Biden was my fifth choice. Sherrod Brown, who never ran, Jay Inslee, who went out early, Elizabeth Warren, who never got untracked and Bernie Sanders all would have received my primary vote ahead of Biden.
That doesn’t matter now. I’m voting to save humanity and democracy by picking Joe Biden.
This is not correct.
I think preference voting or IRV or STV are superior to FPTP.
But it is “winner takes all” that causes the electoral problems.
I do think systems like proportional representation that remove the winner take all aspect are the absolute best you can get. But FPTP is so much worse than any other system that IMO it dwarfs any other consideration.
BTW, it’s possible to implement STV in a non-winner take all way, which I believe is what the FairVote people advocate for at least in the house. Basically in a district you have multiple reps and in the election you keep eliminating the worst-performaing candidates until you have the number you need, rather than eliminating until you wind up with exactly one.
This right here is the most persuasive post I’ve read here. I’m actually mulling it over. I don’t feel great about the idea of voting for Biden. I feel like doing so is accepting that I have no other choice than to participate in a truly fucked up system that I don’t believe serves our country well really at all. It makes me feel part of the problem and that’s tough. I want my vote to mean something to me, so it’s a struggle to come around. It makes me sad to see so many say they don’t feel enthusiastic at all about the person they help put into power. Don’t we deserve better than that?
To reiterate, though, I don’t sit out of elections. Never have. I vote in every single one. I pour over the voter guides and ballotpedia; I get informed. I vote in all down ballot races that aren’t unopposed except for dog catcher. I’m a registered Democrat who doesn’t identify as a Democrat and yet votes mostly for Democrats when they aren’t other party candidates that I prefer.
So it’s not a huge stretch for me to vote for Biden. At this point in time, I don’t view a Biden presidency as progress, but more as course correction, which we very badly need. I don’t believe he can or will be a notably effective president, but it seems obvious he can do better than the current disgrace. I’m seriously considering it except for the fact that where I live my vote for president doesn’t really matter. I’m in a solid blue state, so I can comfortably sit out and not help Trump. That said, I absolutely vote for congress critters and state legislators, even though I’m in a fairly red district and my vote never prevails there. So, it could be argued that none of my votes matter to anyone other than myself.
The way to change the system is to have more people like you who are passionate about changing it and showing up to vote in primaries for their ideal candidate. That puts pressure on people like Biden, who now knows he can’t just shrug at Bernie’s voters and say that they don’t matter (the way Hillary kinda did to her detriment).
Look at what Biden’s doing. He’s not sneering at the Bernie Sanders group; he’s courting them, and he’s actually quietly co-opting some of their ideas. Sanders himself said he wished he’d go a little further to the left, but that he’s pleased with how open and receptive Biden has been. And in this election, particularly with the pandemic and its economic carnage, there are opportunities for real change - not a total revolution, mind you. But there’s a mandate for real reforms.
However, that mandate is going to depend a LOT on proof and evidence in the form of voters showing up overwhelmingly to reject Trump and McConnell. And I think it actually does matter that you participate to support Biden, even if you’re in California or Oregon. Each vote - even one - strengthens that mandate. Down-ballot politicians look at statewide results, even in states that are reliably one party or the other. They look at those results to gauge the strength of the candidate- that’s why so many Republicans who ought to be know better than to support Trump’s outrages do so, because they look at statewide voting from 2016 and see that he won their states or their districts by double digits. We want Biden to have that same kind of power.
Brava!
@asahi You make good points about the message sent by raw numbers of votes. But I believe it also works in the other direction. If candidates (such as Clinton) rest on the notion that the majority of the electorate voted for them without looking at lost potential of those who would have voted for them, they don’t question what they could have done to achieve those votes because they don’t see them as necessary. This would change in an RCP system, obviously. But it also applies to down ballot candidates. If Biden doesn’t achieve progressive votes it’s because he’s not doing enough to court them. If they aren’t enough to matter then why try to convince progressive voters that they owe Biden their vote. And doesn’t that also say something important to down-ballot candidates that progressive policies matter? I saw what happened in the primaries and I’m thrilled about it. Progressive candidates are doing better every election.
I also saw the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force recommendations. It certainly doesn’t go as far as I’d like it to, but I understand compromise is very effective in successfully achieving policy enactment. I can obviously see where Sanders compromised and am still reviewing Biden’s policy movement. That’s important to me because it informs me as to whether he’s really committed to those policies or if it’s simply a stunt to pull in progressive votes. But it does demonstrate that he recognizes the value of progressives where Clinton dismissed us as an essential voting bloc. He will need to work with and achieve buy-in from Congressional progressives. Liberals outnumber moderates within the Democratic party and as more Millennials and Gen Z achieve voting age (37% of eligible voters in 2020), liberal voters will be and --I’d argue, currently are-- very necessary to Dem candidates’ success. I’d suggest that for the Democratic party to survive, it will need to pivot away from more moderate candidates and policies. That’s where I’m at. Biden doesn’t excite me, but if he were to choose a progressive running mate (such as Warren), that would go a lot further to demonstrating that he’s serious about promoting a more progressive policy than the unity task force alludes to.
There was an interesting Samantha Bee interview earlier tonight with Masha Gessen (Russian dissident and author of Surviving Autocracy):
After noting that in 2016 Trump “ran not for President but for autocrat,” Masha Gessen said something toward the end of the interview that really stuck with me regarding the upcoming 2020 election:
I’m not quite as concerned with his choice for veep as I am for his vision of his cabinet, particularly at Labor, Treasury, and Justice. He also needs to be on board with ending the senate filibuster.
Assuming the Senate shifts back to the Democrats, that’ll be a job for Chucky, lol
Hats (or pants) off to you.
I would like to believe that his selection for VP would inform us as to what his future cabinet selections would look like in terms of the particular policies that he values most and the type of leaders he believes have the ability to effectuate his priorities.
Disappointment in both candidates is why a lot of people Do stay home. And it is usually what is “more of the same”.
I do wish there was an electable third party option, if they called it the center option with some Republican ideals and some Democratic ideas, we’d be golden. Biden is centrist (as a Democrat goes ) but not really center.
As someone whose first choice was definitely not Biden last year when he entered the race, I realize now that he probably should have been. I was for Sanders or Warren due to their more-radical-and-to-the-left views of Biden’s, because I think ultimately if a lot of those views (w/o going into detail, that’s another thread) can be instituted, it will be good for the country. But now I think that even with a possible Democrat senate and house, Warren or Sanders would have spent too much effort into getting things done that would never have made it to the Oval Office desk. I believe incremental change is the way to go, and I hope Biden will be a good start.
That being said, I for one am definitely not for Biden now simply because he is the “D” in the election. I happen to think a lot of his policies are in the right direction.
I do not, if you want to talk about “wishes”. I wish we had a different system that concentrated less power at the top. The presidency might have been an ok idea in the eighteenth century. Today, singular national leadership with minimal safeguards is just not a good idea.
If we’ve learned anything from a Trump presidency it’s that the concept of ‘checks & balances’ and traditional norms of government are only as good as the people in power willing to honor them. I think we can still expect to see a peaceful transition of power to the next administration, but only just, and we’ve not seen the last of Trump’s authoritarian attempts to hold on to power. There may need to be some laws with well defined consequences and enforcement measures put in place to assure the security of free elections and a subsequent peaceful transition of power.
If Trump was el presidente or chair of some democratic republic of Buttfuck No-where this wouldn’t be so critical. But he is the corrupt, bullshitting, devisive leader of the most powerful, nuclear-armed country on the planet. He is (and maybe he doesn’t even realize it thanks to his lack of understanding of history) capable of dismantling the various post-war alliances and institutions, facilitating the continued destruction of the environment and, to various extents responsible for the deaths of at least166,000 Americans. He is also fomenting a civil cold war and presiding over the retreat of the west and the hand-over to China.
He is truly an existential threat. The fact that Biden isn’t quite your cup of tea at this time, and therefore a great excuse to either not vote, or waste a vote on a third party is appalling.
That undercurrent in this thread is actually terrifying and I do fear that Trump will get a second term and possibly a third one.