We need to fix voting, and voter registration. Your vote is your voice, and too many people have their voices taken away by malfunctioning machines, long lines, misinformation designed to get people to show up at the wrong place or time, and the inability to take off from work to vote.
We need to put pressure on statehouses to adopt the Oregon twin policies of automatic eligible voter registration at the DMV and vote-by-mail.
The view must be lovely from your ivory tower.
This can be enforced by the carrot/stick of federal aid. I.e. if a state’s electoral process isn’t in good functioning order then it is less able to fully participate in the Union, ergo it should receive less benefit from that Union.
(It’s no coincidence that the states receiving the most federal aid are the ones with the most dysfunctional voting systems.)
Part of the low turnout is due to racially targeted voter suppression and felon disenfranchisement, and the overall history of Confederate bastardry in general. That ain’t the fault of lazy voters.
A large part of the voter turnout figures are due to the electoral college and winner-take-all elections. Millions of California Republicans stayed home because they knew that their vote would not change the result. If they’d come out to vote, California would still have sent its electoral votes to Clinton and Trump would still be President. Even if you manage to take over a state with an unexpected turnout surge in one election, that is likely to drive opposing turnout in the next election, returning to the status quo.
Much of the rest of the turnout numbers can be explained by widespread disgust at endemic, intractable corruption on all sides of the US political establishment.
Yes, higher turnout from the non-fascist part of the American electorate would be a good thing. Give them something to vote for, and work against the powers that are determined to prevent them from doing so.
Indeed, non-voters in general are waiting for a sufficiently large systemic change to make it worth voting!
I believe that one of the primary goals of the Pirate Party must be effect that change from ground up - give people reasons to vote locally first, and leverage that into the change that is needed at higher levels.
How precisely did Sanders do this? He ran a great campaign, lost with dignity, and told people to vote for Clinton - just like I am sure the DNC wanted him to.
So, if Clinton’s subsequent campaign suffered, and/or people voted for Stein or Johnson, how was Sanders culpable for this? Are you also assuming that those who voted for Stein or Johnson would have otherwise voted for somebody else?
This seems like something we should be lobbying for right now. I found a petition on Bernie’s site, but I’m not sure of how to send a more direct message.
Expanding on this a bit, Independents have historically been viewed as wildcards, rogues who didn’t fit in with the established system. Greens have lately been the “third option” and some Independents have gravitated to them, but they have a fairly narrow focus and tend to attract the more extreme fringes of the Left.
In other countries, (EU, Iceland et al), the Pirate Party, for all of having a silly name, has been the voice of the sensible people. The voice of those who see enough flaws in existing parties that they don’t wish to be tainted by association, yet are not wilding about off in the fringe either. It’s become a focus, a point of commonality for those who see the need for change, the need to “turn the ship around”.
Americans have spoken loudly in that regard with the response to Trump, but unless he makes some substantial changes between now and January, he has thus far proven himself very much the demagogue and very little the capable captain.
Like the other Pirate Parties, we can see the flaws in the system, we know what needs to be done, what’s currently lacking is the structure at a local level to “git 'er done”. Hence the proposal that we form an “official” Pirate Party. Not so much to elect a “Pirate President”, but to act as a common vehicle towards the changes that are needed - the framework of the necessary boarding parties as it were…
Maybe call your congresspeeps? I assume the federal office-holders have some degree of standing within the party…
It’s freakishly complicated.
After reading thru this thread I’m reminded of the famous quote:
The Sanders who campaigned for Clinton and whose concession speech was “I need you all to vote for Clinton to defeat Trump”? The only people he ‘drove’ away from the Dems were the ones who never would’ve voted Dem otherwise and registered as one just to vote for him, like myself.
What if the BB community itself organized a “special task force” to strategize and plan original campaigns, culture jams, calls for action, and other projects that could potentially be promoted on the site? Our talent pool includes writers, designers, artists, and other highly skilled, creative types who could collaborate with one another. It needn’t be centralized; the strongest proposals would gain momentum and grow to fruition, the weakest would fade. I’m envisioning something that operates a bit like /b/, but obviously with a very different set of values.
Naturally this would require one or more of the management to communicate with us and make decisions about what they’d be willing to publish.
No, he didn’t.
He started running a great campaign. But he gradually shifted into personal, ad hominem attacks and dark conspiracy theories about rigged elections. Sound familiar? He hinted that Democratic voters in my part of the country were less than full voters because black. He refused to support Clinton until his convention speech and then did nothing at all, nothing, to actually support her for at least a month.
He did what all ego driven politicians do. He kept it on the level of policy when he thought that worked for him. When it didn’t, he went negative. Fully, extremely negative, and you can’t plausibly argue he didn’t. It wasn’t Clinton supporters that rioted when a caucus didn’t go their way, and it wasn’t Clinton who afterwards argued that the riot was understandable rather than condemning it.
Here are the facts according to exit polls. Anything you want to argue has to square with these facts.
EVERY demographic group was within a per cent or so of their vote in the Romney/Obama election except two: unmarried men and unmarried women. They were, respectively, down 10% and 5% for the Democratic candidate since the previous election. This parallels a huge jump in the vote for third parties.
I think we’re on pretty good ground taking unmarried voters as essentially a proxy for young, and democratic leaning unmarried voters as a pretty good proxy for Sanders’ people.
They responded to Sanders’ vitriolic condemnation of Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and Clinton ethics by claiming they’d never vote for Clinton, and you can’t plausibly claim you didn’t hear that.
And that’s exactly what they did. The Democratic leaning constituency shifted from the Democratic candidate to Stein and Johnson. And every vote for Stein or Johnson was a vote for Trump.
Does that answer all your questions?
The Sanders campaign that descended into name calling, rioting when they didn’t get their way, questioning Clinton’s ethics and finances, and was the first to claim the election was rigged. The Sanders Campaign that refused to support the nominee, holding out hope that superdelegates would overturn the expressed will of voters, right up until his speech. And the Sanders who didn’t actually do anything to act on his claims of support for another month.
Here are the facts according to exit polls. Anything you want to argue has to square with these facts.
EVERY demographic group was within a per cent or so of their vote in the Romney/Obama election except two: unmarried men and unmarried women. They were, respectively, down 10% and 5% for the Democratic candidate
since the previous election. This parallels a huge jump in the vote for third parties.
I think we’re on pretty good ground taking unmarried voters as essentially a proxy for young, and democratic leaning unmarried voters as a pretty good proxy for Sanders’ people.
They responded to Sanders’ vitriolic condemnation of Clinton, the Clinton Foundation and Clinton ethics by claiming they’d never vote for Clinton, and you can’t plausibly claim you didn’t hear that.
And that’s exactly what they did. The Democratic leaning constituency shifted from the Democratic candidate to Stein and Johnson. And every vote for Stein or Johnson was a vote for Trump.
That’s data. Your claim that “The only people he ‘drove’ away from the Dems were the ones who never would’ve voted Dem otherwise” is clearly inconsistent with that data and therefore bullshit.
Every liberal-leaning site should do its part in the next four years, as I’m sure the Happy Mutants would agree. This site seems to have traffic that’s not only high in quantity but also in quality. In addition to the artistic skill sets that you mention, the talent pool also includes techies, scientists, entrepreneurs, educators, and old-school activists among many others. Some of the guest contributors and friends of the site are recognisable names (at least to cultured and informed people).
I wouldn’t presume to ask the owners to set up a complex new feature set on what is already an excellent site or pile more work on our diligent community moderators. But I do like the idea of adding a simple “Call to Action” aspect to the site – perhaps a form available on certain FPPs that allow users to propose one or more small collaborative projects related to or inspired by the post and providing a place for the interested to sign up. If a project has momentum the originator sets up a Slack team and takes it from there.
I would be interested to read a citation of that, it seems unlikely to me.
Support in what way? As soon as he lost, he explained that it was over, and immediately started directing his voters, activists, and other interested people to the Clinton campaign. There was a lot of coverage about this on the net at the time.
I agree that it got more personal than I would have liked. But I thought that of the major figures of the election year, Sanders did a better job than Trump or Clinton of pushing the focus of discussion to the issues. Since the debates between Trump and Clinton got quite a bit more personal and nasty, I don’t understand how this indicates that Sanders cost Clinton the election in any way.
Informed voters have a responsibility to make up their own minds. If a candidate such as Sanders raises criticisms of another Democrat who is competing for the same position, then they are doing their job. Also I think it is disingenuous to characterize Sanders campaign as being “vitriolic”. He was as rigorous and polite as the situation demanded. He criticized that he was being blackballed by the DNC because their policies claim impartiality, and his criticisms were later shown to be accurate. If Sanders did his job too well and raised doubts about Clinton which would voters could not reconcile, then any deficiency there is Clinton’s - or the DNC’s for not offering somebody better.
Firstly, since Sanders was quite vocal and genuine in telling people to vote for Clinton despite his reservations about her as a candidate, he has no blame there. Some people were never going to vote for Clinton. It is pointless to speculate that “If they voted for somebody else, the outcome may have been different!” No kidding… we could say that about anybody. But that’s not how voting works.
Is that how entitlement works? Is it that we deserve other people’s votes for those who we personally consider better suited? Or should we resent that we know better what is in others’ best interests than they do?
I would think simply publishing a news item in the normal flow of articles would suffice, perhaps with an appropriate tag assigned so that they may all be viewed in one place easily. (Likely multiple tags to help break things down by state and type of change being implemented or work to be done.)
The real difficulty will be for editorial staff to identify those items worthy of attention!
Perhaps interested folks could volunteer to preview items and vote them up/down appropriately? There’s a fair number of readers here itching to make a difference, I think we could form a decent vetting team to help lighten the load in this regard.
If any editors are perusing this thread perhaps they could reply here with the best way to submit oneself as a volunteer?
To be fair on that one, we’ve seen that there was definitely some pro-Clinton bias going on; not surprising given that she’s been way up in the party since, well, before I was born.
Which I personally chalk up to the candidate not being good. I could be wrong here, of course, but of the people I know who voted for Sanders in the primary, smack dab in the middle of this age group we’re talking, everyone but myself held their nose and voted Clinton.
I don’t know about Sanders’ condemnation, but the fact that she was a lukewarm candidate to start with, plus some of the dumb stuff that went on around her was enough to get me to throw away my vote.
That’s really the long and short of it. Clinton was no Obama: she didn’t have the same conviction in her rhetoric when she had it, probably because she’s jumped around in her positions enough that we know better. Obama saw a drop himself once he was no longer a fresh-faced,new politician who suddenly shot to prominence, but instead a president going for a second term after failing to accomplish much of what he’d planned. Add into that decades upon decades of time in the limelight giving the public the idea that her only really persistent position on any given issue is “whatever’s politically convenient at the time” (didn’t the Clintons take the White House the first time by basically flaunting conservative credentials? Serious question; I was -3 at the time.) In the hindsight we have now, she made the fatal mistake of being a consummate politician in the election where your requirements to get in office were to not be a politician, to seem genuine and uncontent with the system in place rather than filtered and bland.
In some ways Trump was the worst possible candidate for her to go up against: Clinton really was everything he railed against, and if it was a narrow win this time, if there was a Trump-like who toned down the crazy she would’ve been completely whipped.
For the most part she ran on a platform of “More of the same; everything’s fine right?” With a significant portion of “You don’t want that guy as your president, do you?” It hardly makes for the kind of talk that inspires people to really get out there and vote for you.
