It Will Be an Election Unlike Any We’ve Lived Through. Are the Democrats Prepared?
The animating concept behind the Trump campaign will be chaos. This is what history shows us fascists do when given the chance to participate in democratic political campaigns: They create chaos. They do it because chaos works to their advantage. They revel in it, because they can see how profoundly chaos unnerves democratic-republicans—everyone, that is, whether liberal or conservative, who believes in the basic idea of a representative government that is built around neutral rules. Fascism exists to pulverize neutral rules.
So they campaign with explicit intention to instill a sense of chaos. And then comes the topper: They have the audacity to insist that the only solution to the chaos—that they themselves have either grossly exaggerated or in some cases created!—is to vote for them: “You see, there is nothing but chaos afoot, and only we can restore order!”
Whatever. I’m voting D no matter what, for every election, because republicans are disgusting traitor filth.
I don't consider myself a Democrat, but in this two-horse race, I vote Democrat because, as my father was fond of saying and said as far back as at least the Reagan era, "the worst Democrat is better than the best Republican." Sad but true. I'd rather have a senate of Bob Menendezes and lose Susan Collins in the mix. Menendez is a corrupt bastard, but at least he votes as if he gives a shit about other people. Collins tries to sound reasonable and fair and then votes in lockstep with the rest of the Republicans most of the time anyway.
Lol yeah I remember when I used to consider positions, evaluate the candidates, check historical records etc. GOP has made this very easy the last few years because "fuck women, gays, immigrants and the disabled. Science is fake, Jan 6 is fake, covid is fake, trump is a saint and the rich need more help".
Wow what a winning platform. ☑️ D
I'm a Houstonian. I'll vote straight ticket, but I can already tell you how the election will shake out.
Texas will go bright red. Houston will go bright blue. My vote at the state and national level won't matter, because its winner-take-all. And many of my neighbors will be subject to harassment, disenfranchisement, and voter caging because they've got African American / Pacific surnames, which flag them as easy targets for reducing D turnout. That's before you even get into how reliable a Jane Nelson / Ken Paxton administered election is expected to be, given how frequently we've had rules for mail-in ballots, voter id, and county-wide voting challenged by the current state administration.
The GOP has made the decision to vote against them easy. They have made the process to vote against them increasingly difficult.
The same folks who say this shit are the ones expected to tally the results of the election faithfully.
As the saying goes, "Its not the votes that count but who counts the votes". Our dogged reliance on the machinery of elections in a state with a decades long history of shady election practices is naive af.
I used to be an Independent voter. I'd consider reasonable Democrats and Republicans alike. No more. Dems down the ballot for me.
Same but I primary whenever I can for candidates that even entertain being progressive. Anyone who want to stop the plutocracy, treat our planet like we need it, or will act with empathy.
Too many people can't bear conscience for voting for someone actively abetting a genocide. A lot are boting 3rd party this year, so the vote's split
Cool. Vote third party. We’ll get Trump (or one of the other authoritarian dominionist clowns in the car), who will end up pushing for a nuclear attack on Gaza while dismantling every institution we have here, meager as they are, but people still need them. Then in 2028, don’t vote at all because you will probably lose your right to do so. At least you voted with your ~heart~<3 though, so have a nice cup of tea and give yourself a hug.
We do not have a system in place where your idealistic protest can do anything other than make things worse. Fix the goddamn system, put people in power on a local level who have a chance, and work up from there. Fuck outta here with any Jill Stein horseshit.
If not voting Biden is a vote for Trump, wouldn't not voting Trump be a vote for Biden by the same logic? The logic only works if you assume all third party voters would be voting Democrat which isn't the case.
You know what I’m talking about. Of course not all third party voters would vote for the Democratic candidate, but how many leftists would otherwise vote for the Republican? I reeeally doubt these people are stumping for the American Freedom or Constitution candidates.
Trump arguably won in 2016 because of the 13% of Obama-Trump voters, Bernie-Trump supporters are also a thing, and not all Trump voters are politically engaged people as aren't many Democrats, and only about 66% of eligible Americans voted, with lowest rates in the 50s-low 60s being red states. A third party wouldn't necessarily only "steal" Democrat voters because this isn't a closed system with one option. The logic I presented there is perfectly valid because not everyone is a leftist, for "not voting Biden is a vote for Trump" to work you have to ignore a bunch of voters and potential voters. It's just something people say online for people to say "yes" to that has no relevance or impact on material politics at all.
I’m referring specifically to actual politically engaged people who refuse to vote for Biden because he isn’t progressive enough. Also, as I have not addressed it, I do get why they do refuse, as he would not be my first choice either, and I absolutely agree that Biden (and most democrats, tbh) needs to reach out to these voters because the base is more progressive than is reflected in their representation. I was aware of Bernie-Trump voters but, beyond their disdain for the establishment party politicians, I do not understand their motives; however, I will read up on it because it so baffles me.
I do hope that you’re right about this; being a mediocre white guy, I am not really in any danger of the fallout of a Trump presidency beyond what it would mean for all of us, but I don’t want to see more of what happened to marginalized people during his administration, as I fully expect things to be even worse if he gets in, just out of spite and due to redhats becoming even more deeply emboldened to act out. Not that they won’t act out otherwise, but I expect them to see themselves as self-appointed enforcers.
Isn't Trump's victory predicated on an electoral college victory?
How does voting third party impact whether or not your state's electors vote for Donald Trump?
Sure we do. Look at the very origins of the Republican Party. Abraham Lincoln emerged as the frontrunner against a Whig Party that was in full collapse. It was only possible thanks to Freemont's break from the Whigs in 1856, galvenizing abolitionists into a full formal partisan block.
Or consider the Farmer-Laborer party of North Dakota, which controlled the state for several decades before merging with the Democrats under Roosevelt.
Or consider the rise of Libertarian, Socialist, and Fascist candidates within the major parties. Primary insurgency candidates will routinely build a base of non-partisan support before joining the major parties as outsiders. Sanders ran as an Indie from Vermont for 14 years, before stepping up to run for President in 2016. Donald Trump himself was a Reform Party candidate in 2000 and was a staunch Democratic mega-donor/bundler in New York well, before defecting the GOP in 2012. Senators like Mike Lee and Rand Paul built their brands outside the party system before winning primaries in their respective branches.
The split in the Dem Party in '68 gave rise to Nixon and Reagan's Southern Strategy, which secured the Presidency for the GOP (with the exception of the narrow Carter win in '76) for the next 24 years. Great news for Dixiecrats who cared more about maintaining racial supremacy than New Deal economics and who found a way to profit handsomely from Reagan-Era giveaways to large land owners and shareholders.
Third Party campaigns have a long and proud history in the US of paving the way for more successful general election runs in subsequent election cycles. They don't always pay off year-of, but they can have a seismic effect on politics going on decades afterwards.
It doesn't have to be. If there are enough splits to deny any candidate an outright majority in the EC, the task of choosing a president falls to the congress in the 'contingent election' procedure, whereby state congressional delegations each have 1 vote. If 26 states have republican delegations (which seems plausible, given how many states are controlled by the gop) it's very likely Trump wins if it goes to a contingent election.
If anything, this supports the argument against voting 3rd party protest votes in any FPTP election
Well, double damn then. I'm in a heavily gerrymandered house seat so now my vote extra doesn't matter.
That's heavily predicated on how midwestern states manage their house seats in the next election. Pennsylvania's forced redrawing of maps in 2018 flipped five or six house seats. Wisconsin and Michigan redistricting fights could cost as many more, each. Dems are within range of the House (barring another landslide swing like in 2010 or 2018) if too many of these break the Dems' way. And now that Dems appear more focused on winning state SCOTUS elections, that's not inconceivable.
I'm guessing you're not a Lieberman 2008 guy. And who can blame you?
But folks with sufficiently high name recognition can definitely win third party. Just ask Lisa Murkowski. Or Jesse Ventura, for that matter.
i don't think so. i voted for howie in 2020 and we got biden.
With donnie in power, we may very well have genocide in our borders.
Part of the problem with the Biden Administration (and Obama before him) is that it seems content to allow guys like Abbott and DeSantis to Do As Thou Wilt in their respective states. Biden could win reelection in '24 and we'd still see a genocide of border people, entirely because his administration is unwilling to pick a fight with a powerful governor in a state flush with heavily armed state border guards.
Uhh have you seen your borders the last... America's entire history
Sorry, I didn't word that very well. I mean within our borders. The extremists on the right wing get tingly in their swimming suit areas over the idea of killing their fellow citizens, and over stupid shit like not being sufficiently deferential to their Orange Jesus (OJ), being POC, gay, an uppity woman or liberal, and so on.
I'm assuming they are a fringe, but this kind of terrorism on a nation-state level does not require a majority. Not even all of the conservatives taken as a group are a majority. I suspect the teabaggers types are 30% or less of the population, and the ones that will gleefully cheer on/actively participate in genocide are probably less, but it's still at a very scary point, since even 10% of them and having a government that backs them is a recipe for disaster.
Here is why you should never vote third party in a FPTP voting system. If you are not happy with your candidate choices, then we need to increase voter turnout in local elections, mid terms, and most importantly, primary elections. Primary elections are where you actually can change the spirit of the political parties, but hardly anyone votes in primaries despite them being arguably the most important.
This only holds when the respective parties are roughly evenly tied with one another and the two major parties have the marginally more-popular candidates.
In a state where one party or the other is an overwhelming favorite to win, this math doesn't matter. In a state where both parties have put up a shit candidate (say, you're in Arizona or West Virginia and being asked to support Kristen Sinema or Joe Manchin yet again), a third party vote is the only way to clear the deck of deplorable alternatives. If you're in Nebraska and the popular frontrunner is the indie union activist Dan Osbourn you would be foolish to vote party line as that's effectively a vote for Deb Fischer.
No, it holds regardless. Your argument is the same as saying there's no point in voting if you don't win.
Your real problem is as I said, Primary Elections, where we have EXCEPTIONALLY terrible voter turnout. The primaries are where you choose your party representatives. If you are complaining about the General election, the fight was already lost.
This is demonstrably true, though. Hell, there's no point to voting if you do win, when the election is sufficiently lopsided. The general election process is the tail end of a far larger and more financially involved whittling of the candidate pool.
Even then, the focus is on building a movement rather than a single candidate's campaign. Elections are not one-and-done. Candidates can rise and fall in iterative races based on the coalitions they built (or squandered) in prior campaigns.
Turnout hardly matters when only a few candidates have the resources to compete. This Presidential primary is case-in-point. When Trump is favored to win 60% of the primary vote and Biden is virtually uncontested, volume of participation is irrelevant. Whether turnout is 10% or 100%, the same two guys are going to move on to the general.
I'll spot you that primaries have an outsized influence and that entryists in the democratic process are savvy to focus their attentions on these races. But Beto O'Rourke winning the primary for Texas Senate and then Texas Governor did nothing to overcome the enormous support-deficit he suffered in the general.
So what do you propose? Do what instead of voting? Seems like the lowest hanging fruit to me. The left tends to win with turnout. The left tends to be more progressive and more conducive to evidence based problem solving. Fixing the parties at the primary level seems like the lowest effort solution for the largest pay off.
Encouraging voter apathy is counterproductive, unless you are going to propose we do something else that's more effective for the same energy expenditure.
I truly believe that if every person who complained about politics spent as much time voting as they did complaining, we'd have a more representative government.
We complain about a government that is corrupt, run by the wealthy as if we're not the ones who put them there. Inaction is an action. Why should they represent our interests if we don't even vote? All not voting tells a politician is that you aren't their constituent.
Depends heavily on what kind of problems you're facing at home. In my home town of Houston, the state government has hijacked the school board of HISD and imposed a bunch of shitty rules and regs, designed to waste money and torture kids. So I joined my local PTA. We go to meetings and harass/shame the bureaucrats involved. We reach out to the teachers and administrators who are under the gun to enforce these policies and offer them our support. There was a picket of the school district's office in October for instance.
Direct action - refusing to comply with harmful public policy, harassing public officials who are advocating and endorsing this policy, and getting other parents and teachers on board with alternative policy that you can implement outside the scope of the administration - is an effective means of undermining an unelected bureaucracy appointed by a corrupt state government.
There's more to politics than complaining. You need workable alternative and you need a popular consensus. Ten different people all pulling in ten different directions won't affect any kind of change. But ten activists with a shared understanding and vision, pulling in the same direction can.
We're not. Far more often, it is the wealthy and well-organized interest and advocacy groups that put these people in power.
Greg Abbott and Ken Paxton aren't rogue agents who just kinda bubbled up from a political morass. They are the direct beneficiaries of large social mobilizations - O&G lobbying groups paid for with overpriced fossil fuels, large religious organizations like Houston's Second Baptist Church and Lakewood Church which galvenize masses of people along socially conservative political issues, doctors and lawyers and real estate associations and car dealership clubs who have formed cartels designed to guarantee higher salaries. One of the most politically active people in my community is Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale, a local celebrity businessman with a penchant for hookers and blow and QAnon conspiracy bullshit. This guy single-handedly bankrolls half a dozen talk-radio shock jocks with his advertising money and influences hundreds of thousands of my neighbors. Another is Dr. Peter Hoetz, a close personal friend of Dinesh D'Souza, who helped produce "2000 Mules" a documentary about how Joe Biden stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump.
Knowing who these people are and how they influence the body politick is instrumental in understanding where and how public opinion is crafted and distributed. If you're just showing up to the polls every two years and praying that Truth Will Prevail, you're walking to the slaughter. Only by recognizing who these assholes are, how they're seeding conspiracy theory and bigotry into the public domain, and where they fucking live so you can put a few rocks through their windows, can you discourage them from continuing.
I think the problem is that third parties are thinking too big. You can't just rival the Democrats or Republicans on a national level overnight.
Let's say hypothetically, one state becomes disillusioned with the mainstream parties and a third secessionist party starts making headway in mayoral and state elections, soon winning over the people.
If it's a big state like Texas, that's well over a hundred electoral college votes lost for the Republicans.
The problem is the spoiler effect. It's a well documented shortcoming of FPTP.
We need to all ask ourselves what is the biggest impact I can make politically with the energy I am willing to spend. For me, energy spent voting should never be LESS than energy spent complaining about politics.
It's funny. It's already election year and you can't even name a 3rd Party candidate with any sort of shot. But yes, some perfect candidate will declare in late September, right?
The Green Party was an absurd joke even decades before Stein the Russian useful idiot came along...
I hate it, but there is just no viable third party choice for progressives in this country.
The choice is to find Dems like AOC and get them elected.
I'm tired of every election being the most important election. I want politics to be boring again, less evil too if possible.
If politics were ever boring or less evil, it's because you weren't paying attention or engaged. Every upcoming election will always be the most important. Simply because all the others have happened, and the remainder are too far off and nebulous.
Ask all the people suppressed, attacked, and assassinated in the 50s and 60s fighting for civil rights. All the ones since then too. It didn't magically become perfect. Or all the people brutalized by robber barons before as they fought for unions, weekends, reasonable hours, and basic safety.
Being disengaged from politics is a luxury and a privilege that most people can't afford. Which explains why we're in such a deficit. With so much of the American population chomping at the bit for fascism again. And much of the rest of the world close behind. Putin in Russia, Orban in Hungary, Milieu in Argentina, etc etc etc. We've been asleep at the wheel, enabling the worst people among us.
You landed in the wrong timeline.
Too late for that.
Republicans are pushing for fascism, and Democrats like not having to do anything but be second worst to fascists.
It might be a few elections before that happens. There’s political turmoil and fascists have a chance so they’re gonna keep going for it until republicans understand they cannot possibly win anything with fascism
Yeah the problem is that wide reaching policy changes is hard to sell on a country wide scale
Are the Democrats EVER prepared though?
"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." - Will Rogers, 1879-1935
"Democrats never agree on anything, that’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they’d be Republicans." - Will Rogers, 1879-1935
TIL you guys have been stuck with the same two political parties since the 1850s. No wonder they've gone a bit corrupt.
To be fair, the parties themselves have changed significantly since then.
To be fair, no two-party system is a healthy democracy, and the way our elections are designed it’ll stay that way.
Which means, get worse
Yep, as it has been since the 1850s
Yeahhh, you may find some people disagree with you on that one. I hear some stuff happened in 1861-1865 or something, for example.
Our election system is generally bad. Elections aren't controlled by the federal government, even for federal elections, they are run by counties (or whatever the locality calls a county - in Louisiana they are parishes) and each county runs their elections differently unless the state steps in and regulates it. Some states have mail in voting, some make you stand in line on election day. Some counties have FPTP voting, others might have STAR or RCV.
The only way I see things changing at all are two fold: publicly funded elections with no private money at all AND abandoning FPTP voting for a broader method with an added benefit of potentially eliminating primaries. I know parties would complain, but things would be much more democratic.
This is entirely correct. The only way to heal the nation is to take steps forward, not relying on an archaic system that ‘works’ and building out something that actually works.
We won't get rid of FPTP or gerrymandering so long as we elect our representatives from geographically defines districts. We should empanel state congressional delegations in statewide elections, rather than by districts.
In a state with 20 congressional seats, any party that wins at least 5% of the vote should have a seat. A party that wins 10% of the vote should have 2 seats.
America's founders biggest fear were political factions forming. But when they were concerned the voters were all landowning men, how could people with shared economic interests ever form factions?
That's what happens with a first past the post voting system. A ranked choice would open things up quite a bit, but that would require the people elected by the first past the post voting system to change it or mass revolution.
Someone call the French and let them know we actually do need them again.
It must be a proportional system. No other system produces viable 3rd parties.
American's lack of knowledge about Canada never ceases to amaze me.
Canada has effectively the same system as the UK, both being based on fptp, are you suggesting that fptp is fine in a preliminary system?
I've campaigned for an NDP candidate who was against fptp as many of us are, even our current PM ran on replacing fptp which never happened of course... however we have more than 2 "viable" parties despite not having proportional representation. You can apply definitions to "viable" at your will but they have won provinces quite recently and have many seats in federal and provincial government.
I looked over and the trend is away from two parties as well.
Americans are perfectly capable of manufacturing guillotines domestically.
Yeah, but the French guillotines have that certain je ne said quoi.
God damn it. It's been true that long?
It's almost like individual people have different opinions and want different things.
...yeah...but also, we all need to want Republicans to lose spectacularly.
It increasingly feels like that's the single unifying trait holding the democratic party together. That's the sole reason you see people telling everyone to get out and vote.
It's not "We need to get young people to vote because they care about progressive policies, and we can elect a candidate who will align with their views", it's "We need to get young people to vote because we can't let Trump win another term."
Because it is the only trait. The Democrats know it. As long as they act slightly more progressive they can enjoy massive corporate and AIPAC bribes just like the Republicans do.
Nothing will change if people vote Democrat this time. In 2028 some other Republican (or Trump again) will run and the Dems will go "Vote for us or we're going to get Genocided for real this time unlike the other 150 last years whenever a Republican won"
The Democrats are actually way more internally organized now. About 30 years ago during the 90s both parties reached almost unanimous internal ideological consensus' and essentially all vote as a single blocks. The state we're in now with this polarization is part of this, and an example of the increased factionalization of US politics.
It's crazy to think how there were staunch segregationist Democrats in to the 70s even as the party as a whole had been (successfully) catering to younger urban demographics that came alongside industrialization. We can't really imagine something like that occurring now. Even Biden was opposed to bussing and a lot of his "across the aisle" examples even today involve working with segregationist Democrats, not "across the aisle" as we interpret it now.
I actually like that about the Democrat Party. Shows how ideologically diverse it is because tolerance is a bedrock of the party ever since the two parties switched from being conservative and liberal. The GOP flipped within four years from being neocons to isolationists, and anyone who disagrees with the current identity is a RINO
"Ten degrees to the left of center in good times, ten degrees to the right when it affects them personally.' - Phil Ochs, 1966
Democrats and Republicans swapped ideologies and beliefs around 1936
This has been the Republican Party's M.O. for decades.
"Government is corrupt and ineffective, elect us and we'll prove it to you!"
I really wish Biden would step down. I'd love a better option from the Dems. That said, no way in hell am I voting for Trump.
glances at Kamala Harris
sighs
Biden is safe, and honestly the best frontrunner we have.
I disagree. An 80 year old is not the best option we have.
Certainly the best option who's running though
That's 11 months for heart disease to do the world a favor and get itself some good PR for once.
There is no saving America, there's only buying time. Democrats can't do what's needed to prevent fascism because actually doing something about the Republican party would risk creating actual democracy. Prepare to fight fascism now because at best you're buying yourself another 4 years. Vote, don't vote, vote for a third party out of protest, whatever you do organize with other people and prepare for the worst.
In the best case, I'm wrong and you've made new friends. But if you don't organize now it will be too late to organize in the worst case.
Hard fucking facts. When you look at places where liberals have carte blanche to do whatever they damned well please - your Californias and Washingtons and NYs and Minnesotas - they still can't bring themselves to do what needs doing. No public health care. Rampant homelessness thanks to commodified housing. Food deserts. Rich-people-only universities. No new mass transit. Police budgets skyrocketing. Everyone kowtowing to tech executives for no discernible benefit.
Meanwhile, the fascists in Texas and Florida and the Dakotas and Carolinas are creating the future of the American political system while Schumer, Jeffries, and Biden just kinda sleep through it.
Voting as a panacea for organizing has really fucked the country as a whole. While movement conservatives raid school boards and throw pipe bombs at abortion clinics and do Brooks Brothers Riots and Jan 6ths any time an election is in doubt, liberals have been totally pacified. They show up ever couple of years, pull a lever, do a thoughts and prayers, and go home.
They spend far more time gambling on Robinhood or working overtime to earn their bosses a bigger paycheck than they do throwing events for their neighborhood or organizing their offices to bargain for a bigger share of company profits.
The American future looks increasingly grim.
When voting isnt enough learn how to grow crops like a farmer not a gardener and then practice shooting. If we're lucky those will stay hobbies.
Historically, the smart move it own the land and have other people do the reaping and sowing. Even then, agricultural land has skyrocketed in cost as its been commodified. Idk if I'd consider "sharecropper" a savvy career change under and social conditions.
At whom? Or is the plan to just shoot everything that moves and hope for the best?
If you have enough money to hire people to do farmwork this comment is not for you. It's about you.
If you don't have enough money to hire people to do farmwork, you sure as hell don't have enough money to purchase productive farmland.
No on said to buy a farm. Use what's available to you and ammend the soil, there are plenty of organic addatives that are free, low cost, or byproducts. Also make you own compost to continually add neutrients, aka grow food like a farmer not a gardener.
The point is to know how to do it cyclically, with little if any input other than what you create. Its an investment in divesting from society, and a lesson in sufficience that you may need once the fact that China and Bill Gates own the most farmland in America becomes a more pressing issue.
The guns are there because for any situation where food become that valuable, productive land anywhere becomes a target. Weather its pests, deers, boars, or humans.
A quarter acre of land in my neighborhood runs for $300k. There is nothing I can do to that soil that's going to justify a $300k upfront investment in urban agriculture. Nevermind what this prepper nonsense is going to accomplish in the event the End of The World isn't happening within the next five years.
The cool thing about farmland is that its only really useful if its being worked. And the realization that we're ultimately going to have to come to terms with is that the folks who "own" the land are very far removed from the folks who give the land value.
At the same time, subsistence farming isn't a particularly productive lifestyle in a post-industrial world. So telling everyone to run out to Iowa and become soybean farmers is not good financial advice.
I find it funny that you discount learning to grow crops as something that doesn't help and can only be done on a $300k piece of land but also acknowledge the land alone isn't what gives it value. Yes that's why it's important to know how to grow food. Which is apparently only useful to know if the world ends in the next five years according to you.
It seems like you're deliberately interpreting eveything I say in a way you can argue against it instead of the way I wrote it. Never told people to move, never told them to buy a farm, never told them to buy land but you argue against all those things as if my points hinges on them. What I said was learn to grow crops, not simply a vegetable garden that relies on annual trips to buy more miracle grown. That doesn't mean you need a farm.
Also interestingly enough if we check the CPI food items are rising faster than most other costs. Also sustainable and urban agribusiness demand is growing. Posturing yourself to understand and take advantage of that is the opposite of a financial mistake.
You don't need to know a ton about agricultural science to understand concepts like "units per sqft of productivity". In fact, these are more business-minded questions that someone interested in investing in farmland might ask, particularly if they were sold on some modernist "Vertical Farming" application of the science and wanted to sink $300k into a quarter acre with the hopes that it could be maximally productive.
But then that's where you run into serious problems. Understanding the agriculture at a professional level is very different from understanding it abstractly from the financial perspective. Suggesting that people just get a professional education in both things becomes even more untenable than the original "buy land and make it agriculturally productive" pitch originally sounds.
Because the underlying energy, fertilizer, and water costs are rising faster than most other costs. So the real brain-buster move is to invest in these things, rather than trying to compete with Tyson in raising chickens.
Its always growing because its routinely failing. The boom-bust cycle of agriculture technology companies tracks with the rest of the tech sector. And, like the tech sector, you're far better off investing in Cargill or Archer Daniels than going long on Eden Green Technology.
True, that. Building mutually supportive communities is really beneficial if shit goes bad. It's something most of us can do on a local level and it's something most humans are pretty good at.
Gods know I’m not ready for another American election.
You and me, both.
Democrats still don't know who they will be running against - since the polling needed to determine that are not "likely Iowa caucus goers" but "likely Trump jurors". We don't want to be like the Republicans in 2008 who were completely prepared to take on and tear down a Hilary Clinton nominee, only to find themselves fighting Obama.
If the Republican nominee is anyone but Trump, we'll see Trump run as an independent and split the vote.
🤞🏻
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I would hate to see how that voter turnout would affect all the downballot elections.
Him running from jail while competing against a candidate that isn't popular with the MAGA nuts, would be the ideal outcome.
The world will be looking at you. Don't fuck this up USA
Too late. We've already normalized fascism.
Fascism makes people turn on the tv, so every national news network actively did that for the profit of it.
Too late.
A lot of wackos around the world have been winning elections, so we shall see.
I wouldn't be surprised if more vicious rhetoric has been used in past elections, at least one candidate in pre-Civil War America was called a "hermaphrodite", but the inevitable use of AI is going to make the election an absolute circus. L
Meet the new year, same as the old year.
Please, for the love of God; if it's a state where Biden is guaranteed, then vote third party or whatever alternative dumbass you want. If it's a swing state, it's your god damned duty to vote for Biden. I don't like the AID he's providing Israel but he's not dropping the fucking bombs.
We don't need to spit in the face of our constitution to prove a point. We don't need to tank the work he's done getting the country back on track so you can feel morally superior. We don't need another bad year of COVID just because your friends are saying "Biden bad". Your friends are retarded and so are you.
Normally I don't give a shit what you liberal idiots do but this is seriously going to affect us in the real world. It's not your reddit and lemmy echo chambers out here so please tighten the fuck up.
Or tell us of a viable, alternative candidate with over a 90% chance of winning. Oh you don't have one? Then please shut the fuck up and vote Biden.
Agree basically but why use slur?
It's BIDENS BOMBS being dropped from BIDENS AIRPLANES. The fact that the pilot is israeli would only matter if Biden STOPPED SENDING THEM MORE BOMBS AND AIRPLANES.
Genocide Joe has got to go!
Since you seem to love concern trolling, please explain why you'd prefer a literal xenophobic dictator who gets off to torturing minorities
Checks news.
Biden sends Israel more bombs
No. No they are not.
The illusion of choice: vote for a senile old man or a senile old man that would consider turning minorities into Big Macs because he is hungry
The while calling Biden senile thing is pretty worn out. It's not true and it only helps Trump. Yeah, he's old, but Biden is sharper now than Trump was 30 years ago.
What about the 40 beheaded babies that Biden saw photographic evidence of?
Biden is the dullest tool in the shed.
You think Biden is a duller tool than the guy who suggested injecting beach to fight COVID and wanted to nuke a hurricane?
the he’s better than Trump thing is worn out. Don’t worry I’ll vote for grandpa Joe, I mean, what choice do I have?
Hey man, just look at China, the much darker truth is that in many parts of the world, senile old men run things, your freedom, dreams and purpose is largely meaningless to them unless they're very close to you or you've shown that you also care about their freedom and the well-being of their future offspring.
For a lot of older people, a certain cynicism comes with wisdom, and you're just like everyone else, a cog in the wheels of a big system. For America and China, where in many parts it's essentially still a mafia state, this is even more pronounced for people that come into positions of power at an older age as they're even more experienced at the real life equivalent to GTA politics.
The only real upside is that it's not as bad as the middle east still but hey that's a low bar for most that consider war and civil society to be two separate states of existence
Don't forget, both those old men want Genocide in Palestine. I'm hoping more people vote 3rd party this year
Why would that accomplish something in 2024 when it didn't accomplish anything with Nader in 2000 or Perot in 1992? The Democrats and Republicans will really definitely for sure learn their lesson this time for realsies?
Nobody learned any lessons. If they did Trump wouldn’t have been elected let alone be allowed to run again after provoking an insurrection to stay in power. I want to see viable 3rd party challenges that can make for actual change in how this current system work. People need options that don’t completely suck
Who would this viable third party challenger be and why would they be able to make actual change when neither Perot nor Nader could?
Don't strawman the idea of 3rd party candidates. Just fall in line is not really a healthy mindset if change is desirable. Humans could never fly until they actually tried
Very sadly we just aren't in a climate for third party candidates to do anything. I would suggest getting involved with ranked choice voting advocacy groups if you really believe in it.
This is the perfect climate for it. Teach the Democrat voters that these Zionist Nazi foreign agents have no place in politics. Either they all join in third party voting or they'll keep losing to Republicans.
Trump winning again isn't going to change anything. The "he's a dictator and never going to step down" fear mongering from last time turned out to be complete BS.
Nothing will ever change if you guys keep acting like scared chickens refusing to vote for anything other than Democrats.
Democrats are the controlled opposition, nothing more.
TRUMP LITERALLY TRIED TO VIOLENTLY OVERTHROW A DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT, YOU UNEDUCATED POTATO.
He walked a bunch of morons to the building. The government wasn't letting him take control.
Even if Jan 6 took over the entire building... It's a bunch of people inside the building.
The government wasn't listening to Trumps command to make him god emperor. 4 years passed and he gets kicked out.
I disagree. If Republicans take the presidency, the house, and the senate, I don't think voting will matter anymore. It's not so much, "Trump will be a dictator that never steps down," and more like further erosion of voting rights and democracy to the point that the Republican party will always control all branches of government. The large majority of states have red legislature or governors, and the Republicans are passing laws and trying to get court rulings that would keep them red no matter what (which would ensure control of the entire federal government). In reality, U.S. democracy is so weak now that only a few more laws and court rulings are needed to ensure Republican control of the federal government forever. They are doing it out in the open, "lawfully." As they say, "this is not a democracy, it's a republic!"
How do you expect to see a viable third party challenge in the US with our current system? All third parties do is get the major party most opposed to their position elected because it don't matter jack shit if 51 people vote against Orange Hitler if 3 of them vote 'Principled Third Party', leaving only 48 people to vote for the major party candidate opposed to Orange Hitler. Orange Hitler wins 49-48-3, and all 51 people who didn't want Orange Hitler get stuck with him because 3 didn't want Grandpa Joe. Leave off with the Rebellion for now, and spend your effort on replacing First Past the Post. Until you do that, all you'll do is ensure we get Orange Hitler.
...which will only help the fascists and put donnie into power.
Someone in another thread asked me what was the difference between coalition governments and two party systems. This is it. You should never be forced to vote against a candidate, yet that has been the US for the last several elections and will continue to be the US for the foreseeable future. Unless Trump wins, then the last vestiges of democracy in the US will fall pretty hard as Trump and associates continue to stuff cronies into government and finishing what they started during his first presidency while Europe and Asia likely fall to military conflicts.
I don't think either of them cares much about the middle east or Israel much. If anything they both look at Benjamin the same way Xi looks at the DPRK guy.
Just old upstarts with bones to pick over
How common are faithless electors?
How willing is the system to punish them? And if not the system, how willing are the people?
My question is a statistical inquiry. Your question is a bit more complex, I'm not even sure what that data would look like.
I was able to find this at least.
Not very. The real problem is straight up fake electors. With the State Secretary office sending a legitimate group and the legislature sending another.
All they need to do is stall that process long enough to either toss the election into Congress or have SCOTUS illegally intervene again
The real problem is no one votes. It's the bare minimum level of effort. It's the participation trophy. They can do all that because we put them there with embarrassingly bad voter turnout. We spend more time complaining than actually voting.
All of those problems are the symptoms of an unrepresentative government, and a government tends to represent the people who vote for them. If no one votes, they'll listen to the highest bidder.
Short Answer: No
Long Answer: I'm prepared for the Republicans to do the most blatantly illegal and immoral thing to steal the election, for Democrats to wave their finger if they feel an "aww shucks" isn't good enough, and for Democracy to die so Decorum may live... and for the Media to pretend it's not happening while they parrot "BoTh SiDeS", Comedians will call it as it is, but that'll be the extent of it.
The electoral system in the US has been going increasingly downhill. It's sad that it also affects the rest of the world as well.
America is the most propagandized nation in the world and all it takes is the words 'lesser evil' and someones gonna come in with an essay parroting what they 'learned' in a grade school history book that was picked by a few old white politicians in texas for use in schools around the country.
Even if they know some history they'll get swept up in the bipartisan political spectacle and operate as if Republicans and Democrats provide meaningful alternatives to the same economic arrangement.
The amount of "normal" Americans who aren't even that political and just vote based on some "I like how he talks" quality is always understated for highly online political types too. They think Trump voters are all insane MAGAs but so many are just like "well we need something different and I didn't personally experience what the media was freaking out over" which is actually valid for many. The Democrats are trying to instill these people with fear with feelings/affect they don't share, and they wonder why it's having no effect and why Biden's polling is lackluster at best. The policy-first Obama strategy of coming up with "reasonable policy" then convincing voters it's right is completely backwards, and requires someone who can speak like Obama, and even then... well look what happened after Obama and 13% of his voters went Trump, and arguably that swing is what won it for Trump. You can't win by coming up with policy and inventing a politics around it after the fact, you have to appeal to the politics first which is what they aren't doing. They're both still stuck and forced to work within the same economic system though so the amount that can really be done is pretty much contingent on that.
Of course they're prepared. They've already selected a group to blame if they lose.
No they won't. I'm still not hearing of any credible candidates the Democrats are putting forth.
3 Candidates. Just, 3 candidates.
Help us all.
"We live in a Democracy!"
"I need to wait to see who they put forward for me to vote for..."
True only in theory
The DNC (and RNC) both operate as businesses in practice and will put forth oppositions in specific races that are more advantageous for specific donors. These backed members are heavily funded the up winning most the time, despite often being worse candidates.
Recently Tim Burchet was threatened by the RNC to heavily fund an opposition in his next race and he upset the military industrial complex donors attempting to pursue the UAP investigation SCIF.
Also pretty visible in 2016 when Bernie was leading the Democratic primary race until the DNC backed Hilary which massively turned the entire race. You can argue that she would've won anyways, which is a fair argument. But the reason it wasn't close was the DNC backing.
If we can absolve all lobbying then I'll agree that we live closer to a democracy, but right now we're very plutocratic.
They are incompetent by design and by ignoring that means nothing will ever change for the better
vote biden because trump is a fascist
biden and obama chained a presidential candidate to chair for eight hours so she could not debate with the democrats and republicans
https://www.dailydot.com/debug/jill-stein-2012-debate-arrest-hofstra-university/
and now who you get to vote for will be decided by your state
During the campaign, Stein repeatedly said that there were no significant differences between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama. She said, "Romney is a wolf in a wolf's clothing, Obama is a wolf in a sheep's clothing, but they both essentially have the same agenda." She called both of them "Wall Street candidates" asking for "a mandate for four more years of corporate rule".
how was she wrong
If Genocide Joe doesn't step down I hope you all have the slightest morals left and vote third party instead of this Nazi enabler.
It will be just like any other election. People will vote for either red or blue because they get brainwashed that they only can do that.
I've seen a number growing that're actually angry enough to vote 3rd party lately
lol the downvotes, people are so dumb that the idea alone of something that isn't red or blue make them mad