Right, but even if they don’t vote against her, not voting FOR her might be sufficient to move the electoral needle in quite a few states. There were a number of states in 2008 where, if young voters had stayed home instead of voting for Obama, Obama might have lost the state.
BudgetPlayerCadet has been here since the last election. Did you see if BPC actually said what you said he said the last time this came around? Or was all this based merely upon how you “felt”, as you claimed above.
If s/he didn’t say this in 2012, are you going to apologize for all those “you’s” you threw around?
:rolleyes:
While I agree that the arguments would be the same (though perhaps not tinged with so much hysteria for a non-Trump), I think that’s because the system–not the party ideologies, but the system–is the same no matter who is running. If you want a Republican in office, you should vote for a Republican. If you want a Democrat in office, you should vote for a Democrat.
If you want a third party in office you should… try to change the Republicans or the Democrats to be that party.
Trump is remarkably bad in many ways. But if you don’t want Antonin Scalias on the court, and I most emphatically do not, then all Republicans right now represent the same thing. And all third party voters who are actually reasonably close to nearly identical with a major party should think practically rather than ideologically.
Some candidates are better and some are worse. Some eras are more sensitive and some are less. Because of the incredible partisanship right now, I genuinely believe that there is not much of a status quo. Previous presidents tended to build on what past presidents did. I think a Republican elected now, any Republican, would have a huge push to reverse as much that Obama did as possible, just because of the symbolism. And if Obama were a Republican (cue fervent Bernie supporters), a Democrat would do the same thing.
In other words, I do think we’re in an era now of huge partisanship which leads to huge swings in how the country does business. Not minor differences of a tweak here and there, but big divides. Which means losing is a bigger deal than it used to be.
I don’t like this scenario. And if you think this is madness and wrong, please tell me. But I feel like we’re turning into a kneejerk polarized country that is more interested in winning than in finding common ground. I can say let’s find common ground, but I’d rather do it while winning.
To clarify and completely revamp that very clunky sentence “And if you are a third party voter, you should see if a major party is actually reasonably close to or even nearly identical with your position, and then vote practically rather than ideologically.”
Please try to keep up.
The last election was irrelevant to this discussion, at least as far as the Democrats are concerned, because there was an incumbent Democratic president running for re-election, and thus no challenge to his candidacy. The types of issues we’re dealing with here are, for the most part, at the forefront of the political landscape in years when a two-term president is leaving office and both parties are seeking new candidates. When a sitting president is running for re-election, the only party with meaningful debates over candidacy is the party that is not occupying the White House.
It’s also worth noting that some of the same Hillary Clinton supporters who are telling Bernie supporters to get on board in 2016 were threatening to abandon the Democrats when it became clear that Barack Obama would win the candidacy in 2008. I don’t mean Dope members in particular, but there were a number of Clinton supporters who felt that the nomination had been “stolen” from her, and who said that they wouldn’t vote for Obama in the election. We had discussions about this right here on the boards. Most of those Clinton supporters ended up coming around and supporting Obama, just like i believe that most Sanders supporters will probably end up voting for Clinton.
But there’s an inherent contradiction here. As long as the mainstream Democrats know that people will keep voting for them just because they’re not as bad as the other guys, they have no motivation to change. If your basic message, as a voter, is “I want you to change, but i’m going to vote for you even if you don’t,” where’s the incentive? You give up your leverage before you even start.
And here’s a fundamental problem with political discourse in this country: the idea that some political decisions are “practical” rather than “ideological.”
The fact is that a decision to support a party you disagree with just because it’s not as bad as the other party IS an ideological decision. You can frame it in the language of practicality and pragmatism, but it’s no less ideological than voting for Trump, or voting for Sanders.
I’m not saying this is a bad thing. I think we need to embrace our ideologies rather than pretend they don’t exist. Too many Americans treat the word “ideology” as some sort of epithet, while at the same time pretending that their own ideology is nothing of the sort. I have a set of ideologies, and these ideologies inform my sense of what is right and wrong, and my decisions about who to support in the world of politics. it’s been over half a century wince Daniel Bell wrote about the “end of ideology” in America, and too many Americans are still swallowing the myth.
I’d prefer winning too, which is precisely why i’ve said, at least three times already in this thread, that i would vote for Clinton in the general election.
But what do you mean by common ground? What would that look like? Call it ideology, call it whatever you like, but i’m not interested in finding common ground with people who want to criminalize abortion, or with people who believe that the poor don’t deserve access to quality medical care, or with people who believe in filling our prisons with non-violent drug offenders, or a whole bunch of other things.
Too many Democratic politicians have been complicit in maintaining the inequities that Democrats are supposed to be fighting against, and too many Democratic supporters have been so focused on winning elections that they don’t seem to care whether the party they’re voting for actually lives up to its promises. If you don’t believe that there’s any possible election where it would be acceptable to torpedo your preferred party in order to maybe bring about more substantial change, then you don’t don’t much believe in change at all. And one of the most profoundly undemocratic attitudes is to tell people that they have to vote how YOU want them to vote because they have a responsibility to your “pragmatism” rather than their own values and beliefs.
As i said, i’m supporting Hillary Clinton in the election, and i’m doing so not because i think my own life would benefit greatly from her rather than Trump being president. To be honest, my own life probably wouldn’t change much at all. In terms of my own economic well-being and my general place in society, i haven’t honestly noticed much difference between the Bush presidency and the Obama presidency. But i recognize that plenty of people do notice a difference, in important ways. I’m supporting Clinton because there are plenty of people worse off than me who would suffer in real and measurable ways under a Trump presidency. But i still resent self-righteous and anti-democratic Democrats who seem to believe that i owe the party my allegiance no matter how much it fails to represent my values and beliefs, just because it’s not quite as bad as the other guys.
That seems to make “ideology” mean “any reason I have for voting.”
I’m focused on winning elections because the Democratic party has done some of the stuff that matters to me, though they do not always go far enough, and the Republican party has made destroying some of that stuff part of their platform.
That’s all there is to it, for me. Yelling at me for talking about common ground when I was talking about why winning matters is really funny to me. The less common ground there is the more winning matters.
Would any part of the argument not apply? I mean, other than the whole “racist shit-flinging howler monkey” bit. Yeah, McCain and Romney are not as bad as Trump. Then again, neither is George W. Bush. But they are still conservative republicans, who will support and further the goals of an increasingly puritanical, repressive right wing.
See, here, in my eyes, is the main issue:
Do you honestly believe that that could happen? That the Republican party could straighten up and say, “Yeah, you know what, let’s stop being obstructionist dickbags (despite the fact that this strategy has been working like gangbusters for us and that our voters will scream bloody murder if we step out of line in the slightest) and actually work for the betterment of the country by making reasonable compromises, ending the brinkmanship, and trying to make Washington work again!”?
No. That’s not going to happen. The republican party has gone so far off the fucking deep end that they’re not even occupying the same general reality as the rest of us. For fuck’s sake, they think DONALD TRUMP is an acceptable candidate for president!
And it wouldn’t matter if they nominated Susan Collins. It really wouldn’t. The fact is that she would still nominate regressive, hardline judges who would overturn many of the substantial improvements made over the past 8 years, and help further shred things like healthcare, unions, prison reform, and more. She would still sign off on fucking awful ideas coming from the majority-republican congress. She would still be far, far worse than any democrat. Is that partisan? Maybe. But then again, I’ve been alive during the entire Obama administration. I saw the party go pretty much completely off the fucking deep end, embracing absurd conspiracy theories, enabling their absolute worst, and bringing Congress to a complete standstill and refusing to do their jobs. So maybe at this point, a little partisanship isn’t exactly without good reason.
The point where that challenge should come is when there’s a chance the Democratic Party will acquiesce, and it should end the moment it becomes clear that there will be any noteworthy split in the vote. Anything else is self-destructive; cutting off your own nose to spite your face. Oh, the democrats don’t represent you very well? Huh. That’s a shame. Do they represent you better than, say, this guy? Yes? Then get your ass out to the voting booth and vote democrat.
This really isn’t hard to understand. If there are two major political parties on different points on a spectrum, and I start a third party further down the scale, unless I can completely usurp the party in the middle, I am hurting my cause. That, by the way, is how the challenge should work. Exactly what Bernie Sanders did: get into the democratic party, challenge it from within, and enact change that way. No splitting of the vote required. That’s the right way to do it. It didn’t work? That’s a shame. Try again next election. Don’t campaign against your ideological allies, throwing the game to your ideological enemies. That’s idiotic. Instead, campaign with your ideological allies and try to show them that your way is better. Even if Sanders loses, he’s certainly shifted the party to the left. That partial victory doesn’t even necessarily come at any substantial cost to the party’s overall well-being. Unlike, say, a Jill Stein candidacy. That would accomplish nothing except hurting liberals. God the green party sucks.
It is all about Pragmatism. The fact of the matter is that parties like the green party hurt their own interests simply by existing. Yeah, it sucks that the standardbearer of “liberalism” in the USA in 2000 was the centrist Al Gore. It would have been awesome if it had been Ralph Nader. But it wasn’t. Ralph Nader, for all his hardline liberal bona fides, got 2.4% of the vote. That wasn’t enough to accomplish anything productive, but it was enough to cost Gore the election and hand the reins of power over to a hardline neoconservative idiot.
The fact that the Green Party didn’t look at that mistake and say, “Wow, guess we learned something about how voting works in the USA, time to pack it in guys,” tells me that they’re collectively either spiteful assholes or complete fuckwits. They either legitimately don’t get it (which seems incredibly hard to believe given the 2000 election) or they just don’t care.
I mean, the wording alone gives it away. “Protest vote”. They aren’t voting for the greens because they think they stand a snowball’s chance in hell. They just want to stick it to the democrats. That’s stupid, short-sighted, spiteful, and achieves nothing. They either don’t understand how our democracy works, or they don’t actually want their cause to succeed.
…That, or they just want to “heighten the contradictions” until people get fed up and a revolution happens. Which is so stupid and harmful that I don’t even feel like getting into it here. Those people can fuck right off.
To be fair, in the last election, we were dealing with an incumbent Barack Obama, so there was essentially no challenge whatsoever from the left. Might not be the best comparison.
Also: he. 
I didn’t see myself doing any yelling. That’s your imagination. Anyway, my main criticisms are leveled at those who not only believe that we should vote for Clinton, but who have been suggesting that those who will not vote for her are “morons” (that’s apparently OK in an Elections thread, as long as you generalize about who the morons are?) who don’t understand how the electoral system works. I understand it just fine. In fact, despite being an immigrant, i’ll bet i understand it better than (conservatively) 99 percent of the US population.
Yeah. The system is really broken. But what other option is there? Throw the election, and hope that the damage done by 4-8 years of the next hardline right-wing candidate teaches the party to move further to the left? That’s a lot of risk for a hypothetical and inconsistent reward, if you ask me.
As said, Sanders has the right idea - get in there and start putting up primary challenges. Don’t run against Mike Michaud in the main election campaign. He may be a blue dog, but he’s still miles better than another 4 fucking years of LePage. Run against him in the primary campaign, and force the state’s liberals to consider your platform in that context.
And yet, when faced with people who are right on half of those issues and people who are right on none of those issues, the choice becomes blatantly obvious. Yeah, it sucks to have to support Mike Michaud. He’s anti-gun control, and quite a bit more conservative than I’m really happy with. But his opponent is Trump Jr., so I have no excuse not to grit my teeth and find allies where I can.
That said, a lot of Mainers didn’t get this. Twice in a row. Because two elections in a row, Michaud faced up against opposition from the left, opposition that never really had a snowball’s chance in hell, but which turned a solid liberal majority into a win for Paul LePage, who might actually be fucking insane.
I’d be open to this if the opposition wasn’t morally and intellectually bankrupt. But that’s just not the world we live in. The current election is the most egregious case to date, but the result would be similar with Cruz, Rubio, or even Kasich.
What’s more, we’ve already seen a viable alternative! Look at Bernie Sanders! He’s pulled the party to the left and caused a major discussion of issues nobody seemed to be talking about before. He was a serious contender, and could have won. If he had, he would have drastically shifted the party without pulling a Nader. We don’t need to tank the democrats. We need to primary them.
They don’t have to, but as I keep saying, one of two things is necessarily true:
- They don’t understand the system
- They don’t understand the stakes (i.e. Susan Sarandon is perfect spokeswoman for #neverhillary. )
The fact that you keep saying this doesn’t make it true.
1–She asserts these positions, but has no commitment to them.
Empty noise, made to soothe voters who’d buy into that Election Year Blarney.
2–She isn’t a Democrat. She acts more like a Republican.
I’ve been one of the ones making the case that a protest vote instead of voting for Hillary only aids Trump in winning the general. This is a mathematical fact of the election.
I make no value judgments on those protest voters’ ideology, nor do I claim that they must agree with my voting for Hillary and follow suit. But I will blame them if the difference between Trump’s winning and losing is a third-party vote, and deservedly so.
Your entire post was excellent (and I urge all in this thread to give it a full reading). I wanted to highlight the very well-made point you finished with. The ability of a US President to appoint federal judges as well as Supreme Court justices is one of the most consequential powers of that office.
Letting Trump make these appointments will affect the lives of every American, and will affect all but the top one-percenters in a vastly destructive, long-lasting way.
I’ve never encountered anyone who says things like the red-highlighted bit, who has any remote idea of how torpedoing one’s preferred party could actually “maybe bring about more substantial change.”
There’s a odd strain of magical thinking at work, apparently. Some sort of waving of the hands and chanting will “bring about” that substantial change.
For example, look at all the progressive milestones accomplished after Nader’s supporters torpedoed Gore!–lots of wars, lots of profits for weapons makers, lots of marvelous behavior from subprime mortgage lenders and other Great Recession participants, and so on. Quite a triumph for the left, that torpedoing was!
But beyond the specifics of recommending working against the party closest to your own beliefs, and how that might pan out, there’s something even stranger. The weird, self-absorbed preciousness of defining a Presidential vote is “leverage” is disturbing.
There seems to be some sort of sense among people who say such things, that one’s vote is a Magical Avatar of One’s Soul–an enchanted emblem that must be kept pure.
In the 2016 US Presidential race, a vote for the Republican is a vote against the Democrat, and vice versa. That’s exactly what it is and that’s all it is. It’s a vote on who will appoint the Supreme Court justices and federal judges, who will play a huge role in determining our quality of life for years to come. It is not your own personal message to someone who falls short of your standards of perfection. And it is NOT your soul-twin, not a powerful entity that must be kept clean so that it can represent your personal purity to the world.
I mean this in the kindest way possible: please do try to get over yourself. Think about the future.
I would love to see every person who opines about how wonderful a revolution would be for the USA, to be airlifted to an actual revolution—and dropped straight in.
But then you get the problem of Democrats just taking voters for granted because much of the Democratic base hates Republicans more than they like progressives.
Say what you will about the GOP, but lately, taking their voters for granted is a quick route to the unemployment line. I know I’d rather see Democrats win than elect a bad Republican. Alternation of party control is an inevitability. It’s kinda like poker. You double down when your hand is strong, fold when your hand is weak. We got dealt Trump. Bigtime fold, right there. I am not obligated to support Trump just because he’ll nominate better judges IMO than Clinton. Or because he’ll sign an ACA repeal and Clinton won’t. Aside from those policy victories he’ll be a terrible president and that’s the last thing Republicans need.
This idea that you need to support your party’s nominee because the alternative is always worse is a rationalization. I’ve seen it used even to support corrupt Democrats over honest Republicans, because it’s a vote for the majority leader. NO! That’s what keeps Washington the way it is!
She has convictions, but over 30 years of attacks by the GOP has made her guarded. Look at most of the things people say are her “lies”. That 13 minute video claiming to catch her lying? 1 lie in there. Everything else is explainable if you read the full context.
Hillary Clinton has convictions. She’s been fighting for health care for most of her political life. She’s fought for women and minorities. She’s pragmatic, so she understands when things aren’t going your way you have to change gears and get the best deal you can rather than stamp your feet and refuse to be moved and lose big.
Look at Trump’s list of SCOTUS nominees. If you think Clinton will nominate any of them, you’re kidding yourself. She was essentially the defendant in Citizens United. The whole reason why we have unfettered private money is because someone attacked her and the Roberts court, appointed by GWB, said money equals speech.
Sure, she uses large private donors, and I don’t fault her for that. Obama did that too. He essentially said that you can hold on to your principles, but if someone else is using the system the way its designed, and you refuse to, well, you might be able to sleep at night but you’d be sleeping in the loser’s bed. For all the good that Obama has done, I would not trade any of that for him being “clean” and not use Super PACs and private donors when McCain and Romney were raking in the big bucks.
Clinton will fight against big money in government and campaign reform. Citizens United was about her, there’s absolutely no reason for her appoint judges that wouldn’t overturn that.
Have you compared actual records of accomplishment lately? You really should.
Isn’t the definition of Democrat up to the majority of Democratic voters?
But what if what you want is a multiparty system?
While I suspect that result in the poll is true I do not think you can assume it. The article is about Hillary winning over those who currently would pick Sanders but not her over Trump. There is no reason to post the numbers of those who would not vote for Sanders because there is no possibility of him being the nominee.
Never seriously attacked let alone Swiftboated Sanders right now is a way to say “other.” According to that survey they are not preferring Sanders to Clinton over Trump because they agree with Sanders on positions: they are more likely to be conservative or very conservative than they are to be liberal let alone very liberal. But they are a group that wants to say they want “other than the above.”
They are also not necessarily people who voted for Sanders in a primary or a caucus. They may have voted for Trump or someone else in the GOP field … or I think more likely stayed home.
It is important to note is that the cited poll is a registered (not likely) voter poll. Important because the group that is Sanders not Clinton over Trump seems to likely contain many likely non-voters. The biggest lean? Young White males … and while I cannot prove it my guess would be overwhelmingly non-college-educated. Some who won’t vote would prefer to be not voting one way over not voting another? Meh.
Meanwhile a current YouGov internet survey, question 24, of those who have or who plan on voting for Sanders in a primary or caucus, only 53% plan on voting for Clinton. But take that for what an internet survey is worth.
Call for jungle primaries in all states and work towards a federal jungle primary.