I just saw this, and it’s important to keep in mind.
I know some people are unhappy that they didn’t get the presidential candidate they wanted, and have declared that they will never vote for Hillary Clinton.
Fine.
Refocus.
You aren’t going to get Bernie Sanders this time around. You aren’t going to get Jill Stein or Gary Johnson, either. But if you could work to shift the balance in those lower level offices, you can make a difference.
Minor correction: the house has 435 seats. There might be 5 additional nonvoting delegates but they are irrelevant to the conversation. DC and Puerto Rico each have one. I’m not sure for our other territories.
I live in a “machine” city: The democratic primary is the real election for many offices, including the mayor. However, the city does have one odd little feature: 2 out of 7 “at large” city council seats are reserved for a minority party. That minority party does not have to be the Republicans. It seems a perfect set up for a third party–say, for example, the Greens–to move in. So where are they? I’m ready to vote for them and even fund them if they’re ready to run reasonable candidates for these seats.
I saw a meme yesterday reminding people to elect a Democratic majority in the Senate so that Sanders can be the majority leader. I’m skeptical the Democratic caucus would do that, but it’s a nice thought.
Mike: According to Wikipedia, there are six non-voting members making the total 441. The six are DC, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, Guam (where the sun rises on the American flag), Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Yeah, I dig that analogy of the country being a
carvehicle and the Republicans thedriveroperator, who complains about how the car is running off the road and needs to be driven their way. Easy to expand this metaphor to the old cliche of a family on a summer roadtrip where the kids spend the whole trip fighting in the back seat causing distraction to the parents in the front seat. “Quiet you guys or I’ll turn this car around right now!!!”Yet aside form that nuance, the current operators are completely disregarding the condition of the car itself, nor the condition of the roads and bridges [literally, not just metaphorically] when complaining how the car is not staying under their control.
Gosh (within this analogy) is it really conceivable that to get things working and moving perfectly straight, just empty the car and stick in a single driver who says he’ll fix it, “believe me” he says with no indication of how he will?
Sanders has not been a Democrat for most of his career. He was an independent who caucused with the Democrats. So this seems unlikely. If the senate Dems managed to regain a majority, I hear Charles Schumer of NY would be a contender for majority leader.
I’m in Texas, so I might reasonably prefer helping getting the Green party to 5% (ensuring funding for 2020) over helping Clinton lose by less. I don’t support the Green party (being anti-science is a deal breaker) or the Libertarians (reverse robin hoods), but a repeat of Nader is really only possible for voters in a handful of states.
Refocus?
But there’s a tantrum to be thrown, man!
I’m now imagining a republican partridge in a pear tree.
@ #5
Sanders has already said that he will return to the Senate as an Independent. ”I was elected as an independent; I’ll stay two years more as an independent”
Please, please, please… You are missing the point by a mile. It has nothing to do with the fact that we “didn’t get our man” and the continued self-delusion that this is the only reason Sanders supporters are angry is only going to hurt you come November. Yes, Sanders was the best option in the running in quite a long time though, like all humans, he also had his flaws. Even if Sanders had never tried for the nomination I would not consider voting for Hillary. She is the antithesis of everything I and many others stand for from her position on race (“super-predators”) to crime (I see zero chance of her ending the immoral travesty that is the War on Drugs) to foreign policy (even MORE likely than Trump to start new wars) to economics (she would sell us down the river to Goldman in an instant) to the environment (she would sell the drilling rights to Yellowstone and Yosemite). Her and Trump are carbon copies. Progressives have eternally damned Republicans for far less than what she has done. The only reason anyone here is so willing to vote for her is because she is running as a Democrat which is hypocrisy at best, dangerous and short-sighted delusion at worst.
I will not vote for someone who I disagree so strongly on virtually every issue on. And if that means having to put up with the Oompa Loompa for four years, so be it.
You will sell the rest of the USA down the river to feel morally superior? My ethics say do the greatest good I can do with my vote. I see your avoidance of reality, and selfish morality, as unethical.
@ Nerd of Redhead, Dences OM Trolls.
The worst damage has been done by the Democratic party by supporting center-right candidates for the last couple of decades. Right leaning Democrats have sold the USA down the river. Frankly treefrogdundee has every right to feel morally superior if they’ve voted for left progressives of any kind in this election cycle and S/he should be proud.
I have to quickly frame this so be patient.
When the political spectrum is from left to right, centrist policy is the result. For just over a couple decades the Democratic party has been electing center-right candidates. When the Democratic party started supporting candidates like “third way” Clintons and Obama, the spectrum moves away from centrist to center right. (Which mostly puts left progressive policy off the spectrum, not completely)
However, the real significance of the Democratic party’s move to the right is that it allows, eventually, for far right extremist candidates like Cruz and Trump to be viable. It’s no coincidence that after two decades of the political spectrum being what it is that we see the resulting upset in the Republican party, where the more radical Teapartiers were elected in 2010 and now an anti-republican establishment candidate (Trump) has pushed the Republican leadership aside and taken the nomination. These radical right candidates would have been laughed off the stage as unelectable decades ago and rightly so. But today they are a reality because of that shift.
“The greatest good” is highly subjective. Do you look at the short game or the long. Do you look at the small picture or the big picture?
If you’re progressive and you look at the short game then yes, voting Clinton is the lesser of two evils. However if you look at the long game, when you vote Clinton you’re voting lesser of two evils and for a greater evil. You’re perpetuating the move right which allows extreme right candidates like Trump, Cruz et al to be a real possibility in the first place. I get it, Trump is horrible and you want to whack him down. Good short term strategy. It’s not a very good long term strategy, to play whack a mole against radicals in every election cycle, it’s better to make it impossible for them viable in the first place.
Ironically I’ve seen you admonishing third party supporters for their choice over many threads. As here calling trefrogdundee’s choice “unethical”. I’ve laid out why Trump’s candidacy is a possibility, there is blame enough to go around for all of us if he won. What to do, what to do? That’s simply up to you, there are a lot of reasons why people vote the way they do and what effects that decision. Discussions on obscure blog threads is not in the top 100 on that list methinks. So lets just chill out a bit on the divisive rhetoric. We’re all just folk talking here after all. These are good people not deserving of that kind of brow beating.
Trump is a fascist. He he needs to lose and lose big.
Anybody who thinks the possibility of electing the fascist is worth it in order to “send a message” to–someone-or-other, will be morally culpable if he wins.
Mrdeadinmypocket, Democrats have always been centrists. What do you think Kennedy was? This is a mostly centrist country. We have two viable political parties, and our voting system insures that that we will most likely continue to have two, and those two will each verge toward the center, as long as we have First Past the Post (look up Duverger’s Law.) If you think an extra few percentage points for the Green party is swill make a difference to anyone, you’re wrong.
All a loss to the likes of Trump will do, (best case scenario, assuming he does not dismantle our government entirely,) is convince the Dems that the party needs to move further to the right. Oh, and leave the Supreme Court peopled by I hate to think who.
You don’t effect change by allowing a fascist to be elected. (That’s downright evil, and I think those who collude in it deserve brow beating.) You want to move the system to the left, you work at the local level. You continue the movement Sanders helped energize. You change our voting system from First Past the Post to some sort of range voting.
You do not, I repeat do not, allow the fascist to become President of the United Stayes. That’s dangerous bullshit that benefits nobody, and inflicts years of (perhaps irreparable) damage.
so, it was the dems passing all those anti-abortion and anti gay and anti LGBT laws then.
righto, good to know.
also must be the dems who came up with this great idea?
http://time.com/4406567/republican-platform-johnson-amendment-churches-political-organizing/
just want to be clear, eh?
narcissistic fuckwits.
One of the things I would Love to see in future elections everywhere would be that the voting ballot has two boxes next to each candidate “For” and “against”.
This would allow people to vote either for their preferred candidate or against the candidate they absolutely do not want (while leaving preference to other voters). “Against” votes are subtractief of the “for” Total and the elections is decided by the remainder.
I see how this would be great in multi-party Systems as we have here in BE or NL. Just imagine how quickly populism would deflate if people could litterally say “fuck you” to the Ruling party while the wind-bag populists would see how many people are actually against them.
Even in an expected “either/or” elections like you have in the US, General dislike of both main candidate could generatie so many “against” votes that a third party candidate bevomes viable.
In the least, it would be easier to vote against the worst evil than to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
@14 Ichthyic
I’ll use your example of LGBT rights. With the election of “New Way” Democrats in the early 90’s the political spectrum took another sharp jump to the right. Although this move right had been going on to a lesser degree for several decades before this, how much or how little depends on the issue being discussed. So we’ll look at LBGT rights.
The early 90’s is an intersting key turning point, the issue of same sex marriage was put on the front burners by the progressive left, making it an issue in the 1996 presidential election. The “left” position was that the LBGT community should have the equal rights that heterosexuals enjoy. However the Democratic position was a repudiation of those ideals and that’s why, with overwhelming Democrat and Republican support legislation passed and Bill Clinton signed DOMA going into his second term election bid. (I’ll give you a hint as to one of the few Senators to vote against DOMA in the 90’s, he ran against Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primary.)
So yes Democrats supported and signed anti LBGT laws. Though many suffer from some kind of collective amnesia about that. As far as LBGT rights are concerned, the Democratic party is a Johnny come lately on LBGT issues. That is, only after the Clinton administration the party paid for moving right by losing to Bush twice and has thankfully had come to its senses during the Obama administration.
Sigh, no that wasn’t the “dems” idea. I get that you were going for snark. I can only assume you don’t really understand what I was saying in my post because that’s a wildly inaccurate statement that isn’t pertinent at all. All I can respond with is, extremism of that sort is a political possibility when Democrats move right.
By the by, you’ve elected not to be included in any more discussion by writing “narcissistic fuckwits”. You can sit in the corner and talk to yourself. I wont have palaver with the likes of you until you shape up.
ohno
Ichthyic
whatever will you do?
This really is the Silly Season, isn’t it? Everyone trots out their little one-liner “proofs” that X is evil incarnate, for their choice of X.
Trump is fucking scary chaos, and Clinton is, at worst, business as usual. And anyone to the left of Attila the Hun understands that, unless their heads are jammed up their arses. Hi, Mrdead Inmypocket and treefrogdundee.
Americans are weird.
Nope, no amnesia, just a context of the historical perspective. We achieve same-sex marriage here in Illinois by legislative initiative. Initiated and voted for by the democrats, and opposed by the rethugs.
Something that wasn’t feasible in the past became feasible due to the changing of the minds of the populace. You forget that attitudes have changed dramatically in the last fifty years, and politicians changed their minds on issues due to that change. Makes you sound like a demagogue, not a realist.
18 chigau
Have a modicum of class hopefully.
@20 Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls
It wasn’t like I wasn’t giving the historical perspective. They said “so, it was the dems passing all those anti-abortion and anti gay and anti LGBT laws then.” The answer is yes. But more importantly is the subject being discussed in the previous comments. The Democratic parties move right and it’s significance. But also your claims of superior morality.
If we want to understand the full “context of the historical perspective”, as you say, then even those not so flattering parts should be freely discussed. I know I know another presidential election is coming and we’re supposed to circle the wagons and forgo intellectual honesty and all that. Oh well.
Erm, yeah. I lernt somethin like that in skool once. They called it pron, prog… uh… wait I’ll be back in a minute while I check with mama.
Ah ha, progressivism!
Mama always has a way of explaining things so I can understand them.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s great that the Democratic party is finally arriving in the 21st century and playing catch up with progressive ideals on that issue. It’s obvious attitudes change. I’ve been following politics since before Buckley threatened to punch Chomsky in the face on TV. In fact Democratic voters were way ahead of the Democratic leadership on LGBT civil rights, they still are. It’s the way of things. It’s as if Democratic voters have to fight against their party establishment before they can take the fight up with republicans. Though I wouldn’t portray that as dragging the Democratic party into the 21st century kicking and screaming. That would be demagoguery, I’m just a realist.
@19 Rob Grigjanis
*He then trots out a little one-liner, his “proofs” that x is evil incarnate, for the choice of x.
That was actually funny, Rob. I guffawed.
Mrdead Inmypocket @23: What’s funny is your apparent inability to understand simple English sentences. Like I said, Silly Season.
Neither Trump nor Clinton are evil incarnate. Trump is an unstable buffoon, Clinton is a centrist Democrat. No evidence, pseudo-evidence, or “framing”* required. Just listening.
*Aka amateur political analysis that’s worth exactly what it costs.
@24 Rob Grigjanis
I honestly thought you were joking, Rob.
Mrdead Inmypocket @25:
No, no upset here. Actually, I apologize for being rude and dismissive. It was uncalled for.