This could be a daily feature — but it won’t be, because I’m already gagging at the thought of it. The latest news from Romney is that he’s making political hay out of the fact that Obama made a speech declaring the importance of a national infrastructure — roads and bridges, for instance — to businesses, and he dared to say to businessmen that “you didn’t build that”. So of course Romney is lining up Republican businessmen to say, “I did too build my own business!”, a claim Obama did not dispute.
But here’s the funny bit: one businessman Romney featured in an ad is not only ignoring what Obama actually said, but is the recipient of millions of dollars in government loans. I guess he didn’t build his own business after all, but had an awful lot of help from us taxpayers.
And one more thing: Sally Ride has died, and we now learn something new: she’s been in a committed lesbian relationship for 27 years. Romney is now praising her, without acknowledging that his anti-gay policies would deny her the dignity and benefit of recognizing that relationship. What an asshole.
You’re not actually going to vote for that guy in November, are you? I’m extremely lukewarm about Obama, but I’m going to poke that paper ballot to spite Romney, if nothing else.
Obama may be another Jimmy Carter, but he’s still a lot better for America than any present-day Republican. The guy who opposes evil inconsistently is always better than the guy who supports it consistently.
Romney is now praising her, without acknowledging that his anti-gay policies would deny her the dignity and benefit of recognizing that relationship.
More to the point, he’s praising her without admitting she’s an example that shows gays and lesbians aren’t one-tenth as evil or subhuman as his party say they are.
Nope, not voting for Romney and not voting for Obama either. Back to a third party this year.
Romney also told the olympic athletes last week that none of them got where they are on their own, but with the help of others. No, really.
I’m voting for Obama. I despise him, but I despise all but a handful of the politicians I’ve voted for over the last 24 years.
Yea well, guess I’m going to be a Yellow Dog Democrat. I’ll vote for a Yellow Dog before I’d vote for Rommey!! Or any of his kind.
Third party…proof that there are idiots who still don’t grasp game theory and play based on how it should work rather than the actual rules.
Hey assholes this isn’t monopoly where you can change house rules. Your stuck with the voting system we got.
It’s like you’re driving a car and the brakes quit on you.
You have the choice between careening into a river, or to plummet off a cliff with a black hole at the bottom that has hungry alligators inside.
I’m not thrilled about getting wet and having to claw my way out of the car, but at least I have a chance.
Where are you planning to vote, PZ? As far as I know, Minnesota ballots do not require poking – you mark them with a pen.
Well I shan’t vote for Romney or Obama..but this may be because I am a Briton in England
So you admit you ARE voting for Romney.
Sigh. As I’ve posted repeatedly at various FTB blogs, fewer than 1000 presumably very liberal voters in Florida gave us eight years of G.W. Bush by voting for Nader in 2000. If they’d held their noses and voted for Gore we’d all be a lot better off.
Sorry Trebuchet, I’m not voting for someone who did nothing but get worse on the things I voted for him for. You can piss and moan all you want about that, but it isn’t going to change how I vote.
Captaintripps, thanks! The post was totally about whether youd vote for Obama or not!
Ing: Praise The Lord And Pass the Ammunition, America’s extraordinarily stupid voting system aside, there’s nothing wrong with voting with one’s conscience. People shouldn’t need to be expedient or ‘grasp game theory’ so that you can get the person you want elected elected. It may be dumb and sure they’re not helping themselves nor anyone else, but that’s a choice people can freely make without being called ‘idiots who still don’t grasp game theory’ as though an understanding of game theory must have anything to do with choosing a candidate to vote for.
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As for Sally Ride, I don’t know how much she wanted to live such a private life, but now that it’s out in the open and now that her partner has been exposed, it’s really shitty to know that she won’t live the rest of her life as the legal spouse of a pioneering astronaut and totally awesome woman of science, with all the benefits that come naturally from that recognition for people who can be married.
Mitt Romney, fuck you.
Fuck those who are vote shaming. Don’t do that.
Barrack Obama is pandering, conniving, pawn of Wall Street’s Capitalist pigs as well as a devoted believer in the invisible tyrant who lives in the sky whose position on gay rights “evolved” when it was politically expedient for him to do so.
I’ll vote for the fucker, but I won’t like it nor will I think it’s going to change anything. The Democrats have official become the “NOT the GOP” Party; which means rather than advancing an left-wing agenda, they have discovered that it is politically safer to be slightly-less crazy than the Republican party (who, despite being a bunch of Bible-humping plotucrats, at least have an aggressive agenda).
And if I and others had voted for Cutler instead of Mitchell, Maine wouldn’t be dealing with LePage right now.
That’s a decision I regret.
That’s the name of the game, no matter how much we wish it wasn’t.
Forgive the creative use of punctuation in my last post. Either my fingers are too fat for an iPad keyboard or I need sleep.
That’s about how I feel about this election, PZ. I’m basically a realist, and it’s pretty clear that either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama will be president for the next four years. While I may have huge problems with Obama on foreign policy, terrorism, and due process, I have no doubt that Romney would be the same or worse. Meanwhile, we can have a president who will lower already record low taxes for the wealthy while demolishing the social safety net and repealing our first wobbling steps into universal health care and who thinks LGTB folks are not entitled to the same rights as the rest of us and women should have their health care choices dictated to them, or I can have a president who at least has some belief in Keynesian economics, gay rights, women’s rights, and atheists’ rights. It’s a no-brainer, I have to vote for Obama. Sure, as a reasonably well off, straight, white male with generous health insurance, I don’t benefit directly under Obama, so I could easily just cast a protest vote against Obama’s foreign policy, but I have a wife, a mother, nieces, and friends who are women and/or gay. I have many relatives and friends who aren’t in the comfortable financial position I am. And I benefit from fairer economic policies and universal healthcare, even if indirectly. There’s a real difference between Obama and Romney that affects real people, and I cannot, in good conscience, vote for a third party who won’t get elected in a protest that no one will hear or care about when I can help real people with my vote.
Besides, I had my fun voting for Ralph Nader thinking that there was no difference between Gore and Bush, and that even if there was and Bush was awful it would motivate people to make changes that we desperately needed. We can see how well that turned out. I won’t make the same mistake again.
To the third party voters: always remember that Americans are very split on issues. You can always find about 50% of people in disagreement when you start laying out solid policy positions. So good luck getting a third party who represents far less that 50% elected. If you want to change things, voting for a third party candidate who won’t get more than 2% of the vote won’t do anything. It’s not a protest, hell, it’s not even really voting your conscience if your guy simply can’t win. If you want change, you have to change minds and organize at the grass roots level, or you get nowhere. Build up an organization and get America on your side, get congress on your side, then worry about the White House.
That said, I still have to ask when will we be allowed to vote for an actual leftist candidate rather than just a place holder? The Republicans have no problem with being able to vote their black and twisted consciences (and win doing it), why shouldn’t we?
“So,” said Arthur, hoping he wasn’t sounding ridiculously obtuse, “why don’t the people get rid of the lizards?”
“It honestly doesn’t occur to them,” said Ford. “They’ve all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they’ve voted in more or less approximates to the government they want.”
“You mean they actually vote for the lizards?”
“Oh yes,” said Ford with a shrug, “of course.”
“But,” said Arthur, going for the big one again, “why?”
“Because if they didn’t vote for a lizard,” said Ford, “the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?”
(from So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, Douglas Adams)
gussnarp, this poster is not American and you are still vote shaming. It does occur to you that other candidates do have and come from grass roots movements? The fact that it is not represented nationally is not their failing. Stop shaming people for who they vote for.
And if Gore had made an effort to reach out to those voters instead of doing everything he could to alienate them, maybe they would have.
Nobody is being shamed, but the reality of the situation is being pointed out. Not voting for Obama is the same as voting for Romney in a swing state. That’s reality. I know, I’ve gone the third party route. Didn’t work to change the major parties.
Also, part of our voting system awards more benefits to parties who get at least 5% of the presidential vote. So even though it should make more sense to build 3rd parties from local races up, because of the election laws, there are tactical reasons to vote for a third party presidential candidate you know won’t win – it helps his or her party get more access to funding and other perks.
Akira #15
Doesn’t Medical Care for millions, accepting gays in military, winding down Iraq War, advocating for lower & middle class count for anything?
We don’t all live in swing states.
I do, so I’m voting for Obama. If I lived in a state that was sure to go to Obama, I might vote for someone else.
until some time in the future when the political parties change significantly I will agree with Ing and go with the system as it is and not resort to a third party candidate without a chance in hell of winning.
besides what good would it do if some third party candidate did win he would still face a congress made up of members of the other two parties?
Romney and the republicans using the modern newer and softer version of double speak.
I do find it really odd that conservatives can ignore the benefits of government and society as a whole and make the claim that they did it all themselves while at the same time praising patriotism and the nation. Then asking for more tax cuts (government help) for the rich and business to help business make more money so they will spend it (trickle it down) to the middle class and the poor.
many successful businesses understand that much of their prosperity is owed to their customers at least.
I get the feeling that they do not really believe any of the conservative talking points but hope that the voters believe it long enough the vote them into power and them support them for fear of being seen as deluded and used by them.
we need the conservatives to win so as to usher in the true distopian future we all dread, as we edge toward ecological disruption and its wake of governmental instability world wide.
happy times are coming!
uncle frogy
“I’m extremely lukewarm about Obama, but I’m going to poke that paper ballot to spite Romney, if nothing else.”
This sums up my voting strategy since I’ve been eligible to vote all the way back in the 80s…
Obama’s medical care plan is a centrist plan, not left wing by any stretch of the imagination.
That one counts, although he came to it very late and very reluctantly
On George W. Bush’s timetable? No, that doesn’t count. His failure to prosecute anyone who lied to Congress about Iraq’s WMDs or ordered torture counts against him.
Empty words that are contradicted by his policies don’t count.
truthspeaker @ 23
Ah, but then Gore would have alienated all of those Good Ole’ Boy Conservative Democrats away down South in Dixie, who only stay in the party because of that n****r-loving Licoln beat their great-great grandpappys in the War of Northern Agression. I’m willing to bet that there were (and possiblly sill are) more of them in the Democratic Party than their are progressives.
Doesn’t politics fucking suck?
Ing, actually we can change the house rules, change the Constitution, and have proportional representation like every relatively rational country — but that’s not happening by November, so, yes, what you said.
And what Trebuchet said.
Thomathy, what’s vote shaming? Making people with their heads up their asses feel shamed of themselves by talking sense? Fuck you and the the rest of the third-party idiots!
Short-term, realize that more poor, elderly and sick people will — I’m so sorry if it makes so ashamed to think about it — die if Romney is elected than if Obama is re-elected. Long term, by all means let’s amend the Constitution and get proportional representation.
ramaus @ 26:
Pretty sure that doesn’t count because it wasn’t voluntarily.
What the hell is vote shaming? I’m making my case, pretty politely, I think. Do I not have the right to make an argument against third party voting for President of the United States? Fuck that. A vote is a political statement, and I can criticize it much more harshly than I have so far and not be “shaming”. If a third party supporter tells me I’m enabling the murder of innocent people in drone strikes, is that vote shaming?
I used to vote my concience.
I did it 1980 and voted for Anderson – Saint Ronald got elected and trickle-down economics and deregulation began the economic collapse of the country.
I did it again 1n 2000 and voted for Nader – Bush the Lesser got elected and we got two pointess unpaid for wars and futher Reaganomic erosion.
Screw my concience, I’m voting for Obama. Right now the lesser evil looks damned good to me.
You would lose. badly. The people you are describing are Tea Party and have been republican since the sixties.
A couple of comments from people who voted for Nader in 2000 and are voting for Obama in November. This gives me hope in the future of humanity. It seems to indicate that almost anyone can learn.
I sometimes wonder when people will get over their political Stockholm Syndrome. If Obama wins, the major takeaway from this election will be that if you absolutely screw over your voter base, there will be no repercussions on your electoral chances. Dems will simply go further “rightward,” since they don’t have to convince the terrified “leftists” to vote for them.
CT @ 36
Then why the fucking rightward shift in the party since Clinton?
I forgot to add that if you live in a really solidly red or blue state, you may as well go ahead and vote for a third party. I’d probably do that myself as this state (Washington) is pretty solidly blue due to the influence of Seattle; except that we’ll have a gay marriage referendum on the ballot in November which might bring out a higher than usual proportion of right-wingers.
daemon23 @ 38
THIS! Exactly this! Where is the incentive for the Democrats to go leftward when it’s safer to stay to the right? You didn’t see Obama or the DNC run out to embrace OWS, or the Wisconsin Recall? Considering the liberal principles the Democrats have compromised or abandoned over the last 20 years, what more do they have to do before we can leave without someone complaining that we’re abandoning the nation to a conservative?
I think the Repugs learned from 1992, Clinton v Bush, and realized the Perot 3rd party killed them. So the last couple of cycles they’ve decided to suck in the bat-shit crazy tea baggers and assume this won’t hurt them (too much) with their non-crazy centrists. But look at the attack on McCain today by tea baggers, how dare he support a capable government employee.
So I hope the tea baggers go full on racist (using the words and ideas publicly they express privately to each other) and drive the few remaining Repug moderates into either a middle 3rd party or to the Dems. The rich started using the racist vote and the religinuts vote because, well, they are only the 1% and how do they get up to 50% with the people they can con with guns, god, gays, “others”.
But my worst case fear is that some leftwing party will split from Dems (or disaffected progressives vote for fringe parties) and thus give Repugs permanent majority until the relatively near end of the republic.
I don’t know the answer to that. But I can tell you definitively that the people you described are living all around me and every single one is Republican Tea Party asshat who thinks Democrats are Satan’s army.
@stevenbollinger: While you’re on your little snit about how terrible people that won’t vote for Obama are, how many dead innocents from drone strikes is whatever he’s done that you like worth to you?
Do they not matter because they’re the wrong skin color?
(Yes, I’m fucking with you, but you’re engaging in such blatant hyperbole and whining that it might be the only thing to penetrate your thick fucking skull.)
Sadly, my vote for Obama won’t matter on whit. I live in Oklahoma and as a state Oklahoma will vote for the village idiot as long as he’s a Republican.
I too am lukewarm about Obama as a candidate, but he is still lightyears ahead of Romney.
Trebuchet:
Some would say the first four of those years were thanks to nine voters in Washington DC.
Nerd of Redhead:
“Nobody is being shamed, but the reality of the situation is being pointed out.”
Apparently such things being pointed out makes some people ashamed. And they blame you.
Which of course is very silly, and very, very far from even resembling a half-assed-good reason for reality-minded people not to speak their minds. If people took this accusation of “vote shaming” seriously and stopped speaking their minds, now that would be a shame.
I don’t see much chance of that happening. That would be a real shame.
I’d never read or heard the bizarre term “vote shaming” before today. I Googled it just now, in quotes. Got less than 300 hits and most of them seemed to be from the Walla Walla Tea Party.
The whole thing reminds me of the tea party in Alice in Wonderland.
Akira MacKenzie:
“That said, I still have to ask when will we be allowed to vote for an actual leftist candidate”
You’re allowed to vote for whoever you want. If their name isn’t on the ballot you’re allowed to vote it in. I’m allowed to call third-party voting useless in our present system. I’m allowed to believe that the lesser of two evils is better than the greater of those two evils. I’m allowed to actually see a difference between Obama and Romney. I’m allowed to promote changes in our system which would make it more closely resemble most democracies, so that a vote for a third or fourth party, or even maybe a fifth or sixth one, would no longer be useless, and could actually help elect legislators. I’m allowed to say I think that such constitutional changes are much more likely to occur under Democratic administrations than under Republicans. (I’m allowed to point out that it’s still a hell of a long way from ever happening but that it’s the best way I can see to really solve these problems that bother me too, and not just the people voting third parties or not voting.) Thomathy is allowed to accuse me of vote shaming. jthompson is allowed to insinuate that my supporting Obama over Romney means I’m a white supremacist. I’m allowed to point and laugh at Thomathy and jthompson.
In my darkest moments I can’t help but wish for the day, where your one-percenters most of you worship as near-demigods will have succeeded in robbing you blank and you fall to third world levels, to come as early as possible.
But then I remember there are at least some humane souls among you that deserve prosperity and not precarity.
The phrase “vote shaming” is, in my not so humble opinion, a case of projection. It’s an attempt to shield oneself from reality, hiding real world consequences behind the idea of principles. While I admire accepting the consequences of standing by your principles, I do not admire making other people accept the harmful consequences of your actions. Third party voting in states where the outcome is not in doubt might help build the third party, or maybe not. Third party voting where one can tip the election to the outright dangerous candidate is irrational, not only masochistic but actively harmful to your neighbors, locally and globally. George W. “Osama Who?, What WMDs?, Mission Accomplished” Bush and Dick “No-Bid Halliburton, Secret Energy Task Force, Waterboarding” Cheney indirectly killed tens to hundreds of thousands of people. Making up a new phrase and playing the victim is avoiding the fact that voting has real world consequences. Voting affects reality. Refusing to vote for the lesser of two evils is not just a mental game when it results in, well, evil.
@Jerry (50):
So, we must vote by your principles? Are you not making other people accept the harmful consequences of your actions, signalling to the incumbent party that any evil is acceptable so long as they promise to be less than the opposition, regardless of what they do? Are we not permitted to see the long term outcomes of continually abiding by the principle of voting for the “lesser evil” as being more harmful than the alternative of voting for a candidate we might actually like to see in the position?
QFT
You really think Romney would stop drone strikes? I don’t think so Tim.
Let me just point out that voting is a really, really crude way of changing party directions. If you have a serious problem with the direction of a party, you need to organize. As a group, you can actually move stuff. As a single voter, all you can do is select between the directions offered; only very rarely will you be able to significantly change the direction.
Remember the tea party? Think about creating an analog on the other side. If your points are good enough, you’ll get the numbers, and if you have the numbers, politicians start to listen.
stevenbollinger
Simply, it’s telling people who they should have voted for based on your reasons for voting either because your favourite candidate didn’t win or because you’re afraid your favourite candidate won’t win because of how they that person has cast their vote. It’s fair to criticise politics and political choices, it’s another thing to tell someone that they ought to have voted for a different candidate you agree with some part of their platform or find it expedient to have voted for them.
This is not what it is and I never said it.
SpeculatingMaking things up is so much fun in the absence of reading comprehension or an explanation. Criticising someone’s politics or the political choice of their vote is decidedly different from telling them whom they should have voted for and blaming them for jeopardising the election of your favourite candidate or somehow causing them to lose, or worse telling them the myth that their vote for anyone else is a vote for one particular candidate that you oppose.I’m not a ‘third-party’ idiot, whatever that is. In my country, I will likely be voting for the fourth most popular party. Don’t hit your head on the wooden arm-rest on your fainting-chesterfield.
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gussnarp, read above. Criticism is not shaming. I never said it was. Politeness has nothing to do with it, so fuck that noise.
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stevenbollinger, I’m also allowed to point and laugh at you too. We’re even! Ha!
daemon23, no, you don’t have to vote by Jerry’s principles, Jerry’s not making people accept anything, you’re permitted to see whatever silly shit you see. God (It’s just an an expression, I’m an atheist), you’re stupid!
Thomathy, I don’t even know what a chesterfield is.
@stevenbollinger: I don’t think you’re a white supremacist. That’s why I said I was fucking with you.
Obama will have my vote, for what it’s worth. Which may surprise me, this time. Depends on how much the vile Southern Baptists can get over their hatred of everything that isn’t Southern Baptist to make themselves vote for a Mormon.
I’m just amused at “Vote for evil!” as an actual argument. Especially when it’s tied to outrage at people that dare to NOT vote for the evil you (And I, for that matter) choose.
@Nerd: No, Romney probably won’t stop them. But if you vote for a candidate and he kills innocent people, who is to blame when you reelect him?
As long as you’re voting for Obama knowing that the candidate you personally voted for is going to kill innocent people without trials, that’s fine. You don’t get to wave away responsibility by insisting the other guy would do it anyway. And you don’t get to demand others sacrifice their morals about not wanting to vote for him.
I live in Maryland, and Romney has no chance of winning here. I’ll vote for the most progressive candidate on the ballot.
@stevenbollinger (55): Jerry asserts that, by voting in the way he finds unacceptable, we make people accept “something.” Are you saying that he is wrong, or is he somehow exempt from this phenomenon?
Despite heavy organizing, expending oodles of money, and logging many hours of volunteer campaign hours, organized labor has gotten jack squat from Obama or the DNC.
People and organization doesn’t do shit in American politics.
Only money matters, thus both parties will do what their owners tell them to do while the other 99.99% of us gets screwed.
How do you fix a broken democratic system if there is no way for normal people to change the course? Are we destined to have things get so bad that French Revolution bloodletting becomes the only path to change?
daemon23 said:
I pointed out that voting has consequences, sometimes painful ones. I stated no demands or requirements, merely noted my opinion and my own principles.
How have your principles worked out, daemon23? As khms pointed out so well, since 2000, as far as I know, the only so-called third party that has gained traction has been the Tea Party, an astroturf organization fully paid for by wealthy individuals, firmly entrenched in the Republican Party.
I would argue that when a course of action is proven not working, e.g. supply side economics to increase jobs (a.k.a. trickle down a.k.a. tax cuts for the rich), it should be abandoned. That seems rational. Has voting in the last 12 years been shown to grow any other third parties? (Assuming the Tea Party is a real third party, not just an extreme wing of the GOP, which is a stretch.)
In short, was it a rational course of action?
Nerd- As someone who often admires your writing, I thank you.
@Jerry: I seem to recall there being another one floating around…I think it had something to do with Occupying something.
It was pretty easy to miss, what with most Democrats refusing to acknowledge it or trying to distance themselves from it, but it was there.
An attempt to be “pro-business” and get those important campaign contributions. Also, an acknowledgement of the power of the Israel lobby.
Tell that to the Greens on the Minneapolis city council.
Voting for a third party for president is almost, but not entirely, useless in our system. As I said above, getting above 5% of the vote in a presidential election is important for third parties as it removes some of the hoops they have to jump through to get on ballots.
What makes you think Gore would have done any different? Obama certainly hasn’t – his foreign policy picked up where Bush’s left off.
The second part is absolutely true.
The first part of this is not – those organized labor forces are corporatist assholes. We’d need a new labor movement in the United States, which given the hate for unions these days, isn’t likely. Fact is, that French Revolution-style bloodshed is the most likely course of events.
Losing five out of six presidential elections, most of them by wide margins, may have had something to do with that shift.
Steve Benen has been chronicling Mitt’s Mendacity on a weekly basis for The Maddow Blog. The number of lies tends to be about 20 or more per week. Benen always provides sources to prove the lies.
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/20/12859512-chronicling-mitts-mendacity-vol-xxvi?lite
@Jerry (61):
The phrasing suggested harms existed for voting for third parties while none existed for voting for the lesser evil, or at best ignored them. While you made no explicit demand, moral arguments such as these have an implicit demand, that people have a moral obligation to behave appropriately, in accord with the argument’s position.
The Tea Party, despite the name, was never a third party in the first place, just a populist advocacy movement swiftly co-opted by the Republicans.
As for how my principles worked out, poorly, but I hadn’t expected Obama’s actions to be at such variance with his rhetoric. Fool me once, shame on you…
First, 12 years–3 presidential elections–seems like a ridiculously small dataset to derive any sort of lessons from. Asserting that deriving a course of action from that is “rational” seems like a stretch, at best.
Secondly, voting for a third party is not just about growing the third party, it is about registering dissent with the incumbent. I am of the opinion that the short-term damage of a Romney presidency would be worth getting a message across to the Democratic party that their present rightward course is unacceptable. You may disagree, but please don’t imply that this is somehow less rational unless you can come up with a serious argument.
jthompson,
I not only know about Occupy, I agree with its’ principles and support it. It is not (yet) a political party with any candidates for whom I can vote. Are you aware of that?
truthspeaker,
I don’t live in Minneapolis. I have voted for local third party and underdog Dem candidates. None of them ever won. No Green Party candidate has ever gotten more than a few percent (if that much) of the vote in a presidential election, so it goes back to my point about real life consequences. I’m not willing to cause short, medium, and long term real harm to my country by giving a veto-proof majority to the GOP extremists just to spite Democrats who are not as liberal as you or I would like them to be. I write to my elected officials to try to get them to see my point of view. Democrats have changed their minds. My local Republican 20-year incumbent representative has surprised me by being halfway sane exactly 2 times in those 20 years, but he has never budged on being wrong, extremely wrong, at times criminally corrupt, and recently Tea Bagger wingnut wrong.
However, if you think that Al Gore, who promoted and narrated the Inconvenient Truth movie warning about global warming, was no different from George Bush the ex-oil guy, the arrogant cowboy wannabe from (strikethrough) Connecticut (/strikethrough) Texas, and Dick Cheney ex-Halliburton CEO, whose administration suppressed scientific advice (FDA, EPA, etc.) in favor of partisan ideology, then you have not been paying attention to reality on this planet for the last decade. Apparently, I do not live in your fantasy world. You are not debating honestly using real-world facts.
It’s well-known that first-past-the-post produces two-party systems. That effect has a name: Duverger’s law (Wikipedia)
As to proportional representation, most nations outside the former British Empire now use it, and even some inside that empire. Opponents of PR often bring up Israel, but most nations with PR don’t have politics that is nearly as dysfunctional.
Here in the US, it is easier than it at first seems to implement state-by-state PR in the US Congress, and also state legislatures and city councils. All that’s necessary is to change various election laws. It may be necessary to amend various state constitutions, but many of them are much easier to amend than the national one. In fact, some state constitutions are as much as 10 times larger than the national one.
I repeat, one does not need to amend the US Constitution to put proportional representation into place.
@11
Nader was a good fucking candidate because he represented what people want, and he got real close to hitting 5%.
It would be just as easy to say how all those people who held their noses for gore should have voted nader, and that would have gotten funding for his party, dems were going to lose anyway etc. People vote however they think is best.
there is a shit ton more data than that, the idea is a lot older than the recent talking points for it. The argument is FOR income inequality. You can attempt to correlate many other factors with income inequality and see if it turns out to be true.
daemon23,
Firstly, let’s look back not just 12 years, but 30. Remember Saint Ronnie Raygun the Forgetful? We’ve been following the same tax cut philosophy since 1982, and it has only gotten worse. Romney (R-Money) is promoting the _same_ ideas. How has the country moved since then? More liberal? (no) More right wingnut? (yes)
As far as your second point, if you vote against your Dem incumbent, with no rational expectation for your party candidate to win, then you’re swinging the election to the GOP. That’s not “registering dissent” because the winner, the GOP is not listening to you. That’s not rational.
Finally, we’ve already had Romney (R-Money)’s policies in place. They sucked for everyone not already rich. U.S. income inequality is at Third World levels. Poverty rose. Business deregulation caused a global economic crash. Pollution rose. Global warming got worse, even worse than worst-case projections, endangering our species. Were you really not freaking paying attention?
And short term? Is 30 years too short for your data analysis? That’s a generational experiment. We’re had these same policies since Reagan slept through his first and second terms. Why in the name of sanity would I want to risk going through that again? Just for you to feel good about making a principled but useless stand? So you can feel good about not compromising your lovely principles while compromising our species? Yeah, some principles you have. Bask in them as the oceans rise, right next to the Tea Baggers and Christian Dominionists you let get elected.
@Jerry: If there were an Occupy candidate to vote for, how long in seconds do you think it would be before people were running around screeching about Ralph Nader?
God damnit I hope Warren wins her election and I get a chance to vote for her for president in 2016 or 2020. So tired of voting for the lesser evil.
@skeptifem: Yeah, most of these craptastic arguments cut both ways.
Just as those terrible people that vote third party can be blamed for Democratic losses, Democrats can be blamed for putting forward such shitty candidates that people don’t vote for them.
jthompson,
I not only hope that Warren wins, I donated to her campaign. I too would vote for her for President. Get this, though- she’s running as a Democrat, not third party.
As far as an Occupy candidate, that’s another hypothetical. I’m arguing about real world consequences of votes this year. Yes, an Occupy third party would get the same criticism… if it was not well run, well promoted, and only got a useless percentage of the vote. It would need to build up locally, get local support, before it had a chance to win any national elections. Current third parties do not resemble this vital situation.
@skeptifem (73):
Jerry indicated that the trend data indicates that voting for a third-party candidate can have no effect, which is what I was primarily responding to. The response was to that–to be honest, I should have removed the reaganomics reference, because I don’t feel it was really part of the argument.
@Jerry (74):
This actually flies in the face of the data I’ve read. The Republicans have waged a largely successful semantic war, and the term “liberal” has become unpopular. Yet when asked about what policies Americans want to see enacted, the majority wants more liberal government. The wingnut right is vocal, aggressive, and unpopular.
I know it’s difficult to tell right now, but the incumbent is actually a Democrat. If you read what I wrote more carefully, you’ll find that the Democratic Party is the one I address with my dissent. Further, I do not believe it is irrational to hope that other people agree and will similarly vote third-party.
Why, yes, I was paying attention, which is how I observed that Obama has done nothing to reverse any of that. Obama’s administration regulates the financial industry even less than Bush’s did! He continues to push policies which enrich the American aristocracy at the expense of the general citizenry. Obama’s policies have made things worse, not better, and he shows no sign of awareness of this.
So instead of voting for someone I think might have a chance of improving things and try to get the Dems to realize that they’re going the wrong way, I should vote for a man who has enacted “these same policies since Reagan slept through his first and second terms?” I mean, seriously, your argument is that voting for the guy who has run the last four of those thirty years of regressive bullshit is somehow going to improve things and somehow stave off global warming, Christian Dominionism and general rightwing fuckwittery, and this is rational?
The fact that someone as obviously unsuited to the supposed job at Rmoney is polling dead even, despite being an open and obvious liar about literally everything to everyone not a copy of himself, and a man without even the notion of compassion or justice, is a great an indictment as I can imagine of the shithole “America” has become.
If Rmoney and his billionaires’ club buy/steal this election, the only return for the nation will be after the survivors begin rebuilding from the debris, and – horribly and stupidly enough – there will be bodies everywhere.
And it is not in any way necessary, but for the greed of a few, and the incredible, proud stupidity of a great many. Not one of them a reader here.
Regarding a left-wing analog of the Tea Party: I think we’re way past overdue for such a movement. The thing is, the Tea Party became so popular by spreading misinformation (highest taxes ever under Obama!) and appealing to the lowest comment denominators in terms of intelligence and reasoning.
How do you win a pissing contest while trying not to get anything wet?
You forgot “disproportionate coverage by right-wing blogs and news (including Fox)”, including flat out lying that the events were bigger than they were. There is no real mainstream option for a left-wing analogue (MSNBC is at best tepid-right after all the false balance they toss in so as not to lose the masses).
This is only true if you assume he’s a bleeding imbecile. It’s much less condescending to believe that he is aware, but his priorities lie elsewhere (or are actively opposite what his base thinks should be his position).
@Paul (82): Overzealous application of Hanlon’s Razor, I suppose.
I’m guessing there are as many Republicans pissed off with their politicians as are Democrats. Here’s a fun alternative if you are ‘lukewarm’ about ‘your’ candidate:
1. Find yourself a pissed off Republican.
2. Promise each other not to vote for ‘your’ party.
3. Vote for someone you actually like, or spoil your ballot.
I don’t think Ride ever made a secret of it, but she certainly never trumpeted it – probably because she had far more interesting things to do.
daemon23 says:
The message the Democrats would take from a Romney win would be that they need to be more right-wing because that’s what wins elections. Anybody with a grain of sense would get the same message. And I don’t think a few more Scalias on the Supreme Court for the next thirty years, which is what you will get with Romney, is merely short-term damage.
@tomh (86):
If the lesson the Dems learn from people voting for a third party or parties to their left is that they need to move right, then they deserve to fail at this point, because they clearly are simply Republicans, and therefore redundant. Apparently Republicans are the sensible ones, who knew?
I see the odds of more Scalias getting onto SCOTUS as about equal given Obama and Romney.
@tomh: You’re right, they would. And the message they take from winning elections is that they need to move right. Presumably the message they’d take from tying an election would be to move right.
Funny how that absolutely everything causes them to move right. You’d almost think they were happier there.
Really? You think Romney would appoint people like Kagan and Sotomayor, people who consistently vote against the Scalia, Roberts, and Alito wing of the Court? Perhaps it’s more likely that Romney appointments will be, as he has said many times, modelled on Scalia and Roberts. You may think Obama is an awful choice, but one thing is indisputable, that is that the Court appointments would be diametrically opposite.
Compared to wasting a vote that ensures that we elect somebody far, far worse than Obama, yes. Think about the difference in evils, and if they Dems/Obama lose, there is no reason to drift to the left, only further right…Big picture, beyond the immediate election.
Oh, and Bork and his ilk are waiting in the wings for a Romney Presidency to really stack SCOTUS on orders from the Koch brothers…Bigger picture.
That’s pretty much exactly what I’m doing.
@ Moggie, #46:
Only because less than 1000 liberals voted for Nader in the first place. If they’d voted for Gore, there’d have been no issue — Florida and the presidency would have gone to Gore.
@ Skeptifem, #72:
Blockquote fail, once again. Dang!
@tomh (89):
At this point, I don’t know. I’m not sure Obama would risk anyone too liberal at this point, for fear of undermining his power.
@Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls (90):
See, I think if the Dems/Obama loses because people are voting for other leftists, they’re smart enough to realize they might be able to get those voters back by moving left. But perhaps you are correct, and they will see attempting to pillage the Republican voting base as their only viable tactic, in which case I would deem them terminally stupid, and hope that the third party which takes their place will be better.
That theory was tested after the 2000 election. The Democrat lost because people voted for the ‘leftist’ Nader. I didn’t notice the party moving sharply to the left to reclaim those votes.
@tomh (96):
Okay, maybe they need more encouragement, since I did notice the party move sharply to the right when Obama won. Exactly what lesson do you think they should learn when, in the event that they shift their policies rightward, they get even more votes?
I wanna hear what Captaintripps voted on that got worse. He whined and flounced before telling us…
Or daemon23 to tell us how the party shifted to the right.
Because I know of neither of those things.
But I do know there are a substantial number of Republicans willing to vote for their ignorance. And if we don’t stand together against them, they’re willing to take the job and fuck the nation (or state, or city) right up to please their whims.
And where is that viable party? Simple question.
PS, Akira MacKenzie et al…
There are these things called Primaries. Participate in them.
http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/sov/2012-primary/pdf/70-us-senate-formatted.pdf
Democrat Dianne Feinstein, our most conservative Democrat in office got 71% of the entire vote. Sure seems like there’s a very tiny number of those who find themselves to the left of her and participated in the election.
So, why do you think your special leftist feelings will make it to the General Election?
Re: truthspeaker
But who voted for it? Name the Republicans in office.
So… Getting a law passed counts as reluctant? What universe do you live in that you can’t have your cake now you tantrum?
On the timetable he approved before Bush did. Did he campaign on those things? No? Then why did you expect it? Who campaigned on that? How many votes did they get in the Primary?
What policies? You didn’t mention any.
Totally, WTF, and where did you get this childish crap?
There were some.
They all lost at the polls.
Tell me again why politicians should run to OWS and you when you don’t freaking vote? Or when you, like truthspeaker, penalize you for getting things done on the ‘wrong’ timetable?
Where is the motivation to move left with this childish bunch?
I voted against Dianne Feinstein. I do it every primary. She has never won a Primary so large as this one.
@Crissa (98):
Support for war–Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Iran.
Support for abetting American war criminals.
Support for domestic spying.
Support for torture.
Support for executions without trial or charge.
Support for financial fraud.
Support for leaking confidential information so long as it makes the government look good, while viciously opposing anyone who dares whistleblow.
Support for mindless endorsement of a personality regardless of action.
All of these have apparently increased over the last four years across the Democratic Party, but perhaps you’re right. I can see the argument that these are not inherently “Republican” values, I’ve simply come to associate the two.
@Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls (99):
I don’t know, I wouldn’t expect that to become clear until the Democratic Party is collapsing.
le wut.
Gore likely won the 2000 election. what gave you 8 years of Bush was a fucked up supreme court
I’m glad you responded, daemon23.
Now I know you’re a liar.
War? Torture? Domestic spying? Not a single citation?
It saves me alot of time arguing with you.
daemon23 #97:
And you where where, exactly, during the 80s when Reagan had to deal with a Democratic Senate and at times House, and in the 90s when Clinton had to deal with a Republican House?
(I should note that by all appearances the relationships were — aside from Newt’s shutdown — not nearly as bad as Obama’s relationship with this Congress…which is comprised of many of the same Republicans that were in office in the 90s.)
@Crissa (105):
So, in order to air my opinion to your satisfaction, I must additionally indulge your wishes to enumerate things which have been in the news for years, or, gasp horror, you’ll call me a liar.
I have better things to do with my time. Perhaps you could try reading the news.
Yeah, I generally feel the same way about Obama.
I’m not a big fan, but the alternative is worse.
If the Democrats don’t win in 2012, the Republicans will entrench their voter suppression and Citizen’s United agenda, and there won’t ever BE a third party.
It will have no chance of ever getting off the ground. Ever.
If you want a viable third party by 2020, and you are serious about wanting it and not just being a petulant hypocrite, you vote DEMOCRAT in 2012, AND you start participating, actively, in the Democratic Primary process in 2014, 2016, and 2018.
Nope.
Because if the Dems/Obama lose in 2012, then by 2014 voter suppression and Citizen’s United will have been entrenched by the Republicans, and the smart politicians will know that this makes it IMPOSSIBLE to win anything in the United States election-wise by moving left. You will be outspent by at least a logarithmic order and your core supporters will all be disenfranchised anyways.
The smart politicians will realize that for the foreseeable future, the ONLY way to electoral success is to tack right as far and hard as you can, to curry favor with the wealthy few who now have ALL the power in the system.
What few diehard leftists remain in office will have no recourse except to go full-bore obstructionist, and filibuster everything. The absolute best the progressive left can ever hope for again for at least a generation is perpetual frozen gridlock, until they get ousted in primaries where they’ll be drowned in anonymous SuperPAC funding for their opponents, or their ridings get Gerrymandered out of existence.
If the Dems/Obama lose in 2012, no smart, self-interested politician interested winning will even consider trying to appeal for left-wing votes. Moving left will become political suicide.
There is only one viable way to fix this, and that is to DESTROY the Republican Party. Total electoral wipe-out. Complete discreditation, ideologically and practically (from electoral-success point of view), of the crazy Republican politics.
A punitive example of the Republican Party such that no future politician interested in actually having a career will ever dare to even think about such positions ever again.
This cannot happen in 2012. If MAY happen in 2016 or 2020, but ONLY if the Democrats and Obama win in 2012. If they lose, then it will simply NOT happen. Not for at least a political generation. (And by then the US will likely not be in a state worth saving anymore).
If it were not for those Nader votes, Gore would have won Florida cleanly and the supreme court would not even have been in the picture to fuck things up at all.
daemon23 @95
“I am of the opinion that the short-term damage of a Romney presidency would be worth getting a message across to the Democratic party that their present rightward course is unacceptable. You may disagree, but please don’t imply that this is somehow less rational unless you can come up with a serious argument.”
I think you’re wrong, and my serious argument is three words: “Supreme Court Appointments”.
As disappointing as Obama is, I wouldn’t vote for Rmoney if I had cancer and he had the cure.
Speaking of not building it… a few years back, I bought and renovated the house in which I now live. I put on a new (white) roof, installed sustainably-harvested bamboo floors, repainted (some rooms with milk paint, others with zero-VOC paint). The point is that I worked incredibly hard to “greenify” my house — to make it more livable and better for the environment. But since this was the first house that I bought, I got $8,000 from the government. I also got some tax credits for using Energy Star quality products. In addition, I got $2,000 back from the state. All of this money went towards renovation — a total of $10,000! In a sense, there’s no question that “I build that!” But in another sense, it’s very much true that “I didn’t build that,” since if it weren’t for the tax credits, etc. that I received from the government, all that renovation would have been impossible.
In other words, wishful delusional thinking. Typical of cranks. And why I don’t listen to them.
He did, by all legal ways to count the ballots. A series of crimes intervened with the counting.
That would have given you 4 years of Captain Unelected, not 8. What happened in 2008 was that the votes of Ohio were counted in the Windows computer on the desk of Kenneth “Katherine” Blackwell, the head of the Bush campaign of Ohio. My impression is that the USA simply doesn’t know the utter basics of how to organize democracy.
Romney continued to lie when he gave a speech to veterans recently.
Excerpt:
Five lies from just the VFW speech by Romney are listed here:
http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2012/07/5-flat-out-untruths-in-romneys-vfw-speech.html
I don’t think people realize that being raised in the mormon church teaches one to lie. Yes, politicians lie and stretch/twist/bend the truth, but Romney is a very special kind of politician. He has mastered the skill of lying while keeping the fact that he is lying from entering his own awareness.
Romney does have international experience. He’s connected to British financiers, for example, who are implicated in the LIBOR scandal. Excerpt below:
http://www.salon.com/2012/07/25/romney_fundraises_with_libor_fixers/
Some of Romney’s latest lies (it’s hard to keep up) are detailed here:
http://www.democracyarsenal.org/2012/07/5-flat-out-untruths-in-romneys-vfw-speech.html
Excerpt:
Romney casually lies about everything. I think he has learned the mormon skill (not unique to mormons, more a trait of all cult-like groups), the impressive and distressing skill of keeping from his own awareness the fact that he is lying.
He lies about hunting and gun ownership.
The other way to explain this is that a lifetime of mormonism causes so much cognitive dissonance that the brain, as a survival tactic, learns to “believe” whatever is said at the time, and to avoid connecting current pronouncements to past statements. There are no connections. (This is how the General Authority of the LDS Church avoids its embarrassing history — make no fact-based connections.) There’s only the all-important privileged Priesthood holder status, expectations of automatic respect from all the peons, and the freedom to say whatever you please because you are blessed by god with the ability to transcend reality.
Forgot the source link for previous post:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/25/romney-s-flip-flops-on-gun-control-over-the-years.html
More on Romney’s lies being called out, with corrections being blithely ignored by Mr. Romney:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/07/23/the-state-of-the-race.html
Ex-mormons discuss Mitt Romney’s tendency to lie:
http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,450854
Excerpts below:
More quotes from ex-mormons discussing Romney’s exceptional ability to lie:
More comments from ex-mormons discussing the way in which mormon culture actually teaches people to lie, and condones lies as “faith-promoting”:
Slate provides details of Romney’s gymnastics over the abortion issue.
So apparently I am delusional and a liar. Suit yourselves.
I’m still not voting for Obama, and if you insist on doing so, well I guess you’re just going to help Romney win.
Delusional people don’t need evidence, daemon23. Rational people do. You provided none. Not a single shred. So why wouldn’t rational people believe that you’re either a liar or delusional?
You apparently want the last word, too. I’m not sure you deserve it.
Talk about a self-refuting stupid statment made by a mindless unthinking crank….
Even Karl Rove thinks Romney blew it in London.
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/karl-rove-romney-blew-it-in-london-video.php
I disagree that Romney walked his error back adroitly. He was so blatantly rowing backwards that the British Press noted that as well. Mitt the Twit.
Stephen Colbert did a great job of making fun of Mitt Romney’s charm offensive:
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/07/colbert-romney-london-olympics.php