Why not? Do you honestly think Trump would be the better candidate, or do you lack an understanding of how the American political system at some fundamental level?
I can vote for whoever I want. In this case, multiple third parties have ballot access in New Mexico. Only a vote for Trump is a vote for Trump. Besides, if Clinton is as strong and Trump as weak as assumed, there’s no way that Trump will get the paltry five electoral votes from New Mexico and that how the state actually goes will make no difference. Clinton is going to crush Trump, after all. She’s the inevitable one and it’s her turn.
So another day passes and Trump does something else absolutely nuts. He [URL=“Trump Attacks Federal Judge in Trump U Case - WSJ”]the judge in the Trump U. case because he was Mexican. I can imagine him appointing the whitest slate of judges and cabinet members since the slavery days, and that’s not an exaggeration. The guy feeds off hatred and bigotry.
If you’re a Bernie supporter who is disappointed the grind of a close primary battle meant taking some shots from Hillary, this man and his values are what you’re supporting. Federal judges serve for life. 4 years of a GOP congress gleefully confirming every Trump nominee means that whatever revolution you’re hoping with a terrible Trump presidency will continue far longer than your ideal of America voting him out in 2020. It means that whoever progressive president we may have in 2020 will have all of his laws blocked because of fucking Trump judges, and that is something you would not have had with a Clinton presidency.
Anyone who votes for Trump will be suffering from him long after he’s out of office.
Yes, you can. But don’t delude yourself that a vote for anyone else but Hillary isn’t helping him. It’s still half a vote for him, the same as if you didn’t vote for President at all. That could change in some unforeseeable future, but for now, it’s just the way it is.
You can rationalize it by saying your vote doesn’t really matter because of the state you live in. I’m in a similar situation but I’m not taking any chances.
Whatever else Chavez was, he was no tyrant or dictator, and neither is Maduro.
Amen, brother.
I wrote an article on this subject on a local MDI blog.
http://www.bowenswersey.com/2016/06/03/godzilla-vs-rodhan/
Check it out.
I’m not voting for Trump (or Clinton) but this is probably the best argument I’ve seen to vote for Trump. I really, really don’t want to see a candidate who considers their mission to “Make America Great”.
Not fighting the hypothetical for a change, I’d say we blame the idiots who think it’s acceptable for America to ever again have a Republican as President.
Blame yourselves. YOu didn’t need to test the electorate by nominating the weakest Democrat possible.
The weakest Democrat possible is still preferable to any Republican ever again, and any American voter who does not realize that is an idiot.
An irresponsible idiot.
We’re in agreement there, but again, why test the electorate’s patience? It just wasnt necessary. The DNC did everything they could to clear the field for her, Biden stayed out because he figured she’d be too hard to beat, and Martin O’Malley was soundly rejected despite a sterling resume.
Sure, Clinton is MUCH better than Trump. It’s still Clinton supporters’ fault if she loses. They didn’t have to make that choice.
Nice article, touches upon everything that’s been said so far. Sadly an actual Godzilla would probably be better for America than a Trump presidency. We can repair buildings and roads after Godzilla, we will have a harder time undoing the laws after Trump.
A lot of Bernie supporters are hanging on to this idea of a “revolution” that they think is just around the corner. Hope is powerful, and maybe the current system is so disastrous for them that burning it all down (through electing Trump) and starting over is preferable to trying to fix something so broken. It may be hard to think about the future because its still unwritten, so maybe it would help if I have the “Bernie or Bust” supporters look at the present.
Its no secret that Obamacare has been continuously challenged by the Republicans since its inception. Its still there, thankfully, and the signature bill of Obama’s administration remains mostly intact. But like abortion laws, Republicans try to chip away at every aspect of it, relitigating each line and paragraph to find some hole in which a judge may agree with them. And they have found one, her name is Rosemary M. Collyer. She serves on the district court over DC, and on May 12, 2016, she ruled against Obamacare’s provision of “cost sharing” that requires insurance companies offering health plans through the law to reduce out-of-pocket costs for policy holders who qualify.
Ms. Collyer is a George W. Bush appointee.
For those of you who feel that they hate Hillary too much to vote for her despite her and Bernie having very similar stances, realize that the laws governing abortion, the environment, unions, free speech, torture, campaign finance, etc. are all under attack. Ms. Collyer was 57 when she was appointed by GWB in 2002 to the DC district court. She’s 70 now but likely will serve for more than a decade, certainly longer than the term of the president that appointed her, and likely longer than the possible cataclysm of a Trump presidency and the liberal revolution aftermath. She will be deciding future laws on single payer, or free college tuition, or marijuana.
And she’s not the only one. There are hundreds of judges appointed during the term of GWB, each one of them the end result of 500 people in Florida voting for Nader instead of Gore because “oh they were too similar”. And these were only the small fry. How about we frame it as a vote for Nader equals a vote for Alito and Roberts? Roberts, whose court opened the floodgates to private money with Citizens United. Or Alito, who’s been called another Scalia in how conservative he is. Do you think those Nader voters, with their green party credentials, their “pure” morals, and their disdain for the establishment liked Roberts and Alito, liked Citizens United? A vote against Gore/for Nader was a vote not only for GWB but for Roberts, for Alito, for 10+ years of war, for Abu Ghraib, for the TSA, and for the hundreds of judges like Collyer that was doing damage to liberal laws like Obamacare long after GWB was out of office.
If you are a Bernie supporter who is liberal, and you refuse to vote for Hillary, you’re voting for the next wave of Roberts, Alito, and Collyer judges. You’re voting for challenges, possibly wins, by the Republicans on Obamacare, on gay marriage, on unions, on the environment. Long after Bernie runs and wins in 2020 or 2024 and establishes a liberal utopia, his laws will be watered down because he can’t get it past the likes of Rosemary Collyer. Think about that before you attack Hillary for being an imperfect Democrat
A poll reports on voters who will vote for Bernie but not Hillary. The results are interesting. I hope this is the right thread to post it in.
It’s well known that polls show people who would vote for Bernie, but Trump instead of Hillary — a preference that seems bizarre to most of us. In this poll, voters were asked other questions and results presented by group.
Fully 45% of the Bernie-but-not-Hillary group are Republicans. They are young and moderate, or even conservative. About half of them “dislike” Trump … but the same portion of them “hate” Hillary as in the always-Trump group.
Some Dopers have announced the opposite: they’d vote for Hillary but not Bernie. Appaerently that group is so small that the pollsters didn’t bother showing it in the graphs.
Which is what you’d expect for the supporters of the one in the lead.
And the polls I’ve seen show that it was a higher percentage in 2008 of PUMAs. It wasn’t a big deal in the general then, and I doubt it will be now.
True, but isn’t there a difference this time in that the youngsters are supporting Bernie? Last time, the youngsters were supporting Obama, so they were motivated to vote in the general. The youngster Bernie supporters might fall back on their slacker ways and just not vote at all. That might not be enough to hand the election to Trump, but it still makes it a somewhat different prospect this time.
Well, I suppose that cuts both ways. If they are less likely to vote, then they are less likely to vote against Clinton, no matter how stalwart their opposition to her otherwise.
:smack: 35%. Chrome tells me when I misspell a word, but not when I press the wrong digit-key.
I am going to follow Noam Chomsky’s advice and hold my nose and vote for Hillary even though she is second best.
As i’ve already said in this thread, despite being a Sanders supporter, i would absolutely support Hillary in the general election as the Democratic candidate.
But…
You and others in this thread seem to be suggesting that THIS particular election is so unusual, and so important, that it is completely irresponsible for anyone who claims to have liberal or progressive values to deny Clinton their vote. You imply that a Trump presidency would be so damaging and so dangerous that defeating Trump HAS to take precedence over any liberal/progressive differences.
I have considerable sympathy for this position. I do, in fact, believe that a Trump presidency would be a disaster.
But i would have a bit more respect for your position if i felt that there were ANY circumstances where you honestly would allow for a protest vote against the mainstream Democratic candidate. That is, i think you would be making exactly the same self-serving argument even if the Republicans were putting up a reasonable mainstream candidate like John McCain or Mitt Romney. You would have made the same argument against voting for Nader in 2000, and if there is a progressive challenger to the Democratic nominee in 2024, you’ll be making the same argument again, even if the Republican nominee is a perfectly reasonable one. I really don’t believe that you would accept, under any circumstances, the idea that a more progressive candidate should challenge the Democratic Party claim to represent American liberalism and progressivism.
For people like you, the Democratic Party are the official owners of all left-of-center political votes, and any attempt to deny those votes to the Democratic Party, for any reason whatsoever, constitutes a theft and a betrayal. You’re just as rabid and self-interested as the loudest Bernie or Trump supporter; the only difference is that you couch your rabid partisanship is the language of pragmatism.