Democrats know all they have to do is say the right things and people will keep voting.
Biden has no intention of doing anything meaningful on inflation.
Do you think Trump would?
He surely wouldn't but for those of who don't belong to either mainstream party your question is annoying AF. As long as we keep electing people from the same two pools of corporate backed idiots NOTHING is going to change.
None of us like it but most of us, eventually, learn what a trap third party voting is the way the system is set up. When you're young, naive and a bit idyllic it seems like an easy choice. "I'm standing up for change!" you think to yourself. Or perhaps the old "We gotta start somewhere, let's get that 5%!" nugget.
Then you get older and the shit you used watch from the sidelines on TV actually starts to affect your lives. Health care, education, retirement and other life issues show up and that naivety falls away rapidly as you learn that A) it'll take a revolution of sorts for any meaningful change and B) our lives are too short to hope for said revolution. Do we still want that change, absolutely. However, sometimes in life, you really do need to choose between the douche and the turd sandwich.
Then you get older...
Then you get even older and realize that choosing the douche or the turd sandwich ends up with you holding a douche or a turd sandwich.
At 52 I'm done with these games. Its too important to my children, my nation, and the actual environment I live in.
I don't think these people will ever get it. It's the same mentality that keeps climate change raging on, "I can't change anything on my own, so I'll just keep doing the same thing until someone else fixes it."
Fair to be fed up, but I feel that was more a concern when the two sides of the coin were very close to being the same. I'm not much behind you on age but I can still see that only one option TODAY is trying to blatantly and openly destroy most of the progress we made in your 52 years. I'd rather hold the douche and have a chance at getting out clean than hold the turd and assuredly end up covered in shit.
...but I can still see that only one option TODAY is trying to blatantly and openly destroy most of the progress we made in your 52 years.
They both are, one is just more open about it and willing to get there a bit faster on some issues. Yes, the bulk of Conservatives are somewhere between "Awful" and "JFC this person needs to be beamed into outer space!" but the Authoritarianism and Stupidity are running just as rampant among the so-called Liberals.
I’d rather hold the douche and have a chance at getting out clean than hold the turd and assuredly end up covered in shit.
You know what a douche is for, right? That's the point of that skit, it's a Hobsons Choice. It"s amazing to me people continually bring that skit up without understanding what it really meant.
Of course I know what one is for, the point I was making is that what SEEMS to be the same to you and what may have been is no longer the case.
You've clearly already checked out and, at best, listen to mainstream media if you're still in the "they are the same" or "one hides it better" camp. Lost cause.
I tried to ask an honest question ... no snark intended.
And I happen to agree with electing the insane same old-same old expecting different results.
Someone once explained representative democracy this way: Choosing a candidate is like riding a bus. None of them are going to come directly to where you are and none of them are going to drop you off at your exact destination. The best you can do is choose the one that gets you as close as possible in the shortest amount of time. Sometimes you're not even gonna get that close and you'll still have a long walk to your destination, but at least you'll be closer than where you started. Sometimes you have to take one bus then transfer to another to get to your final destination.
When the alternatives are buses that are traveling the opposite direction, your best available choice becomes very clear.
The place where this analogy falls apart is that by not taking either bus, you may actually lose ground and get further away from your destination. So I guess when the alternative is a bus that stands less than a 5% chance of arriving, you ultimately end up being shoved onto the bus that the majority of people are riding.
This person gets it.
The 'their guy sucks too' defense doesn't inspire much confidence.
Better to at least support whichever candidate is less likely to destroy the country while we wait for a better one to come and save it.
Ah, the "just wait til next time to vote for the person you want" argument that we see repeated every two years ad nauseam. That'll surely fix things.
I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, but if you live in a swing state there is definitely an argument to be made about pragmatic damage control. I don't judge either way, if you don't feel like someone has earned your vote it isn't your fault that they haven't earned your vote.
I also agree that voting for the slightly less shitty candidate isn't going to fix anything in the longterm, but sometimes the best choice for the well being of people is damage control. Damage control isn't a strategy, but sometimes it is the best tactic within a broader strategy. That being said, fuck all that noise when people get upset at you for voting third party. You aren't the person that created a rigged system that doesn't provide meaningful choices for you to choose from. Someone can disagree with you on how best to fix that, but getting angry at you for choosing a different approach is just people taking out their anger on you for the system being rigged and broken.
That would be the third party candidates.
The last time a third party ever got close to winning the presidency was the progressive party with the candidate being Theodore motherfucking Roosevelt a well liked president to this day. And do you know what happened? It split the vote and we got fucking Wilson a segregationist bastard who revitalized the KKK and kept us out of WW1 which probably prolonged the war.
If you want a third party start at the local, dont even think about the presidency until ypu can overthrow one of the two parties. The Rupublicans went from being an irrelevancey to win ing the presidency back in the 1800s for example.
One thing that people fail to understand when voting third party is the overall makeup of the two big parties. Republicans are very homogenous. One need look no further than a picture of all republican senators and compare it to a picture of all current democrat senators. Both pictures will have a majority of white men, but one of those pictures will have a much larger number of minorities (women, people of color, etc...).
The democrat party is really an amalgam of lots of different types of people with different cultures and different desires unified by an interest in more progressive policy. But it's much harder to keep every sub-group of people happy. If even one of those sub-groups grows weary or defects to the other side, democrats lose.
I was happy for a while to start to see some cracks in the republican party, but I underestimated their ability to stick together despite having utter contempt for their populist leader. So many republicans detested the idea of a Trump presidency right up until he won. All of a sudden, they rabidly and staunchly defended his every action. There have only been a very few number of principled Republicans that have stood their ground against Trump, and one by one they're either losing elections or declining to run again. It's sad really.
Democrats know all they have to do is say the right things and people will keep voting.
Biden has no intention of doing anything meaningful on inflation.
Do you think Trump would?
He surely wouldn't but for those of who don't belong to either mainstream party your question is annoying AF. As long as we keep electing people from the same two pools of corporate backed idiots NOTHING is going to change.
None of us like it but most of us, eventually, learn what a trap third party voting is the way the system is set up. When you're young, naive and a bit idyllic it seems like an easy choice. "I'm standing up for change!" you think to yourself. Or perhaps the old "We gotta start somewhere, let's get that 5%!" nugget.
Then you get older and the shit you used watch from the sidelines on TV actually starts to affect your lives. Health care, education, retirement and other life issues show up and that naivety falls away rapidly as you learn that A) it'll take a revolution of sorts for any meaningful change and B) our lives are too short to hope for said revolution. Do we still want that change, absolutely. However, sometimes in life, you really do need to choose between the douche and the turd sandwich.
Then you get even older and realize that choosing the douche or the turd sandwich ends up with you holding a douche or a turd sandwich.
At 52 I'm done with these games. Its too important to my children, my nation, and the actual environment I live in.
I don't think these people will ever get it. It's the same mentality that keeps climate change raging on, "I can't change anything on my own, so I'll just keep doing the same thing until someone else fixes it."
Fair to be fed up, but I feel that was more a concern when the two sides of the coin were very close to being the same. I'm not much behind you on age but I can still see that only one option TODAY is trying to blatantly and openly destroy most of the progress we made in your 52 years. I'd rather hold the douche and have a chance at getting out clean than hold the turd and assuredly end up covered in shit.
They both are, one is just more open about it and willing to get there a bit faster on some issues. Yes, the bulk of Conservatives are somewhere between "Awful" and "JFC this person needs to be beamed into outer space!" but the Authoritarianism and Stupidity are running just as rampant among the so-called Liberals.
You know what a douche is for, right? That's the point of that skit, it's a Hobsons Choice. It"s amazing to me people continually bring that skit up without understanding what it really meant.
Of course I know what one is for, the point I was making is that what SEEMS to be the same to you and what may have been is no longer the case.
You've clearly already checked out and, at best, listen to mainstream media if you're still in the "they are the same" or "one hides it better" camp. Lost cause.
I tried to ask an honest question ... no snark intended.
And I happen to agree with electing the insane same old-same old expecting different results.
Someone once explained representative democracy this way: Choosing a candidate is like riding a bus. None of them are going to come directly to where you are and none of them are going to drop you off at your exact destination. The best you can do is choose the one that gets you as close as possible in the shortest amount of time. Sometimes you're not even gonna get that close and you'll still have a long walk to your destination, but at least you'll be closer than where you started. Sometimes you have to take one bus then transfer to another to get to your final destination.
When the alternatives are buses that are traveling the opposite direction, your best available choice becomes very clear.
The place where this analogy falls apart is that by not taking either bus, you may actually lose ground and get further away from your destination. So I guess when the alternative is a bus that stands less than a 5% chance of arriving, you ultimately end up being shoved onto the bus that the majority of people are riding.
This person gets it.
The 'their guy sucks too' defense doesn't inspire much confidence.
Better to at least support whichever candidate is less likely to destroy the country while we wait for a better one to come and save it.
Ah, the "just wait til next time to vote for the person you want" argument that we see repeated every two years ad nauseam. That'll surely fix things.
I agree with the spirit of what you are saying, but if you live in a swing state there is definitely an argument to be made about pragmatic damage control. I don't judge either way, if you don't feel like someone has earned your vote it isn't your fault that they haven't earned your vote.
I also agree that voting for the slightly less shitty candidate isn't going to fix anything in the longterm, but sometimes the best choice for the well being of people is damage control. Damage control isn't a strategy, but sometimes it is the best tactic within a broader strategy. That being said, fuck all that noise when people get upset at you for voting third party. You aren't the person that created a rigged system that doesn't provide meaningful choices for you to choose from. Someone can disagree with you on how best to fix that, but getting angry at you for choosing a different approach is just people taking out their anger on you for the system being rigged and broken.
That would be the third party candidates.
The last time a third party ever got close to winning the presidency was the progressive party with the candidate being Theodore motherfucking Roosevelt a well liked president to this day. And do you know what happened? It split the vote and we got fucking Wilson a segregationist bastard who revitalized the KKK and kept us out of WW1 which probably prolonged the war.
If you want a third party start at the local, dont even think about the presidency until ypu can overthrow one of the two parties. The Rupublicans went from being an irrelevancey to win ing the presidency back in the 1800s for example.
One thing that people fail to understand when voting third party is the overall makeup of the two big parties. Republicans are very homogenous. One need look no further than a picture of all republican senators and compare it to a picture of all current democrat senators. Both pictures will have a majority of white men, but one of those pictures will have a much larger number of minorities (women, people of color, etc...).
The democrat party is really an amalgam of lots of different types of people with different cultures and different desires unified by an interest in more progressive policy. But it's much harder to keep every sub-group of people happy. If even one of those sub-groups grows weary or defects to the other side, democrats lose.
I was happy for a while to start to see some cracks in the republican party, but I underestimated their ability to stick together despite having utter contempt for their populist leader. So many republicans detested the idea of a Trump presidency right up until he won. All of a sudden, they rabidly and staunchly defended his every action. There have only been a very few number of principled Republicans that have stood their ground against Trump, and one by one they're either losing elections or declining to run again. It's sad really.