In my opinion, John Scalzi has the most clearheaded and best articulated view of the situation.
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Read my comment again. And not a Clinton supporter, for the record.
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itâs based in part on this article.
Convinced as Sanders is that heâs realizing his lifelong dream of being the catalyst for remaking American politicsâaides say he takes credit for a Harvard Kennedy School study in April showing young people getting more liberal, and he takes personal offense every time Clinton just dismisses the possibility of picking him as her running mateâhis guiding principle under attack has basically boiled down to a feeling that multiple aides sum up as: âScrew me? No, screw you.â
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Definitely throwing in my lot with Pogo.
There was a great series of strips back in the 60s (I think) in which Seminole Sam was running to be Pogoâs VP candidate. His slogan: âPogo for President, and Iâm For Vice!â
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there is no recourse available except for voting them out of office when their term expires. neither u.s. representatives nor senators are subject to recall.
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that reminds me of an old âbloom countyâ punchlineâ
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It was not naive to accept it for the sake of the rhetorical point being made
Calling people naive is really not nice.
Youâre right, I wasnât nice.
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naive is a much nicer term than the one i used in 2000 when i heard people arguing that bush and gore were identical.
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I donât think anyone says Trump and Clinton are identical. What theyâre saying is Clinton is horrible and they donât want to support her. âVote for this horrible person because, hey, they arenât that serial killer over there.â
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When Nader said heâd be fine with seeing Roe v. Wade overturned and leaving it up to the states to decide if abortion should remain legal, and that if he was forced to choose between Bush or Gore heâd vote for Bush since itâd be better to see things get worse to motivate a response (among many other terrible things), and I discussed that with self-described âprogressiveâ supporters (who were also friends), and they still thought voting Nader was the right thing to do, I was approaching apoplexy and wasnât always nice, because it was absolutely maddening.
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If I was elected Emperor of the United States for a day, Iâd decree that every citizen was required to vote or face a fine. Iâd make voting for POTUS, for Congress, heck, all the way down to your town dogcatcher as easy as the vote is for your favorite performer on American Idol. Election Day would be a national holiday so citizens would have no excuse not to vote.
Far Right partisans have worked hard to suppress voter turnout by making voting as difficult as possible for everyone knowing their supporters will have an easier time making it to the polling place to cast their ballot. The political system has been corrupted my the massive amounts of money that is used to buy off elections. The political discourse has gotten so ugly that it turns off a large segment of the population who choose not to participate giving a powerful minority control of Congress and state legislative bodies.
So no matter how vicious, ugly and divisive elections get, you need to show up and vote. I have lived in red states my entire life but I still get out and vote. The candidates I vote for rarely win but Iâll be damned Iâll give up my franchise. If enough of us show up exercising our hard won freedom, we will eventually get the candidates that we deserve.
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i do not accept your premise that clinton is horrible. i find it hard to believe that a candidate who is either in agreement with obama or to the left of obama on the whole gamut of issues is horrible. ymmv, but if you approved of obama on most issues or if you found him to be not horrible it is hard, indeed virtually impossible, for me to understand why you would regard clinton as horrible. iâll be glad to cut you some slack if you tell me you thought obama was horrible, i will still disagree with you, but i will at least find your stated belief in clintonâs horribility somewhat more understandable. if you didnât think obama was horrible but you believe clinton is then i think you need to check over your reasoning because there is a major flaw in your reasoning.
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for the sake of argument, i will assume that clinton is horrible. not a serial killer, but horrible. represent trump with a serial killer, represent darrell castle with a 6 foot long rattlesnake, jill stein with a biodegradable garden gnome, gary johnson with a hardback copy of âatlas shrugged,â tim hoefling with an armor plated u.s. flag, and bob whitaker with a recent edition of âthe protocols of the elders of zion.â
iâm still voting for the horrible person over the serial killer, the rattlesnake, the garden gnome, the tedious book, the armored flag, or the book of lies.
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there is no number three.
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donât misquote me, please. i was clearly referring to the 2000 election and actual comparisons i heard made in my presence by nader supporters.
(noteâi donât know why my last two points show up as one and two again but they should be three and four instead.)
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Nader rejects the false consciousness of liberalism.
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whoâs to say we arenât already getting the candidates we deserve?
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Fortunately, our current situation isnât really like Bush/Gore, comparisons are strained at best. There isnât a prominent left-wing-rhetoric spinning guy doing the stuff that Nader was doing, like spending time late in the cycle focusing on campaigning to progressives on colleges in swing states. While Nader did say at some points Bush and Gore were the same (and at other points acknowledged Bush was worse, but said itâd be better if Bush won in the long run), I havenât seen anyone really saying that with Trump/Clinton.
My voteâs irrelevant since my state will fall to Trump, so I might vote Clinton, might protest-vote, might do whatever. Itâs too early to get a real feel for what the topography of the general will be like. But if it comes to it, and youâre a person in a swing state, the polls are close, youâre politically aware, you recognize that the two party system is the unfortunate reality weâre stuck with for this stupid election, have honestly considered the policies Trump/Clinton offer, and see that you can metaphorically take a punch in the face to you, your friends, your family, and everyone else from Clinton, or the bullet to the leg to all the same from Trump, and making some other choice doesnât stop the punch/bullet from happening but just abdicates your agency, for that set of people in those conditions, voting Clinton would be more humane. For the rest of us made irrelevant, I have no real criticism of a Green vote or a write in of Pricklepants (we forgot to file with the FCC), do whatever you believe is the right choice.
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The present electoral system âtells you to vote against what youâre afraid of and not for what you believe,â Stein said. âThis politics of fear has actually delivered everything we were afraid of.â
âSo we see these draconian things that Donald Trump is talking about, we actually see Hillary Clinton doingâ
âAnd itâs not only the militarism that Trump talks about, itâs Hillaryâs massive record of militarismâ
ââŚSecretary of State Clinton was such a supporter of fracking, which she now claims to oppose, that she established an initiative to promote the environmentally destructive practice around the world.â
âThis is what the Democratic Party has done for decades â many decades, in fact. Over the years, the party has allowed principled candidates to be seen and heard, but has, at the end of the day, sabotaged them in one way or the other, often through fear campaigns and smear campaigns, in the same way that Bernie is being called a spoiler now.â
âIn many ways, the Democratic Party creates campaigns that fake left while it moves right and becomes more corporatist, more militarist, more imperialist.â
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I canât believe you arenât writing in Pricklepants.
Isnât that shit, though - feel free to vote with your conscience as long as youâre one of the millions of people whose vote is totally worthless.
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When have I ever said I approved of Obama, on most issues or otherwise?
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my use of the word âifâ was my expression of ignorance over whether you had or not.
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