You sound like every Republican did during Obama’s eight year reign. The tides will shift, and the pendulum will swing the other way…just like it always has, always will. Take a deep breath and maybe a hit of pot while you’re at it.
1 Like
Yes we understand how the atavistic electoral college system works. And there are brave efforts to circumvent it even in the face of the GOP insisting that it continue, (as it allows a voter in a ‘red state’ to have a vote sometimes weighted as much as three times a voter in a ‘blue state’). But until those are implemented, consider by how many popular votes the winner-take-all failed to allow Clinton the win in just the three critical states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan - by just 77,000 of the popular vote. Those were states that if the former Obama voters had deigned to vote then trump wouldn’t currently be president - but they couldn’t motivate themselves to vote because they honestly or deludedly hated Clinton. They decided (with help from social media bent to foreign interests) that they couldn’t vote for someone they didn’t like and that besides it didn’t matter because she’d win anyway: and trump won. The popular vote was tipped and the nasty electoral college winner-take-all rules took over. So, in summary: the popular vote does indeed matter, it’s just stupidly distorted in how it’s weighted.
2 Likes
Unless you’re one of the countless people whose lives are being destroyed in the meantime.
Trans person serving in the military? Bye-bye career. Asylum-seeking parent forcibly separated from your children? You may never see them again. One of the thousands of Puerto Ricans who lost a family member during the prolonged period of Federal abdication of responsibility for the hurricane recovery effort? They’re not coming back to life.
For a lot of Americans it’s not just matter of rooting for their “team” to win again.
9 Likes
Many states allow you to confidentially confirm your vote. Much better than public visibility.
2 Likes
Are there states which allow you to confirm which candidate your vote was counted towards? As far as I know, my state only allows me to track whether my ballot has been counted, but doesn’t tell me how it was counted.
While that may seem like a useful feature to be able to ensure that your vote was correctly tallied, it would still enable vote buying (and, to a lesser degree than fully public ballots, intimidation).
OF COURSE primary election turnout is low. By the time they get around to polling Maryland, the Democratic Party nominee is a done deal. Why should I give up a Tuesday to ratify my second or third choice?
1 Like
Yes. In the 2018 general election I was able to confirm my whole ballot online.
2 Likes
TL;DR; I’m not a troll, just forced to act like one by a broken system.
I’ve been called a troll before, and gotten kicked off of Metafilter for it… before realizing it was just a far left echo chamber… so, I’ll overshare and admit there’s some evidence for the possibility, though I’m not actually trying to get a “rise” out of anyone.
For me, my votes in the Democratic primaries were all about trying to stop a worse candidate, and failing to do so. The last election had me voting for Bernie in the primary to try to stave off Hillary, and being overridden by the DNC.
I almost voted for Trump, but at the last moment his morality was the stopping block, and I held my nose and voted for Hillary, only to see that fail anyway.
I’m caught in a game-theory trap… both parties represent the 0.001% since the “triangulation” game the Clintons came up with in the 1990s. The only weight I can throw around at this point is to take the game theory approach and try to coerce the Democrats into changing course. Since, from my perspective, the Primaries are rigged… the only vote that actually counts is in the general election. I have to play it based on the fucked up nature of the system, not how I actually want to vote.
If I could wave a wand to fix things, we’d get a system where there were NO primaries, and everyone ranked their choices on election day… see CGP Grey for info about better voting systems. Until the glorious future where things get fixed (aka never)… I’m stuck in hell protest voting against the corrupt DNC by giving my vote to the corrupt RNC.
The candidate who got the most votes in the primaries last time around (and AFAIK in every Democratic Primary to date) is the one who ended up getting the nomination.
Even if you think Hillary only got more votes than Bernie because she had more help from the Democratic establishment, why on earth would you make the establishment’s job even easier by opting out entirely?
Voting Republican doesn’t send the signal that the DNC should field more candidates like Bernie Sanders if they want to win, it sends the signal that they should nominate more candidates like Donald Trump.
2 Likes
“your description of Clinton sounds like you’ve swallowed and accepted every GOP attack and lie about her.”
Thank you for providing a good example of why party loyalty is so pernicious - it makes people willfully blind themselves to the truth.
And one thing I forgot to mention - Clinton was responsible for the massacre of the Branch Davidians in Waco. The government attack on their compound was planned as a show of force instead of a simple police action - an attempt by the government to put the fear of God into dissident groups - and ordered by Janet Reno. Reno was in office because Hillary Clinton ceaselessly badgered her husband the President into appointing Reno. President Clinton later described that appointment as the worst mistake of his life. Your precious Saint Clinton used her influence to install an unfit crony in office and thereby became responsible for the judicial murder of dozens of men, women, and children.
If you ruled out every hysterical thing the right screeched about under Obama, just because they said it about Obama, you’d be out of valid criticisms before you start. It’s kinda their strategy.
3 Likes
I have plenty of valid criticisms about Oh-Bomb-Ya and I am a progressive…but so it goes.
I sympathize with what you’ve written, but the reality was that Hillary won the primary due to votes, not some kind of DNC override.
We can argue whether that was the best outcome, but not whether Bernie got more votes and Hillary somehow stole them.
1 Like
Which is why the Founding Father’s ideal of a state without faction was actually a dream of single-party plutocratic tyranny.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
