US Politics

[Saturnine Tenshi]

But that's operating under the assumption that the majority of those non-voters are going to vote against the prevailing party. Unless you somehow get a movement together to get only those in the party you want to win to go vote (who previously weren't).

Edited November 11, 2016 by Rudolph Hitler

[TheMightyEthan]

Yeah, it cuts both ways: Republicans in Kansas don't feel the need to vote because they're going to win anyway, and Democrats don't feel the need to vote cause they're going to lose anyway.

[Thursday Next]

Which is dumb because if you're a Dem in a complacent Rep state why not screw the other guyses over and vote, I mean if you want to do anything "for the lols" for god's sake go do that.

 

I mean, it's like playing the prisoners' dilemma against someone you know is going to Betray. There's no point in Cooperating cos you get screwed either way. You might as well screw them in the process, and may even go over the top.

[TheMightyEthan]

Yes, but people aren't rational actors. People feel disenfranchised and so disengage from the system.

[deanb]

"I feel the system is broken so I'll vote for Harmabe" is some stupid ass logic. I can't wrap my head around being politically engaged enough to register n go out and actually vote, then to piss your right (which many had fought long and hard for) away on a stupid joke.

 

Though it's the country where senate (or congress or whatever) has a super low approval rating yet many are incumbents in for many terms. So I dunno (and yes I know the response to that is "people dislike the other senators but like theirs").

 

Over here there's many constituencies that are pretty solid in which party represents them, my current constituency has been Labour since the 80s, but if folks get complacent it can easily go back to Conservatives. Might as well not have some states vote if it's just gonna be pre-ordained that they'll be red or blue.

[TheMightyEthan]

I agree with you about the protest votes, I was taking about getting disengaged to the point of not voting at all. Trump and Clinton both got fewer votes than Romney did in 2012, and he was the loser.

[Mal]

I thought Trump got about the same number of votes as previous Republican candidates/eventual-presidents got (it'd be interesting to see what if any demographics has changed)? What really slid was Democratic voters.

 

I wish there was a "N/A" option as people who didn't vote President so we can be kind of counted (I feel like we're not). We were there at the polls. We just didn't find the humor in ourselves to write in Harambe. I could've comfortably done so in California but this is no laughing matter. I wanted Hillary to win but there was no way I could vote for her and what she represents. The lesser of two evils argument isn't good enough.

 

I'm looking forward to the midterm elections.

[TheMightyEthan]

That's what third parties are for.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

Only they aren't taken seriously, at least not anymore. Mostly there for show, and aren't even around for much of the too-long campaigning.

[TheMightyEthan]

But it's a way to lodge a protest vote without voting for Harambe.

[Saturnine Tenshi]

It is, but you aren't actually accomplishing anything.

[FredEffinChopin]

I agree that Trump can win. This entire primary has been an exercise in removing our collective foot from our mouths every time we write his candidacy off. I've been told for a year now that he can't win anything, and that it's going to be over any minute, yet here we are. He's tapped into a new (for our time/setting), unique blend of political discontent and, simultaneously somehow, political and social ignorance. Conventional wisdom has gone out of so many windows in this election that it barely has a pulse at this point as far as I can tell. It should be getting carried around the woods or snow somewhere, searching for a three-eyed raven. 

 

I understand that the Republican electorate hardly represents the political landscape in America, but he seems to be galvanizing a portion of it that was largely inactive until now. Republican turnout so far is the highest it's been in my lifetime, and the presumptive Democratic nominee's campaign has managed to alienate a large portion of its base, and underwhelm much of the rest of it to boot. When your PACs are paying people to pretend that they like you on the internet, you have a problem.

 

The thing is, Trump actually has a platform. It's mostly incoherent, and he constantly contradicts itself when he tries to articulate it, but it's enough. This vague notion of restoring America to some unnamed point in time has resonated with people, and excited them. It's the prospect of change. Clinton is trying to sell the country on the idea of incremental progress at best, and a fight for the status quo at the worst. Her single strongest selling point might actually be Donald Trump's candidacy at this point, and it's admittedly a potent one, as there is constantly talk about this or that Republican considering voting Clinton in the general. It seems to me though, that this doesn't bode well in terms of a strong Democratic turnout. A lot of voters might find their couch to be the most compelling item on their minds after work on election day. 

 

None of this even considers how the actual campaigns leading up to the general will play out. For all the braindead comparisons that have been made between the Sanders and Trump campaigns, one true common characteristic that they share is a portion of the electorate who are primarily fed up with what they perceive as corrupt and exclusive political establishment that mainly works to serve the donor class. Clinton has become the posterchild for that status quo for many voters. Sanders talks about it constantly, but his approach limits the rhetorical force that a more direct, personal attack against his opponent would have. Donald Trump does not pull punches though, and if there is a person who is situated in a better vantage point from which to attack that weak spot than the candidate who donated, not just to political campaigns, but to HER political campaigns, I can't imagine who that person is. He can make up whatever narrative he wants around the donations, it doesn't matter. What matters is how he hammers it home as he continues to position himself as the anti-establishment candidate as he calls Clinton out for claiming to regulate the interests that facilitate her candidacy. Even something like pointing out their shared Delaware tax haven is something that helps him in this regard. He doesn't have to adhere to the same standards that other politicians do. He's a "businessman," and his supporters can overlook any behavior that is done legally for the purpose of maximizing his profit. It doesn't work so well for a candidate that is struggling to convince the progressive portion of her party that she's going to make the nation's wealthiest pay their fair share in taxes. 

 

And how can we anticipate her responding to this? Sanders' assault represents the mildest forms of political attacks that I've seen, despite their potency. His offensive largely amounted to identifying items on Clinton's record/history and contrasting it to his own, as well as framing her as representative of our corrupt campaign finance system. The response from the Clinton camp mainly amounted to screaming bloody murder and flailing in every direction. Are we going to see a Trump Bros meme pop up? Can we expect that to be effective? His voters don't register that frequency at all, and she's cried wolf enough in the primary that people who are disenchanted by her primary strategy might stop listening by then. 

 

I don't know, she seems incredibly vulnerable in this election. She has problems with likability and trustworthiness, she's mired in scandal, and she excites almost nobody. The DNC's support has been a tremendous asset in her primary race, but I'm not sure how helpful it's going to be in a general election.

 

I haven't been around in a while, but I've been doing an I told you so tour of the internet in the past few days, and while I don't think I got any opposition in here, I would like to reprint that bullseye right above where I'm writing right now. A lot of us saw this coming from miles away and were being dismissed in favor of polling that never reached this newly-galvanized portion of the electorate. 

 

To the people pointing fingers of blame at 3rd-party voters, there are a couple of things to keep in mind (disclosure: I voted Stein in NY, but would have voted Clinton if I was in, say, Florida):

 

1) Johnson took most of the third-party vote, which, we can fairly safely assume (feel free to argue it), represents more votes taken away from Trump than from Clinton. If anything third-party votes might have helped her win some of the states she did considering the small margins by which she won states like Colorado and Nevada; smaller than the percentage of the vote that Johnson snagged. There seems to be nothing to support the idea of Stein and Johnson being monkey wrenches in this election. 

 

2) Even if there was a so-called Nader effect in this election, I'm not at ok with this idea of spending more time talking about the responsibility of those third party voters instead of talking about the responsibility of people who actually voted for Donald Trump. The two party system is just custom, it's not a rule. If the ball never gets rolling though, we'll be stuck with it for good as far as the Presidency is concerned. If there was ever an election in which voters have an open window to begin pushing the viability of a third party it's an election between two historically disliked candidates from the parties that have each got one of our testicles in their grip. If for nothing else than to remind them of their own mortality and/or to get the two parties to work to appeal to that growing portion of voters. 

 

A lot of people talk about how this is different than past elections (where people have already been conditioned to vote for the lesser of two evils, and to the point where the phrase doesn't phase them anymore, as we've just seen from Democratic turnout) because Trump was a singularly frightening candidate. I agree that he was. As I said, I'd have voted Clinton if I were not a NY voter, and only out of pure fear of Trump. I think what a lot of people missed though, is that that tactic would only become more susceptible to exploitation had it worked here (maybe it still does). Anyone who saw a Republican primary debate earlier this year knows that there are no shortage of frightening presidential hopefuls with nutty ideas that the Democratic party can point at while screaming "fire!" in order to get people to vote Democratic without an especially appealing campaign. Who wants to be trapped into that "choice?" What I'm getting at is that if Clinton actually did lose because of Stein and/or Johnson, it really sucks, but there's a word for it: Democracy. Aside from that electoral college part... But yeah, that many more people were compelled to vote third-party with the given choices. Or were compelled to vote against the other parties. Want to blame Trump's election a portion of voters? Look at the people who voted him in.

 

To that last point, that's where Dems shot themselves in the foot. The Republican voters got their candidate. Yes, the party did try to push others ahead of him, and I'm certainly not crediting the party's leadership for it. The point is that their base was inspired (ugh) by this guy, and they pushed him into the general, which is probably a lot easier to do when you're running against 15 other people. Look how many people ran in the Dem primary in comparison. That party had chosen their candidate years ago, and when the going got tough for them in the primaries, their only course of action was to shove their candidate down the base's throat in the most hamfisted way possible, insulting and demonizing many of them in the process, rather than reading the writing on the wall. Consequently, new voters came out in excited droves for Trump, and people who voted for Obama in 2012 decided to stay home. 

 

It's funny (in the most tragic way), a month ago people were talking about how the Republican party would whether this storm and whether they would ever be able to pick up the pieces again. Now it looks like the Democratic party are the ones who will have to do soul searching and repairs while the Republicans have their way for a while. 

[TheMightyEthan]

The two-party system is not a custom, it's a direct result of the way our elections are set up. A first-past-the-post voting system will always lead to only two viable parties over time. There can be short periods of three or more parties, but two parties is the only long-term stable configuration of a fptp voting system.

[deanb]

 

Not only is Farage not the UK Opposition Leader as Fox News claims (that's Corbyn), he's only acting leader of his party and not even an elected MP. He's pretty much just "a guy" who I guess wasn't as overtly racist as Nick Griffin so got trotted out on shows in the name of "balance".

 

Oh and he wasn't allowed to join in on the Leave campaign and pretty much campaigned on his own. And yet somehow assumed he'd get a spot in parliament for it.

[deanb]

https://youtu.be/Fd5e6bOUCY4

 

If you've not seen. 

[Mal]

People should work with him if goals align. If the goals don't align then expect a fierce fight. That's how I'm taking it. Everything points to a very rocky first 100 days though.

[Hot Heart]

It makes sense for Farage to meet Trump in the same way that flies buzz around shit.

[deanb]

What swamp needs draining? I've understood enough that I don't think there's a physical swamp that is being talked about, like in some large scale "lets creating farm land" kinda project, but metaphorical. just what I'm unclear of.

[TheMightyEthan]

Washington DC is built on land that was formerly a swamp but was drained so they could build the city.  "Drain the swamp" is a metaphor that's been used by the Trump campaign for clearing out the establishment/corruption in DC, referencing the actual swamp that used to be there.

 

Side note: due to that swamp DC has a horrible mosquito problem.

[Thursday Next]

It actually appears to mean "Drain the swamp so I dredge the bottom to find enough creatures to fill my cabinet posts."

[deanb]

People really think the guy with a chain of hotels with his name on, a fucking tower to himself is anti-establishment?

 

But yeah, adds the final jigsaw piece on remarks I've seen, of which mainly in relation to his postings. Which did make it seem like how Thursday has presented it

[Mr. GOH!]

I lived in DC for three years and did not notice a mosquito problem. Outside the city, yes, but there are far worse areas for mosquitos than around DC.

 

I mean, there are mosquitos in DC, just that I didn't notice them any more than in other cities I've lived in.

[TheMightyEthan]

Huh, well that's what I've been told, that they have terrible mosquitos.  Maybe it was one of those things where people were referring to the surrounding areas as DC when they're not technically DC.

[Thursday Next]

Actually Ethan, they have the best, the very best mosquitoes. Hard working mosquitoes, not like the corrupt Shillary mosquitoes that used to live in DC. These mosquitoes, well, let me tell you about my plans to bomb Isis...

[Mr. GOH!]

Oh, yeah, outside the city is terrible, but not as bad as the boundary waters between USA and Canada.