My comment for either side, and maybe I am numb because I have heard many elections where the candidate is sure to “destroy America” (Obama couldn’t even get THAT right.), is that:
The President isn’t a dictator, even if they wanted to be. Their power is fairly limited in a lot of respect, especially when it comes to laws, which is the job of the legislative branch. Yes, he/she can light a fire under their asses, and has the power of veto, but can’t just “change the federal abortion laws (looser or tighter), abolish the EPA (or any other government agency), ban Muslims, issue tax breaks to supporters , abolish/replace/increase Obamacare, ban guns, further deregulate the financial industry, etc. etc.” Any of those things would take Congress as well.
The most “damage”, not to America but perhaps your “side”, would be the Supreme Court nominee. Which again can’t be toooo off the wall crazy because the Senate approves the nominee.
All elections are about moral and ethical compromises, because the “perfect candidate” has never existed and never will. If your last living act is one that helps put a fascist in office just because the alternative is imperfect then I’d say “good riddance to you.”
Which is exactly where the uninsured Childless Adults populations become a focus. It becomes a less pricey option for those populations, making it easy to replace block grants and local county and regional programs with (those that exist)
Hillary at her most evil would not adequately address pressing social issues in the face of overwhelming congressional opposition who will undoubtedly try to impeach her before her first day of office.
Trump at his most evil would, with the blessing of a conservative Congress, dismantle decades of the progressive movement, victimize minorities and women in ways we haven’t seen in a century, and lock that destruction in with an ultra conservative Supreme Court that will maintain this oppression for decades to come.
Just to make one thing clear, there is a solution to that issue that’s been proposed more than once. It would take an FDR type to get it through, but that’s what a lot of us want.
Of course Clinton will share some of the responsibility if she somehow loses to Trump. But if a consumer chooses to order rat poison for breakfast because the corn flakes didn’t look appealing enough then I don’t put the bulk of the blame on Kellogg’s poor packaging design.
I certainly did when Gore conceded in the 2000 general election. What I didn’t know, but plenty of Texas residents did, is that GWB was an incompetent good ol’ boy whose brain had been cauterized by years of coke and alcohol abuse rendering him unfit to manage a McDonald’s.
Now thrown in sociopathy, narcissism, and poor impulse control. That’s what we get if Clinton loses.
I believe the operant theory is that choosing neither may result in a temporary period of worsening which leads to the destruction of two political parties.
Arsenic, for example, can be used to kill intestinal parasites.
The question is really “Do you believe things will get so bad it will be intolerable or do you feel like if society cane be saved through a temporary hardship then it’s worth it.”
That’s an argument no more irrational than the one claiming Trump will literally destroy America.
the thing is votes have never mattered and our collective oppressors put in places of visual power those who have severed them in the recent past.They skate where as you and I would be so lost in the jail just.us system for the rest of our lives. It is truly so sad for me to see people so lost in the corrupt mockingbird media sham they ca no longer think for them selves and blindly support whatever puppet the tell.lie.vision tells them to.If you are not familiar with arkancide please check it out-even recently another body dropped to add to the count. The media is owned by our oppressors and it will serve them and their agenda.hrc is their darling-she is a war criminal just like the rest of them and will say anything including lying thru her smile and teeth to her and our oppressors media.
There’s another implied question, which is: how will the Democratic party interpret your protest vote? Which in turn implies another question: how will the Democratic party know that your vote was a protest vote?
Then vote your conscience but raise hell. Write whichever Democratic candidates you’re not voting for, explaining why you’re not voting for them. They need to hear that feedback because a protest vote alone won’t be loud enough.
Oh I’m not “protest voting”. I certainly don’t want to actively support Trump. That is the crux of my dilemma. I’m sick and tired of compromised ethics and I’m sick and tired of people my age and older telling children one thing and then getting mad at them when they grow up and try to live morally and ethically.
Blaming young people for not being cynical and knowing they were being lied to is fucking bullshit.
As has been observed before, I notice that the “let Trump destroy the system so we can rebuild from scratch and make something better” argument seems to be coming almost exclusively from straight white males. I suspect that’s because
Women, minorities and LGBT people are the ones who will actually feel the most hardship under a Trump Presidency
Women, minorities and LGBT people realize that by and large things have not been getting worse. Why do you think almost all time travelers are white guys? Because everyone else knows that for all our problems today, the past was even worse.
One might well point out that the Chancellor of the Weimar Republic was also not a dictator in 1933.
Your president has the power to put 12 new people on the Supreme court (with complicity from a Senate who is promised that Roe vs. Wade will be overturned or something stupid like that) who then have the power to interpret the constitution as giving the president to unilaterally make laws. That sounds stupid, but the whole checks and balances system depends way more on people being reasonable than the founders would have really wanted.
I hear that. Here in Canada we had a similar steady shift right for a decade or so, until the ‘center’ party was just the right wing party in drag, and then (a plurality) or people just decided to elect the overt right wingers for a decade or so of damage.
It took a decade in the wilderness and a very strong threat from the left to get the so-called ‘centrist’ party to smarten up and stop trying to out conservative the conservatives. (It also helped that the left party inexplicably decided to be a right wing party in our last election).
What Bernie did was force the Dems to pay attention to actual progressive politics. Not just pay lip service - though of course that remains to be seen.
If I were American I’d have been a hardcore Bernie supporter, and I’d keep supporting that position for a long time. But I’d also be voting for Clinton in November.
I say that as a 15 year NDP member here in Canada who voted Liberal in the last federal election. More or less the exact same calculus was at play.
