Except that at the end of a certain cycle of the primary campaign, a large section of the electorate get no say.
Maybe we need more free air time and debates for the candidates instead of them necessarily traveling everywhere.
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Plenty of people agree, but I do think that @GideonTJones has a strong case for the former, that racism/sexism are so baked into our system (in the US) that fixing classism wonāt help. After all, upper class black people still experience racism and rich women of all colors are still subject to sexism (look at some of the criticism aimed at Clinton, which is based purely on sexist attitudes - not all criticism of her, but surely some of it, especially from the right).
Iād prefer we try and address them together and see where they are interconnected, and work from there. But thatās just a much harder conversation to have, I think, especially for people on the left who are white.
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FTFY 
Or level the playing field by getting rid of the huge amount of cash in the election, and allow all candidates the same air time, the same ability to mail the electorate, the same access to the public instead of allowing parties to build up a massive war chest full of funds coming from who know where and to make connections with shady superpacs (though not officially). End the depenceny of corporate, partisan media to get information out to the country. That, not the primary schedule, is a the bigger hurdle to minor candidates.
At this point, a large percentage of our population has no say in one of the most important aspects of the general election. Thatās a major problem. In some years, the decision is made by the time SC rolls around - so Iowa, New Hampshire and SC are deciding the for the rest of America who the candidates areā¦ and not even the majority of those states, either. Do you not see the problem there?
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Damn it, I DO NOT want to wait 15 hours like my gals comment here!!!
Take a gif instead, please!
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1 donated.
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And now I canāt like this, eitherā¦ but thanks!
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Thatās a lot of unpacked privilege speaking, there.
A large, perhaps catastrophic number of people will die if Trump gets elected, both in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world. For body count reasons alone, please do not vote in such a way that he has a chance of getting the higher percentage.
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Careful, trying to get into my head invariably leads to some very flawed assumptions. Iām not a typical American.
Statistically, my vote isnāt relevant. We both know this. During my lifetime I have never come close to having an opportunity to vote on something that close on a scale larger than āDo we have Pizza or Tacosā.
This is a fact and it is undeniable. I have statistics to prove it. You have the ability to prove the same thing with respect to yourself. If your personal vote has ever made a difference on a larger scale then youāre a very, very lucky person.
So I have other focuses for my efforts. I MIGHT have voted for Sanders because heād have actually been a net positive. But Iām playing for bigger stakes than the elections of a single nation. Iām in it to break the birth Nation lottery.
If enough people (you included) thought like Iāve learned to think then weād have already rewritten the planet.
Weād have started the process of collecting peopleā¦getting the best out of themā¦ and then monetizing the results to rinse and repeat. Weād have gotten to stage 3 already (Stage 1: easy sells. Stage 2: supplementation/critical mass. Stage 3: Refugees and orphans get to join amazing lives instead of dealing with charity)
Trust me, youāve got this privilege thing backwards. The privilege is being in the West rather than in the Ivory Coast or Honduras.
Itās about humans. Not Americans.
I assume that being the queen of Scotland you will still be voting in the US election? As much as I like watching these arguments, I am curious how much if this is an academic discussion for some folks vs those that will actually be able to vote.
That was part of the āunpacked privilegeā I was talking about. The idea that politics is just a game to be put down when tired of it. It is life or death for many people.
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Itās a LAYER. Itās a stupid LARP that weāre all forced to play. Itās like joining a game of Monopoly where somebody already has all the properties.
Iām working on the layer underneath. Thatās where I can actually solve things.
I keep meaning to go back and dig through Cowās old posts. He had a lot of infographics about the importance of ejecting a Democrat, any Democrat, and the regressive steps every time the GOP get back in.
(still supporting Green where it doesnāt matter, though).
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I honestly do not understand. You say your vote is so inconsequential that working on a meta layer is where youāll āactually solve thingsā. How does that make sense? Unless youāre a Republican or Libertarian megastar in Hollywood, or something like that.
And how does one inconsequential vote for an alternate candidate solve anything?
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Having actually lived through some of those times, I totally agree with the Cow on that. Can you say John Andersonā¦oops, I mean President Reagan?
(P.S. To no oneās surprise, Iām out of likes.)
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Heh.
Hereās one from a few years ago. And I see he was arguing with @William_Holzā¦
@Cowicide - hope you donāt mind me digging this up - appreciate that this might not be the time you want to be thinking about voting for Clintonā¦
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Well, there arenāt many solutions in national politics because thereās a fundamental flaw in expecting everyone to agree based on their geographic location and where they fell in a birth nation lottery. If you want to create a civilization, it needs to be something people choose to join and something thatās very easy to leave. (unless you have other ideas, but I think thatās pretty solid)
Really super-roughlyā¦create a Mondragon/Valve/Google/Charter city hybrid that uses principled hiring to gather people up under the condition that they raise the bar to a basic level (respecting consent, not ruining other peopleās days, that sort of thing). Then provide them housing and turn campuses into charter cities that the people themselves control.
Use an open-source forking type structure to cover a personās entire life (governance, housing, economics, etc.). Give people options, let them vote with their feet. The ones that people like grow, the ones they donāt shrink. Instead of one person imposing their will on everyone else with a generic idea that nobody is excited by and is a very low bar, people are forming groups based on what they like because weāre all different and change over the course of our lives.
Of course itās more complicated than that (everything is complicated with people involved), but Iāve got a team and currently weāre at āabsurdly overengineeredā. It just needs to be good enough to put refugees in Skunkworks-type projects. And Iāve already got a team working on the VC pitch and putting the rest together.
Honestly, there arenāt any original ideas there. Itās a framework and the Venn diagram of overlapping ideas has already been implemented in various ways. This is just a different assembly of existing parts and falls very nicely into my comfort zone (business consulting on complex interactions was what I did before moving to Data Analytics after 9/11 turned my job from āletās enable people to be awesome!ā to āletās be more efficient so we can fire people!ā)
THEN we use Citizenās united for a very good cause.
Nation-based representational democracy will always create a miquetoast solution that traps everyone at a fairly low level because āif theyāre not trying hard then why should I?ā thereās not much incentive for progress there.
Iād give my spleen for an infintesimal fraction of the resources that go to these elections, we only need enough to set up a couple of university-type campuses (with housing) to create our critical mass.
Seeing everyone put so much heart and resources into our political process honestly kind of ticks me off. Thereās no way that the good guys will win because the advantage goes to the worst in us.
Edit: The last local convo on the subject is hereā¦but something much, much better is in the works.
I already said I canāt vote, but there has been a lot of history of US presidents influencing UK politics. Why canāt I have someone closer to my beliefs pressurising David Cameron to not be as shit as he has been? I canāt see Hillary doing that, and Cameron has already expressed a strong dislike of Trump.
Also, while I couldnāt vote for Bernie, I did vote for his brother (Who is currently Health Spokesperson for the Green Party of England and Wales )in the 2005 UK General Election.
So, no I canāt vote, but itās more than academic for me.
Iām not saying donāt vote Hillary, Iām saying she needs to do a lot more to win votes than saying āvote for me or Trump winsā. I would rather see anyone other than Trump as president, but the way things are going Hillary is going to lose. She is pushing the independent left away.
Maybe the only way out of this mess is for Hillary to have Bernie as her running mate.
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Not a problem and certainly worthwhile to have a voice in the debate.
I would not agree with that sentiment and neither do recent polls. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/06/10/donald-trumps-polling-surge-has-faltered-and-democrats-havent-even-united/
Trump is not going to have an easy time and will likely lose moderates to Clinton. I am not a Clinton enthusiast, but I find the narrative of the Sanders supported to come from a bit of a bubble. Clinton is saying a lot more than āvote for me or Trump winsā and from my non-partisan position it sounds very similar to what Sanders says. As I have said before, I think Sanders is just a different mix of centrist and left-center policies than Clinton. Depending on which issue you most identify with you could end up counting one or the other as more progressive. Seriously. I think the biggest difference is that one is the establishment and one is not actually a member of the Democratic party.
Let us know how youāre going to sidestep it all.
