I started a thread in Politics & Elections asking for who people would vote for as President if Biden and Trump are excluded as choices. Of course given this Board all of the responses (except one) was any Democrat which as you may note does not exclude Biden assuming he is the Democratic nominee which kind of defeats the purpose of the thread. I pointed this out to try to get people back on track and What_Exit replied (with any Dem ignoring the Biden exclusion) and then followed it up with
Now as a mod, your guideline is untenable. It means nothing and will not be enforced. Sorry, but if you want I will close the thread for you.
I agreed to close it because let’s face it, when the posters refuse to abide by guidelines set out in the OP AND THEN a mod says, Yeah no, your guideline is unreasonable and will not be enforced. then what’s the point.
So was he right? Is my guildeline untenable? Unreasonable? Is the only solution to close the thread?
It would be a problematic thread with most posters ignoring your premise. The other solution was leave it open and let it run its course. I was happy enough to do that also, but was cutting off any further complaints about posters not following the word of the OP. You do not own your threads.
I would’ve gone even further in “you don’t own your threads” and not offered to close the thread. I think it had excellent chances for getting back on track. @Saint_Cad, I posted a suggestion in the thread before it closed, for how it could get answers closer to what you were wanting. Would you (if mods were amenable) be willing to reopen it with that suggestion–or to start a new thread with a more specific question at the beginning?
I think the “Any Dem” folks were sincerely trying to answer your OP to the best of their ability. I was surprised when you ruled their answers out of bounds and fussed at them. Maybe a more precise OP would be better?
I actually thought Saint Cad’s premise was pretty clear and I was interested in the responses. Maybe you’d vote for “any Dem” in the general but that’s kind of a bland answer; surely you have a preference - who would you vote for in the Dem primary, given infinite options?
Not in that thread with the way the OP was written. A modnote would never be enough. A new thread maybe with a much better written OP might work OK. The key point would be naming a single candidate I guess.
I mean, I guess whoever the Dem candidate will be
Yep, I’d do as you [the poster above] would.
Another vote for whoever the Dem candidate is.
So for me, I would vote for any Democrat.
Never GOP here. I guess that makes me a yellow dog Dem
At that point you came in and insisted those answers weren’t good enough. But the very first sentence in your OP was, “Only guideline is it cannot be Biden OR Trump.”
Seems to me those posters followed your guideline and answered your question in good faith. Rather than getting snippy about it, maybe you should try to craft your questions better.
And that what I tried to clarify with “Any Dem” is ok provided it is followed up with “But if the nominee is Biden …” Even before @What_Exit offered to close it, I was thinking that if it continued that the thread would be like nine-million other SD threads.
Actually, if the thread had started out like the posts after@What_Exit had offered to close it, there would never have been an issue as those post mention someone by name other than Biden or Trump.
I’m still not completely sure what your intent was in that thread.
It’s not sufficient to just say “no Biden or Trump”. Given that most people will have the priority of keeping the GOP out of power at all costs, you did not make clear whether you were asking for
(a) the candidate (excluding those two) who you think has the best chance of winning for your party;
(b) the best person (excluding those two) to be President if you had the only vote.
Or some other possibility? I really have no idea what “who would you vote for” is supposed to mean without specifying the circumstances clearly.
The problem is, the question you asked is, “Who would you vote for?” The obvious answer to that in the era of GOP madness is “Anyone other than the Republican”. That this obviously automatically excludes Biden is built into the OP, so complaining about that part just seems petty.
I think what you really wanted to ask was, “Who do you want to vote for?”, with the additional stipulation of it being a specific name or small list of names. After all, it’s clear that most posters will vote for whoever shows up on the ballot under the Democratic ticket. But they still might have a preference for who that should be in a perfect world.
That was the point. Sometimes questions are over-engineered. I’m standing there looking at
Biden - D
Trump - R
Other Candidates - Minor Parties
Write-in
So if not voting for Biden or Trump who do you vote for? How can I guess what criterium you will use? Why do you assume the criterium you would use is the same one everyone would use? It could be …
Member of your desired party who would make the best President?
If not Dem, go Green
Yourself since you’re a 35 year old NBC
Murder Fox
You could formulate the question as, “Who do yo think has the best chance of keeping the GOP out of power?” It’s pretty clear there are a lot of people on the Dem side who would utterly fail at that under today’s conditions, but it’s not so clear who might succeed.
But that’s the problem. The only reason I wouldn’t vote for Biden is if he’s not the Democratic candidate–and in that case, I’d almost certainly vote for whoever the Democratic candidate was. That’s the criterion I’d use. And that’s genuinely the criterion that tens of millions of people would use. When folks say, “Any Dem,” they’re probably assuming that Biden’s not the Dem nominee, and they’re answering you to the best of your ability.
If you want a different answer, you need to engineer your question so that “any Dem” isn’t the correct and honest answer.
