U. S Politics: I know why the caged babe screams.

[LongRider]

Cages. 

[Fragile Bird]

Ouch.     

[Altherion]

17 minutes ago, Triskjavikson said:

It's that it cannot be defended on moral grounds the way that many casting such votes seem to think.

It most certainly can. There are many philosophical thought experiments exploring whether or not it is moral to actively choose what you consider to be the lesser evil or to do nothing at the risk of something even worse coming to pass. The most famous of these is probably the Trolley Problem. You may take one side of these arguments rather than another, but the people casting a third party votes need not agree with you.

[Martell Spy]

Citizens United will likely stay the law of the land, now. Oh, and also be supersized. Fortunately though, some brave people chose this moment to stand up to corporate Dems. 

[Bonnot OG]

Worst things about the 2016 election, Trump winning, and Sanders running. I honsetly hate Sanders with a passion. Fake ass centrist trying to pass himself off as a leftist and his cult supports him no matter what. Whiter than a klan rally support base.

[karaddin]

2 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Citizens United will likely stay the law of the land, now. Oh, and also be supersized. Fortunately though, some brave people chose this moment to stand up to corporate Dems. 

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not

[Darth Richard II]

11 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not

I was going to post a similar statement but Poe's Law has become so common lately it's just...if I woke up tomorrow and we we're being invaded by half lizard Nazi's from space I don;t think I would even blink.

[The Anti-Targ]

5 hours ago, Triskjavikson said:

Booker is saying SCOTUS seat should not be filled until Muller investigation is concluded.  Not sure there's a better approach than that though it may unfortunately be toothless.  

ETA;  Larry summed it up nicely in the previous thread.  I am torn on whether I should feel badly for using the term "morons" to describe Jill Stein voters, but any apology I'd offer would probably not be worth much since that is indeed what I believe.  Imagine the person who walked into a voting booth in Michigan with Trump actually having a chance of winning and not choosing to vote the option to block Trump.  Presumably everything you care about if you are a Jill Stein voter is threatened by Trump in an unprecedented way, and you decide to vote for Jill Stein to keep your conscience clear or something?  

That's part of why it's hard to be sympathetic.  It's not just that it helped us get this terrible reality of a result.  It's that it cannot be defended on moral grounds the way that many casting such votes seem to think.

Surely you were listening to the rhetoric about how Hillary was sure to win. On polling day pundits were saying they were 80% sure Hillary would win. And as the popular refrain goes, the two people most surprised by Trump's win were Hillary and Trump. When you believe the lesser of two evils is going to win anyway, you can afford to vote your conscience, or throw in a protest vote. And if California and New York lefty voters get to vote their conscience, then why would a Michigan lefty voter think they couldn't? Aside from Michael Moore (who lefty voters should have been listening to, to be fair) who warned that the rust belt was going to go to Trump, who else thought that PA, MI and WI would be the states that handed Trump the win?

I think the correct analysis is still that the Democrats and Hillary took those states too much for granted and didn't put enough campaign effort into them. 

[Jace, Extat]

Sure, she was at fault for not bolstering the Blue wall, but if you chose not to vote against Trump you chose to help him. Regardless of where you live or how bad your tummy felt about the mean lady.

[IamMe90]

2 hours ago, karaddin said:

I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not

Clearly sarcasm

[lokisnow]

51 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Surely you were listening to the rhetoric about how Hillary was sure to win. On polling day pundits were saying they were 80% sure Hillary would win. And as the popular refrain goes, the two people most surprised by Trump's win were Hillary and Trump. When you believe the lesser of two evils is going to win anyway, you can afford to vote your conscience, or throw in a protest vote. And if California and New York lefty voters get to vote their conscience, then why would a Michigan lefty voter think they couldn't? Aside from Michael Moore (who lefty voters should have been listening to, to be fair) who warned that the rust belt was going to go to Trump, who else thought that PA, MI and WI would be the states that handed Trump the win?

I think the correct analysis is still that the Democrats and Hillary took those states too much for granted and didn't put enough campaign effort into them. 

I don’t really know the ins and outs of the various campaigns, but I wonder if the infamous three states that elected trump, I wonder if Obama’s campaign was more careful with those states and paid much closer attention to them because his campaign assumed that because obama was black no state in the northeast was guaranteed and therefore they had to proactively earn every state, because nothing is guaranteed to a black candidate.

Clintons campaign seems to think the north east states that had voted dem since 92 were hers by right, and blinded by her white privilege just assumed she had those three states in the bag, nothing had to be earned, just awarded.

[karaddin]

2 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

Clearly sarcasm

I was giving the benefit of the doubt, because surely if you're someone that expects the left to fall in line and vote for the party candidate then the acceptable way for the left to pursue their agenda is to run in the primary and expect the centre to return the favour. Unless you're not referring to the primary result and instead people people abrasive online, in which case I'm still misreading the post.

Regardless, I really wish both the left and the centre would stop fighting the 2016 primary. Discussing how to avoid making the mistakes that happened all over again is of course important, but pointing fingers and yelling at each other isn't accomplishing that. Personally I think putting up a bland centrist candidate is a sure fire way to lose the next election, but that doesn't mean anyone was in the wrong for thinking Hilary was the right approach last one. More than anything, I think whoever the Dems run needs to present something to vote for, I just don't think voting against even the monsters that you've got now will turn people out in the numbers necessary to overcome suppression and gerrymandering.

I'm not saying it all needs to be rosy and conflict free going forward, the stakes are incredibly high and there is radical disagreement on how to proceed, but at some point there really needs to be an amnesty on opinions held in 2016.

[Relic]

4 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

...if I woke up tomorrow and we we're being invaded by half lizard Nazi's from space I don;t think I would even blink.

well, that's why we need a SPACE FORCE!, so I guess Trump really is onto something. Hope SPACE FORCE! helps you sleep better at night!

[LongRider]

6 hours ago, lokisnow said:

Clintons campaign seems to think the north east states that had voted dem since 92 were hers by right

On election night I was reading Daily Kos and there were posters who were saying not to worry as the Rust Belt was her firewall and she'd be OK.  Didn't work out that way and I read in various places later that she could have sent GOTV folks that way but didn't.   

Howard Dean's 50 state strategy, it works, pay attention Dems.

[Maithanet]

19 minutes ago, LongRider said:

On election night I was reading Daily Kos and there were posters who were saying not to worry as the Rust Belt was her firewall and she'd be OK.  Didn't work out that way and I read in various places later that she could have sent GOTV folks that way but didn't.   

Howard Dean's 50 state strategy, it works, pay attention Dems.

The handwringing over Clinton failing to invest in MI and WI is misplaced.  If Clinton had won PA and only MI + WI had given Trump his margin of victory, then you'd have a point.  But Clinton undeniably invested a huge amount of attention and resources into winning PA and it wasn't enough.  So IF we assume that Clinton had better information and instead of investing in reach targets like AZ and GA instead spent her money in MI and WI, then yes, it's possible (not certain) that she could have won those two states and lost the election more narrowly than she did.  Would that really have been so much better?  Because it makes no difference to me. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

4 hours ago, Relic said:

well, that's why we need a SPACE FORCE!, so I guess Trump really is onto something. Hope SPACE FORCE! helps you sleep better at night!

You are wrong about the purpose of space force. Trump wants to be able to greet his superiors with a guard of honour when they arrive.

7 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Sure, she was at fault for not bolstering the Blue wall, but if you chose not to vote against Trump you chose to help him. Regardless of where you live or how bad your tummy felt about the mean lady.

Not entirely true. I think in super solid blue states like Cali or NY you could afford to keep some moral purity and sit out the last Presidential election. In that sense Susan Sarandon's vote matter jack shit. Her parading before the election claiming Trump isn't worse than Clinton however, that's a different story - that's also what to some degree galls me about Saint Susan protesting Twitler's policies now, afterall it's not worse to that Clinton would've done, right?. As for Stein voters and Bernie voters in swing state, who didn't vote Clinton hit them, and remind them they are as responsible for this monstrosity as actual Trump voters.

[LongRider]

16 minutes ago, Maithanet der Mannschaft said:

So IF we assume that Clinton had better information and instead of investing in reach targets like AZ and GA instead spent her money in MI and WI, then yes, it's possible (not certain) that she could have won those two states and lost the election more narrowly than she did. 

Would she have lost tho?  Never the less, a 50 strategy is still in my mind, the one to pursue.  Isn't that what the RNC did for Trump?

[Maithanet]

21 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Would she have lost tho?  Never the less, a 50 strategy is still in my mind, the one to pursue.  Isn't that what the RNC did for Trump?

Well, if we take the 2016 results and flip MI and WI to Clinton then it would be Trump 280-Clinton 256.  So yes, she would have still lost. 

And I'm not arguing against a 50 state strategy, I think that Democrats failing to even fight in huge swaths of the country is indeed a huge problem and it's why the House is such a gerrymandered mess.  But it wasn't a strategic failure that led to Clinton's loss; her voters were really badly allocated into states that were not electorally important. 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

9 hours ago, Bonnot OG said:

Worst things about the 2016 election, Trump winning, and Sanders running. I honsetly hate Sanders with a passion. Fake ass centrist trying to pass himself off as a leftist and his cult supports him no matter what. Whiter than a klan rally support base.

A lot of you can play around with the whole, "this is just about Sarandon" argument from the last thread, but I see things like this, and I know the argument is a lot bigger. Dems are super divided to the point of saying ridiculous things to anger a huge portion of their voting base. Clinton was the worst thing about the last election, pal. The Dems consistently find the only candidates who cannot beat the obviously worse choice. How does this happen?

[Centrist Simon Steele]

8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Surely you were listening to the rhetoric about how Hillary was sure to win. On polling day pundits were saying they were 80% sure Hillary would win. And as the popular refrain goes, the two people most surprised by Trump's win were Hillary and Trump. When you believe the lesser of two evils is going to win anyway, you can afford to vote your conscience, or throw in a protest vote. And if California and New York lefty voters get to vote their conscience, then why would a Michigan lefty voter think they couldn't? Aside from Michael Moore (who lefty voters should have been listening to, to be fair) who warned that the rust belt was going to go to Trump, who else thought that PA, MI and WI would be the states that handed Trump the win?

I think the correct analysis is still that the Democrats and Hillary took those states too much for granted and didn't put enough campaign effort into them. 

I wanted to bring this point up too. I think a lot of protest votes came from the belief that Trump would never win. As smart as people are, they really have forgotten how much they thought Trump wasn't winning. No one thought he would win. Except like two dudes podcasting from a garage somewhere and Bill Maher.