Yah well if someone think Trump is a shit sandwich, and Biden is a shit sandwich with cheese, I won’t blame them for staying home. Even though I get it: Trump is worse. To me.
There’s no reason not to blame both. It is absolutely consistent to say that the Democrats are, and have been, fuckin’ the dog something fierce when it comes to giving people who aren’t right of center-right electoral options that feel good, but then also say that the balance of the equities on election day 2016 meant that, if you didn’t show up and vote for Clinton, you were voting to roll the dice on some really fucking atrocious outcomes, and so you should have.
Emphasizing one of those things doesn’t make the other not true anymore, which is the mistake a lot of people around here have decided to make their specialty. A liberal Democrat of exactly the Straight Dope type (this place always represented a very thin demographic sliver, but by now the chart is effectively one-dimensional) loves to start on the conclusion that “no matter how shitty” the candidate is, it’s better than Trump, and just stay right there, without ever thinking about how convenient that is when no matter who the candidate is, it’s going to be basically exactly what they want, and that this isn’t true for most people. Most people don’t occupy the space that is exactly in the middle of the “no matter how shitty” range of candidates. But when you do, man is that easy!
You would think that it would matter to a group so putatively obsessed with electability that, just as a mathematical inevitability, there are going to be returns that diminish as voters are ideologically further and further from a given candidate’s positions. It is inescapable that people whose politics are remote enough from the offerings available would eventually decide that the cost of voting outweighs the benefit. The more of those there are, the more somebody who cares about electability should be paying attention to them.
But, with that all said, it works the other way too. No matter how bad the options are, it’s still reasonable to blame anybody who arrives at that decision for making the bad choice. There is a real difference between having Trump as president and having whatever other bloodthirsty technocrat would be in there instead. That doesn’t get less real depending on how many dipshits are in a place being dipshits about it.
Jimmy me lad, are you Irish by chance? Because you have the gift for gab.
I will. Fuck them.
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Biden finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in NH. Regarding the latter:
Ultimately it comes down to the difference between commanding votes vs demanding them.
I’ll blame them for supporting racist sexist criminal scumbags. Because it’s patently obvious that failing to vote against Trump is a vote in favor of hate and corruption.
Seriously, I get that some people love Bernie and want to have is babies and then vote for those babies. That’s fine - there’s nothing wrong with favoring him as a candidate and promoting him and voting for him in the primary as hard as you can.
But if after all that he doesn’t get the Dem nomination, then it’s no longer a matter of trying to elect Bernie. Bernie will cease to exist as a presidential candidate (until next time, when he will run from beyond the grave). At that point it will be a vote against racist criminal corruption, or not a vote against that.
Let’s say you succeed and you get me to vote for Trump just to spite you. How would you feel?
Dunno about him, but I’d feel like you were an immature idiot who would shoot yourself in the face because somebody said you’d be dumb to shoot yourself in the face.
You get we’re talking about Trump, right? I know that the political right has been trying to paint all this as a game, us vs. them, support our team win or lose, but seriously we’re talking about a government here and there are actual consequences to who gets elected.
So I googled it. And found this.
But wait, there’s more.
Interesting article. Worth reading in it’s entirety.
And that being said, I think SenorBeef’s point is spot on. Stop insulting Bernie supporters. It doesn’t make us/them any more likely to vote Democrat and the Democrats need all the votes they can get to remove the Orangeshitstain.
You said in your previous post that it won’t matter too much to you who is control. Good job, health insurance, education and so forth. Same here. Except I give a shit about others, and the future of this country and the planet.
As a voter, that does not make you less responsible to try to make this country the best it can be. AND try to keep it from CONTINUING to slide into a dictatorship run by a moron. Well, he is a figure head when it comes down to it.
I’m not particularly a fan of Bernie, and wasn’t of Hillary. When the other option is to keep a treasonous shit stain that doesn’t care about anyone but himself in office, the choice is clear.
Vote for whomever can beat him.
That you’re a petulant child with more privilege than brains.
Hey, Senorbeef, pro-tip: sarcasm in thread titles doesn’t register for all readers.
What makes you say that? I thought the title was pretty clear: it was presenting the idea that Bernie Bros are so short-sighted that they would discard the well-being of the country if insulted too much.
Now, there’s little to be gained from preemptively antagonizing any Bernie supporter who has not suggested that they’ll do something completely brainless like voting for Trump out of spite. Of course, Seniorbeef has suggested that they might vote for Trump out of spite, so there you go.
I didn’t ask how you guys would feel. I know that much. I’m asking from the perspective of someone who is essentially daring me to vote for Trump - how would he feel if I actually did? Like he accomplished something, that he trolled me into offsetting his vote? Excited that now he gets confirmation that he was right to treat me like shit all along even though his behavior was a critical factor in pushing me to commit the act that he feels justifies his treatment?
You get that a bunch of you are basically doing your best to dare non-democrats to not vote, or vote for Trump, right? You’re essentially saying “fuck you, what are you gonna do, vote for Trump? Well you can’t do that because that’s the greater evil! So haha, suck it, bitch, and vote how we tell you” and “and if you question this or don’t vote at all, you’re an enthusiastic Trump supporter!”
You’re essentially challenging us. Hey, we’re going to try our hardest to make you vote against us in spite, and we’re going to have faith that you’re emotionally mature enough to ignore us and do what we want you to do anyway even though we’re being complete twats to you and daring you not to"
So let’s say you goad me into it. You put me off so much that I don’t vote. Or even that I vote for Trump. Do you feel like you’ve succeeded? Failed? How does that make you feel about your actions?
Edit:
My title is more along the lines of “hey, let’s not dare them to do exactly that”
I very much did not do that. I only suggested that the treatment that people are giving me seems designed to achieve that end. And I wondered, hypothetically, if they were to succeed, how they would feel about it.
I don’t see it as terrible when Democratic* candidates and their supporters criticize other Democratic candidates and their backers during primary season. It’s a healthy part of the process, despite GOPers’ glee at “internal strife”.
It only becomes problematic when backers of a particular candidate are so wound up in believing that (s)he’s the Messiah that they 1) become horribly offended at any suggestion their candidate is less than perfect, and 2) sulk and stay home, or worse, when their candidate falls short of getting the nomination.
repeatedly referring to the ‘‘democratic party’’ using the lower case “d” is reminiscent of Republicans saying “Democrat Party” because they can’t bear calling it the “Democratic Party”. Not the end of the world, but rather childishly* annoying.
**hope that ‘‘sneer’’ doesn’t result in another vote for Trump! :smack:
Looks like Bernie has a good chance of getting the nomination. I’ll vote for him if he does.
If say Pete gets the nomination, and Bernie doesn’t have a chance, will you write in Bernie? Will you just stay home?
If you do, I fully expect you to carry the weight of that choice.
We are talking about DONALD JOHN FUCKING TRUMP here. Not Kasich, not some Bush toddy. Trump. Throw away your vote, and you should be derided for that.
If you are a Sanders supporter, not voting for a Dem that got the nomination instead is petulant bullshit, and does not align at all with the real world. Stay home and cry, and wonder why things are so bad with out Bernie, when you could have at least voted for a person that could beat the insane crook in the Oval Office.
This whole “Bernie as the Messiah” thing is really fucking stupid. People who support Bernie aren’t a cult. They’re not like Trump cultists. They don’t think he’s a God-Emporer.
All he is is someone that actually represent real leftist ideals, the likes of which we haven’t seen in a presidential run in - I honestly don’t know the last time. There are a lot of people in this country that know we’re a managed democracy, really an oligarchy, and that both parties bow down to the richest among us.
The reason Bernie stands out is that he has a decades-long history of being completely sincere and fighting for actual progressive/leftist ideals. No one thinks he’s flawless, he’s just literally the only candidate in our lifetimes who is willing to call out the most fundamental problem of our political system: that the rich own almost all of our media and both of our parties and completely control our political discourse. They’ve given us political choices ranging from extreme right whackadoo loot the whole country to the benefit of the rich tomorrow, to moderate right wing let the rich loot the country at a steady and more sustainable pace.
It’s amazing that none of you guys even seem to understand the mindset of a Bernie supporter, because it’s not complex at all, and they’ll tell you what they think. It’s not a cult of personality. Bernie has huge, obvious flaws. But he’s the only guy that’s willing to call out our actual problems and who we can be completely confident would actually sincerely do his best to improve the lives of the average person in this country.
Yes you did. Don’t blame us if you were unclear.
I’m not challenging you about anything - I’m simply reminding you in no uncertain terms that there is a racist criminal piece of shit running for office. I feel that this reminder is necessary because people are floating the idea of facilitating or directly casting their vote in favor of the aforementioned shit. Honestly you’d think that people would be able to remember that Trump is bad without my prompting, but apparently not, because there are dipshits who are saying there are circumstances where they’d be willing to vote for him. And not, like, “it’s him or Manson” circumstances, either. Just “I got my widdle feelings hurt” circumstances.
Seriously. Anybody who supports trump is, explicitly, supporting racism, sexism, and crime. That’s not ambiguous, that’s not a slur, that’s a literal hard fact.
So how would I feel if you threw a baby baby hissy fit and voted for Trump? I’d feel that you’re probably at some level a racist, a sexist, or a criminal. You’d pretty much have to be at least one of those things to support him under any circumstances. And if you’re that awful, it’s not a personal failing on my part if you vote for evil. I don’t control you and can’t turn you away from the darkness. That’s entirely on you - all I can do is try to remind you what the hell you’re talking about doing.
No, I didn’t ask you, because I don’t recall you doing in this thread that I would describe as “daring me to vote for Trump”
You don’t seem to be deliberately alienating in the way Quicksilver or John Stamos are.
You seem to be misunderstanding me. I’m not threatening to vote for Trump. Under no circumstances would I ever vote for Trump. However, I am baffled as to why a lot of people want to make it as hard as possible to want to be on the same side as them.
If I say “it’s hard for me, but I’ll vote for Joe Biden even though I’ll make a bad president”, and they say “that’s right you will, you little bitch. Grow your bernie loving ass up and vote like an adult”, you understand that it’s making it harder for me to swallow what is already a bitter pill, right?
So, while I personally won’t refuse to do it out of spite, there are certainly people who are less politically involved, and closer to not voting at all, or who actually are petulant or spiteful. And this treatment actually will change their votes.
And for what? What do you get out of this as a strategy? Why is it a good idea to make it as hard as possible for reluctant anti-Trump voters to vote democrat?