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Comment by annoyingnoob | Hacker News Reader

We need to vote out the people pushing for backdoors. They seem to want backdoors at any cost, without any technical understanding of why its a terrible idea. Vote them out!

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Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) - vote for Jamie Harrison on Nov 3 in SC

Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut) - term ends in 2022*

Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) - 2024

Dianne Feinstein (D-California) - 2024 as well... good luck with this one

Been working on that last one for years. At least I'm likely to out live her.

I believe you. I've never understood how she garners so much support in progressive Cali of all places.

She's got money and power and a D in front of her name, she'll get voted in every time in California. Vote Blue no matter who, remember?

> Vote Blue no matter who, remember?

I mean, yes. Feinstein is better than the alternative in the General. The Primaries are the way to get rid of her, I can't believe no one has booted her out yet.

You don't seem to understand the California Jungle/Blanket primary system... All candidates from any/all parties run against each other in the primary, and the top two are the contenders for the general election. Recently this has led to two Democrats always being facing each other in the general election.

In her 2018 race, Feinstein faced another Democrat, who lost by 10 points in the general with Feinstein winning the vast majority of the vote in densely populated areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_Senate_elec...

The most recent general election was Dem vs Dem (due to the unique way that CA primaries work). Feinstein still won a strong majority of the statewide vote. :|

California is not as progressive as you might hope. The cities are full of progressives, but outside the cities is very conservative. You have to be fairly moderate to win statewide office.

Newsom was a reaction to Trump, but sort of an aberration. More than half of our governors have been Republicans, including Regan, who went on be President and a paragon of the GOP.

Since the 80s 14 out of 30 years has been Republicans, and Jerry Brown was 10 of the remaining 16 years, and he's pretty moderate as far as Democrats go.

Nancy Pelosi represents San Francisco. I don't think you can call even the cities progressive.

Pelosi has power and will never be voted out no matter how far she strays from the people she represents.

Even the cities are full of people who are progressive right up until the point that it affects them. Just look at the NIMBY problem we have in SF.

In American politics, voting really doesn't make a difference as much as just having opinions alighted with those of the top 10% of income earners[0]. Making noise and protests are more effective in some ways, but the sad reality is that most of senate/congress is not beholden to the selectorate of all voters, but rather the smaller selectorate of influences that control the advertising and narrative that allows them to continue to be re-elected.

[0]: https://battlepenguin.com/politics/video/does-voting-make-a-...

The video there talks about a study about how people feel about a policy and whether the policy gets passed or not. Then it goes on to extrapolate that to electing humans. The video is right that we have less influence over policy, policy that citizens do not vote on directly. We do directly vote for humans and those votes do count - electoral college is a special case.

Also, I'd bet there are a lot of folks that read HN that are already in the top 10% of income earners. So maybe I'm speaking directly to some of the 10% now.

Just like we needed to vote out the people that voted for the bailouts and the Iraq war.

Politics keeps moving on. I'm still on the Iraq war. I'm not interested on any other issue until we solve that one.

Edit: s/bailouts of/bailouts and/

What are "bailouts of the Iraq war" ?

Maybe OP means both the bailouts in 2008 plus the Iraq war in 2003? Or the fact that the US is still actively involve militarily in predator bombing seven nations?

I meant "and" as you guessed (I think?).

Everyone vowed to vote out the representatives that bailed out Wall Street and left home owners holding the bag. Then whatever came along and poof, that didn't matter.

Same (and more importantly) with the Iraq war. IMO, you voted for it, you're out. Doesn't matter why, doesn't matter what you believed at the time, you're out.

There's been zero accountability on death and destruction on the grandest scale this century, so I don't expect anyone to remotely lift a finger about some IT bill.

If you give up, then the powers that be win by default.

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