Decision 2016

[ParaGoomba Slayer]

Originally Posted by Nukatha

Okay, so if that is your single most important issue, Gary Johnson is the much better presidential candidate with that stance.

Since it's my single most important issue, I'm not going to throw away my vote on a third party candidate.

[Dad_Scaper]

Yup. As I said earlier in this thread about third party candidates, my vote is both more precious and less precious than that. I don't care to own a bumper sticker that says "don't blame me," I just want not to have a xenophobic incompetent narcissist as President.

[Nukatha]

And I'm never going to throw my vote away either of these two.
How the heck do you personally determine a 'wasted vote'? It seems to me that by your metric, any vote for an individual who lost the election was wasted.

You have two individuals so entrenched in the cronyism and corruption that both exploit daily to their benefit. How can you, in good conscience, vote *FOR* either candidate?
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1625...cy-you-see-you

[Dad_Scaper]

Well, that's your opinion. In my opinion, your cynicism is dangerous to our democracy, and to world peace. Your cynicism with respect to Clinton is particularly upsetting. See dok's post, above.

Back during the primary season, I'd already read about the Clinton Foundation and I thought it might be a problem for her. Since all the coverage of it more recently, though, it turns out that the Clinton Foundation has dotted its I's and crossed its T's and has been an efficient force for good in the world. I don't understand where a well-informed person gets this incredibly toxic dislike of Clinton, but it's there. See dok's post, above.

But even if you were right, I have too much to lose. I have a job and a family and a community; I have a country and my country has its dignity. Electing the racist pumpkin would imperil all of it, *now*, in the *short term*. So I'll vote for Clinton, because I believe she's qualified and I believe the so-called "scandals" have been essentially meritless from people whose job it is to make scandals about her (and Obama, etc.). And what is a meritless accusation? Nothing. Nothing on the scale.

Against her, an unqualified narcissistic buffoon whose base is the worst of us as a nation.

So, a reason to vote for her, a reason to vote against him. You counter with a cynical comment about "cronyism and corruption," but cynicism is a point of view. Not facts.

[Dysole]

Because although I want to fix our election system, that is not a feasible goal this election. Therefore while I am not enthused about either mainstream candidate, I will support the one more closely aligned with my views. (And it's not even a close contest; I knew my vote would be Democratic a couple months into the primaries) Until we fix the voting system, I see attempts to bring a third party candidate in as ultimately just going to kill one of the other two dominant parties or maintain its own status quo. That just swaps the faces; it doesn't eliminate the problem.

On another more personal matter, voting Democratic has sadly become a matter of survival for me even setting aside Trump. The GOP has made it very clear that they don't want me and will actively pass legislation targeting me. While I sometimes worry that the Democratic party might care more about my vote as a member of the LGBTQ bloc rather than me as a person, they haven't tried to pass legislation actively targeting me. When one of the parties in play has a theoretical future that confines you largely to the Pacific Northwest for safety concerns, you kind of get okay with the other candidate regardless of other concerns you might have.

~Dysole, who apologizes if she comes across as harsh

[dok]

Dysole brings up a point I've brought up with some other people in other forums. If you can say "I'm OK with losing this election because [long game]" then you are coming from a place of privilege, where you basically think you're going to be OK no matter what happens. That's not true for a lot of people.

Additionally, you're probably:

• Underestimating the extent of negative impact you, personally would suffer from a bad result
• Wrong about how good that long game impact would be.

I'm going to copy something I wrote on another forum. It was addressed to someone who was leaning towards Jill Stein, but much of the content is meaningful anyway.

Spoiler Alert!

FWIW, I know you're to the left of me on some issues, and on others I assume we'd disagree on prioritization. But neither of those things are relevant to the argument I'm making here.

I strongly disagree that backing third party candidates in presidential contests in close, contested states is an effective way to advance progressive causes - in the short, medium, OR long term. I'll divide my argument into a few main tacks:

1) Impact

The value, to progressive values, of electing moderate liberals over conservatives, even in today's absurdly polarized environment, bears repeating. In particular, note two issues that the Supreme Court has tackled in the last decade and will continue to address: the financing of campaigns, and access to voting rights. These are foundational issues in our Democracy, because they speak to how elections happen, and in turn they help determine how we are governed. As Bernie Sanders noted repeatedly during his campaign, if you care about any other issue at all, you need to care about these issues first.

Say what you will about literally any other policy points, but getting better Supreme Court rulings on these matters will make any progressive change easier to implement. Conversely, electing Trump probably means that the current rulings are in place for a generation. Those are pretty high stakes.

2) Incrementalism

Setting aside those critical issues, take a look at some of the other achievements of the Obama administration, which will likely to be continued by a Clinton administration. On many issues, such as healthcare or the environment or financial regulation or tax policy, Obama is seen as a disappointment by many on the left. But the progressive shifts he's effected on these fronts should rightly be seen as the sort of incrementalism that defines change in America.

Pretty much every progressive change in American history has been incremental. Health care is probably the most obvious example: we went from nobody having guaranteed access to health care, to just military veterans, to military veterans and seniors, to military veterans, seniors, and the extreme poor, to military veterans, seniors, the extreme poor, and children, to finally everyone (albeit in a patchwork system that still needs work). It took about 80 years. And the work continues, but that's how things happen.

I don't ask you to be happy with incrementalism - I am happy that you are not happy with it actually, as we should always have people advocating for faster and bigger change to move the window of the acceptable forward - but we shouldn't be surprised by it. More importantly, we shouldn't reject it as meaningless. It's not.

3) Privilege

This isn't an argument, per se, but an observation (and one that I imagine you've seen before). If Trump wins, you and I will probably be OK. This is because we're both relatively well-off white dudes who aren't in any heavily oppressed group. But if you really care about progressive values, you should care about those who will NOT be OK in a Trump presidency. People whose residency or marriage or dignity will be in jeopardy can't afford to wait out 4 or more years in the interest of some long goal. We have some responsibility to vote with their interests in mind.

4) Backlash

If Hillary loses in 2016 because some progressives support Jill Stein or somesuch, the reaction from mainline Democrats won't be "oh, gosh, we should really listen to the left more next time around". No, the reaction will be anger and resentment followed by turning their backs on the left. Conversely, the reaction from the progressive left will not be to proudly tout the electoral power they wield. It will be to deflect blame for the disaster they have a hand in, and saying that the loss was for other reasons.

How do I know this? That should be easy and obvious - we saw all of this happen 16 years ago. Almost 100,000 Floridians voted for Nader. If 1% of them had been tactical in their voting (and please don't give me that crap about how a majority of them didn't prefer Gore over Bush) then the history of this century is a lot different. And the reaction wasn't a leftward shift in the Democratic Party. It was a profound backlash against the left that didn't really resolve itself until anger against the Bush administration swamped everything else in the 2006-2008 cycles.

The right way to effect change for progressives isn't to mount third-party general election presidential challenges. This should be obvious not just because of Nader. It should be obvious because of Bernie Sanders! While I may have some minor quibbles with how Sanders has comported himself, he's provided a nearly perfect blueprint for how to push Democrats to the left without screwing them in the general election. He switched parties to run as a Democrat in the primary, ran a issue-heavy campaign and forced the other candidate to move left in substantial ways, and then at the end of his candidacy he used the leverage he had in delegates to enshrine many of those principles in the platform.

By any standard short of "electing Bernie Sanders president", Sanders' candidacy was a huge success for progressive values. In this election, of all presidential elections, we should be able to see with clear eyes what the best way to advance progressive values is.

[keglo]

Originally Posted by Nukatha

And I'm never going to throw my vote away either of these two.
How the heck do you personally determine a 'wasted vote'? It seems to me that by your metric, any vote for an individual who lost the election was wasted.

You have two individuals so entrenched in the cronyism and corruption that both exploit daily to their benefit. How can you, in good conscience, vote *FOR* either candidate?
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1625...cy-you-see-you

Well said. I approve this message.

[Nukatha]

Originally Posted by dok

Dysole brings up a point I've brought up with some other people in other forums. If you can say "I'm OK with losing this election because [long game]" then you are coming from a place of privilege, where you basically think you're going to be OK no matter what happens. That's not true for a lot of people.

Additionally, you're probably:

• Underestimating the extent of negative impact you, personally would suffer from a bad result
• Wrong about how good that long game impact would be.

I'm going to copy something I wrote on another forum. It was addressed to someone who was leaning towards Jill Stein, but much of the content is meaningful anyway.

But I'm in the position where I honestly believe the policy that either Clinton or Trump would enact is damaging and downright dangerous to this nation. If I either result is a loss, why not take a stand?

Both, in different ways, seek to remove civil liberties of individuals. The government has no right to tell an individual to take part in an action that opposes his religious beliefs, and the government has no right to define marriage or remove an individuals method of personal defense. The government has no right to determine winners and losers in industry, yet does so now with countless subsidies to businesses and branches of industry that could not support themselves if left alone. Neither of these two candidates would do a thing about that, and would increase said support as it benefits them individually. Trump's pushed for government assistance to his personal endeavors for years, and you all know the huge donations Clinton's campaign and foundation have received from corporations over the years.

I honestly cannot see a year 2020 that actually has the United States better off then than today with either of these two in charge. You can argue all day over who is worse, but I have yet to be convinced that either is good. How horrible do your two choices need to be for you to consider a third option? I've been pushed over that line.

[vegietarian18]

Both the Green Party and the Libertarian Party don't run their presidential campaigns with the goal of winning. If they wanted to wield political power, they could pump the funds they put into the presidential campaign into random seats in Congress and start to make little differences that way. Instead, they just want to influence the political discourse in the direction of issues they think are important. Which is just the future of our environment or your legal right to smoke marijuana, depending on which area of hippiness you prefer.

That doesn't mean you can't vote for them, if you think the issues that they push are important enough for you to give them an ever so slightly louder microphone for next time. But I think it's important to recognize that they don't have the complete platforms, experience, or support necessary to be successful as a president. It is voting for an idea rather than a difference.

What makes me sad is that I don't want to throw my vote away on a third party candidate, and I don't want Trump to win, but I don't want to support the direction I see the Democratic party going in. But I have to do one of these things. It's by far the least of the evils to vote for Hillary, but I am worried that the issues will continue to be attacked in the wrong way and we won't ever fix them but we will have to keep voting Democrat anyways.

[Dysole]

Originally Posted by Nukatha

The government has no right to tell an individual to take part in an action that opposes his religious beliefs, and the government has no right to define marriage or remove an individuals method of personal defense.

Just have to say that yeah we do put limits on people's religious beliefs. You aren't allowed to use your religious beliefs to justify murder or discriminating by race.

Marriage was established as a constitutional right in the 20s and reaffirmed with Loving vs Virginia and again with Ogerfell (sp.?). As long as marriage is attached to a bunch of federal privileges, it's something they need to define.

As for firearms, overturning the 2nd amendment is hard. Like stupid hard. The one amendment we've overturned was overturning something banning something. A president has insanely little control over that.

I kinda agree with vegie but again my hand is kind of forced.

~Dysole, who really should be asleep but she knew she wouldn't sleep well if she didn't respond

[Tornado]

Is that some kind of veiled birther propaganda Kuba2016?

Not sure what you are going for but I support your platform.

And btw, I will have a great.

[Nukatha]

Originally Posted by Dysole

Just have to say that yeah we do put limits on people's religious beliefs. You aren't allowed to use your religious beliefs to justify murder or discriminating by race.

Dysole, you know what I meant, and what the Libertarian stance on the topic is.

Marriage was established as a constitutional right in the 20s and reaffirmed with Loving vs Virginia and again with Ogerfell (sp.?). As long as marriage is attached to a bunch of federal privileges, it's something they need to define.

I don't follow. The only amendment to pass in the 20s was the 19th, guaranteeing that no individual can be denied the right to vote on the basis of sex.
Show me exactly where in the Constitution marriage was ever established. Furthermore, I would argue that such legal benefits to marriage are, in fact, unconstitutional. Heck, Loving v Virginia would never have been a thing if governments had not attempted to overstep their bounds and define marriage.

As for firearms, overturning the 2nd amendment is hard. Like stupid hard. The one amendment we've overturned was overturning something banning something. A president has insanely little control over that.

I kinda agree with vegie but again my hand is kind of forced.

~Dysole, who really should be asleep but she knew she wouldn't sleep well if she didn't respond

Oh, its absolutely hard, and for good reason. A system of government that rapidly bends to the daily whims of the populace or elected officials is chaotic and unstable. Relatively slow change is the only way to get things done on the grand scale. However, the president can still advocate for his/her causes, and as Mr. Obama and others before him have demonstrated: There are little to no consequences for overstepping one's Constitutional executive powers, allowing them to pseudo-legislate from their desk until Congress or the Court tells them otherwise.
Again, if I see the nation as worse off in 2020 than today under Clinton or Trump, then I cannot vote for either. Can you honestly say that a 2020 after 4 years of a Johnson administration would be worse than 4 years under Mrs. Clinton?