d likely be even more of a disaster for America than Trump is.
What could get me to simply not vote: if the Dem nominee committed an extremely serious crime. But in that case, the party would surely declare its nomination null and void, and nominate someone new. So I doubt that’s really a possibility that a voter would have to reckon with.
Under no circumstance would I vote for the rotting corpse of Hitler. I hope the agreement to disagree on this matter does not create the sort of rift between us that precludes a minimum degree of comity in our interactions going forward.
There are certainly Democratic candidates (or potential candidates) I’d vote for over Trump (or over another Republican candidate in the unlikely event one emerges).*
That doesn’t mean I’d automatically vote for, say, the rotting corpse of Hillary Clinton or some other objectionable Dem, given that my one vote is rather unlikely to swing the election.
I voted for a third party candidate last time and could well do that again.
*Kasich has about as much chance of being nominated by the GOP as Jussie Smollett.