Sorry Andy… My reply was to coward not you
Unless a person can demonstrate conclusively that a candidate is somehow exactly and entirely and definitely perfectly aligned to them politically then people are pretty much always voting for the lesser of two evils. I’ve never found, at the federal level, a candidate that I felt was even that close to my own viewpoints much less a perfect match, and outside of a few Nader-esque outlyers I never found one that I felt was especially honest or free from potential corruption.
LKapsedPacifict’s claim might be true, I guess, but it seems to gloss over the reasons one thinks anyone should be president. I contend that if a person is not voting to promote the common good in some tangible sense then they’re not voting constructively or rationally. Intelligent voting means voting for who or what will benefit the most people/society the most, and do the least harm.
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I would humbly submit Bill, Bernie, and folks like Tammy Duckworth as counterexamples. I get it, though, there’s a level of unfairness to how the Rs targeted her for 20+ years that makes one root for her. She didn’t respond by running for office, though. She responded by avoiding the question until all her chips were on the table.
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No problem.
This election is a “live and learn” moment for the Democratic Party, but the next four years will also be “live and learn” for lots of Trump supporters.
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The perfect is the enemy of the good.
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That’s pretty much it. I can’t vote Republican because they enjoy attacking people who look like me, and Democrats think I owe them something for being basically decent. I’m not allowed to want more than that, apparently.
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Forget all this ridiculous analysis of votes stuff. The reason Trump got appointed as president is that your owners think they can make more money that way.
I have never been presented with a qualified candidate who shared every one of my beliefs and do not expect to see one at any point in my lifetime. Even counting the third party candidates, Hillary was far and away the best available combination of qualifications and policy on the ballot.
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I agree, though the establishment is split in the internal progressive movement which actually makes me feel better about them as a whole. I think Ellison is what is needed to win states back, and to build a roster of new Democrats. I don’t see anyone else having that ability.
I’m talking about ideological purists. I haven’t known anyone who said they were one, and I haven’t even read an interview with one. It’s just that anyone who feels apathetic toward Clinton gets called a purist, and the root causes of this apathy go unaddressed. If the Clinton camp addressed these and was contrite about it, then I would have felt better about voting for Clinton. She never even have lip service to progressives and our issues with her. I’m not asking for purity or perfection, just something better, which is not at all too much to ask for
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The ‘Lesser of Two Evils’ calculus is the bedrock of the Democratic Leadership Council strategy, which basically promotes Democrats who are actually Republicans with a progressive social policy. Hillary messed up the calculus due to her massive unlikability and Neocon in drag foreign policy. For example, her crime in Libya was not Benghazi, but promoting the smash and grab that took out Ghaddafi but left the country as a failed state. Does that pattern seem familiar?
It’s more than sad that Trump and the Republicans have almost full control of the government, but it’s a Greek tragedy of how hubris and lust for power in the Democratic party screwed over the majority of the country. By all means, keep looking at the finger pointing at the Russians and not at three fingers pointed back at the rot revealed within the DNP.
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Candidate who intentionally campaigned to appeal to moderate Republicans turns off left-leaning voters. WHO WOULDA SEEN THAT COMING?
Telling people “I’m your only choice, deal with it” is not a recipe for high voter turnout and scolding your voters for being unrealistic isn’t going to get you future electoral victories.
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So while Cory is busy blaming People of Color and women for Trump’s win, a lot of us have noticed something a lot more interesting:
It’s almost as if more people voted for Clinton than for Trump…and it’s almost as if the votes of women, young people, and minorities are worth less than the votes of “Real Americans”…
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I guess they were racialized by their parents?
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This is exactly it. They stayed home because of the steady drumbeat of hate propaganda.
To Learned, so you're saying because you felt slighted by the Clinton campaign Trump is clearly the better option. Purity or not, apathetic voting here shows a lack of having a grasp of the larger implications. I'm not trying to be a dick, I just think having negative personal feelings towards Clinton and having them overshadow your decision to vote meant that you and others didn't see the gravity of what Trump is bringing. But as I said in an earlier comment, this will clearly galvanize the left and we'll see where that takes us. In any case you did your part to destroy Democratic centrist right politics so I guess that's a good thing.
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This argument depends on a bogus assumption that fools nobody, in a different context.
When the RIAA is totting up the value that downloading mp3s costs the recording industry they insist that every download is a lost sale. If this criminal hadn’t stolen that track he woulda bought it. He woulda! Phooey, bogus assumption.
Likewise, disappointed Hillary supporters are pleased to assume that any Dem who didn’t bother to go and vote would just naturally have voted for Hillary if he had voted, so his nonvote must represent a vote deducted from HRC’s total.
Yeah? I dragged myself to the polls because there were some downticket and local races I cared about. But when I got to the “for President” section I wrote in Spongebob.
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And yet nearly the same graphic would apply to most presidential elections in recent memory (excepting 2008, an extraordinary year in many ways). Low turnout is the Achilles heel of the Democratic party dating back to 1968.
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Fewer than any in history? I think you mean more than. More interesting: He got almost the same number of votes as the republican candidates in the past three elections.
