In that the 2020 election is far far away…
In that there is already a plethora of people jostling for the candidacy…
In that all of them, even pathetic Howard Schultz, are better than Trump…
In that there will be much campaigning in the next nearly two years…
In that I’m already sick of it all…
Be it resolved that:
- I shall consider each candidate, be they Bernie, Kamala, Amy, Kirsten, Pete, Cory, Julian, Elizabeth, yea, even Tulsi, on the merits of their policies as presented in the primary campaign,
- and that I shall vote my conscience in the primary election, not on the basis of mythical “electability” or “likability”,
- and upon the resolution of the primary process, I shall campaign for and vote for whoever is selected to represent me, no matter how lukewarm I am towards them personally.
Because Trump is a fuckwit, and he must be deposed.
So be it.
Hear, hear!
Sounds good to me.
Personally, if I hire an electrician it’s because I don’t know about electrical stuff and I hired them to know; and if I hire a politician it’s because I’ve got my own business and it’s their job to know the policy stuff. So a large part of my judgment is going to be on hw bold they’re willing to be, e.g. Klobuchar throwing water on the idea of free college is a big minus. That’s not even one of my top issues persay, but it isn’t an impressive attitude to me.
Haven’t been all that impressed with anyone yet though, so we’ll see.
I feel for you Americans. We’ve got our election before yours, in October (probably; except for Albertans, who’ll probably have one in May first). But all our “primaries” are already done with, and in any case, nobody’s really talking about the elections all that much yet. We’ll probably have a month or two of election fever, and then that’ll be it… just a blip compared to the almost two years of non-stop campaigning you Americans will be dealing with.
Hard to get anyone worse than the bottom of the barrel. GOP/Putin will find someone worse, I’m sure. The plethora in the DNC are FAR FAR better than anything the GOPutin would offer. Anything BLUE is better than anything from GOPutin.
Every time a new candidate enters the fray for the 2020 presidential campaign, I am reminded that John F. Kennedy’s declaration of candidacy did not occur till January 2, 1960, the election year itself. Sure, he did a lot of testing of the waters and public appearances before then, but Kennedy didn’t kick off a formal campaign until it was less than a year before election day. The good old days.
https://youtu.be/6l9lQ85-4D0
@anthonybarcellos:
Now that, if made a matter of formal policy, I could get behind. No declarations, no campaigning, no public “just testing the waters” until first day of election year. Then, go!
Indi@3 the increased use of fixed election dates in Canada is making things more like the US situation, with the unofficial campaign season stretching out longer and longer.
timgueguen@7 One could argue that the “unofficial” campaigning for the next election begins the moment the polls close. Certainly the parties often act that way, and yes, it’s a problem.
But only politicians, pundits, and wonks really care about elections outside of the official campaign period. And the last election had the longest campaign period ever… 2.5 months. Even if Trudeau decides to do the same thing (he will probably choose not to because it was so controversial last time, and because the extra length actually benefits the Conservatives who are better funded, but you never know with the Liberals), it’s a far cry from two years. I think we’ll be okay.
I’ll always remember Peter Mansbridge solemnly, and unironically, intoning about the “grueling” 80 plus day (83, 87?) election.
So Say We All!
anthrosciguy@9 Not even 80+. 78 days. 😁 We’re so spoiled, eh?
I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with Howard Schultz being better than Trump. Ever since he delivered his ultimatum to the Democratic party to select a centrist if they want him to drop his campaign, it’s clear that he doesn’t really significantly disagree with Trump’s policies, only his tone, and is willing to accept abuse of people to protect his precious tax cut. That puts him on par with Trump as far as I’m concerned.
Don’t forget 2016 and the fact that some states required voters to register as democrats more than a year in advance of the primaries to be eligible to vote!
Sanders, Warren, Gabbard. The rest are all the same. They suck less than trump, but they won’t change a thing and we’ll just end up with trump 2.0 later on. Were I American, I’d vote for any blue over trump, but major changes need to come and the rest will just continue the neoliberal policies that got us here.
@jamiejag:
The only thing close to supporting your claim I can find is this Guardian article which states NY is the only state which requires more than six month change-of-party registration to vote in any primary. While six months or more is entirely ridiculous a deadline (mine allows same day registration during early voting all the way up to last EV day before election day) and needs changed, I can’t find corroboration for multiple states with year long primary deadlines specifically for Democrats.
While our campaigns up here in .ca may be shorter, if we elect a majority government we will have 5 full years to regret our choices!
I’ll sign your resolution, with the addition that Trump really needs to go long before the next general election, if at all possible. Like, now.
Big Baby Donald started his re-election campaign, what? 20 minutes after his swearing in?
We have to be careful, because the 2020 election will be rigged UNLESS HE WINS!!
The truth, of course, is that the 2020 Trump campaign is just another crime family money maker.
Red hats at what? $50 a throw, for a shitty Chinese $3 slave labor hat extolling false American Virtue?
Beyond all doubt, Trumps re-election money will be another disappearing money act like the $100 mill or so “just gone” after the Hugest-Inauguration-Ever.
I got a feeling that whoever wins, the working class is still going to lose.
Except it will be a lot more than $100 mil.
So… we’re just resigned to treating this grossly abnormal and abusive administration as normal, then? We accept that one of the two major political parties is not only entirely beholden to a wannabe dictator, but that the dictator is openly doing the bidding of a foreign power who’d love nothing more than to see this country burn itself to the ground so that he could piss in the ashes?
Because that’s what treating an election as the remedy to traitor-in-chief Trump is doing. That fucker needs to be hauled off in chains, along with all his coconspirators. Pence, McConnell, Ryan, Sessions, Trump’s loathsome spawn- every last one of them needs to spend several decades in prison. If they don’t, this nation will not survive.
Merely voting them out, for a candidate who will no doubt admonish us to look forward, not backward, would be the equivalent of putting a band-aid on a gangrenous limb. Four years later, eight at the most, the scum on the right will dredge up something even worse from the sump of human ignorance and hate that forms their base and lie-steal-cheat it into office.
Will Richard Spencer be old enough to run for office? Will the shoggoth called Steve Bannon be able to hold his humanoid form long enough to get through three debates? If so, then say hello to your president-and-vice-president-after-next. I mean, we’ll have to have a Dem for a term or two to take the blame for all the damage Trump has done, but after that it won’t matter how many people vote against the Republicans. Not if they’re allowed to get away with Trumpism.
This is the United States’ Brexit. This is politicians punting the hard decisions back to the voters, because they don’t want to do the hard work of removing the network of traitors from office. The Democrats don’t want to do anything controversial, like upholding the fucking Constitution.
Can someone please explain to me (a dumb limey!) why you have to register as a Democrat or a Republican? In the UK, and here in Australia, you just rock up to the polling booth and vote for whoever you like. If you’re registered as a Dem or a Rep, do you have to vote that way?
No. In many states you have to be registered with a party to vote in its primary, where it selects its candidate for the “real” election, though. But you can vote for anyone in the real election, and you don’t have to register for anything to vote in it.
..err. You don’t have to register for any party. You do have to register to vote.
@bassmanpete:
As Azkyroth said, you have to be registered to vote, and you can vote for anyone in the final election. But in every (I believe) state and voting precinct, you are required to declare a party affiliation (or none if allowed in that district). In many states, possibly most, you can only vote in a primary for your declared party. That means that if you are registered as an Independent or no party affiliation, you cannot vote in the primary at all. It’s yet another way to disenfranchise some voters.
“Can someone please explain to me (a dumb limey!) why you have to register as a Democrat or a Republican? In the UK, and here in Australia, you just rock up to the polling booth and vote for whoever you like. If you’re registered as a Dem or a Rep, do you have to vote that way?”
As a fellow Limey, you don’t have to register to vote in the actual election, but if you want to vote in the primary elections (or caucuses, which are like elections but different) for a specific party, you usually have to be registered with that party, except for in states which have ‘open primaries’ where anyone can vote in the primaries of either candidate, or in one or the other.
Basically every state handles its elections slightly differently but as a rule, you have to be registered Democrat to vote in the Democratic Primary and vice versa (usually)
It’s kind of like how only party members get to vote for the party leaders here in the UK and most parties don’t let you be members of more than one party.
When I say you don’t have to register, I mean as a Republican or Democrat.
In the totalitarian socialist evil EU nobody has to register to vote, at least not in GE and CZ where I live. People are automaticaly registered to vote upon reachint 18 years and stricken from eligible voters upon death.
And to be honest, the way the USA behaves these last few decades, playing “world police” all around the globe, voting for US president should be global too. I am not joking, although I know it is not realistic. But that US has voted in an evident racist and incopetent bufoon into the WH (again) has repercussions worldwide (again), and it might lead to worldwide economic crisis (again). Why should the uneducated, uninformed and hateful fascist GOP minority in USA dictate worldwide politics?
#28
I like the idea of that, give the rest of the world at least one vote on the Electoral College.
I will NOT vote my conscience. in 2020. I will instead vote for whoever has the best chance of beating Trump, no matter who that might be. Yes, I will even vote for a semi-informed gadfly like Sanders, or a lock-’em-all-up prosecutor like Harris – IF they have the strongest chance of beating Trump. Even Sanders or Harris, for all their ghastly flaws, would be an incomparable improvement over Trump.
@methuseus #25 said:
Not in my state. Here in Virginia, no voter ever declares party affiliation in either federal or local elections. To vote in a primary, you just tell them when you’re voting which primary ballot you want to use (you can only vote with one), and the next primary, you can opt at the time to vote in a different party’s primary.
Schultz is a different duck from the rest as he is threatening to run as an independent, potentially disrupting majority rule, though as far as I can tell he has near zero constituency. Does he have an endorsement, even a half-hearted one, from anyone at all?
The way states handle their primaries varies. Some have open primaries, where any registered voter can vote in any party’s primary election they choose. This runs the risk of the opposition coordinating to vote for the weakest candidate so their preferred candidate of the other party has a better chance of winning the general. Some have closed primaries where if the party you’re registered with doesn’t run a candidate, you have to wait for the general election to cast your vote. Some have caucuses. All general elections are open, meaning voters do not have to belong to a candidate’s party to cast a vote for them.
North Carolina, like Oregon and several other states, has a partially closed primary. Democrats have to vote for Democrats, Republicans for Republicans, Greens for Greens, and so forth, but registered Independents get the special privilege of being allowed to vote for any party they wish including their own, a privilege which is not granted to other party members outside of general elections.
The longest Canadian federal election campaign ever was 78 days. The average is around 50 days.
I can’t help but think that your Founding Fathers made a mistake, having fixed-date elections.
jamesredekop wrote:
Only if you don’t consider the Tory’s constant ads about “Canada’s Economic Action Plan” election campaigning when they were in power.
I think that for those who are not U.S. citizens or residents a little clarification may be helpful. Primaries are as far as candidates are concerned really a political party process. They are not very old and not written into the constitution they are in essence just administered by the various state governments according to their own agreed upon rules and processes. In the past candidates were chosen by the parties themselves completely out side of government participation, primaries are an way to try and bring more democracy to the process whether that is working is as far as I can tell is some what unclear.
uncle frogy
@22 bassmanpete
Can someone please explain to me (a dumb limey!) why you have to register as a Democrat or a Republican?
You should not have gone there. That way leads to madness.
I suspect that with the exception of a few foreigners who do their Ph.D. in US politics, you need a minimum of 20 years residence in the USA + an avid interest in US politics to get some idea about registering and what the primaries do.
Note, that as far as I can figure out there are no parties in the same way as there are in the UK or Au or my country of Canada where one is actually a paid-up, card carrying member of a party. Also the registries seem to be kept by the states not the parties, but AFAIK only for the Republicans and Democrats not other parties. See uncle froggy’s point @ 36. Parties and US state governments have agreements on how to hold party elections.
It may be easier to understand Australian proportional voting than the US electoral whatever.
@22 bassmanpete
You register to be able to vote in the primaries, which are for whittling down the number of candidates by their popularity before the election. Some people register as a member of the other party in order to try to swing the vote to a candidate they believe can be beaten in the election.
Kip,
So, are such registrations mutually-exclusive?
(I presume so, in which case they thereby preclude themselves from swinging the vote for their preferred candidate of their preferred party)
Thanks to everyone for your replies. It’s clearer now.
John Morales, i expect they are. I could see someone choosing to do it when their preferred candidate is a shoo-in for nomination but they want to weaken the opposition.
Kip, heh. Checks and balances, tos and fros.
I don’t care if the DNC nominates a plate of chicken fritters for President. I will vote for Chicken Fritters 2020. Oh hey, can we have a Chicken Fritters/ Cole Slaw ticket ?
DLC, so, if DNC (heh) nominated Milo Yiannopoulos, you’d vote for him.
(You really sure you want to brag about that?)
@voidhawk #29:
Putin would just hijack that one too.
@jrkrideau #37:
Of course they do. That makes it easier to decide which wider social group to disenfranchise.
Laughable that you think that’s how it works. It’s not
Mrdead Inmypocket @46: The video’s blocked in my region, but that’s irrelevant. What does “how it works” (whatever the fuck you think “it” is) have to do with criteria for voting? Do you suggest not voting? What do you suggest?
Rob, link is to “This segment is from Michael Moore’s 2018 documentary Fahrenheit 11/9” where the narration claims the party ignored the actual vote “of the people” and instead selected their preferred candidate.
John @48: Thanks. I’d still like to know how Mrdead Inmypocket thinks that renders PZ’s resolutions laughable. My working hypotheses are (a) that Mrdead Inmypocket thinks that not voting is a powerful statement that will resonate in the Halls of the Mighty, or (b) that Mrdead Inmypocket thinks voting for lesser evils somehow precludes working against evil. But I’m open to correction.