Minnesota has it’s big primary election this coming Tuesday, and of course I’m going to vote. I always vote. It’s a civic responsibility.
We (Democrats. Who cares about the Republicans?) have 11 options on the ballot.
Joe Biden
Eban Cambridge
Gabriel Cornejo
Frankie Lozado
Jason Palmer
Armando Perez-Serrato
Dean Phillips
Cenk Uygur
Marianne Williamson
Uncommitted
Write-in
Most of these are garbage. No, I’m not voting for Dean Phillips, deluded native son, or Marianne Williamson, weird flake.
I’m voting for “Uncommitted.” I feel a little bit of power here — I get to send a message to Biden to let him know I’m disgusted with his craven approach to Israel’s criminal behavior. This is not a decision based on uncertainty or because I might consider voting for Trump in the general election. It’s entirely my way of expressing dissatisfaction with the incumbent’s pandering to an authoritarian state and permitting a genocide to continue.
On the California Democratic primary we have “President” R. Boddie at the top of the ballot. I have no idea who that is, but leading with “President” and top of list almost got me to vote for him accidentally. The “R.” is apparently “R19”. He says “he has developed a comfortable rapport with God.”
We don’t have an Uncommitted option.
Uncommitted should be listed before Cenk Uygur and Marianne Williamson.
(The rest of the list is alphabetical.)
Lozada, Cornejo, and Palmer also appear on our primary ballot here in Arizonastan, along with Williamson, Phillips and a particularly unsavory character named Stephen Lyons, who appears to be running in the wrong party . https://lyons2024.com
To be fair, he’s not pandering to an authoritarian state. He’s pandering to the many American supporters of that state.
(OK, OK, really I don’t think he’s pandering at all, I just think he’s in an extremely difficult position. And I see it as a good reason not to vote for… Bibi Netanyahu… if you needed another one. Joe Biden remains, for me, a better president than I ever thought he would be.)
(BTW I’m in Maryland — our primary isn’t until May and means nothing.)
GASP!
MSNBC SAYS “EVERY TIME YOU DON’T THINK HAPPY THOUGHTS ABOUT JOE BIDEN, DONALD TRUMP WINS ANOTHER ELECTION AND A BABY FAIRY DIES!!!”
(Curls up in a fetal position, rocks catatonically.)
Vote BLUE no matter who… Vote BLUE no matter who… Vote BLUE… Forgive us Mommy Hillary for not voting hard enough in 2016… FORGIVE US MOMMY HILLARY!!!
What, no Ole Savior on the ballot? Not until the general election I guess. Here in Lake Wobegonland maybe we should write in “Senator K. Thorvaldson” although “Uncommitted” will do just fine.
Why not do a write-in for “Somebody better than the above”?
Alternatively…
Juet remember: Super Tuesday comes only every leap year, but Taco Tuesday can be every week if you so desire.
Whatever your vote, the DNC will decide the Presidential candidate for you. That’s the whole point of the superdelegates. They don’t want to ever be Cartered again and luckily for them, they’re a private corporation and can make up their own rules.
The protest nonvotes are meaningless. If you want to put pressure on the Dems to change, vote for a 3rd party in November – they actually react to that, though mostly with finger-pointing. This time, they’ll call any 3rd party vote “a vote for Trump” which is enough to shame most folks out of the notion.
Votes for local offices and ballot measures will still matter in November. The actual places your vote counts.
@9 drew makes an important point (or two): the corporate DNC controls the process no matter how destructive the results.
To paraphrase an earlier comment I made. This election is a squirrel circus. But, the squirrels have hand grenades. We are too close to driving over the edge of the cliff to replace biden with a more competent driver. tRUMP is ready grab the wheel and shoot everybody in the car. And, we are going too fast toward the cliff to safely jump out.
Now, tell me how society isn’t a mostly failed experiment.
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=QwouwjJLGhE
What’s the general problem with people like Marianne, other than lack of experience?
Sorry, I forgot the headline to the above comment.
What I mean to say is, SSAT* has more reasons to be desperate than the democrats.
*Serial Sexual Assaulter Trump
I guess that Cenk is figuring, “If Trump can piss on the constitution and claim he has rights it doesn’t give him then I can run too, despite being disqualified by not being a natural born citizen.”? Still.. As much as a I hate some of what Biden has done, and failed to do which he should have, I personally have to admit that he has, never the less, managed to do many things that Democrats have hand wrung over for years, claiming, “Maybe we should do this!”, but never once, even for the brief times they had real chances to do them do to majorities, utterly failed to. As much as a I hate it, he might actually be a step towards getting the party back to what it should be – unlike just about every other Democratic candidate that has ever run, never mind won, since… I don’t know when.
And, yeah, short of a massive number of people, like half the voters, or more, voting, “Uncommited”, doing so is about as likely to change the minds of either party about anything at all as 10 protesters showing up outside the headquarters of an oil company in a city with half a million people in it. They likely won’t even blink.
After Super Tuesday if Nikki Haley can convince RFK, Jr. to join her in creating a new party, then that would make the MSM wildly happy while making the November election closer to a toss-up. Can two such narcissists meet the challenge?
The arab-americans in swing states have realised what is obvious: playing hardball is the only way to make the big cheese take notice.
@9. drew : Voting third party only works in places with preferential (ranked choice) or run-off elections and multi-party states. In Oz I can vote Greens first and not put the evil LNP (rich regressives) party into power.
In the US of A as well as having the anti-democratic abomination that is the Electoral College (see : https://www.huffpost.com/entry/its-time-to-end-the-electoral-college_b_12891764 ) rigging things in the Repugs favour lacks preferential / ranked choice / run-off elections like they do in civilised nations. (The USA also lacks an actual left wing of politics thanks McCarthyism but another story. Among its other issues.)
What that means is that third parties become spoilers putting ythe very worst PORTUSUES (POTI?) into power if peopel vote for unelectable third better alternatives over the les sbad. Exhibits Bush vs Gore, HRC vs Trump, theroles played by Nader, Stein, Perot, etc..
Basically if you vote for a third party candidate inthe ucomingelection (or stay home) then you are effectively voting for Trump since the only way to stop him will be voting for Biden. That’s the unpleasant reality.
Voting ‘uncommitted’ may be satisfying but it will give more support to many who will then vote third party or not at all in the general election. The problem is there is considerably greater support for Israel than the Palestinians among Americans and for Biden to give in and court the ‘uncommitted’ by abandoning Israel could well result in just the opposite of a good outcome for the Palestinians and the rest of us.
There can be only one goal in 2024 — defeat the GOP.
I plan to vote for Biden in the primary, even though I have some differences on his policy re: Israel and Gaza. This is for a few reasons — one, as previously noted, support for Israel is much higher in the US than support for the Palestinians, though I believe Israel’s conduct in this conflict is starting to change this. Two, from what I’ve been able to glean from various reporting, behind the scenes Biden has pushed Netanyahu much, much harder than he has publicly, and this is largely responsible for the cease-fire periods we have seen so far, plus the limited aid that has made it to Gaza. And it may have prevented Israel from invading Lebanon. Netanyahu is bad and desperate enough that he could do anything, and while Biden can’t control him, it certainly seems like he’s been able to influence him to some degree. And three, with the Israeli public very thankful and grateful to Biden for his support, it seems to me that they are largely souring on Netanyahu and the Israeli right-wing’s leadership, and this may not have occurred if Biden had initially been sharply against Netanyahu.
On the contrary, Biden has a long history of uncritical support for Israeli expansionism and oppression of the Palestinians.
That may be so in general, although considerably less so than in the past. But Half of US adults say Israel has gone too far in war in Gaza, AP-NORC poll shows. Biden’s handling of the war has only 31% approval, and only 46% among Democrats. In particular, Biden’s key constituencies among the young, Black people, progressives, are far more likely to support the Palestinian cause than Americans in general.
Biden doesn’t need to “abandon Israel”: he needs to stop enabling Israeli war crimes. He could do that anytime by threatening, in private, to halt arms shipments and diplomatic support unless these crimes – the collective punishment of the whole Gazan population, the wanton destruction of schools, hospitals and other essential civilian infrastructure, the slaughter of children, the deliberate starving of the population – cease forthwith. Very likely this would lead to a full ceasefire, negotiations, and the release of more hostages – Netanyahu has shown quite clearly that he doesn’t give a shit about the hostages, and wants to keep the war going in order to stay in power, and up to now, Biden has simply acted as his stooge.
Much of the Israeli public “soured” on Netanyahu immediately after October 7th, and this had nothing at all to do with Biden; it was because Netanyahu had blatantly failed to protect Israel from Hamas. Biden could indeed control him, or ensure his ouster, by making a credible threat to halt arms supplies and diplomatic support. The USA – including under Reagan – has in the past forced a halt to specific episodes of aggressive Israeli war, and could do so again, if Biden wanted.
I don’t believe that is the case anymore.
If you vote Uncommitted and it gets more than 15% of the vote in your congressional district (or your state overall), then you need to attend your party caucuses — or whatever meeting they’re using to select delegates.
Otherwise random people will be chosen and they may not represent the point of view that you want them to, e.g. instead of being anti-Zionist, they might be LaRouchies, or Maoists, or Williamson/Phillips/whoever fans, or they might be complete whackjobs (but I repeat myself).
Australian ABC live news coverage here FWIW :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-06/super-tuesday-us-presidential-primary-elections-live-blog/103542148
Vermont is a “nailbiter” buut Haley seems to have won, Biden lost American Samoa, Plus in Minnesota
Uncommitted has 39,260 votes and 19.8%.
Ah well, I can hardly comment about the USA election coming up from any informed perspective.
But I can be general about it: back in 2016, Trump was a political unknown and supposedly a cluey businessman. Appealed to saps that imagine government should be run like a business.
Then he had a term.
In 2024, Trump is a very well-known quantity.
No excuses, this time.
Obs, he will be the Republican Presidential nominee, but if he actually gets elected, well… that’s up to the populace, no?
I like to think better of them (you!) than that. But honestly, I do wonder.
(I remember being amazed when he first got elected.
And, BTW, November 5 is my birthday)
—
And don’t get distracted by this 3rd party/protest vote thingy.
On the actual day of reckoning, it’s a two-party zero-sum game. Simple as.
@ Morales
Quite. Did it occur to you you’re allowed to stop there?
Everybody does. Including Trump. The pictures of him having to go to the White House to be briefed by Obama were priceless. “Wait – You mean I actually have to do this president shit? For four years??!”
We’ll try to forget Juan Ramón so we don’t get accused of being overly-familiar obsessed trolls revealing personal information by saying “happy birthday”.
https://www.politico.com/dims4/default/ec0edaf/2147483647/strip/true/crop/4543×2464+0+0/resize/560×304!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic.politico.com%2Faa%2F94%2Ffa1807d94af8ac112bc5eef612eb%2F161228-trump-obama-getty-1160.jpg
X-D
“We” will, will “We”?
Your obsessive obsessiveness regarding me is duly noted for the umpteenth time, as is your misnyming, FaecalBobble.
Since I was not fucking obvious enough for the ShitBrainedBub, here’s Wikipedia:
“The 2024 United States elections are scheduled to be held on Tuesday, November 5, 2024.”
(Once was Guy Fawkes Day, where I live)
^ Get a room you two! ;-)
Tonight’s Planet America coverage of among things* the Super Tuesday results so far here – half an hour long.
.* Including how former POTUS William Harrison really died with some very unpleasant fecal imagery conjured up in the mind’s eye esp in one quote. (26 mins 12 secs mark.)