And she still will be elected, because this year we had to have joke candidates on both sides. I guess it's probably the best time to vote 3rd party.
I keep (wishful thinking) envisioning a scenario where he gets just enough votes that all of a sudden everyone on the fence realizes that maybe he could win and joins in, and then he launches ahead
Wishful thinking and politics aside: there's a term for that phenomenon on the tip of my tongue, but I can't quite place it. Can anyone think of one? Where there's a slow growth until you get just enough of something and then it takes off?
Yeah, I know what you mean. It's just that this time around, BOTH "major party" choices are SO bad, that you look at it and think "who cares whether Gigantic Douche or Turd Sandwich wins?" Ya know?
Thus, it becomes a choice of 1) making a symbolic vote for a third party to "show them", 2) helping Clinton win, and 3) helping Trump win.
Given the potential outcomes of Trump vs Clinton, a lot of people believe (rightly, IMO) that this electoral cycle is not a good time to make symbolic gestures or long-term strategic voting games. Too much is at stake. Status quo sucks, but is still infinitely better than the alternative.
- Obama vs Romney
- Obama vs McCain
- Bush Jr vs Kerry
- Bush Jr vs Gore
- Clinton vs Dole
- Clinton vs Bush Sr
Unfortunately, because this argument was abused so many times before, it's hard to convince people that this time is different.
And a lot of us believe (rightly, IMO) that both Clinton and Trump are so equally bad, that there's no effective difference.
Me personally, if Gary wasn't in the race, I wouldn't cast a vote for President at all. shrug
Whereas 4 years of a sociopath with megalomania, a definitive authoritarian streak, and a massive populist backing, I'm not so sure about.
Let me put it this way. As a third party supporter, your strategy, presumably, is to slowly accrue vote until your candidate of choice (or really, anyone who's willing to reform the electoral system to make third parties viable) breaks past the barrier. This presupposes that there is such a thing as elections, though. Say what you want about Clinton, but there's no viable threat from her in that regard. She might be prone to skirting the rules, but she doesn't rewrite them. Trump, on the other hand, seems to be a fan of the "strong hand". Last time my country of birth went for that, we ended up with a dictator in all but name. And the parallels between what I heard people say there then, and what I see people in US say now, are making me very nervous.
Corruption is the #1 thing that destroys countries. Nothing else comes close.
A "sociopath with megalomania" on the other hand can't really do much to hurt the country (no one would let him). And I don't see how "a definitive authoritarian streak, and a massive populist backing" are a problem.
i.e. secret damage to a country is much worse than open damage.
I can see how someone might have said that before the 20th century happened.
Really? Militaristic jingoism has historically been a pretty popular choice to commit national suicide, for example.
The thing about corruption is that it's not violently destructive. It slowly erodes the system, but it takes a lot of time, and the process is reversible at practically any point.
> A "sociopath with megalomania" on the other hand can't really do much to hurt the country (no one would let him).
That seems to be a common retort that I've encountered among reluctant Trump supporters - that checks and balances would prevent anything really damaging.
I don't feel like it's particularly well supported by experience. Just to give a simple example, not only Japanese-American internment during WW2 was found to be legal and constitutional, but the corresponding SCOTUS decision (Korematsu) still stands. Which means that the president can sign a similar EO, and it'll be in force per existing precedent until SCOTUS gets a chance to overturn - and even then there are no guarantees.
And then there's a slew of accumulated post-9/11 precedent, which, in the hands of someone who thinks that torture is a good idea, among other reasons, "because they deserve it", could blow up big time.
> And I don't see how "a definitive authoritarian streak, and a massive populist backing" are a problem.
I'm not sure how to respond to that.
If you mean that you don't see it as desirable, but also don't think that it's dangerous, I would like to remind you that this is something that has repeated many times in history in the past 100 years alone, and pretty much every time resulted in authoritarian societies, with all that entails - political dictatorships, massive human rights violations, and often, wars with neighbors.
If you mean that you actually see it as desirable, I don't think that we have sufficient common ground to meaningfully discuss this subject.
There's really never a chance for third parties to rise in the US because we use a crappy voting system (first past the post). We should change our voting system to Range Voting [1].
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/gary-johnson-libertarian-...
Prisons:
>Johnson accepted at least $9,000 in campaign donations from a prison company that ultimately won a state contract. By the time he left office, New Mexico led the country in for-profit prisons, housing 44 percent of its inmates in private facilities. Only Alaska, with 31 percent, came close.
>In 2000, after four inmates and a guard were killed in private facilities, Johnson vetoed an oversight bill and startled reporters by insisting that New Mexico had the best prisons in the nation.
Poverty:
>Within just a few months, the state had knocked more than 16,000 people off its welfare rolls, and its poverty rate had risen to first in the nation, according to a report from the state’s legislature.
Schools:
>For Democratic legislators, the trouble wasn’t just that Johnson wanted to divert money from the public system to private institutions. It was that his plan would privilege rich families in the long run, said Charles Bowyer, who served as government-relations director of the teachers’ union during Johnson’s tenure. Tuition at the most prestigious private schools often cost around $8,000 or $9,000 — meaning low-income families could never afford them, even with vouchers. And private schools would still be able to reject special-needs students.
Keep in mind, Johnson is running for President, not Chief Cartographer.
You can call our foreign policy a joke, but it's inexcusable for someone running for the most powerful office in the world to not have even a cursory knowledge of it.
I was going to vote for Hillary, but after Sander's success, she started making promises that just mimicked his. She is not going to bring jobs back to the United States.
I might not vote for a president this year. I feel kinda dizzy just writing that last sentance.
There's a small part of me that thinks if the right third party candidate/person, back by a ton of money, jumped into the race this week, he/she might win.
At this point, if Bill Maher jumped in; I would vote for him. Hell--if Jimmy Kimmel jumped in, I would vote for him.
I don't even know these two guys, but I trust they would try to do the right thing, or at least delegate to the right people.
I rember feeling a sence of doom when Regan was running, but the world was so different, and I was in high school.
As someone said before, this election is beyond weird.
And why is that important? The government can always lower the minimum wage to adjust the number of jobs if it decreases.
Keep in mind, "Duverger's Law" isn't a law in the same sense that gravity is. That is, it's more of an observation of how things usually are... it's not an inviolable fundamental principle of the universe.
If you vote for one of those two people, you get to influence that outcome.
You're not influencing the outcome when the outcome is the same in both cases.
If you haven't heard of Johnson Weld, please hear them out and at least watch their 60 Minutes interview from last night: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-libertarian-candidate...
Effectively, there is no 3rd party this year :(