You seem to feel that people should not use their conscience or sense of ethics and morality in the voting process, but should simply vote for whatever… suboptimal candidate their party shoved under their noses on the grounds that “Team B will win if we don’t!” You go so far as to ridicule people for not toeing this line, as if discarding one’s principles for the convenience of one’s party leaders is not only thinkable to you, but seems normal.
Until the democrats lose this attitude, they will continue to lose elections, even to people like Donald Trump. If they don’t want to lose, they must address the concerns of those like me who wanted no part of this game with its street-thug level threats and prisoner’s dilemma logic. Standing before me with a bludgeon and telling me it’s my patriotic duty to vote for your candidate just loses you my vote. This is not my fault or my problem. It is your party’s fault for trying to rely on such shameful tactics.
You can try to patronize people who voted their conscience as much as you like, but Vonbobo is not the one who sounds childish in this exchange, and this hostile rhetoric only drives us who could have been a meaningful part of your base even further away from you. I do hope you take this lesson to heart before 2018.
If your principles dictate that it’s better to let a fascist take office than to vote for a candidate you don’t agree with on 100% of the issues then darn tootin’ I’m going to ridicule you.
…Again, this is the kind of attitude the Democratic party must change if it wants the votes of people like me. Threats, bullying and ridicule don’t change my mind and only make me lose respect for you.
As Trevor Noah said some months back, both Clinton and Trump were each running against the only candidate they could possibly beat. If the Democratic party were truly interested in beating Trump decisively, they should have fielded a more popular candidate. They failed to do so, and they lost. This is the Democratic party’s fault, and theirs alone.
If you field a deeply unpopular candidate, you should not be surprised when you lose, even if your opponent is Beelzebub incarnate. If you field a deeply unpopular candidate and then blame and mock the people who didn’t vote for your candidate because she didn’t win… That’s just sad.
@nemomen - That’s okay, I’ve said what I had to say.
simply pointing out that once the dust has cleared and one discovers that one major party has nominated “beelzebub incarnate” while the other party has nominated someone who is merely “unpopular” and then one casts a ballot which helps elect “beelzebub” when one could have helped elect someone who actually cares about governance as opposed to stealing the country on behalf of the 0.01%, when one could have helped elect someone who cares about diversity as opposed to caring only about white men, preferably rich white men, when one could have helped elect someone who ran on the most progressive platform of the past 50 years as opposed to someone who ran on the most repressive platform of the past 100 years, when one could have helped elect someone who would have appointed left-oriented judges, election commissioners, fcc members, nlrb members, etc. as opposed to a collection of right-wing kleptocrats is not bullying, threatening, or ridicule. it is simply asking you and others like you to take your share of responsibility for the disaster which is the trump administration.
Christ on a crutch people. Us at eachother’s necks is what both parties want; an opposition to their petty bullshit too divided and hissing at itself to mount any sort of coherent pushback against either one party’s corruption or the other party’s insanity.
Ah, I wasn’t aware of that. Doesn’t make too much sense to me. I live in Singapore where we have three major ethnic groups. This June when there is a presidential election the president will need to be Malay because there hasn’t been a Malay president in the last five terms. The system is called reserve elections, and it’s been put in place so all the ethnicities get adequate representation. Very different from the US, more inclusive.
I voted for Bernie in the primaries but Hillary was not actually a “deeply unpopular candidate.” She not only won significantly more votes than Trump, she won more than any white man who ever sought the office.
If you, like me, were one of the people who thought Bernie Sanders would have been a great choice for President then perhaps you should have respected him enough to heed his pleas to support Hillary in the general election.
The criteria for candidates here are somewhat strict, shall we say. To stand in the reserve election you must first be recognised as a member of the community in question. And then there’s the normal requirements, which mandate the electoral committee must find you of good morals and integrity and you can’t be a member of a political party (!).
This has resulted in a few default elections where there has only been one candidate fit to run. Now, some might be inclined to think it’s a dictatorship but if so, a very benevolent one at that, one aimed at building unity and trust between its citizens. (:
Actually there are other parallels there - that party was following the Conservatives rightwards, because, well, that’s where the votes were - but then, what’s the difference? We need an opposition that opposes, that points out the flaws in the government position and hold them to account - not just be a milder version of the above.
And then the members (of which I am not one) found an actual full-blooded socialist to run the show, and most of the rest of the party opposed him, and here we are.
Damned if they did, damned when they didn’t. Ineffective in either case, which is a crime right now.
No, that actually isn’t true. The president just has to be an American citizen by birth. And as long as at least one parent is an American citizen, you are one by birth.
This is how John McCain is an American citizen even though his actual birth place was in Panama.
So yes, this whole distraction about Obama’s physical birthplace is even further from the point. Not only was he born in the US, but as long as his mother was American it wouldn’t matter if he was born on Mars.
Every president to date was either a citizen at the adoption of the Constitution in 1789 or was born in the United States.
There hasn’t been a chance to litigate exactly what “natural-born citizen” means.
It’s quite possible (and even, I think, probable) that “an American citizen by birth” is the meaning they’d adopt if it ever were litigated, but as of right now, it’s not settled law.
I agree we all need to work together. It just remains so frustrating that people won’t acknowledge Trump was obviously far worse for all the things progressives claim to care about, than Hillary would ever be.
I expect her to run again, and I really hope purity trolls swallow all their complaints this next time. Even Noam Chomsky was against Trump, because he’s smart. I hope other people show they’re actual progressives and vote pragmatism for the future.
And I’ll shut up towards others against Trump if that’s what it takes. Just frustrating to have been Nadered again.
It actually is that simple. What “natural born” means as far as citizenship is concerned has been litigated and resolved, in cases going back to the 1800s. There is absolutely no reason that this same law wouldn’t be applied to the Presidency - and there is no actual controversy on this issue among actual impartial legal experts in citizenship and immigration.
