Within the same sentence! May 22:
I recall 1964 and 1972. No margin is large enough for me. Trump is very, very dangerous. I wouldn’t take even a one in a billion chance my non-Hillary vote would elect him.
I do say I’m a Sanders supporter, and I voted for him in my state’s primary. What’s your point? Is this supposed to be some kind of “gotcha”?
If memory serves me, in the presidential primaries for 2004 and 2008, I voted for Dennis Kucinich for president. He was still on the ballot, even though (and my memory may be failing me here) he’d already dropped out of the race. Kind of a lost cause, but I liked him. In 2004, in the general presidential election, I wrote in a vote. In 2008 and 2012, I voted for Obama.
I’d say the chance that someone living in, say, NY would cast the deciding vote in the 2016 election is far smaller than one in a billion. You’re positing a situation in which NY (and forgive me, BigAppleBucky, if I’m making a poor assumption here) not only goes for Trump, but does so by one vote. Not really gonna happen.
Then in those 2008 and 2012 Obama/Biden votes, you gave your vote to someone who voted exactly as Hillary Clinton did in 2002. Apparently you did not find that 2002 vote to be disqualifying.
Yep, guess you got me there. You win. Then-Senator Joe Biden did indeed vote in favor of the Iraq War Resolution. Guess that means I have to vote for Clinton now, right?
Look, that’s silly. I was voting for President, not Vice-President. Barack Obama did not vote for the Iraq War Resolution (naturally, since he wasn’t in the Senate then), and in fact had a record of speaking against it before he became a Senator. Vice-Presidents, well, we take them as they come, especially when we’re talking about a young presidential candidate.
I was opposed to the war in Iraq. I decided not to vote for anyone who had made that war happen. My vote is what I’ve got when it comes to making my opinions known. So I decided that I would not vote for someone who decided, for reasons of political expediency, to send hundreds of thousands to their deaths.
Biden? Well, we don’t vote directly for vice presidents. No system is perfect. Nor am I.
Another principle, selectively applied. 
Removing the “I’m not a Bernie supporter, but I demand a right to vote in this poll” option, of the actual Bernie supporters polled, 86% of them will vote for Hillary with varying degrees of enthusiasm as of this moment.
This is not a scientific poll of the electorate (I actually think people here are generally smarter and more thoughtful than the populace as a whole) but I would be surprised if that number doesn’t wind up being pretty close to what actually occurs in November.
Given (I think) that readers of this board tend to be more opinionated than average, I would bet the real number is even higher. The number of Republicans who refuse to vote for Trump, many of whom will actually vote for Clinton, seems likely to be *much *greater than the number of still-sulking Bros, come November.
Oh, bullshit. The senator from my state voted for the Iraq war. I was opposed to that war, and that was a (very big) part of my voting decisions in the future.
There’s no selective application of principle here. At all.
And there are other reasons why Ms. Clinton won’t get my vote for president, but that’s the big one. Simply put, she’s way too much of a hawk for me.
One thing that really puts me off about the Clinton campaign (and many of her supporters) is that she’s somehow entitled to my vote.
She’s not entitled to your vote. That’s your reading into other people’s attitudes, not them themselves.
If HRC or the DNC thought she was entitled to your vote, they never would have “let” Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, et al, run for President under the Democratic banner. But they don’t think they are entitled to your vote and every Democrat who wanted to run against HRC did run against HRC.
I have no idea how you and others have come to believe that HRC thinks she is entitled to your vote. The only thing she thinks she’s entitled to is to run for the Democratic nomination for President, which, again, she and Sanders are doing.
As opposed to the person she’s running against? No, seriously, this is a first-past-the-post electoral system. You have to vote stategically. It’s not enough to say, “Well, I don’t like this candidate, so I won’t vote for them”, because realistically, only one of two candidates is going to win. Failing to turn up in support of one candidate, for all intents and purposes, means supporting the other. You always need this comparison!
Clinton is “way too much of a hawk” for you (likely based on one widely misunderstood vote in 2003 she almost immediately regretted). The alternative is a guy who thinks the correct way forward in Iraq involves invading again, stealing their oil, and murdering the families of terrorists. Think about that one for a moment. You’re opting, essentially, to not vote in an election where one guy is a Racist, Shit-Flinging Howler Monkey because you have slight quibbles with his opponent. Even given every claim placed against Hillary, this isn’t “Giant Douche vs. Turd Sandwich”, this is “Giant Douche vs. MechaHitler”.
I would suspect that though ‘never-Hillary’ types may have come to convince themselves that they actually believe in the “Clinton thinks she’s entitled to votes” myth, they didn’t start out actually believing it. Like most anti-HRC arguments, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. It was always a fake rationale. But if one is determined to oppose a candidate, one needs “reasons” that sound sorta-plausible.
Thus we get gems such as:
[ul]
[li]The Democrats/Hillary Clinton supporters are telling me how I HAVE to vote! (No. This has not happened. It’s fiction.)[/li][li]The Democrats/Hillary Clinton supporters are demanding loyalty! (More fiction.)[/li][li]I can’t vote for anyone who voted in favor of the 2002 Iraq Resolution! Except that yeah, I did vote three times for Democrats who DID vote in favor of the 2002 Iraq Resolution (in the 2004, 2008, and 2012 Presidential tickets). But, that’s different, because Reasons![/li][li]Hillary Clinton gave speeches for high fees, and giving a speech for a high fee makes you a puppet! How? Well, er… (Bonus point for ignoring the question, ‘Would you become a puppet if someone gave you a check for $______ to give a speech? Why not just make the speech and cash the check?’)[/li][li]Hillary Clinton has committed terrible acts! (Bonus point for failing to be able to come up with any actually-documented ‘terrible acts.’)[/li][li]Hillary Clinton stayed married to a man who was unfaithful! (Bonus point if you are Donald Trump, trying to make the case that divorce is what Godly, decent people do in response to infidelity; staying married is what TERRIBLE people do.)[/li][/ul]
An incomplete list, no doubt, but that’s the first set of Fake Reasons that occur to me.
Of course there are legitimate reasons for finding Clinton to be an imperfect candidate. But the 2016 election is not about voting for perfection. It’s about voting for the outcome that’s least-far from one’s values and goals. And the Fake Reasons seem to come into play for the type of person who is (to their credit) interested in the effect that political decisions have on the quality of life–but who cannot seem to understand that Perfection is not a reasonable expectation.
This this this this this.
Any attempt to deny this is an attempt to ignore how the American political system works. You can complain and crow about how broken and awful it is all day long (it is broken, and it is awful, let’s be clear), but the fact of the matter is it probably isn’t going to change between now and November, so we’re stuck dealing with the unfortunate reality that Sherrerd is exactly right.
And if the viable outcome that’s least-far from your values and goals isn’t Hillary Clinton over the racist, shit-flinging howler monkey… Well, then you either clearly weren’t a Sanders supporter, or need to take another quick look at that issues sheet. That, or you’re the kind of moron who thinks “blow everything up and start over” is a viable solution, in which case I have no respect or tolerance for you.
Yes. I will vote for Sanders next week in California, but would gladly vote for our first woman president.
I wonder if one of the things Hillary supporters don’t get is how Bernie is loved by tyrants and dictators like Maduro, a Hugo Chavez acolyte…
And Hillary’s BFFs with Henry Kissinger. Your point?
I’ll see your Maduro and raise you a Putin and Un.
Oh, I’ll vote in November. Just not for Clinton on the top of the ballot.