I also voted Johnson then. Is Ohio a swing state?
By that same token then littering is not a big deal either.
Unless the one can you threw out of the car window choked the river then it is not of your doing right?
Of course not. There is no obligation to vote for any particular candidate at all. No person or party is “entitled” to my vote, no matter how much you may think otherwise. I vote for the candidate that pleases me most. Sometimes it’s an “R”. Sometimes it’s a “D”. Sometimes it’s an “L” or an “I”. Sometimes, it’s me.
In national races, it simply doesn’t matter how I vote. My state is as red as it is possible to be, and Trump is bigger than Jesus here. All of this state’s electoral votes are going in the Trumpster no matter what. Lately, it’s getting to where it is almost impossible to get elected to anything as a “D” here. I’ve got only two openly Democratic friends in office at the moment. I’ve had several switch parties lately, not due to any ideological change, but simply because they want to keep their jobs.
I know at least two people who are going to do this. They both have the same reason.
They are both on facebook, and don’t watch news channels. They have been turned against the two party system and they are actually in a kind of love with crypto-authoritarianism, but they think they are coming at it from the far left. They think they know more than you about the way it all works.
They don’t believe in russian interference. If you bring it up, they will say something very similar to kayleigh maceneny for instance. They refuse to accept it and think that it has been debunked completely. They refuse to acknowledge difference between the two parties, except that they are secretly in love with the republicans because they are powerful machievalliean actors, and much more exciting to think about.
They are accelerationists, because they have lost faith in any meaning for themselves other than as prophets of facebook politics. They would rather live under a failing Republcan state or a totalitarian state, than any democratic state run by Democratic pols. They don’t have a strong role in their own society and are losers of a sort. They are assholes pontificating in bars.
I hope that they are vastly outnumbered by the young people who are sick of dt and his shit.
Your vote, but I feel an obligation as a member of society to vote for the candidate most likely to improve things (or barring that, least likely to mess them up). In my case, that sends me to the Democrats but if a conservative would likely voter GOP (although the “not mess things up bit” would certainly make it hard to vote for Trump).
For statewide offices, that means a Dem or a Rep, because no other party is going to win. For lower level, I look at what the minor parties are offering because they could conceivably win and implement their ideas (or at least swing things their way).
BTW in most elections in the last 30 years there were not two bad options. 2016 Clinton was a good option. I did not vote for McCain or Romney but I did not see them as bad options. they were both 100x better than Trump.
BTW in most elections in the last 30 years there were not two bad options. 2016 Clinton was a good option. I did not vote for McCain or Romney but I did not see them as bad options. they were both 100x better than Trump.
So since Trump didn’t win by a single vote, no Trump voters bear responsibility for his election?
This is, of course, your right. You can vote for whomever you like, for whatever reason you like, as is your right. You have no obligation here whatsoever.
It does, however, border on naivete for placing ideology ahead of pragmatism.
If you were a football coach and up by six points with 20 seconds left in the game the pragmatic and prudent choice is to have the quarterback take a knee and run out the clock. But maybe you are some kind of football ideologue who feels the game is meant to be played and not mess around with things like “running out the clock” so you tell your team to try a Hail Mary pass.
Afterward you claim no responsibility for losing the game. It could have gone either way and you merely did what you felt was right.
The problem is, you are playing a game as you wish it was rather than how it is.
I would LOVE for ranked-choice voting to be a thing! But until it is we are left with the system we have and while voting for (say) Nader in 2000 may have felt good it was the difference between which president we got.
You (as an example…I do not know who you voted for) may well have hated both Gore and Bush and felt Nader was far more to your liking but if you saw Gore as the less bad choice of Gore/Bush then that vote really should have been for Gore. By voting for Nader you (again, general “you”) effectively helped vote Bush in to office.
There is no two ways about it. Nader didn’t have a chance in hell of winning. None at all. Never did.
The difference is that littering isn’t something really definable as having reached a critical mass. Whereas with elections, it’s crystal clear. Either you have your opponents ***N+1 ***votes and you win, or else you don’t. So as long as the number of votes for the worse guy does not reach or exceed N, you, a third-party voter, have not caused him to win.
Driving drunk is wrong, even if you don’t hurt anyone. You’re increasing the chance of hurting yourself and others, due to your own irresponsibility.
By that principle, voting third party rather than the best chance to take down a monstrous leader is wrong, because you’re increasing the chance he’s elected. Even if you’re not in a swing state, you’re increasing the chance he has more of an electoral mandate. By a teeny-tiny bit, but still a non-zero amount. So that’s wrong too.
tournip has been boasting about his mandate for 3 years now. You have to vote against the fascist no matter where you live.
Nah. You can never say which vote it was that put someone over the top and you can never say which piece of trash it was that ultimately collapsed some system.
They all count in aggregate. You (general “you”) do not get to beg off because no one can show it was only your vote, and no one else’s, that made the ultimate difference.
You all made a difference and had a hand in the end result.
I voted for Johnson in the last election because I was unhappy with either choice and especially the Democratic Party decision to step back and let Clinton run basically unopposed (spoiled by a non-democrat independent). I also knew that my state was going blue no matter what. If I were in a swing state there is no way I would vote 3rd party.
Strangely enough, all Green candidates are not alike, just as not all Republican candidates are alike, and thank goodness for that.
If I’m voting 3rd party in the first place then chances are that I don’t think the “best” option is that much better than the worse option. Therefore, I don’t care whether I take responsibility or not because, to me, it’s not an important question.
That’s true. Some claim to be descendants of aliens as well.
You’re forgiven since you don’t live in any of the nine (or fewer) states that could possibly be a tipping state, but I still don’t get the “No person is entitled to my vote” which you and others write about.
I don’t buy Betagen yoghurt drink because Betagen is “entitled” to my custom — I buy it because it’s the best option for yoghurt drink available at the local 7-Eleven.
People in swing states shouldn’t ask whether Biden is “entitled” to their vote — whatever that even means — they should ask whether Trump or Biden is the best option for the country.
And BTW: I think either a Greenie or a Libbie would be a very bad President, but that is irrelevant! Voting for either of them is like the student who, faced with the quiz problem2+2 = ? (a) 4, (b) 5 can’t decide between (a) and (b), so writes in “banana.”
Let’s postulate the impossible: a third party candidate wins. What would happen? Who would he call in Congress to help him with his agenda? I think you’d wind up with 4 years of inaction as neither party would feel particularly obligated to work with the president and they’d likely ignore him for 4 years. Maybe a term of inaction is preferable to the current Senate ceding all power to the White House, but it wouldn’t be an effective government.
It’s a two party system for the rest of the lives of anyone living today. One of them must align closer to your views. If you don’t pick that one and instead fritter your vote away, then you’re not voting in your best interest.
It might or might not be. Obama had a senate that opposed him at every turn and he managed ok.