I’m still going to vote, I take that right very seriously, and would lose my higher ground which I use to criticize all my acquaintances who refuse to vote (which, sadly is a sizable portion).
This early on, I haven’t researched the full feild yet. For all I know, the ghost of Teddy Roosevelt has risen, and is in the running.
BRING BACK THE BULL MOOSE 2016!
That’s a question that isn’t always asked enough in the U.S. It’s certainly a question conservatives were asking in the 60s.
By the 80s, school board seats and other local offices were political battlegrounds. Cultural wedge issues framed many local races and leveraged voter turnout for conservatives in national campaigns.
Today, in some regions, esp. rural areas, conservatives politically control entire institutions in local government, law enforcement, DAs’ offices, courts, and boards of supervisors.
So one of the exciting aspects of the Sanders Campaign is the newer local organizing that’s starting to happen. His supporters’ political work goes deeper than traditional GOTV.
The Cow is on a short-ish ban. IIRC, the ban ends in a couple weeks.
I think, on the national level it’s hard. Sanders is one of the few independents. But locally parites can make inroads, as @anon15383236 indicated.
Same here. Haven’t had a land line since 1999. Unfortunately, due to all the phishing, I stopped answering phone numbers I don’t recognize. It would seem I’m not the only one who does this, and may be yet another contributing factor to inaccurate poll results.
On down-ticket stuff we have Greens, Natural Law, Libertarian, and a few others I can’t recall at the moment. Typically, by the time you get to state legislature seats, you’re down to the shit pie or the turd sandwich.
or the organizing. 
It’s important too to find substantive issues that resonate with communities — and caucus with dems whenever possible — because the local dems tend to fight every step of the way.
The majority of voters in the USA are infected with a crippling, self-fulfilling meme (you’ll see it in this very thread) that says voting for any third party is “throwing your vote away”. This is arrant nonsense, mathematically, pragmatically, and philosophically, but the whole point of creating an infectious meme is to prevent clear thought. So, most people here in the USA vote for whichever of the two parties they consider the lesser evil.
Periodically things get so screwed up - when the nation is fundamentally divided on a major issue like slavery, for example, or when the populace is jobless, war-weary and tired of rule by banksters - that the people decide that yes, they will in fact “throw their votes away” and vote for a Trump or a Lincoln.
At which point it turns out that it really wasn’t ever throwing anything away at all, because no one individual vote means anything. It’s only when you vote from your own sense of morality and justice, ignoring what anyone else might do, that a democratic republic can truly reflect the will of the people. Voting for the lesser evil guarantees that evil always wins, and that you’ve been a part of it.
Same here. I’m not a Democrat and never have been.
What about voting for Hillary makes you happy?
I did.
I said this in the Bernie thread about these numbers, but what Nate Silver calls a miracle, I see as plausible. a 15 point spread in California? Look at Silver’s own numbers from two weeks ago, he apparently has Sanders up about 5 points in that time. Look at Silver’s numbers for the last six primaries. Clinton overperformed by 5 in the primary she won, Sanders by 11, 13, 18, 20 and 21 in the ones he won. Basically you should be looking at the margin of error as “within 125 points, 19 times out of 20” with a little asterisk noting that the average is nearly double digits for Bernie.
If I were Nate Silver, I’d have the guts to say, “With polling like this, predictions are pointless.”
So it’s better than not to standing up to a woman who pretty much stands for all that’s worst in America?
The Difference between USUNCUT and Fox News is one bit flipped. I don’t subscribe to the Fox/GOP talking points about Hillary Clinton and recognize she has been a strong and effective leader who has not commit any of the crimes attributed to her by the Heritage Foundation, Teapublicans, Fox News, Bernhards or anyone else.
There is no question in my mind that the nation will be better served by Clinton than Trump.
A reasonable person being appointed to the Supreme Court within the next five years.
A continuation of abortion choice and increased rights for GLBT and minorities.
The lack of a tax increase to pay for a wall that I don’t really want.
There are a few other things, but those are the highlights. She’s not the best, but she’s certainly really far from the worst.
If there is no question in your mind that the US would be better off with Clinton than Trump, I imagine we simply stand for different things. Clinton’s hawkish, interventionist foreign policy is terrifying to me. As is her two-faced appeal-to-African-Americans but stand behind laws which hurt them. Her support of big banks, and indebtness to them. Her let’s extent Romneycare. To have her as president would continue all of the bad things about the Obama years with none of the good things. She has the right stand on women’s rights and marriage-rights, but that’s about it. I would agree that Clinton would make a better president than Cruz, but so would a demon-possessed stalk of limp celery.
Neither Sanders nor Clinton have any chance of achieving anything with the current legislature in place.
Which is why it isn’t about persuading the current legislature to act; it’s about driving them out of office and replacing them with truly representative members who will vote with the will of the American majority on healthcare, taxes, corruption, etc.
Bernie has a chance to do that. Hillary does not.
