Not going to happen, but I wonder how a mixed party ticket would do. Kamala (or whoever) + Mitt Romney as VP ?
Has it ever been done?
Would it work to attract the center/swing vote, or more likely to be a negative?
Has it ever been done?
Would it work to attract the center/swing vote, or more likely to be a negative?
I think it would be very hard to convince the liberal-progressive base (i.e. the core of the party) of the DNC to go for this.
> Has it ever been done?
Before the 12th Amendment was passed, the VP came from the opposing party[1]. This didn't work particularly well in practice, which is why nobody remembers the 12th Amendment :-)
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelfth_Amendment_to_the_Unite...
(I'm not saying whether or not I would. But I think this kind of brinkmanship is a very dangerous game to play, especially in the context of a cross-party ticket.)
I'm not happy about it, but given my view on why I should vote I don't feel comfortable voting for Trump, Harris, or Biden. Voting for one to spite another would require me first to change my mind on what a vote means or cave on my principles.
https://x.com/VaughnHillyard/status/1811402883604050216
"Our country is going to hell. The critical job of institutions such as Heritage is to lay the groundwork, and Heritage does such an incredible job at that. [...] But this is a great group. They're going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do, when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America, and that's coming."
Here's the whole transcript: https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-delivers-k...
At the same time, Trump has been saying "I know nothing about Project 2025" and "I have no idea who is behind it."
Edit:
Also, CNN says 140 people from the Trump administration worked on Project 2025: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project...
Trump is the kind of guy who will say he is against abortion while asking and paying for his mistress to get one. He has a great sense on how to work populism, but doesn’t really have ideals/policies of his own.
I won't vote for whoever the Democrats propose simply because I dislike Trump. I can't vote for anyone I think will make our country worse, and if Harris is selected I do feel that way about her as well.
A person being a DEI hire doesn't say anything about their ability. You could be a DEI hire that is also good for the job, but you're a DEI hire because the pool of candidates was purposely limited based on certain diversity factors.
You literally just used it as a way to disqualify her as a valid candidate. You said nothing about her skills or accomplishments, merely that she had certain demographic characteristics and therefor wasn't a good candidate.
If that's not what you actually meant, I suggest thinking about what you're trying to say in the future and phrasing it differently.
I don't view Harris as competent or fit for duty. We have quite a few issues coming to a head, from economic problems we keep sweeping under the rug to geopolitical challenges not seen in decades. I have no faith that she will be able to steer us through without making things worse. None of those concerns have anything to do with her being a DEI hire, I just view it as fact that she was.
Also, of course, if she's the democratic nominee then you're going to get either her or trump, so, dunno, make choices based on this decision? Do you really think trump and the republicans are ever going to care about people refusing to vote?
I don't have any concerns with being a DEI hire alone, it really doesn't say anything about the candidate. In the context of a person I already view to be a bad fit for the role, the fact that the person is in the role partly due to the DEI model of selecting candidates is important in my opinion. Its important not because she was a DEI hire, its important because a DEI approach out her in a role she isn't fit for and she's now potentially being offered a promotion.
> Do you really think trump and the republicans are ever going to care about people refusing to vote?
I don't have any expectation of either party actually caring how I vote. I'm just one voter living in a non-swing state. I have effectively no say what happens at the federal level, and my whole point at the beginning is this comment chain was simply that I won't be voting for President if the choices were Trump/Biden or Trump/Harris. I don't expect that to have any meaningful impact unless I'm part of a much larger group of voters who feel their best choice is to opt out.
How is Harris the same as Trump? Trump a convicted felon and rapist and god knows what he did on Epstein's Island. Trump said he will be a dictator for one day (hint: it won't be just a day) vs Harris a criminal prosecutor who understands the importance for upholding law & order.
How is Harris going to be bad for the country?
This is not about voting for Harris or whoever will be nominated. This is about voting against a wanna be dictator who wants to dismantle our democracy and constitution.
I didn't say Trump and Harris are the same. I think both will be bad for our country, but for very different reasons.
I haven't seen anything from Harris that makes me believe she is competent or fit for office. While in Congress I was never impressed by her public hearings, she either stayed silent or meandered through very lazy arguments that were often illogical and surprising coming from a lawyer. As VP she has either been completely absent or ineffective. She was tapped to be in charge of correcting our immigration issues for example, other than a single photo of at the border I haven't seen anything come of it.
I don't expect I need to lay out why Trump is dangerous for our country. We may disagree on details like whether his felony conviction was unbiased or if you can be labeled a rapist without a conviction, but functionally we're very much on the same page of who he is as a person and why he shouldn't represent the country.
> This is not about voting for Harris or whoever will be nominated. This is about voting against a wanna be dictator who wants to dismantle our democracy and constitution.
This is where we really have different opinions. My while point in starting this comment thread is that I am sick of having to pick between the least shitty option. It isn't sustainable and ultimately there are very bad scenarios that can play out if voters allow two parties to offer whatever choices they want us to pick between. If Trump wishes to dismantle democracy and our constitution I'll never see that day anyway, I'll either be dead in a battlefield or on the other end of an absolutely terrible, horrific war that never should have happened.
Governmental budget shouldn't be treated as your household budget.
It's different. It allows us to invest in the economy, create jobs, create new innovations etc. [0]
> If Trump wishes to dismantle democracy and our constitution I'll never see that day anyway'
This is what the MAGAs / Heritage Foundation have achieved so far:
- Take away woman's reproductive rights
- SCOTUS undid a 40 year old law that now makes it harder for federal governments to regulate, this includes clean air, water etc. So corporations can focus on increasing profits and screw the little guy.
- SCOTUS reduced the scope of the anti-bribery law - weakening democracy.
Just some examples.
Some things that will happen when Trump gets into power again:
- Women's reproductive will be further decimated
- Schedule F will be reintroduced - making it easier for Trump to replace administrative employees with Trump loyalists.
- Higher taxes for the working class - more tax cuts for the rich. That's why Elon and other Billionaires are donating heavily to Trump's campaign. Selling out the little people.
Look up Project 2025 for more.
Are you willing to gamble our rights and the rights of future generations?
What if everything or most of it comes to pass outlined in Project 2025?
Would you be OK with that?
[0] See this book: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/economics-and-philos...
Did you actually read the project 2025 doc or are you just parroting back what you were told to think?
https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/jul/12/project-2025-...
Which page number was that?
In any case of course Trump had nothing to do with it, it was written for him not by him (as if).
Trump also didn't plan and participate in the decade+ Federalist overthrow of SCOTUS .. that was handed to him on a plate. Like Project 2025.
The first sentence of the first paragraph:
This work, Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise, is a collective effort of hundreds of volunteers who have banded together in the spirit of advancing positive change for America. Our work is by no means the comprehensive compendium of conservative policies, nor is our group the exclusive cadre of conservative thinkers. The ideas expressed in this volume are not necessarily shared by all. What unites us is the drive to make our country better
> In any case of course Trump had nothing to do with it, it was written for him not by him (as if).
Ok great, so he's free to read it or ignore it. Let's not treat the document as if it's Trump's own stated/promised policy then.
does not state that Trump had nothing to do with the document.
Which part explicity and clearly states Trump was not involved?
You know, the part that you claimed existed in your comment above.
You're right I should have said that the document *shows* that he had nothing to do with it rather than *says* he had nothing to do with it. It's implicit not explicit.
The doc includes 7 pages worth of contributor names (starting page xxv) and Trump is not one of them.
So either way, it's careless to say that "Trump will dismantle our rights (see project 2025)" when he is not actually affiliated with Project 2025, as the document *shows*.
(IMO, the sad fact of most democracies nowadays is that the government does in fact tend to reasonably well represent the average of what the voters want, in terms of method if not results. Given the state of them, I think it reflects poorly on the voters, but there's not really any better way to align government and populace)
I wholeheartedly disagree with this take. I owe nothing to the two parties and I don't agree that they get to control everything to the point that I can only pick between two bad options they offer me.
Allowing parties to take this power leaves the door wide open for both parties to end up providing options that want to go in directions fundamentally bad for the country and I have to vote for one of them. To be clear I'm not saying that is the case today, but your view on voting makes that possible.
If one doesn't vote when they feel strongly that both party candidates are harmful, voter participation goes down and it opens the door for a new party to step up and have a legitimate chance. Said another way, refusing to vote when I absolutely disagree with both candidates creates a market for an alternative that wouldn't exist if I gave in and accepted choosing between two bad options.
I don't think he's saying it's desirable, but is an outcome of the FPTP system. If you don't want to pick between only two bad options, then you'll need to eliminate the spoiler effect by switching to something like STV.
Neither option is helpful this time around though. That said, I'd vote for congressional representatives that I believe actually will push for such a change if that option was available to me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_third-party_and_indepe...
Decreased voter participation would signal a growing lack of faith or trust in the two major parties. That can open doors for fund raising for third parties, because they now can point to a percent of the population that historically did vote and stopped. Similarly, it would open doors for gaining support and votes because they can make the same argument to voters - 20% (or whatever the decrease is) of voters gave up on both parties. Join our party if you lost faith in the others, and in a 3 way race that puts us very much in the hunt for fundamentally shaking up the system we have today.
This isn't just an opinion certain voters have, it's the truth. A vote for anyone other than one of the two parties with the best odds of winning is a "wasted vote" in the sense that when the third party candidate voted for doesn't win (and they almost certainly wont) that vote can't go to support anyone else. Our voting system makes that true.
The only way a third party could ever win in under our current system would be if they managed to get a massive majority of the voters to vote for them, and a massive majority of the voters knew that the third part was going to be getting a massive majority of the votes before anyone voted.
It's extremely unlikely that a third party could gain that much support. Especially because elections in the US tend to be pretty close. The best any president has ever managed was something like 60% of the popular vote.
Trump basically did just that and Bernie Sanders came close.
The US does not have successful third party runs because of the uncertainty and difficulty of getting onto the ballot, the possibility of getting onto enough ballots that you will harm your allies but not enough ballots to win, and the fact that the electoral college means you can't rely on running up the vote in your home regions in order to get yourself into the running on a national level. It's not FPTP that prevents third party presidential runs in the US, but state electoral administration, state primaries, and the electoral college.
In any case, the effect is the same. It doesn't matter why the US only has two major candidates at this presidential election and the last presidential election and the next presidential election. It just matters that the US only has two major candidates at this presidential election and the last presidential election and the next presidential election. Abstention is nothing more than half a vote against the candidate closest to you. It's not a motivator for an extra candidate to run next time.
In this reading, the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact will probably have a bigger consequence than Ranked Choice Voting, because it will allow candidates to run up the vote in home regions, which will create new paths to the White House. Ranked Choice Voting just allows voters of the least favored candidate to make a protest and then come home. If you had had Bernie, Biden and Trump running at the last election with RCV, then Biden would have won if Bernie voters had preferenced him, and Trump would have won if they didn't. There's no actual alternative in which Bernie wins. So why would you stand if you're guaranteed to lose? It costs money and burns bridges. The extra candidates want a lower hurdle to winning (for instance, 38% in a field of four), not a higher hurdle (like 50%+1 in a field of four).
The consequences are different at the level of an individual district, because a member of Congress is a very different role than a national president.
From a country with Preferential Voting: you run to make preferencing deals that benefit the people that vote for your particular ideals.
It's on the record that X% of the popuation support the stance you take.
Further, it goes all the way to the houses and breaks the party stranglehold; Australia has 10 Independents, more than Canda, the US, and the UK combined.
Politics shoud be about more than "a little king" as POTUS, it should be about the house reflecting the proportional views of the population and weight being given to views represented and the deals that aligned views can make together.
The US FPTP system was doomed (from an iterative dynamic system perspective) to devolve into a two party non representative end game despite the express opposition of many Founders to Party Politics. It's what happens when a poort voting system is scaled up over centuries.
You are free to do that but then dont complain if your rights are taken away.
If you want it to, you are free try to change the Constitution.
I hope to never see that day come to pass and will do whatever I can to avoid it, but we aren't left with only complaining if fundamental rights truly are being taken away.
As much as plurality voting sucks, that's not true unless you assume there is only one election ever.
In reality the game-theory is iterative: What happens this time influences players next time. If X is concerned about losing to Y, they have an incentive to court voters that previously went for Z.
At the end of the day the average person is just trying to live a decent life where they and their loved ones can be happy. We all have different ideas of what that takes, but we don't need to liken those we disagree with to Nazis out to destroy democracy.
The US does not have a reasonable voting system. It’s not compulsory, it’s not ranked choice, and you vote for persons not parties.
You have a duopoly that’s more or less set up so that a third choice will never be available.
You aren’t here to pick an ideal candidate. You are here to pick the one that aligns most with your view that can win. Otherwise you get someone you definitely don’t want.
The problem I have today is that I fundamentally disagree with both options and think we will be worse off with either one.
I am totally fine accepting and supporting a candidate that I generally agree with, or even just agree with on a few key policies. I'm not okay with having to pick between one candidate who I view to be a sociopathic narcisist or another who I view has being well on his way to serious cognitive issues. Assuming Harris is the new candidate, I'm now left with the narcisist and a candidate who I view as unfit for duty, and an ineffective candidate who fell into this position thanks to a combination of DEI and a white house that refused to accept the limitations of the president.
If, on the other hand, voter participation goes down noticeably it can drive change. Both parties will know they lost support and, more importantly for them, have voters to win over. It also opens the door for creating a real chance for a third party that doesn't exist when we all continue to accept the unofficial duopoly that started way back when Hamilton and Jefferson were tearing the union in two.
I'm not American so system and the dynamic might be different there, but this comes off as wishful thinking driving a car down a cliff.
Voter participation among young is painfully low in Japan (a country I follow election results and politics), and almost every young ones reasons for this, as far as I know essentially boggles down to "it's useless for me to vote, older generation out vote our concerns and politics always favours the elder. Not voting at least sends my dissociation and discontentment to it all".
But decades of "not voting" have only told the politicians ONE message: the young voting bloc don't matter, because they don't vote, and our resources are better spent to favor the older bloc.
It's a circular logic, a self fulfilling prophecy, a local suboptimum with steep gradients.
Do I like it? Absolutely not. Do I expect to feel this way again in future elections? Also no, I honestly don't know how both parties allowed such bad candidates to be considered the best we have to offer as a country.
That said, I view not voting more akin to jury nullification than driving a car off a cliff. Not acting is different than doing something insane. I'm not sure how well known jury nullification is outside the US (or even in the US), but effectively it boils down to a juror voting not guilty despite the evidence, usually because they either disagree with the law or don't think the person on trial should be punished.
Jury nullification have a lot of uncomfortable implications to the legal system and that's one of the reasons it's not shared to potential juries, but implicit asked. The systematic implication can be pararelled to politician's in the long run deciding nonvoters concern can be ignored.
Jury nullification comparisons comes with a bit of a blind faith in the other juries (because in this situation you're not replaced, the resting juries just have more votes) are sane.
That said I know you're not advocating for nonvoting as a viable long term strategy but just for this one occasion. I'm not faulting that and can understand it. Advocating for it to others is a bit more problematic and the point I'm contending on in a public forum, in case many agrees to that stance.
On a jury the expectstion is that you will vote based solely on the logic of the facts and legal interpretations presented. Jury nullification is a choice to go against this, going outside what the system wants you to believe is your duty because you disagree with that premise.
Here, not voting is going against this unwritten rule that we must pick between the two options and that is our civic duty to vote for one or the other no matter what. Sitting out for a specific election is ignoring what the system wants us to do when we disagree with the assumption that we must choose between the two options given.
Is there a minimum turnout needed? I'm pretty sure there isn't. All the diehards will always vote for the Dems or Reps. And everyone else is not voting, not voting for an alternate candidate.
Sounds like the fewer swing voters there are, the better.
Sure, maybe if participation dropped suddenly to 20% there would be comments and reactions, but anything over 40% would barely get a few curious articles and no real difference.
I'm not saying I need to agree with everything a candidate says, or even most of it. I need to at least believe that we won't be worse off as a country with the candidate I vote for. I can't sat that for Trump, couldn't say that for Biden, and wouldnt say that for Harris if she is selected.
People frequently make this statement and I think it’s wrong at face value.
If you vote you are giving legitimacy to the beltway uniparty. If the election is “free and fair” why does voting give you the right to complain?
But talking about "beltway uniparty" is indicative of a level of lacking intellectual curiosity that's genuinely sad. You can do better than that.
Maybe if this was twitter or a dinner party and you're just going for cheap laughs, sure, whatever, but I dunno, I guess this place isn't much different? Maybe it could be though?
You need to play the long game and vote for the best interests of your country, even if that means voting for someone you don't like.
If I don't vote, and if many others also stay home, both parties would scramble to gain support and third parties that previously had no chance at least have a potential market opportunity to break the two party system.
Am I allowing my voice to go silent and accepting everyone else to pick my president? Sure, and I don't prefer that, though in a representative democracy I also recognize that my vote doesn't matter anyway if I live in a state that swings the other way. As it so happens, I generally vote Democrat and live in a very Republican state.
Also do you think the next 4 years will be similarly good/bad under either candidate? Or do you think one would bring the country more in line with your preference, but don't want to vote in the hopes of bringing about change to the dual party system, or to make the parties try harder to meet the needs of voters like you in future elections?
> Also do you think the next 4 years will be similarly good/bad under either candidate?
With Biden and Trump, yes I felt both would put us in similarly bad positions going forward. Their policies overlap in some surprising ways, from wanting to lock down our southern border to printing money like it's going out of style. They also differ in some ways, where Biden has seemed to have very little ability to keep the peace globally (I personally don't think many leaders respect or desr who he is today), Trump is a loose canon and I could see him playing a very dangerous game of chicken.
With Harris, I just don't see her as competent at all. At a good time maybe that doesn't matter too much, but there are quite a few situations in the world that require careful, decisive, reasoned responses and I simply don't see her doing that well or even taking it seriously.
That won't work. A non-vote says absolutely nothing about what needs to be done to get that vote. A vast quantity of non-votes are, in fact, not gettable: most non-voters are apathetic and they will never vote, full stop. Many others are, for lack of a better term, snowflakes who will refuse to vote for anyone who does not implement every bullet point of the program that they have in their head, and will therefore never vote, because their standards are impossible to meet.
Basically, most non-voters are either lost causes, really fickle, or have demands that rebuff a larger number of reliable voters and are incompatible with each other -- go and try to figure out who wants what. It's impossible. Parties can't read your mind, if you want better candidates you have to communicate your demands explicitly, and not voting communicates effectively nothing. It's like refusing to choose between spaghetti and curry and secretly hoping they offer you a hamburger instead. They won't. They'll cycle through a dozen other dishes you hate until, perhaps, they randomly stumble upon something you like, (or something you think you like, but ultimately don't.) It's not their fault: you're not telling them what to do! A better methodology is to vote in local races or primaries: that will show up in their statistics, letting them know what it is that you do like.
Which I fine, I was just genuinely curious. I don’t have a vote in the US so I’m not worried about how I spend mine.
- staying home strongly implies your ok with Trump winning and the GOP platform being implemented completely.
When I reference not voting I mean specifically for President. Thanks for calling that out.
You can view it however you want, it doesn’t make it true. Perhaps it would help to consider that one of the two candidates will be leading after the election, and make your decision based off of which of the two outcomes you would prefer.
All the rhetoric that exists to try and drive/guilt people into the ballot box exists for the purpose of trying to get more people to turn out for their preferred candidate.
I'd argue that most votes are wasred given that most states are solidly aligned with one party or another. I happen to live in a strongly Republican state, making every ballot I've cast for Democrats effectively meaningless.
Literally nobody here is doing that.
> Abstaining provides no kind of signal or message to the body politic.
This is true and irrelevant. Not wanting to spend the (rounding up) 10 seconds to glance at and fill out the Presidential portion of a ballot nor waste the ink from your pen to do so before dropping it in the post simply because you do not like any of the viable candidates enough to do so (or for any other reason) is a personal affair.
In the same way that not helping at the scene of an automobile accident is a personal affair, I suppose, yes.
Just not in this reality.
By no means am I saying that is our situation today, but your view of how voters must decide leaves absolutely no room for voters to decide that neither option is acceptable.
And no, your ludicrous example doesn't change that.
You literally said that voters should pick which of the two options seem best. So again, if given the choice of Hitler and Himmler should voters be held to that standard? If not, is it reasonable for voters to disagree with the vote and choose not to be party to it?
Such an dilemma doesn't occur in a Washminster system with preferential voting, that it does in the antiquated US election system is damning.
For president specifically, I usually vote for the least obnoxious or most amusing third party.
I don't expect to agree 100% with a candidate, heck I'm happy when I agree with two or three policies that I find important. But I just can't accept having to pick between two directions that I think are both fundamentally bad and dangerous.
If one side will cause significantly more damage than the other, why would you not want to limit the damage?
If you have examined the political agendas of both candidates and think they will cause equal harm, then I see your point. But I don't see how it can apply to this election.
In this election I only see bad outcomes from either candidate (I'm mainly thinking Biden and Trump, though the same for Harris if she is picked).
I can't quantify the bad and I don't know what metrics I would even use. Lets say I thought one would likely lead to economic problems on the scale of the housing crisis and the other would commit a number of troops to die fighting in a foreign war. How would I weigh the damage of those scenarios?
Before deciding not to vote, here’s one thing to maybe consider: which vote is more likely to get us any closer to ranked-choice voting, so that you can vote without caving on your principles in the future, and/or maybe getting rid of the electoral college? Conservatives are benefitting massively from the electoral college, gerrymandering, and strong collective party action. Both voting right, and not voting, delays the possibility of an outcome where we can vote on our principles. Dems are losing the vote often, and losing support for their shared principles as a result, despite having an actual majority, due to the party being splintered over principles and being less willing to vote collectively.
(Note I’m in favor of voting on principles and not blindly on party. I wish we had a voting system that enabled it. Just pointing out the realities of the different party strategies as I see them.)
I've seen a lot of "vote blue no matter who", to the point that it seems a lot of people don't care at all who the specific person is, as long as they aren't on the wrong team.
I'm not opposed to ranked choice voting or straight majority rules voting. I could see voting for congressional representatives that I believe to be serious about such a change, but the president really doesn't have any say in it.
I'm also totally open to other potentials the Democrats could pick. The bar is really low in my opinion, I just need to see someone that I don't expect to be actively harmful to the country, especially with so many different challenging scenarios playing out globally right now.
My viewing water as a non-liquid doesn’t make it less wet. Not voting is a delegated vote for the status quo, i.e. whoever wins.
Where will we be if we all agree that the two parties have full control and we have no choice but to accept whatever they offer us? To me that sounds like a way to ensure that our democracy isn't sustainable.
If someone puts a gun in your hand and says you have no choice but to shoot your spouse or your child, would you actually accept that you must do one or the other? I'm well aware that's an extreme example and I'm not arguing that we are at that level politically today, but accepting one of the two parties no matter what the options are does allow for that scenario later.
Sure. And I agree someone thinking that way shouldn't vote. None of that changes the effects of not voting when one has the right to.
> Where will we be if we all agree that the two parties have full control and we have no choice but to accept whatever they offer us?
Most people seeking to justify civic nonparticipation ignore primaries and early campaign work. Or the fact that ballots have more than one line item.
> accepting one of the two parties no matter what the options are does allow for that scenario later
Not voting cedes control. There are zero historic examples of civic nonparticipation resulting in a more responsive government. Someone who doesn't vote functionally accepts the status quo. That they don't understand what they're doing isn't relevant.
Put another way: there were hundreds of elections in 2023 [1]. A non-voter had precisely the same impact on each of them as they do where they live.
At least for the Democratic Presidential candidate, we weren't offered a primary or early campaign work for anyone that may actually be the candidate.
I will almost certainly vote for down ballot races this year though. I should have been more clear in earlier posts, my issue is with the presidential ballot specifically and not down ballot races.
Compare that to Trump's recorded: Exploded deficits due to tax cuts. Banning abortion. More power given to corporations over people. Harming our alliances. Maybe you disagree with this characterization, but so many people that he chose for his administration came out and said how terrible of a President he was.
I'm not a Kamala fan, but the choice is so easy.
I don't actually know what her economic policy would be, a primary sure would have been helpful there. If it's a continuation of the current policy, I'm not sure how long they can kick a can down the road though so far it hasn't exploded.
Immigration is a really bad mark for her in my book. She was put in charge of fixing our immigration issues and she has don't nothing from what I've seen. She went to the border once for a speech and photo op, but that doesn't really fix much. I only expect that to get worse when she has all issues of the Oval Office on her plate.
Foreign policy is where she very much concerns me. Obama fumbled through and made mistakes like drawing red lines with invisible ink. He had the fortune of doing that when we were still primarily dealing with terrorist actors globally, the only state actors directly in play were smaller. Today we have Russia still in Ukraine, NATO both moving away from the US and sabre rattling with Russia, and Israel continuing a bombardment if Gaza with the goal of completely annihilating a terrorist organization while simultaneously fending off threats and attacks Lebanon, Yemen, and Iran. Harris bumbling through similar to Obama will be extremely dangerous in my opinion.
That said, we largely agree on Trump's record. I don't understand claims made that he is an immediate threat to democracy or implement some kind of fascist takeover. He is a bad leader though, and a loose cannon which is dangerous given global problems today, albeit a different risk than incompetence.
If the Republican party poses a legitimate threat on democracy or attempts to turn us into a fascist state I'm not above fighting to the death to stop that. That isn't what we have going on today though, and to claim a Trump victory will mean democracy is over and we are now fascist is itself dangerous fear mongering with absolutely no proof to back that claim.
If the Democratic party really believed the apocalyptic rhetoric that they're spreading about the end of democracy, they would take this chance to nominate a candidate who can appeal to moderate voters. Compromise today to save democracy for tomorrow. It should be a total no-brainer to pick someone from the center of their party who even a disenfranchised Republican voter could support over Trump.
Today they have a chance to prove that they haven't just been cynically riling up their base with lines about democracy's imminent demise. They have a chance to nominate someone who stands a chance of beating Trump. If they don't do that and nominate Harris instead, then they've shown their cards and proven that they don't believe democracy is at risk.
A bit beside the point, but I also don't appreciate the Democratic Party putting us in this position to begin with. It has been clear for over a year, even with limited public events, that Biden's health and cognitive ability was declining. We now are left with an unprecedented scenario of the party having to figure out how to pick a candidate in record time with zero voter input.
Of course, if you don’t live in a swing state, then you can pretty much not vote and not feel any responsibility for the outcome, since we have so little influence anyways.
What do we do if we believe both options to be destructive in different ways? I believed that re-electing Biden in his current state would be destructive, potentially because he isn't fit today not certainly because he won't be in 4.5 years. I believe Trump to be a sociopathic narcissist. And, if Harris is selected, I view her to be unfit for the job and an incompetent leader that would be walking into the Oval Office at one of the most important times we've seen since the 40s.
I don't live in a swing state so I do agree my vote is ignored anyway, but I have voted every presidential election until now anyway. I want my voice heard, I just don't want to align my voice with any of these options and don't see how they could possibly be the best our country has to offer.
I get you view Harris as unfit for no particular reason other than you think she is a DEI hire or something. But I bet she is just like other adult politicians, who isn't going to be very interesting, but isn't going to do anything crazy either. Anyways, the bar is low since I don't think Democrats could run anyone that would make me consider Trump's insanity. Heck, I'm probably splitting my vote this year, since I don't like Bob Ferguson for governor of WA, I'm a moderate who isn't happy with the decriminalization that has happened in my city/county/state over the last four years. BUT I value stability over anything else, I at least will vote for adults and not 5 year olds (I never thought we would get here, but Romney, McCain, and even Bush were grown ups that I could stomach).
I consider a DEI hire because Biden made his intentions clear. He specifically said he was going to pick a woman, and I thought he specifically said a black woman but may I'm misremembering that. Saying you are reducing the pool of candidates specifically for a diversity factor makes that person a DEI hire, I'm not really sure how else to see it.
Its also worth noting that being a DEI hire doesn't say anything about the person's ability to do the role. Though I don't view her as being effective in her role, that is because of her experience and what she has accomplished and isn't because she was a DEI hire.
It's fair to say that Donald Trump is to blame for this one. See https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/25/politics/gop-senators-ang...:
"Senior Senate Republicans are furious that Donald Trump may have killed an emerging bipartisan deal over the southern border, depriving them of a key legislative achievement on a pressing national priority and offering a preview of what’s to come with Trump as their likely presidential nominee.
In recent weeks, Trump has been lobbying Republicans both in private conversations and in public statements on social media to oppose the border compromise being delicately hashed out in the Senate, according to GOP sources familiar with the conversations – in part because he wants to campaign on the issue this November and doesn’t want President Joe Biden to score a victory in an area where he is politically vulnerable."
You're not merely voting for the President. You're voting for the full package.
I don't think your view is quite right here either. I'm not voting for an administration, I am actually only voting for the President. I would agree that I'm voting for a person who I trust to make executive decisions, including hiring and outsourcing, but voting for a person and their judgement is still different than voting for the administration comprised of unelected officials. Candidates generally don't announce their cabinet and department appointments until after the election, and it is fairly common for a second term President to shake things up after a reelection.
There's an interesting caveat to competence in getting things done. I definitely agree the Biden administration has gotten projects done, I just don't agree with quite a few of them.
I think we're worse off for the debt racked up by said programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act was a horribly named and fundamental misguided program that printed and spent new money in an attempt to reduce inflation. Whether you use the old definition of inflation, increasing the money supply, or the new definition, consumer price increases, adding new money into the system isn't a sound approach.
I also dislike much (all?) of what is in Project 2025, though I haven't personally seen Trump stand behind it or allude to any intentions of implementing it. Happy to be wrong there if I've missed something, I have a habit of tuning out when he starts talking.
Excerpt from the Wikipedia page about Project 2025:
"Although Project 2025 cannot legally promote a specific presidential candidate, many contributors are associated with Trump and his 2024 presidential campaign.[43][44][45] The Heritage Foundation employs numerous people closely aligned with Trump,[46][47][48] and coordinates the initiative with various conservative groups run by Trump allies.[49] In 2023, Trump campaign officials acknowledged the project aligned well with their Agenda 47 program.[50] Trump campaign advisers have had regular contact with Project 2025,[51] though the project's controversial proposals have also caused the Trump campaign to view it as an annoyance.[52][53]"
Make of that what you will.
Your impact extends beyond your location. Donations, online engagement, and grassroots efforts in swing states can all make a difference, even if you don't live in one. For those seeking an alternative, Harris, for better or worse, has emerged as the only viable non-Trump option.
To me that screams not an insurrection.
A unity ticket of two unpopular centrist candidates is not a recipe for success.
One of the reasons that RFK Jr started his campaign last year was a poll by Zogby which "surveyed over 26,000 likely voters across all 50 states, indicated that Kennedy could potentially outperform both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in head-to-head matchups." I believe the poll showed the majority of independent votes going to RFK Jr, and a significant portion of D and R votes going to him as well.
Given recent events, perhaps Trump is now much more popular, but previously polls showed RFK Jr beating Trump.
Trump isn’t more popular. RFK was never beating anybody. If he played his card better he might have put himself into the running for Trump’s VP.
The bigger problem is there is a strong political incentive to look at who doesn’t vote and transfer their chips to those who do. (Appealing to non-voters doesn’t work. Most non-voters aren’t principled, they’re just lazy or indecisive, irrespective of what they say.)
Not at winning broadly of course.
Note on those parties: the Democratic-Republican Party isn’t related to either of those parties; Andrew Jackson was the first time the Democratic Party put any candidate into the office of the President and while that’s the same Party as the one that exists today, the National Republican Party is not related to today’s Republican Party. We just really like reusing two words for most of our party names.
The Dangerous History Podcast: Ep. 0118: Party Systems in American History, Part I
Episode webpage: http://profcj.org
Media file: https://chrt.fm/track/95538/traffic.megaphone.fm/ADL66387574...
It's not an issue, but it is an electoral dynamic that affected a lot of issues. This might be at a level of abstraction higher than what you're looking for.
I mean beyond that, most issues were local. Voters only voted directly for their Representatives, local offices and Electors during the Presidential Elections, and who that Elector was mattered a lot more given you know, this is basically almost entirely pre-Industrial Revolution and both long distance traveling and long distance communications was still basically Medieval-tier garbage. You wanted to know that your Representative was getting you a good deal in Office and was a man of good character by whatever standard you judged that to be.
EDIT: Almost forgot: checkout American Elections: Wicked Game (a podcast) for the nitty gritty on individual elections. They covered every Presidential election leading up to the 2020 election and they’re currently in the midst of re-releasing it leading up to this year’s election with some updated content.
Thanks for the pointer to that podcast!
Slavery is very much an alive and active albeit illegal in most parts of the world trade, and the global slave trade today is larger than the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was at its peak. The United States is still very active in combatting slavery and the slave trade, usually under the polite euphemism of “human trafficking”.
Appointing Justices is far more of an issue now than it ever was back then where it was a rather inglorious business-as-usual position. It had become more important even before then, but it really became an issue in the popular-consciousness after Roe v. Wade and every single confirmation process between Roe and Dobbs was mired in it. We’ve had only one confirmation since then, so I guess it is too soon to say whether how much it will continue to affect the confirmation hearings.
I also forgot to mention the Barbary Wars, and I actually just watched a video about it yesterday from The Fat Electrician: https://youtu.be/lcJhmm3D3OY
There's also the (maybe) obvious recent topic of liquor. A recent court ruling overturned bans on home distillation and way back in the Washington presidency they had to send the military to squash a revolt driven by a liquor tax.
?
I thought the core of the party is establishment centrist gerontophiles. If there was a liberal-prog core then Bernie would have been a two term president already.
(The point is not that the DNC's progressive base is dominant, but that it's big enough to influence the party's direction. Compare this with the +2 SD left part of the party, which is currently being almost entirely ignored by the party's +0 and +1 leadership.)
He meant socially, not economically. Democrats are made up of very left social issues and centrist economic issues, Bernie who is very left economically of course has a hard time there. But still the Democrats are very left, just not in terms of taxes, but in terms of affirmative action etc.
Those are very left wing and USA is more left wing on those issues than most of the world, even Europe is much more reluctant to go that hard on those things. So yes, Democrats are very left wing, just not in the ways that makes things better for poor people, they are social signaling kind of left wing and center/right on taxes and wealth transfer.
What I meant was that the DNC is still, somehow, a "big tent" party. The plurality demographic within that party is liberal; if you add the next biggest groups on either side you get progressives (left) and centrists (right). The problem the DNC would face in a two-party ticket is that centrists would willingly go for such a split, liberals would be reluctant, and progressives and onwards would sit out of the vote in substantial numbers. Those sit-outs don't matter at the party level, but they do matter in general elections.
(This is true regardless of the social/economic axes used to distinguish the party's demographics internally.)
Not the European kind of liberal. They are "liberal" in that they want to track the race of everyone in the country etc. So not very liberal at all, in Europe those things are called extreme.
Liberal means individualism, freedom of thought, meritocracy, Democrats are not very into those things, at least those things are not the strongest factions in the party today.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Party_of_Australia
My point is that the Democrats are very left wing on some issues when compared to the world. Sure not all democrats are as hard into those things, but they are still very into it compared to what is normal in other countries.
So cooperating with Republicans might not be problematic in an economic kind of sense, but given that Democrats are so strongly to the left on other issues its a no-go. That was the topic.
That's why Australia is being brought up: the way they use "liberal" as a conservative political demographic has as much to do with how the US uses it as European countries do. Which is to say zilch.
People said that the Democratic Party was centrist during Obama's years, during which period many Democratic senators were closer to Joe Manchin than Bernie Sanders in terms of policy alignment.
Today, the Democratic Party today is economically left-wing: they're in favor of funding welfare, pro-union laws, protectionist economic policies (such as tariffs), rent control (not universally), and workplace safety regulations. They're socially left-wing: they're in favor of criminal justice reform (including abolition of the death penalty), racial equity, LGBT rights, a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and access to abortion.
There's not a thing about them that's center-right.
It's never been particularly accurate. Anything as large as the modern democrat party is going to have all sorts of opinions, which is one thing a lot of, uh, twitter style opinions, tend to miss. Ocassio-cortez and Manchin were both technically part of the democrat party at the same time, for example.
Among whom? In what country would their policies be center right?
Left/Right is a pretty rough categorization to begin with, and things we associate with it in a liberal democracy might not hold globally. In China, the left wing of the CCP and other parties is generally regressive, wanting to go back to policies more in line with Mao, while the right-wing is economically more akin to our european liberals, but also socially progressive for things like lbtq rights. In South America, the left wing is usually economically statist and redistributive, but might be rather conservative on some social issues. There's also the whole liberation christianity movement. Japan as a country is way more conservative than the US.
Going back to a US-EU comparison: I think it is fair to describe the Democrats as centre-right on economic policy, especially when it comes to taxation. Outside of the UK, almost all countries in the EU have less qualms about high taxation levels, and it is obvious that a lot of senior democrats are in the pockets of rich donors and Wall Street.
On social issues I feel like it is different though: Open borders and immigration in general is significantly more controversial on the left side here in Europe. Things like being against against voter id is considered cooky by basically everyone. And the US is often leading the way on issues, as can be seen with gay marriage and cannabis legalization.
A simplistic left/right analysis does not do justice to the complexities of voter ideology and policy. In fact, I think the more this kind of analysis makes sense, the less mature the democracy tends to be, as it indicates that people look at it as a teamsport.
barely left wing, please.
There's a reason not-America makes jokes about blinkered vision, American Exceptionalism, and Manifest Destiny.
The US Census has tracked race from the beginning. America has always been very race conscious.
> Liberal means individualism, freedom of thought, meritocracy, Democrats are not very into those things
Depends on your point of view. There's plenty of examples that refute that, and plenty that show those values challenged in the opposing party. More so, the word is a label, not a credo; the party is a big tent.
There's plenty of issue of concern about the Democratic party but not what you listed. I'm not a party member but find them less objectionable than their opponents.
Interestingly, all these unity ticket proposals seem to demand Democrats bow to the whims of centrism with a split ticket; it is apparently perfectly reasonable for Republicans to have a ticket with two far right politicians, such as Trump / Vance.
I am quite liberal. I'd vote for this a million times before I'd consider Trump as a president.
(To be clear: in a sufficiently dire situation, I would also vote for a cross-party ticket. But I know a lot of people who wouldn't, and there's a basic sense that their lack of turnout matters much more than my tepid support.)
I do wonder how much of this is driven by loud minorities on both sides rather than by actual majorities anywhere.
I at least would happily vote for a mixed ticket that seemed to be committed to make bipartisanship work. I'm sick of our hate-fueled political system and am desperately hoping for a change.
However, having a mixed-party ticket like this doesn't need to worry about swaying the Trump voters; they're not going to change their vote for anyone. The appeal here is to get some of the minority of GOP voters, the "never-Trumpers" and others who really don't like Trump much, to switch their vote (or actually vote, if they're sitting it out in disgust).
I do think this idea would succeed in getting some of these peoples' votes. However, I have no idea if that would outweigh the number of votes they'd lose from people on the left.
I read something a few years ago that said moderates/non-affiliated make up the majority of voters with only a smaller percentage on left and right tied to the parties (somewhere maybe in 15% to 20% range on each side, can't remember exactly).
So it seems like a good mix of moderate could possibly win, especially when the other candidate is so polarizing.
They’ve spent nearly a decade isolating themselves in an algorithm fueled mirror room, while disassociating from everyone that doesn't already agree with them 100%
instead of any color coded “wave” occurring despite their recurring delusions, there’s gridlock in the senate, no filibuster proof majority, they’ve lost affiliation and independents are the largest political affiliation in the country now with almost zero representation
It's just the label and tribalism I reject, not their stances or some desire for a mythical "middle path".
I have no idea how common this is in the "unaffiliated base" but I'd be willing to wager it's fairly common.
Most of the folks who say they’re unaffiliated or moderates or open to voting for either party in fact vote exactly like a self-reported partisan. They just don’t like the label.
Lots of crappy reporting doesn’t differentiate between self-reported swing/moderates and true swing.
GOTV matters more. Do your people show up at the polls?
I've seen the same and done similar. I'm now in the unhappy position of voting against instead of voting for.
Hopefully Trump's loss will be the final nail in the coffin for MAGA.
People keep repeating this like it's some kind of obvious basic fact and I get more and more confused each time.
How much more "center" can you get than Joe Biden? Or Hillary Clinton? Or Kamala Harris? As far as I know, they're all in favor of arresting illegal immigrants, using military power to further foreign policies, moderate taxation, little to no drug legalization, mass incarceration for felons, barely any gun control, etc, etc.
What exactly is the "center-right" looking for that they're not getting?
Every time the media (and social media) brings up self-described right wing desires, they're pretty much entirely culture war issues, is that what you mean?
We've seen repeatedly that Democrats going to the middle are met with supposedly moderate Republicans saying, "But not like that."
But both options kinda suck. No minimum wage when wages can be depressed below CoL creates a decay in its own way.
My preferred ideal is setting minimum wage not by rule but via a standing government work program available to anyone that pays above CoL for the area. Then private employers can compete on price or by offering easier less-stressful work.
Republicans are the party of “yeah, but…”
We need both types of thinking, and it’s a shame there isn’t a party that actually merges the two instead of this crappy tug of war we have going on. Practical progressivism, or something.
Republicans just like to put debt into different things, like tax cuts for the rich.
Plus a good deal of the “wouldn’t it be nice…” is real-world tested and proven and the “yeah, but…” is nonsense.
[edit] this notion is a hold-over from when it was sorta, kinda true, when both parties were still basically trying to make government work well and largely working toward similar goals and differed largely on approach—but that was more than 50 years ago. Reagan’s campaign is the demarcation line.
[edit] one of the funniest ones is foreign aid. It’s commonly supposed to be way higher than it actually is (you’ll get answers like 5%, 10% of the budget, wildly wrong stuff) so you can consistently get people to agree that a “cut” to double what it actually is would be a great thing for a fiscally responsible candidate to propose.
[edit edit] so point is the vast majority of voters have no clue what it is they’re opposing when they say they’re against lots of things they’re against. Describe it, and they’re on board. They don’t actually know what it is.
Honestly, just like undecided voters, they are either a myth or complete idiots.
Yes Lincoln’s re-election was a unity ticket that included Lincoln (Republican) and Johnson (pro-war Democrat)
Romney would be an interesting choice. I remember this[0] article in the globe where a columnist who dragged him during his presidential run apologized after seeing how bad things could be.
Like you say though, hard to imagine any party conjuring the courage to do something like that even if they thought it was wise.
[0] https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/07/20/sorry-mitt-romn...
They would if they sincerely believed that losing this election would doom democracy. If they nominate a straight polarized political ticket instead of one that can actually unify everyone who doesn't want to see a second Trump term then we know that they don't actually believe their own apocalyptic rhetoric.
Nominating Harris with another left-leaning running mate may make the most sense from a purely strategic perspective, but I don't think that's because anyone seriously expects her to win at this point or because it's actually their best shot at protecting democracy from the impending apocalypse. They're just hoping that having her in the president slot leads to fewer losses in the rest of the races.
Of course, whoever they nominate will just be called a leftist anyways. Even Harris is on the right wing of the Democratic party, and here you are calling her "left-leaning."
[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/21/harris-potential-vp...
People keep repeating this, what the heck does it actually mean? If we define Kamala Harris as "left of center" what does it actually look like if she "moves to the right"?
Just listening to the news/social media for the past decade, every single "right wing" issue that gets brought up is purely performative culture warring, so what do these "centrists" want?
Seriously, if you look at her record, she's very center or even right of center. We're so polarized now though that the far right is straight up fascism.
I’m not sure why they would reduce party influence either. Features like being robust against spoilers would seem to most benefit major party candidates.
There only functional difference between it and say, the original French two-round system that Maurice Duverger (of Duverger's law) contrasted with FPTP is that someone who wins an outright majority in the first election (an open "primary" in California) is not immediately elected.
The fact the second round is FPTP doesn't change the overall voting system. With only two candidates for a single seat, most voting systems degenerate to FPTP, but none of the issues related to FPTP are present either (there are no clones, no strategic voting, etc.)
For majors the benefit is clear: you don't get spoiled.
For minors, you don't have to overcome the barrier of being a spoiler if the race looks remotely close.
And of course voters are not disadvantaged just for having two acceptable choices rather than one.
Labour also picked Jeremy Corbyn an election back. Ultimately the rest of the country didn't want to vote for him.
The libdems of 2024 have a very different situation in that despite the Tory implosion they are weaker than ever. I'd put my money on them either still making the deal or getting buried if Labour had even more votes.
Labour now hasn't united its opposition because I think nobody fears it much.
Labour's opposition not being united is probably more attribuable to the Conservative party itself not being united. The amount of voters leaving the Tories to go to the Lib Dems and Reform has steadily been increasing.
Besides, a significant part of motivating people to vote against Corbyn came from Starmer's wing of the party itself.
Labour's electoral prospects improved because of the implosion of the Tories, not anything they did.
> "Speak ill of no man"
Aha.
A mixed ticket isn't going to align them better.
Trump doesn’t care about the budget, doesn’t care about protecting our allies, doesn’t care about abortion. I’d wager he doesn’t care about immigration, either, except as a way to get votes.
Christianity, God Bless America, conservative immigration law, well-being of rural people and small towns, second amendment, Made in USA, white-normalized culture ...
Democrats very rarely align. They fight between factions about whether BLM, LGBT, or Stop Asian Hate is more important, ffs. They can't even come together and fight for all of the above.
Other than promoting coal, what has Trump done for rural America’s economy?
And the IRA was a huge investment in “Made in USA”, whereas Trump spent years promoting an infrastructure week that never materialized.
Evangelicals love Trump (in one of the biggest “this massive group of people clearly was lying about its stated moral principles” reveals in recent memory).
One would think so, but they've embraced him as literally God's gift, and his appointments to SCOTUS are deeply religious.
Protectionist tariffs, particularly those imposed on Chinese imports were so popular that the Democratic party has silently endorsed and continued them through the Biden presidency.
The CHIPS Act is one of Biden's crowning achievements and is more truly protectionist than anything Trump every got done.
What are you talking about? Christians (American ones at least) absolutely love Trump. I'll probably get a bunch of replies here from non-Christian liberals making a bunch of theological claims about a religion they don't even believe in, but the people who decide what is or isn't "real Christianity" are the people who actually go to church and call themselves Christians, not a bunch of people who don't believe strongly in any religion. Talk all you want about how Trump doesn't exemplify so-called "Christian values", but that's totally irrelevant. The Americans who actually go to church every Sunday are showing up at Trump rallies like he's the Messiah's chosen one and they're voting for him, and of course defending him at every turn no matter how much you might think his words or actions don't align with your perception of the religion.
>Other than promoting coal, what has Trump done for rural America’s economy?
He's given it a lot of lip-service, and that's all that matters for these voters. And also very importantly, he delivered for rural America by installing a bunch of SCOTUS justices who managed to overturn Roe v Wade. How's that good for rural America's economy? It isn't, but that doesn't matter, because this issue was #1 or #2 for these voters, especially the ones that most strongly identified as "Christian".
It's amazing how easy it is to see why Democrats keep losing elections to the MAGA crowd, and how they completely fail to understand their mentality and what's really important to them.
How about a reply from an evangelical Christian who goes to Church? How about if I use words from Christ himself?
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and in your name drive out demons and in your name perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’ [1]
From what I can tell, there are different camps of Evangelicals and "Evangelicals" voting for Trump.
Let me say at the start that "Christian Nationalism" is an inherent contradiction in terms. Jesus over and over again had the opportunity to become a political power, and explicitly rejected it [2][3][4]. Anything trying to explicitly enforce "Christianity" with political power is out of line with Christ's teaching. This has always been true, but it is particularly true now. A lot of the people I see on TV pounding on about God and Christianity don't show any evidence that they know anything at all about Jesus; I don't have any reason to believe them to be Christians.
Others are real Christians -- people trying to follow Jesus and take his teachings seriously -- who are simply deluded. They actually believe that the election was stolen; they actually believe that the trials against him are witch-hunts. They're not voting for Trump the person, but for an imaginary person they've been fed.
Others are real Christians, and know that Trump is a vile man and a criminal, but somehow have convinced themselves that the Biden "crime family" and/or the Democrats are just as bad, and are cynically choosing someone they think will benefit their own group. Either they don't think a second Trump term will be worse than the first term, or they don't care.
Consider the "gay wedding cake" case [5]. Evangelicals in loads of creative professions (including baking, photography, and so on) came perilously close to having to chose between violating their consciences or losing their livelihoods. Getting a solid majority of the court who would vote "their way" about these sorts of issues was considered by many to be worth the cost of a Trump presidency. (NB I'm not trying to make an argument either way about that case; rather, I'm trying to show the mindset of someone in 2015 deciding whether to vote for Trump or Hillary.)
Also note that I don't consider any of these things excuses. Belief is not a morally neutral activity; there may be people who genuinely had no opportunity to understand Trump's true nature, but I don't think that applies to the vast majority of Christians who have an inaccurate picture of him; particularly after the warnings we have throughout the New Testament to be on our guard against people trying to control us.
Furthermore, while we have the example of using the legal system to defend ourselves (in the case of Paul's various trials in Acts), we're also told to expect to persecuted for our beliefs. Hiring a lawyer is one thing; voting for a man like Trump is something completely different.
And there are plenty of Evangelicals who are outspoken against Trump; but far too few.
All that to say -- unfortunately, yes, Trump is popular with Christians and people who consider themselves Christians.
[1] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+7%3A21-... [2] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+4%3A9-1... [3] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+6%3A15&ver... [4] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+18%3A36&ve... [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masterpiece_Cakeshop_v._Colora...
There's no solid evidence these quotes are accurate (plus, they're translated if he ever existed and made any such speeches). The entire belief is based on faith.
>Anything trying to explicitly enforce "Christianity" with political power is out of line with Christ's teaching. This has always been true
That's your opinion, based on your interpretation. Other Christians in the US have a different opinion.
>A lot of the people I see on TV pounding on about God and Christianity don't show any evidence that they know anything at all about Jesus; I don't have any reason to believe them to be Christians.
That again is your opinion, based on your interpretation of a quote written down by some religious person centuries after the deity that supposedly uttered it was on Earth. Other Christians have a different opinion.
As a non-Christian, it's not up to me to decide whose beliefs are "correct". And the people you disagree with aren't some vanishingly small, fringe minority; they're a significant part of the US voting public. I appreciate that your beliefs are different, and personally I like your beliefs more than theirs, but you're not going to convince me that yours are more correct; as far as I'm concerned, neither one has any basis in reality. Yours certainly sound nicer, but Christianity has well over a millennium of history of being tied to state power, so the other side has a lot of precedent.
>Others are real Christians -- people trying to follow Jesus and take his teachings seriously -- who are simply deluded.
Again, "real Christians" in your opinion. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who self-identifies honestly as a "Christian" is one, regardless of how incongruent their actions and opinions seem to be with some of the teachings of some of the denominations of that religion.
Anyway, I do appreciate you doing this analysis of the different factions, and I do agree with your breakdown of them.
>Consider the "gay wedding cake" case
As much as I hate many of the SCOTUS decisions in the last 8 years or so, I actually agree with this one, or at least its outcome, though I think the justices all missed the real issue. If the gay couple had wanted to buy an off-the-shelf (non-custom) cake, the baker should have been required to sell it to them. However, (as I understand the case) they wanted a custom cake, so basically they wanted to commission artwork. I think that should be subject to 1A protection; no one should be legally required to create artwork for something they disagree with.
I understand where you're coming from, but this is just an unworkable definition. It reminds me of a snapshot of a social media post I saw which read, "I'm a vegan who eats meat. Yes, we exist." "People trying to follow Jesus and take his teachings seriously" certainly isn't a perfect definition, but it's a lot more useful than "anyone who self-identifies as a Christian".
The Republicans have moderated a lot over the last decade. Their current platform reads like the Democrat platform from the 2000s.
There are plenty of faults in the Democratic party, but “both sides” is a tired and inaccurate trope.
It is very interesting how the manner in which people think changes when the topic changes, and also how we focus only on the flaws in intelligence of the supposedly dumbest among us.
> There are plenty of faults in the Democratic party, but “both sides” is a tired and inaccurate trope.
Only if the claim is both sides are identically bad, which is rarely the case.
It is amazing how simple memes (and boy, does our culture run on them) can inject bugs into cognition.
Democrats hail from several religions (and a lot of atheists) and have a lot of independent thinkers. They are not mass-"programmable" like religious Christians and Republicans are. Republicans can be mass-software-updated by their leaders very quickly. Democrats' lack of programmability makes it harder for them to align and win.
Democrats tend to contain a lot of types of socially oppressed groups of people, each of which is fighting their own battle, but they cannot be bothered to fight another oppressed groups' battle.
Democrats hail from multiple social classes that each want the other taxed more out of spite, not understanding that higher taxes of anyone in the economic food chain is going to make it harder for everyone.
I have seen some videos of Trump voters who are claiming that JD Vance is a traitor to the white race for marrying a non-white. And their kids have non-white names.
They are quite upset about this. Some of them are so disgusted by this that they might not vote at all. One can only hope.
In practice, Romney is 77 years old and is ready to retire - and think how often age has come up as a factor in the presidential race recently. Romney isn't running for reelection, but if he had wanted his senate seat for another 6 years, I am quite certain it would have been his. So ultimately, I don't think Romney would go for it, simply because he wants to spend more time with his (large) family.
McCain/Lieberman almost happened in 2008.
If my only two choices were McCain/Lieberman vs McCain/Palin, I would hold my nose and vote for the second.
If you want to bolster the ticket, get someone that people already like. Hell, get Obama or Sanders to come back as the VP.
Sanders could, but I think he has the double issue of his two prior failed campaigns - a lot of his more motivated voters from previous times might have a "boy who cried wolf" reaction a third campaign. He also doesn't really disarm the "too old" criticism, even if all evidence points to him aging a lot better than either Biden or Trump so far - Biden 2020 vs Biden 2024 would give a lot of people pause even if Sanders gave the world's best debate performance at this point.
There's also the fact that Sanders has been actually pretty influential in Biden's presidency, which I think is why he came out so strongly in favour of Biden a few days ago.
Same with (partial) student debt relief, and you see shadows of the Green New Deal in the Inflation Reduction Act.
Thanks for calling that out.
None are likely, maybe Liz Cheney the most though (imagine if her father campaigned for her).
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/21/opinion/biden-west-wing-a...
McCain considered Lieberman
And theoretically no reason it couldn't happen other than both parties definitely not being on board with it.
Romney is politically obsolete. He serves no further purpose in American politics.
E.g. the current administration would be Biden and Trump.
I couldn’t imagine that working today, as divided as the parties have become (especially in the last 20 years).
[1] https://www.senate.gov/about/officers-staff/vice-president/s...
Those are:
House (10): John Katko (R-NY), Jamie Herrera Beutler (R-WA), Adam Kinziger (R-IL), Dan Newhouse (R-WA), David Valadao (R-CA), Peter Meijer (R-MI), Tome Rice (R-SC), Fred Upton (R-MI), Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH), Liz Cheney (R-WY).
<https://www.npr.org/2021/01/14/956621191/these-are-the-10-re...>
Senate (7): Richard Burr (R-NC), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Mitt Romney (R-UT), Ben Sasse (R-NE), Pat Toomey (R-PA).
<https://www.npr.org/sections/trump-impeachment-trial-live-up...>
In terms of public awareness, I'd roughly rank Romney and Cheney the overall leaders (previous GOP Presidential candidate, and daughter of a previous GOP VP), then perhaps Collins, Murkowski, Burr, Sasse, and trailing those Kinziger, though that's my own seat-of-the pants / /dev/ass estimate.
As mixed-party tickets, any of those named, possibly excepting Sasse, might be draws, though Cheney or Romney would lead my own picks. Both reluctant but pragmatic.
One of TFG's prime superpowers is claiming the media limelight, and all that's been going on with the Democratic ticket since 27 June has robbed him of that. Hell, a week ago he came within an inch of being permanently removed from any future, let alone a political one ... and that's scarcely being discussed. I'm not convinced that "no news is bad news", and that all attention is good, but ... at least in terms of attention, the Dems have been winning this battle for the past several weeks.
The other thought is that the general election all but certainly swings not on converting voters but motivating them. Or demotivating.
I've been thinking of a Harris-Whitmer ticket, which would play to Dem strengths among Blacks, women, blue-collar/industrial voters, and one of the key swing states (Michigan (15 EV)).
Other states in play are Nevada (6), Wisconsin (10), Pennsylvania (19), and Georgia (16).
MI, WI, and PA currently lean Dem, which would give an electoral majority, taking NV and Georgia (very slightly GOP) would ice that cake.
An argument against a split ticket is that there might be a greater chance of strongly motivating marginal Democratic voters. The argument for a split ticket might be to take dissatisfied Republicans (or former Republicans), though how much any of the candidates listed above might draw is questionable. Romney is strongly associated with Utah, which will all but certainly go GOP (99% by 538's forecast), Cheney with Wyoming, similarly inclined, and with a small population (and electoral vote) to boot. Whether either can draw GOP votes from elsewhere, and most especially in critical states such as those listed, or perhaps AZ (surprisingly close), NC, FL, or TX (rather more distant likelihoods, but potentially huge if doable) is the question.
It'll be interesting watching this play out, no doubt.
The more I think about it, the less I think a split ticket works, though I think it's worth considering in future.