I presume just about everyone has one or the other presidential candidate as their personal favorite, one for whom they will vote barring some stunning revelation, scandal, etc. My question is:
Do you feel there is a significant chance that you might wind up voting for the other guy after all? Or is your choice pretty much set in stone (barring any drama, as above)?
Also, if you wish to speculate, what percentage of the voting population do you think is still truly “undecided”?
(I for one intend to exercise a third option: consuming large quantities of pizza and beer on Election Day, not voting for either one since IMHO voting for someone means that you actually want that person to hold the office in contention. Though if you held a gun to my head, I’d vote for Obama, and that is set in stone as far as it goes since I wouldn’t vote for Romney for less than a bribe of, oh, $5,000, and I don’t think he’s going to offer nearly that much.)
Maybe, just possibly, I could have voted for the Mitt Romney of 10 years ago, when he was a moderate. And again, if McCain of 2000 had been running against Obama, I would have been unhappy if he’d won, but not suicidally depressed. But the process of getting nominated for the Republican candidacy appears to be a process of abandoning every conviction, no matter how noble, that isn’t solidly embedded in the Republican plank. And that plank is just full of not only the Crazy, but also the mean-spirited.
The result is that even if the candidate is a fundamentally decent man (or woman), by the time he (or she) gets to the podium at the convention, they’ve foresworn everything that would have made them worth voting for. You pretty much have to sell your soul to get nominated. And looking at Romney, at his pitiful renunciations of policies that he once strongly supported, you get the feeling that that’s exactly what he’s done.
To be fair, you also see the Democratic candidates writhe during interviews when faced with some previously stated position, but I don’t think the pandering to the base has ever been quite as glaring as it was with McCain and Romney.
I couldn’t switch in this race. I’d never vote for Romney. He is incredibly dishonest. He out and out lies frequently. He has a tell, he laughs when he lies. And he does it a lot. He has demonstrated he will say anything to get elected. Worst case in this election, I would vote for Harold Stassen again. But not Romney.
In some other elections I could have switched to the other major candidate under the right conditions. Those conditions didn’t occur.
Nope. Couldn’t do it. As long as the Republican party continues to welcome racists, misogynists, homophobes, and xenophobes with open arms, drafting legislation to embolden and empower these groups, as long as they continue to eschew science and empirical data, as long as they continue to promote anti-intellectualism as virtuous, as long as they continue to use religion to trick the weak-minded into voting against their better interests, as long as they continue to be the most destructive force in America, and possibly the world, today, they won’t get my vote.
I would have voted for the 2000 version of John McCain, but the 2008 version realized he had to jump on the crazy train to get elected, hence Sarah Palin, which didn’t work in the end, but very well could have had Palin been a little more savvy. She already had the requisite levels of hatred and hypocrisy down to somewhat of a science.
I’d consider Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower or John Anderson.
The problem with voting for any Republican today, is that the crazies in the GOP have taken charge. They embrace the scuttling of the US credit rating, crackpot economics and crank science. They are propped by the factually challenged Fox News and I’m sorry to say the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal. Crazies exist on both sides of the aisle but on the left the loons are thoroughly marginalized. There was once a time when grownups were in charge of the GOP. No longer.
Nobody has any business in sending a Republican to Washington in 2012. State and local are another matter and should be judged on a case by case basis.
Somewhat shamefacedly confessing to being a “Yellow dog Democrat.” Party hack. If Saint Joan appeared in an angelic halo to run for office, I’d ask, “What party?” before making any commitment.
Not proud of it, but won’t fib about it either. I’m sure that there are an awful lot of people like this on both sides.
Only fools could be undecided in today’s climate. I almost have more respect for right-wing idealogues than voters who pretend they need to think about their vote.
That’s true for national elections. I used to think voting Republican in state elections might be rational in some cases. But since suppression of Democratic vote has become a major policy of several Republican State governments, I’ve changed my stance and now advocate eradicating the GOP wherever it is found.
Disclaimer: Bill Clinton was the last candidate I voted for; and I’ve not set foot in America since the Clinton Administration. If I could legally register in a swing state I’d do so, but to register to vote in California would have no effect – except I could then expect more threatening letters from the California Franchise Tax Board. :smack:
I think what’s more important in the elections are push factors. There are probably few centrists in the US, unless they’re single issue voters (for example, I know an Australian gay rights activist that could hold their nose and vote for Obama, but also they endorse David Cameron). More important is whether a candidate will be so neglectful or contentious for the base that they’ll vote for a third party candidate far more representative of their views (say, Gary Johnson for an ideologically pure Republican or Jill Stein for the Democrats) but with no chance of winning.
Anyway, I could think of two reasons to vote for the Republican party. The first is anticipation that they’ll actually pursue their economic program, which’d lead to rack and ruin and precipitate a democratic socialist backlash once the populace sees the effect of free market policies at home. Highly unlikely considering the ideological climate in the US though.
The second reason would be if the Republican parties hands were forced into a few populist concessions, such as granting the power to states to form semi-autonomous syndications within their borders, which’d also accomplish the same effect of independence from the typical state capitalist construction. I wouldn’t trust them to actually follow through if this were on the platform.
I’m pretty locked in to Obama at this point, but I could conceive of voting for Romney. He’s mediocre but he’s not horrifying in the way that Santorum or Bachmann or Cain were. I think he’d be a poor President but I doubt he’d be the worst we’ve had.
I’ve been wondering about this myself. Democrats and Republicans exchange bitter claims that the other party is the home of the anti-Christ, but we know that we’re not changing anyone’s mind. The fight is for the undecided, but really is anyone undecided? My guess is that those we might call undecided are really just those who don’t like either candidate. They’ll either hold their noses and vote for the one they dislike less, vote for someone who has no chance of winning, or stay home. So what are we really accomplishing with all of the back and forth mudslinging except to inflame the true believers?
Oh, and by the way, I’m committed to the principles of the Democratic party and can’t imagine any scenario in which I would vote for a Republican.
I’m no fan of either party but I find Romney repugnant and Ryan doubly so, so there’s no chance of me voting GOP short of Obama going full-on Sir-Mortimer-Chris-style crazy and threatening to start a nuclear war.
If the American two-party system were Democrats vs. Socialists, then I might be a swing voter. But I see no good or value in voting Republican – which, since the party realignment of the 1970s, always means voting conservative – ever under any circumstances.
If Romney supported gay marriage and included revenue increases in his tax reform plan I could consider voting for him. Even more so if he pledged to reform, rather than repeal entirely, the ACA.
It is inconceivable that I would ever vote for a Republican for any office. What must happen for the nation to move forward is for the Republican Party to die and for the Democratic Party to split in two to fill the void. Until then, it’s D to go forward, R for reverse.
I could imagine someday voting for a Republican - probably no less than 20 years from now; for example, if the Ron Paul wing took over and then moderated somewhat, while the Democrats became more belligerent/militaristic than they already are. Not a high-probability scenario, even so.
