I voted for Sanders and agree with a fair amount of this post. BUT the hyperbolic Berniebro craziness is doing no one any good.
“unprecedented support for Sanders” - I get unprecedented crazy people on social media. But turnout is comparable to 2008, when Hillary actually had a FAR closer popular vote total to Obama than Sanders does to Clinton this year. And PLEASE just stop with the voter suppression shit. The two party system isn’t a direct democracy. It never was and if you don’t like that, move to Switzerland, it’s the only existing direct democracy on the planet.
Let’s say that’s a legitimate concern. Does that make Trump in any way a better option? It’s still a possibility of disappointment vs. certainty of horror.
THE candidate? The real question is “the candidate of whom?” The important thing is always for you to know who your candidates are. Sanders is more likely than not some people’s candidate, but it is easy to say that those people don’t matter if one decides to concede to some other organization.
Which party is the third party again? Surely, they cannot all be third, can they? That’s the language of disenfranchisement. There are quite a few parties, but referring to them all as “third” is a ploy specifically to undermine this fact. People who affiliate with other parties are not “independent” - rather, they are affiliated with whichever party they choose.
It’s an obvious tautology - nobody will win unless people vote for them. When people have no other criteria than “other people vote for them” it becomes something of a circle-jerk.
I don’t think that’s a bad thing, as such. Part of why unjust power structures get so deeply entrenched is because organizations such as governments, parties, corporations etc can vastly outlive individuals, and amass more wealth. There are easy ways to create these organizations, but not to destroy them if they grow unhealthy. A way to say “mission accomplished” and cease operations I think can be a positive thing. Otherwise, the tendency is to milk problems forever to keep jobs. Creating new countries, and new kinds of countries, can easily be a good thing. A polystate with multiple governments in the same area certainly increases the chances of meaningful choice.
It’s a benefit because the money injected into those countries. Free trade agreements hurt American workers because that money goes to foreign countries where corporations pay the salaries of workers there. The reason pay is so low in those countries isn’t because companies took advantage of them, it’s because they took advantage of us - those countries receive steadily increasing manufacturing job pay and start bringing in more and more higher-education jobs. Take China as the classic example, the amount of money it costs to pay Foxconn has greatly increased of the past decade because China’s own corporate power and infrastructure grew. Now companies are going back to manufacturing in Mexico or split between China and Mexico because the money injected into China has brought up the median income to the point that the free trade with Mexico is comparable and the shipping from Asia is too cost prohibitive.
And what do the workers do with their money? They buy modern technology from Huawei, the Chinese company who is growing off that free trade money to a size to challenge American market share. This doesn’t happen without free trade, and it’s all to the detriment to American jobs.
[quote=“enso, post:19, topic:80674”]How does that help Americans living in America? You know, the ones that are pissed off and capable of voting?[/quote]You literally quoted me saying that it doesn’t.
You are, as ever, being obtuse. You know what I mean.
Fine.
The nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States in the 2016 election
A third party is any party (or individual candidate) which isn’t one of the two parties that command the overwhelming amount of votes in elections in the United States of America. Those being the Democratic Party and the Republican Party.
Yes, candidates can’t win unless people vote for them, and at some stage, there has to be a risk/reward decision made. If enough people choose not to vote for a candidate from one of the two large parties, the risk is run that the candidate from those two parties further from your personal political views is more likely to win as a result.
Sanders ran as a Democrat to avoid splitting the vote amongst people that held broadly similar views. He doesn’t want to run against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in a General Election.
The UK leaving the EU drastically reduces the opportunities for me, my family, many other people that I care about and is offering nothing positive in return. I do not see that as a good thing.
It depends what your goals are. If your goal is to prevent a crisis, prevent empowering authoritarians, prevent further eroding any hope of political progress within our lifetime, prevent economic malaise, and prevent immediate short term human suffering then it’s a bad thing.
This is a lesson on voting only based on your dissatisfaction with the government and/or xenophobia. Purely visceral reasons without any thought of the actual consequences. And the irresponsible government not making it immensely clear what a huge deal it actually is.
Also, a lesson on how your vote actually counts.
And if the UK government was just using the EU break to just make a point on other stupid things, and never intended it to actually vote to leave, they were playing with fire on a huge scale.
Countries are authoritarian, by definition. The death of a country can facilitate the empowerment of normal people. When normal people opt to create their own countries, that leaves exploiters out in the cold. Instead, people are bought against their best interests because they are promised the relatively minimal risk of a slow death by parasitism, a form of perceived convenience.
The typical Westphalien nation-state is the very franchise of avoiding progress in favor of entrenched political power. And it is this group who charters the corporations who continue the job. Avoidance of short-term suffering is a worthy goal, but it is also used to extort and intimidate the populace from thinking outside the box and implementing anything more effective.
My goals are egalitarianism. So one of the ways to achieve this in the modern world is break the hold of captive government, and facilitate more people making their own, by and for the participants. Modern wealth is information, so how about overlapping countries based upon affinities and real relationships rather than geography?
Authoritarianism is a quality that admits of degrees and which can be more or less empowered. Further augmenting it won’t realize the goals you’ve listed.
I had this strange feeling that a primary election, in which anyone could run, had taken place and Clinton won with a majority of votes cast. I guess that must have been capitalist propaganda…
Anyone can run? Oh, you mean anyone with party support or do you mean the random independents with no money or resources who people see on twitter or something?
Are you, with a straight and honest face, telling me that anyone can be president of the United States and that it doesn’t require the backing of one of the two parties? Really?
During the run up campaign every time a Sanders supporter would suggest that the Clinton campaign could benefit from moving towards Sanders plank they were told “You don’t represent the Democratic base so Clinton does not need to address your concerns.” or something to that effect.
As long as Sanders supporters just don’t vote or vote for Sanders the Clinton campaign will be just fine.
Here’s the thing this facile take-my-ball-and-go-home-ism misses: the election isn’t about Clinton supporters. It’s not about Sanders supporters. It’s not about either of them. It’s about defeating a guy that guarantees to do the opposite of every fucking thing any self-proclaimed progressive could ever want.
