Won’t be the nominee (thankfully), and even if he was, he’d still be the frontman for Cruz et al and would still appoint 3 or 4 Scalias to the SCOTUS. No Republican is acceptable, because the entire party needs to DIAF.
Kasich isn’t any good, besides. His ‘moderate’ act doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. He just stands out a bit because he’s able to do a passing impression of an adult.
I’m not necessarily talking about tactical voting. Just as a generality. As I mentioned I think there’s a genuine chance that the right wing’s embedded position in legislature, state and county offices could be counteracted in a small way. As its stands the left, and thus the democrats have a slight demographic advantage, that’s completely eliminated or reverse when you look at the GOP’s voter suppression, gerrymandering etc. I don’t think major change on that front is going to happen until the new census forces redistricting starting in 2020, and our newly (almost) guaranteed to be liberal Supreme court gets it hands on some of this shit. But a small shift can happen. And that makes it more likely that genuine progress can be made by the left leading up to it, and that some of these problems can be properly dealt with when the time comes. As it stands the only generally left wing party with anything like a progressive wing with a chance of capturing the presidency (and what looks like a very good one) is the DNC. And in most states, and most races the DNC candidate is either the likely winner, or the only potential winner in a newly in play seat. Any 3rd party or independent, ideological purist will have to work with (as they do now) the DNC, and without increases in DNC wins and margins they’re just as boned as they are now. More votes for the DNC generally means higher elective margins, more offices top to bottom, and more of mandate. Making both obstruction, and watering down your own agenda less necessary and justifiable. Which should mean more progress on pushing the government legitimately leftward.
So point being if you want to push government leftward, then voting party line for anything other than the DNC makes little sense (unless it does, specific exceptions should exist). Washington as an example is a safe state for the Democratic presidential nominee and probably for senate seats. Potentially less so for the House, they’ve got only 2 GOP congressman right now. But I don’t know how many (if any) of those seats may be at risk right now. Their state legislature is a pretty close, with slight democratic control. Though some of those Democrats are weirdly allied with the GOP instead of their own party. And so it goes down the line. A person would genuinely do better to represent their ideology if they voted DNC for state legislative offices, and then saved those other options for specifically safe races like President, or specific cases (like those state senators who caucus with the GOP, or particular candidates who have a chance of winning). 3rd party votes in the US are weird because of the polarization we’re experiencing and the 2 party system. Its mostly a protest sort of thing.
And this is all tactical as hell when you lay it out. But its mostly just my reason why noone should typically be voting party line. But we’ve been handed a shit sandwich where that might be legitimately the best option.
Why is saving the Democratic party your goal? Parties rise, fall, collapse, realign, expand, contract, change, reverse political allignments. How the DNC is now is not where it was 15-20 years ago (by most experts accounts it’s done gone leftward). And political parties are nards. A necessary evil at best. You should be thinking about the best way to effectively move government, particularly below the Federal level and in congress. Even if Bernie does end up with white house he isn’t going to accomplish much without some sort of support outside the executive branch to make it happen. We just saw that with Obama for 8 excruciating years. And those people you do like down the ballot aren’t going to like trying to keep their campaign promises with a fucking Trump white house. And imagine what his court appointments would look like. Its not just the SCOTUS seat there’s a serious back log of judge appointments throughout the federal and state systems. The GOP has been colluding for decades to stack the courts with as many far right judges as they can, while preventing anyone from appointing even moderates. Because those offices outlast the longest administrations and legislative advantages, For the most part the DNC remains the best or only option for progressive causes, exceptions exist. Or you might be in a safe enough, blue enough, purple spotted dinosaur enough place to ignore that. Given what I’m seeing I tend to think protest votes, split votes, and reduced turn out because everything can’t be exactly how you want right now, would hurt the people carrying them out a lot more than they would help the situation.
Technically, Gore won.
That being said, Obama continued the drone strikes, made the Bush tax cuts permanent, and now the Air Force has dropped so many bombs in the Middle East that they’re running out. NSA? Happened under Obama. Guantanamo? Still open. CIA torture? No end in sight. Now he’s nominating a justice that the Repulicans were crazy about to the SCOTUS. Sure, they’re stupid enough to snatch a defeat from the jaws of victory, but Obama hardly went middle of the road with Merrick. So yeah. I’m real glad there isn’t a Republican in office. /s
Side note: Does this topic need to be forked?
Nate Silver, afaik, doesn’t weight by any demographics at all. That is done by pollsters already. He weights pollsters by past accuracy. He weights polls by kind, size, age and pollster weight.
NO he is as bad as the rest of the bunch on the R side but does a better job of keeping the veneer of reasonable.
Yeah, Hillary is the poster child for more the same establishment that got us into this mess.
I could never vote for hillary or cruz or trump, three flavors of yuck/bleck.
I agree 100% and will not do that ever again. Hillary won’t get my vote no matter what, I’d be ashamed to put anyone like her in power.
Her voting record on issues is almost identical to traditional republicans like jeb, so are her backers, which isn’t surprising seeing as she was a republican. I think she is a republican at heart, but the republican party has gone so far off the rails that her conservative stances seem liberal enough to get some dem support, which is crazy. In that way the republicans are actually winning when our choices potentially come down to a very conservative republican masquerading as a democrat on one side and either a sociopath or a crazy narcissist on the other.
I agree and feel the exact same way.
same.
I really can’t believe how people can justify voting for someone so awful to stop someone worse. Don’t they see how that screws us more in the long run? How this is the very problem at the root of our system and how we the people have been fleeced out of any real say. Voting for the lesser of two evils is the problem and how we got here.
He does a better job of keeping the painfully thin veneer of (being) reasonable.
FTFY
These particular predictions are somewhat predicated on demographics, especially where the polls aren’t thick on the ground.
The predictions that made Nate Silver’s name are just as you said.
He is!
He gives me some small shred of faith in the American political system.
Yep yep yep yep.
Absolutely Right.
The GOP is and will continue to burn because they are incapable of putting forth anybody but an idiot.
And the DNC will burn because they alienated a huge and growing movement to hand pick somebody that is going to loose to the GOPs idiots.
So I say let’em both burn, the sooner the better, 2016 seems a good time to get it over with.
Are you implying that the votes for Nader didn’t effect that outcome? That it still would have been close enough for a recount without his name on the ballot? Experts are baffled.
The dems undermined themselves with the left (and continue to do so) and the improper purging of voter roles in Dade had a much bigger impact, actually.
But yeah, it must be the voters disgusted with politics as usual, not being represented by either of the major parties. After all, it’s not a free country, right?
“If the remaining states vote based on the same demographic patterns established by the previous ones”.
Like Michigan?
Sadly, without the DNC, no potential voice exists for liberals and progressives. It would be a bit utopian to hope that the collapse of the DNC would lead a truly viable progressive party rising from its ashes. We could have the Greens, but since Nader they pretty much have devolved into a lunatic fringe (at least as far as the potential electorate is concerned). Perhaps, someday, we’ll break the two party system, and us liberals can have our own party. I don’t think I’ll live to see this happen, if it ever does. Until then, we, sadly, need the umbrella of the Democratic party.
My point was more that the liberals and progressives will be disenfranchised, and the Democratic machine will be further empowered that its bland, compromising, corporate status quo is what the voters want. HRC is like Obamacare, no wholly evil, perhaps even a bit good, but also a compromise that sets back real progress by some period of time.
As to SCOTUS, and the legislative future, the truth of the matter is that I only trust HRC slightly more than I trust Trump. I suppose, to her… credit? Clinton is just be more of the same, whereas Trump will be a dramatic turn for the worse. Hillary won’t make waves, she won’t shake the tree, she won’t change a damn thing. Her SCOTUS appointment will be a blandly right-facing centrist, who isn’t the slightest controversial. Her legislative future will be as bland as Obama’s (and you can’t just blame the Republic domination, there are plenty of things he could have done, or NOT done on his own).
I suppose it is better than the Trump future, where we get relive the downfall of the Weimar Republic, but it still isn’t a future I’m comfortable voting for. Perhaps I only feel this way because I live in a state where my vote doesn’t matter in the slightest (Arizona, where Democratic votes might as well just be flushed down the toilet!).
as we saw in the Michigan primaries, there’s a big gap in the data available to analysts like Silver, who wrongly predicted a 98% probability for a Clinton win there.
Right? Why listen to anything else Silver has to say about Sanders? At least, not without a huge bag of salt nearby.
MSG?
In my experience listening to other opinions is often helpful. Blindly believing other opinions is problematic.
Ugh, I get so sick of Nader blamers. Like Gore didn’t lose for several other reasons, including the criminality that deserves the loudest blame.
