America's Last Chance...?

[Channel72]

Except that Rahvin (and YOU with your attempt to play the Pragmatism card) did use it verbatim (if in far more words) in this thread as an argument. Shut up, idiot, or learn some language skills (specifically, English).

You're seriously confused. Circular reasoning is arguing for some position by using the conclusion as a premise. That's entirely different than arguing for a position by pointing out observed facts, you moron. The argument is:

(1) Third party candidates do not have enough support to win elections
(2) Voting third party siphons votes from second-choice mainstream candidates
(3) Therefore, voting third party is likely to backfire by helping to elect an undesired mainstream candidate

This isn't circular, you idiot, because the conclusion isn't in the premise. (1) and (2) are fucking observations about reality, and (3) is a conclusion drawn from those observations.

The reason you're hopelessly confused is because observations (1) and (2) are true precisely because of a social feedback loop resulting from the perception that (1) and (2) are true. But that doesn't make this a circular argument, any more than arguing that you should sell a stock when everyone starts to perceive that the company is doing badly.

You can attack the premises themselves, like Destructionator XIII is doing, but you can't say this is circular reasoning.

[Broken]

It's the Prisoner's Dilemma on a national scale enforced by the stupid (IMO) electoral college rules. Your vote towards the third party count only if more than 50% of the people who are voting in your state do so. And if they don't, your vote is thrown away. The worst thing that could happen in such cases is that your vote gets a much worse candidate elected, as was evidenced in Florida 2000.

As someone who currently lives and is registered to vote in Florida (although I wasn't here in 2000), I hate to say that I'll likely end up voting for Obama again, if only because the thought of a Republican getting the chance to nominate one or two more conservatives to the Supreme Court gives me chills. Obama has disappointed again and again, but when your alternatives are any Republican currently in the primaries or a protest vote for a third party (lets be honest people, NO third party candidate is organized and visible enough for a shot at winning the 2012 presidential race, especially given the amount of money that is going to be thrown around) that might help get a Republican elected, its a fairly painful situation.

What about voting in a third party into congress and the senate where they can actually make more of a difference? Or is that too throwing the vote away?

Laying a foundation for a party? Doing more than parading around in the Presidential races? That's sensible son, and American third parties don't hold with sensible!

Yeah, I'd love to see some third parties doing the real grunt work of trying to get a party off the ground instead of expecting the entire population to have an epiphany and come running to them.

[D.Turtle]

On Ralph Nader's votes, here's what Wikipedia has to say:

[snip]

There's more too - they talk about the other side - but I don't want to paste it all so check out the link.

If the exit polls from the first paragraph are accurate, if Nader wasn't there, Gore may have won, though this still doesn't say why they voted for him; whether it was protest votes or whatever.

The problem with the 2000 Florida results is that there were a lot of things that went somewhat wrong that could have changed the results significantly. You had things like the result being reported early - while the polls in some counties were still open, the counting/not counting of overseas ballots, misleading vote machines, voter rolls being purged, etc. Some of them favored Gore, others favored Bush, but they all could have easily resulted in a difference of thousands of votes in either direction.

It is simply not possible to conclude that if Nader had not run, Gore would have won.

[Simon_Jester]

On Ralph Nader's votes, here's what Wikipedia has to say:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_nade ... ontroversy

...

There's more too - they talk about the other side - but I don't want to paste it all so check out the link.

If the exit polls from the first paragraph are accurate, if Nader wasn't there, Gore may have won, though this still doesn't say why they voted for him; whether it was protest votes or whatever.

D13, it doesn't matter exactly what thoughts flowed through the minds of individual Nader voters. It might matter if this were some kind of moral culpability, if I were trying to say Nader (or those who voted for him) are evil or stupid or something.

But I'm not. I've said so before, and it looks like you didn't believe me.

Florida Nader voters in 2000 got the worst possible outcome from their point of view, assuming they wanted a Naderlike candidate to win. They got the least Naderlike candidate on offer. And though they had no way of knowing it in advance, they could have avoided this. If they had changed their votes to Gore, and nothing else at all had changed, Gore would have won and they would have gotten a better outcome. That was within their power. But they chose not to do so, for reasons of their own.

I don't really care why they chose that way. That's not the point, and it's totally irrelevant now. It doesn't matter that Nader wasn't trying to throw the election to Bush. It doesn't matter that the people who voted for him didn't want to throw the election to Bush. It doesn't matter which other states Gore won or lost. It doesn't matter that some other third party candidate could have also won the election for Gore by throwing their voter base behind him. It's all water under the bridge now.

What matters is that the 2000 election illustrates how small third parties can indirectly flip the outcome of an election. When I talk about voting for third parties, I bear cases like that in mind. The power of small third parties matters even in a parliamentary system- look at the way Likud affects the Israeli parliament, out of proportion to their numbers and voter base. And it doesn't always work in obvious, straightforward ways.

I think it's important to think through the consequences of my vote with that in mind.

Me, I live in a state so blue that Democratic presidential candidates barely even bother to campaign here. I have flexibility. I could have voted Nader in 2000 (well, 2004; I couldn't vote in 2000) without having to worry about flipping my state over to Bush. But the only reason I can do that is because I know damn well that for every person in the state who votes third party, ten or fifteen more will vote Democrat, versus about eight to twelve Republicans.

If I'd lived in a swing state like Ohio in 2004, I would not even have thought about voting for Nader over Kerry, because I wouldn't want a repeat of Florida in 2000. Not because there's anything wrong with Nader as a man, or with the Green Party as a party, but because it's delusional to vote as if I lived in a world where they had the resources and organization to put their man in the White House, or indeed do much of anything but act as a spoiler in close-run presidential races.

That's not always the case of third parties. Ross Perot ran as an independent in 1992 and did quite well. He was successful, obviously had plenty of money, and for a while was actually the leading candidate with a plurality of 39% in opinion polls. He managed 19% of the popular vote in the elections, but so widely distributed that no electoral votes went to him, and almost no precincts reported for him- looking at a map, about the only area he won was rural Maine and a few counties here and there in Texas, Colorado, and so on.

If he hadn't botched his campaign, he might even have won- and chunks of his support base and platform were later recycled by both parties, so even in defeat he had a real impact on American politics.

That's an example of what a third party can do if it has resources, motivation, and competent management. I don't see anything like that in the 2012 election cycle, and I don't like to be yelled at by people like Formless for not trying to shut my eyes and pretend it exists when it doesn't.

[Akhlut]

What about voting in a third party into congress and the senate where they can actually make more of a difference? Or is that too throwing the vote away?

Laying a foundation for a party? Doing more than parading around in the Presidential races? That's sensible son, and American third parties don't hold with sensible!

The Green Party consistently puts up candidates for every level of office, from city council to state senate and representatives to US presidential candidates.

That's an example of what a third party can do if it has resources, motivation, and competent management. I don't see anything like that in the 2012 election cycle, and I don't like to be yelled at by people like Formless for not trying to shut my eyes and pretend it exists when it doesn't.

The thing is, though, how are the Democrats going to change if they consistently win by shifting to the right? How is "hold your nose and vote for the lesser evil" a good personal policy for people to take? Why should I throw my lot in with Obama and company if I simply disagree with them less than I do with whichever crazy and/or soulless son of a bitch gets nominated by the Republicans? How many votes should people throw at the Party of Compromise Everything before it gets to be too much? At this rate, a third party will never be able to take even a single state representative seat with this sort of logic, because every election can be looked at through this perspective.

So, given that, how am I supposed to actually vote my conscience if my options are, speaking with extreme hyperbole , between Franco and Hitler?

[Simon_Jester]

...I'm talking about simple cause and effect.

You're saying voting for Nader caused "the worse possible outcome from their point of view". This is wrong on two counts: 1) many of those people had George Bush as their second choice, so their point of view isn't that simple, and 2) the causal connection is weak.

Taking Nader out would not have necessarily made a difference at all. That exit poll from Wikipedia indicates that it might have shifted, though we don't know the margin of error on that, and there's still so many other factors that we just can't be sure about it. There's other sources that say it would not have made a difference.

I'll agree that a third party vote can split things and give it to the others. I think the Bull Moose Party of a century ago (1912 IIRC) is better than the 2000 election to illustrate this, but even then, it's arguable that Woodrow Wilson would have won anyway.

Okay.

The reason I view Bush as worse than Gore from the point of view of a Nader supporter may be one of my own. You see, I find it very hard to understand anyone who would want Nader to win, and who would be at all pleased with the man Bush turned out to be. Nader's spent his entire life fighting the corrupt establishment that Bush was a willing member and ally of. The Green Party's platform stands in opposition to the avowed and de facto positions of the Republican Party on almost every issue.

I assume that if someone votes for Nader, their first and foremost desire is to put Nader into office. Presumably, that's because of some quality Nader has, or something he would do in office. Whatever the quality is that Nader has, Bush probably doesn't have it; whatever Nader would do, Bush would probably not do.

So when you point to someone who said their second choice in 2000 would have been Bush, I have to wonder whether that person was in possession of all the facts. It makes me wonder how many of those same people felt the same way in 2004: would their preferences have run Nader-Bush-Kerry or Nader-Kerry-Bush?

Granted, if someone said in 2000 that they'd rather see Bush than Gore in the White House, I'll take them at their word. But if that same person then turned around and voted for a pro-consumer, antiwar, environmentalist crusader, I have to imagine they'd feel less than pleased to get a pro-corporate, prowar, anti-environmentalist crony in the White House. Maybe they didn't realize that Bush would be such a problem. Maybe they didn't anticipate the Iraq War. Maybe they thought Gore would be identical to Bush in office (possible, though very, very far from provable).

But again, I have to doubt that many Green voters really wanted the Bush they got, instead of the Bush they thought they'd get. If they did, why did they vote for a man like Nader in the first place? That would be like, I don't know- wanting lemon juice and ordering a chocolate milkshake, to pick something mundane.


Also, when we look at the effects of third parties on elections, 1860 offers even better examples- the pro-slavery vote split three ways, opening the field for the anti-slavery Republicans. I chose 2000 because it was recent: it is still on the minds of many Americans, and if you're over thirty in America today you were of age to participate in it. 1860 or 1912 is something from the history books; 2000 is remembered.

This line of conversation started with me saying:

Formless, do you remember Ralph Nader and the 2000 election?

A lot of Americans do. It's depressed their willingness to vote for third parties, on both sides of the aisle. Because if even a fraction of the people who voted Green had been willing to vote for Al Gore (whose credentials on environmental issues have since turned out pretty well, for instance), there would never have been a President Bush. There might not have been an Iraq War. There might never have been waterboarding at Guantanamo, or unary-executive sycophantic freaks writing torture memos in the Department of Justice. We might have trillions of dollars less national debt.

To be fair, all these things might still have gone wrong anyway. But at least we would have had a chance to avoid the many shameful disasters and follies America has bumbled or charged into in this past decade.

It is very possible that we would be living in a better country today if people eleven years ago had listened to your advice and done the exact opposite.

A lot of Americans are reluctant to take their chances on third parties, because the last time a third party gained any real traction in America, we got a president who was almost as bad as could be imagined from the viewpoint of the people who voted for that third party.

Ask around- this is supported. People really do think this, because it happened. It affects the way Americans view third parties.

A viable third party has to overcome that barrier by being organized and efficient, and by acting locally before it jumps into the presidential pool and risks spoiling an election and making matters even worse. The Greens have learned their lesson, I think, and are trying to rebuild from the bad PR of the 2000 election- as Akhlut says, they're working locally, which is more effective for an organization of their size.

But in this election cycle, there is simply no one on offer who has done the job, and most people on the left don't want to see President Gingrich badly enough to hope that a third party wins, say, 5-10% of the vote.

So "Obama sucks, vote third party" is simply not enough for a lot of American voters, even ones who are displeased with Obama. It may be enough for you, or Akhlut, or Formless, or even for me. But the decision isn't clear-cut when you factor in the possible consequences, and self-righteous condemnation of people who don't vote third party doesn't go over well.

That's an example of what a third party can do if it has resources, motivation, and competent management. I don't see anything like that in the 2012 election cycle, and I don't like to be yelled at by people like Formless for not trying to shut my eyes and pretend it exists when it doesn't.

The thing is, though, how are the Democrats going to change if they consistently win by shifting to the right? How is "hold your nose and vote for the lesser evil" a good personal policy for people to take? Why should I throw my lot in with Obama and company if I simply disagree with them less than I do with whichever crazy and/or soulless son of a bitch gets nominated by the Republicans? How many votes should people throw at the Party of Compromise Everything before it gets to be too much? At this rate, a third party will never be able to take even a single state representative seat with this sort of logic, because every election can be looked at through this perspective.

So, given that, how am I supposed to actually vote my conscience if my options are, speaking with extreme hyperbole , between Franco and Hitler?

This is the argument for being politically active. Donate to better politicians, join protests, support organizations that try to lobby the major parties back toward your views.

And if by some historical accident, the Democratic Party splits into the corporatist Centrists and a serious, left-wing party that wants to reverse the post-1994 Republican Revolution, and has real traction with the electorate... go for it. Fine I'm all for it. Major, viable third party challenges have happened in my lifetime, and I hope to see them again.

As to the 2012 election- well, the result will be what it will be. I won't tell you what to do. The only thing that bothers me is having pompous nitwits tell me that I'm evil for looking at the names actually on the ballot, working out who has a whelk's chance in a supernova of winning, and voting accordingly.

[Julhelm]

Reading through this thread gives the impression that electing the president is similar to electing a king, as if the whole representative congress system somehow doesn't matter. What difference does it really make who the president is? He still needs congress to go along with whatever he wants to do unless he governs using executive orders only, which only happens in Clancy novels.

Voting for third party candidates is the only way to get any meaningful change a decade or two down the line.

[Akhlut]

This is the argument for being politically active. Donate to better politicians, join protests, support organizations that try to lobby the major parties back toward your views.

That's a lot easier when one has money and time on their hands; being unemployed with a small child does not make that particularly easy.

Also, as for lobbying, that's real useful when petrochemical companies, for instance, can easily outspend any private, non-profit concern with pathetic ease.

And if by some historical accident, the Democratic Party splits into the corporatist Centrists and a serious, left-wing party that wants to reverse the post-1994 Republican Revolution, and has real traction with the electorate... go for it. Fine I'm all for it. Major, viable third party challenges have happened in my lifetime, and I hope to see them again.

However, are the Democrats going to change if they don't lose? Notice the difference in presidential candidates fielded in 2004 and 2008; John Kerry, who had as his main qualification that he wasn't George Bush, and Barack Obama, who actually could talk a good game and seemed to offer a good platform. Too bad for him he reneged on more than a few important things and was okay trying to appease a party that would hate him even as he managed to kill Osama bin Laden and aid in overthrowing Qaddafi, but that's slightly tangential.

As to the 2012 election- well, the result will be what it will be. I won't tell you what to do. The only thing that bothers me is having pompous nitwits tell me that I'm evil for looking at the names actually on the ballot, working out who has a whelk's chance in a supernova of winning, and voting accordingly.

I certainly don't think you're evil for advocating this, however, I also don't see "vote for the lesser of two evils!" as being a good long-term strategy in the least. For the choice between appeasing centrist and asshole who wants to declare war on Iran, yeah, I suppose voting for the appeaser is the preferable choice when the vote would actually matter (battleground states), but, again, as a long-term strategy I think it is an enormous failure. In the middle-term, though, the Democrats are going to have to lose in order to change or for them to be outright replaced by another party that is actually worth a damn (IMNSHO). The Democrats only learn through defeat, really (see also: Dukakis in '88 vs. Clinton in '92), so how can we expect long-term improvement without their defeat?

[Thanas]

As to the 2012 election- well, the result will be what it will be. I won't tell you what to do. The only thing that bothers me is having pompous nitwits tell me that I'm evil for looking at the names actually on the ballot, working out who has a whelk's chance in a supernova of winning, and voting accordingly.

Well, this pompous nitiwit does not deny you the option of doing so, however don't ever call yourself a defender of civil liberties again and have the intellectual honesty to admit that you just do not care about civil liberties or torture enough to stop supporting somebody.

[Simon_Jester]

As I believe I mentioned earlier, I have the fortunate position of being able to vote third party without worrying about the consequences.

For people in a swing state, they have a choice between voting for a torturer, voting for a torturer who will also crash the economy while continuing the torture, or not voting and effectively flipping a coin.

I find it perverse that they are not allowed to care about the "crash the economy" issue enough to vote because of it, if they want to still call themselves decent human beings.

[Formless]

You're seriously confused. Circular reasoning is arguing for some position by using the conclusion as a premise.

Which is exactly what you are doing! Mother of fuck, how do you miss this shit?

That's entirely different than arguing for a position by pointing out observed facts, you moron. The argument is:

(1) Third party candidates do not have enough support to win elections
(2) Voting third party siphons votes from second-choice mainstream candidates
(3) Therefore, voting third party is likely to backfire by helping to elect an undesired mainstream candidate

This isn't circular, you idiot, because the conclusion isn't in the premise. (1) and (2) are fucking observations about reality, and (3) is a conclusion drawn from those observations.

It is a fact... and it is also a fact that you have conveniently omitted something. Something so obvious and important dare I call it a lie by omission? Yes, I do. By definition, using voting statistics to determine your vote will always be invalid, it will always be circular reasoning. Why? Because.

Those

statistics

represent

YOU, YOU FUCKING RETARD!

You are a voter! Let those words sink in. Why do third parties not have enough support? Because you, people like you, and people whose votes you are right now trying to sway, have decided not to support them. And you have decided not to support them... because they don't have voter support. Circular reasoning, paired down to its essentials.

You claim that it is a fact that voters are caught in a logical feedback loop, but you want me to believe that you aren't also caught up in the same? Why is it hard for you to admit you are part of the problem here? Pride? What gives you the right to have any pride? But there I go quoting Mike Wong...

You categorize my position as the "idealistic" position. What you are missing is that democracy is a system where the idealistic position and the pragmatic position are one in the same by design. Your vote as an individual has very little impact on any population too large for everyone to know you personally. It is the sum of everyone's votes that makes the decision of who gets elected or what laws get passed, and the individual voter is barred from knowing the votes of everyone else until after the election is finished. Hence, you must vote on your ideals, because you lack the information to account for what people in current and future elections are going to vote for. Furthermore, you are focusing on your decision as an individual. But doing so leads to absurd conclusions in a democracy. For instance, your individual vote has such a small effect on the decision making process that not casting it has minimal consequences, enough that its tempting to ignore them and stay home on election day. But the more people who make that decision, the more your vote would have impacted the election results if you chose to cast it. That is mathematically true. Incidentally, lets just put the "why not abstain?" question to bed, shall we? Good.

Now, if you use the logic that your vote as an individual is all that matters in your personal decision making process, it can appear that the decision to exclude certain "unelectable" candidates was made for you by the majority. But when you look at a larger scale and realize that there are millions of other voters who are dis-empowered for similar reasons, it becomes apparent that in fact they have no one to blame but themselves for having to choose between the lesser of two villains. Or worse. I am reminded of the classic tactic of dictators, wherein they claim that they are allowing elections... but there is only one party you can vote for. A sham election. That's the situation your "pragmatic" criteria create, effectively, only you technically have two officials... neither of whom you actually agree with. Again, its a sham election; only in this case the fault lies not with a conspiracy of government (though granted I can't see the Status Quo parties complaining any time soon) but with the voting population believing their own bullshit about how there are only two "electable" parties, and everything else is a protest vote/helping the "more evil" candidate/as worthless a gesture as abstaining.

You can attack the premises themselves, like Destructionator XIII is doing, but you can't say this is circular reasoning.

Oh contraire: in fact, that is what it means to call something circular reasoning. Seriously, do you know anything about logic, or are you just trolling? I think I attacked the wrong skillset when I said you should learn something about English. If the conclusion and the premise are one in the same, then dismissing an argument as invalid for circular reasoning is exactly that-- attacking the premises of the argument. Do you also use this rebuttal when someone accuses you of Begging the Question? Its the same fallacy, just a more specific case.

And I don't even have to dismiss your facts-- just the way you use them.

[Formless]

If I vote for candidate X, and candidate Y wins, then I did not get what I wanted. Poor unhappy me.

But it takes a special kind of mindlessness to argue that this means I should be blamed for candidate Y winning. If I had not voted for X, the result would be fewer votes for X, which would not help X achieve a victory over Y. Y would win anyway, just by a bigger margin.


If I vote for candidate Y, and candidate Y wins, then Y's victory had a good deal to do with the outcome of my action. And I got what I wanted. Lucky me.

Concession acc--

If I don't vote at all, and candidate Y wins, then I (and people like me) could have stopped candidate Y, by voting for candidate X. But if I cared who won, I would have voted. So I got what I wanted- namely, no say in the outcome of the election. Lucky me.

e...p People who abstain are saying something now? Huh. I was under the impression that not voting was not fucking voting. A vote sends a message. Not voting implies I don't care... because Simon Says?

You are one arrogant little shit, you know that?

If I vote for candidate Z, and candidate Y beats candidate X by a narrow margin, and Y is less like Z than X was, I have not gotten what I wanted. I didn't even get the next best thing to what I wanted. I got the opposite of what I wanted. Poor unhappy me.

And if the election was close enough, then as a matter of brute fact, I could have avoided this fate, and gotten at least part of what I wanted. I could have voted for X, who would then beat Y, and give me something a little bit like Z instead of being totally unlike Z.


This is what happened to Nader voters in Florida. They got the opposite of what they wanted, the result that matched their desires the least. Had they instead banded together for Gore, they could have gotten a result that was at least less bad.

This is not a blame game. It is not a moral failing, it is not "Nader evil waaah." This is arithmetic. Simply adding and subtracting.

Why don't you just admit it: you have a double standard where third parties vs TEH DEMOCRATHS are concerned. Given your consistent insistence that voting for a third party enables the worse of two candidates to win in elections, none of this is relevant unless you are playing the blame game, you dishonest little rat.

Why bother to think about the outcome of your vote, or the consequences of your action, when you can "register your protest" by checking off a box on a piece of paper instead of doing something hard like writing a check or carrying a sign?

Its not a protest vote. As I said, its a long term strategy that starts with electing third party candidates to as many other positions as possible in the hopes of changing people's perceptions from "third parties SUCK, they will never win a presidential election!" to "we're responsible for who we elect, and these guys have some good ideas."

I say again: you are a dishonest little rat, concern trolling for god knows what reason over this issue.

Those are both true. It is nonetheless true that if even a significant fraction of the Nader voters had voted Gore in Florida, we would have gotten President Gore, not President Bush. The results would probably have been better from the point of view of the Green Party, and they would certainly be better from the point of view of people who share some but not all of the Greens' beliefs.

If you keep insisting on making this point, I WILL make an official request that you prove it or concede. This is your last chance to prove you aren't a dishonest little concern troll.

Oh, horrors, I am now one of the damned. However shall I look myself in the mirror?

Start by imagining a suction cup dildo attached to it, molded after Obama's cock. Now suck it, Rat.

[Broomstick]

Get active in politics and don't vote for torturers. Don't vote for Paul as he has too many faults himself, but don't condone these politics with your vote.

So, in the 2012 election... don't vote? Or vote for whom, exactly?

Vote for decent local candidates who opposed the politics. Or, if you vote for Obama, just be honest enough to admit that you don't care if your country tortures and killis innocents. Or don't vote.

Thanas, given the reality of whose running in the US this year, you're essentially labeling any American who votes in the Federal part of the election (President, House, and 1/3 of the Senate running) as immoral. According to you, the only acceptable choice is self-disenfranchisement.

If the moral people choose not to vote, who do you think will get elected?

[Thanas]

As I believe I mentioned earlier, I have the fortunate position of being able to vote third party without worrying about the consequences.

For people in a swing state, they have a choice between voting for a torturer, voting for a torturer who will also crash the economy while continuing the torture, or not voting and effectively flipping a coin.

I find it perverse that they are not allowed to care about the "crash the economy" issue enough to vote because of it, if they want to still call themselves decent human beings.

Oh, they are allowed to care. They are not allowed to call themselves supporters of civil liberties though if they do, or at least have to admit that they care more for money than they do for civil rights.

Thanas, given the reality of whose running in the US this year, you're essentially labeling any American who votes in the Federal part of the election (President, House, and 1/3 of the Senate running) as immoral. According to you, the only acceptable choice is self-disenfranchisement.

Really? There are a number of third parties. Voting for them is not self-disenfranchisement.

If the moral people choose not to vote, who do you think will get elected?

I love this arrogant assumption that moral people would automatcally vote for the democrats. Are the occupy people immoral? In the end, I am not presuming to tell you who to vote for. I do not have that right. What I do tell you is what I think of people who vote for a candidate that tortures and assassinates and has that as a cornerstone of his foreign policy. In my mind, they are little better than those who voted for Bush in his second term because I do recognize they also consisted of people who feared what the evil democrats would do if they were elected and glossed over his faults. I also recall how many people were all "I am such an idealist" when it came to the election of Obama. Now, when push comes to shove and the idealistic choice actually might have some consequences, amazing how ideals suddenly matter less, no?

[Spoonist]

@Formless
Your entire rant would have had merit had you included something about changing the voting system to a two tier style. Like the Finnish or French. As it stands now in the US your whole anger management failure just ignores reality.

[Broomstick]

Thanas, given the reality of whose running in the US this year, you're essentially labeling any American who votes in the Federal part of the election (President, House, and 1/3 of the Senate running) as immoral. According to you, the only acceptable choice is self-disenfranchisement.

Really? There are a number of third parties. Voting for them is not self-disenfranchisement.

I have lived in my current state for 14 years. In that time, I can't recall a third party candidate on the ballot for a FEDERAL level office be it PotUS, House, or Senate, with the exception of Nader in 2000. The third party candidates are all state or lower level on the ballot I have to use.

There is literally no option to vote third party for candidates on that level in most elections in my state, and so far as I have been able to determine there will be no such third party candidate on the Federal level on the Indiana ballot in November. We don't have that choice.*

You do know that each state draws up its own ballot for the election? Just because a Green candidate gets on the ballot in, say, Massachusetts, doesn't mean they'll appear on the ballot in any other state. If the Green candidate can't fulfill the requirements for getting on the Indiana ballot they simply won't appear on that ballot, even if they are on the ballot in 49 other states. It should not be a surprise that those rules tend to favor the two major parties.

It's not that Americans are completely unwilling to vote third party. I and many others certainly do so when we have that option. Third party candidates are common in local level races, and appear frequently in state level races. Hell, the communist party appears on the ballot in low-level races in the US (actually, I think there are several with the words "communist" or "socialist" in their names). They are, however, rare on the Federal level.

Hence, saying "vote third party or don't vote" is effectively saying "don't vote on the Federal level". Thus, my question to you, slightly clarified: if the moral, anti-torture people refuse to vote for the current major party offerings they won't vote at all in the Federal elections... in which case, who do you think will win?



* There is an option to write in a candidate, but in this state the process is cumbersome and clearly designed to discourage the practice. Many write-ins are rejected on technicalities, such as slight misspelling, which comes down to if John Q Candidate usually writes his name as John Q Candidate and you write in John Candidate without the Q your write-in could be rejected as invalid. Write-in candidates getting an office in the US is even less common than third-party candidates getting an office.

[Spoonist]

It's not that Americans are completely unwilling to vote third party. I and many others certainly do so when we have that option. Third party candidates are common in local level races, and appear frequently in state level races. Hell, the communist party appears on the ballot in low-level races in the US (actually, I think there are several with the words "communist" or "socialist" in their names). They are, however, rare on the Federal level.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesse_Ventura for instance.

But really the way the US presidential voting is just one tiered makes it very hard to reform a two party system.

[Thanas]

Hence, saying "vote third party or don't vote" is effectively saying "don't vote on the Federal level". Thus, my question to you, slightly clarified: if the moral, anti-torture people refuse to vote for the current major party offerings they won't vote at all in the Federal elections... in which case, who do you think will win?

If there is no option, then write in a candidate. But if you care for civil liberties, I cannot see how one can vote for Obama and thereby validate his policies. I do not know how the election will turn out but I know that I could not justify to myself voting for Obama.

And so far I note you are pretty much dancing around the issue of what you value more. I guess the above is to turn this into a spiel about how the EVIL REPUBLICANS will win if all those good, honest people who totally oppose torture (except when it threatens their interests) do not vote for the VALIANT OBAMA (who, I might add, presided so far over the biggest rollback in civil liberties in over a century). Sorry, I do not buy into this false dichotomy.

[LaCroix]

Actually, the longer this discussion goes on, the more I come to the conclusion that it might be in the interest of Third Party/Democrat voters to have Ron Paul win the race, and then vote for him and vote for a congress that supports all his ideas. Or to use him as write-in candidate...

It sounds crazy, but let's play a what-if:
The US would stop meddling all over the planet, so Europe would be forced to use their weight instead of letting the States trash the place to their hearts extent. Without letting the US do what is actually mostly in their own interest, Russia and Chine would also have to actually police the planet, instead of just leaning back and trying to gain something out of conflicts. I am fully aware that this would cause some places in the world to become more violent, but some others might actually calm down. (Without having to counter American interests on principle, RUS/CHI can act much more rational towards countries.) Still, most countries simply do not have the capabilities to wage war in a lazy, one-sided fashion like the us does, which is a very good deterrent.

Yes, the economic crash would be hard (although there is very much the same possibility that the crash is inevitable if current policies are continued)
Still, all the people going to the banks and demanding gold payouts for their dollar wage-checks would make it easy to make the big banks crash completely, making room for new, smaller enterprises with sane lending policies and less power. Big banks failing makes TBTF industries fail, and globalization grinds to sudden end. Re-emergence of medium business will occur as small businesses take over market shares.

Environment (and to an extent medicine) are fucked - but aren't they already almost broken, anyway? But give it a bit time under the new non-regulated scenario, and most people will realize that federal oversight is needed, and public healthcare is a good idea.

But most important - power is reverted to States!
Now you have a real possibility to get third parties into play - it's much easier to get them into State government, and they wouldn't be able to do much good in Congress as single independent, anyway. Once a Party gains a foothold in a state and proves that they're up to the job, it will be much easier to get the ball rolling in other states, or to actually be taken serious in federal elections. After all, you actually know the percentage of the base they already have.

Also, with most powers reverted to States, the important stuff will be done there, anyway. So you can regulate pollution and medicine on a state level, and branch out to all other states, one after another. People can finally vote with their feet again...
Once the power base is established, you can do all the stuff that is needed to repair the system (proportional vote system to keep the US from creeping back into a "choose between two barely different tyrants" system, new federal regulation systems, healthcare)

Conclusion:
It would be a hard time, but in the end, you'd get your third parties into power much faster than if you actually try to use the current system and have slow progress. I also think that this route would actually cause less damage than further decades of Repocratic/Depublican leadership. And let's be honest here, thinking you can change the system through the system within your life-time is ambitious, given the current state. As crazy as it sounds, your chances are better Paul crashes the system in the way he proposed to do so.

[Simon_Jester]

Hence, saying "vote third party or don't vote" is effectively saying "don't vote on the Federal level". Thus, my question to you, slightly clarified: if the moral, anti-torture people refuse to vote for the current major party offerings they won't vote at all in the Federal elections... in which case, who do you think will win?

If there is no option, then write in a candidate. But if you care for civil liberties, I cannot see how one can vote for Obama and thereby validate his policies. I do not know how the election will turn out but I know that I could not justify to myself voting for Obama.

And so far I note you are pretty much dancing around the issue of what you value more. I guess the above is to turn this into a spiel about how the EVIL REPUBLICANS will win if all those good, honest people who totally oppose torture (except when it threatens their interests) do not vote for the VALIANT OBAMA (who, I might add, presided so far over the biggest rollback in civil liberties in over a century). Sorry, I do not buy into this false dichotomy.

No, the problem is that the two mainstream candidates are going to be identical (bad) on civil liberties, and some other issues like free money for financial corporations. Meanwhile, they are going to be different on other issues (bombing Iran, abolishing welfare, blocking any movement on gay rights, cutting taxes further and cutting spending further still to match so that we can balance the budget in the middle of a recession...)

By your argument, because all available candidates with a plausible hope of victory are identically bad on some important issues, it would be better not to vote at all than to vote for any of them.

For the more utilitarian people in the thread, that doesn't make a lot of sense. If the outcome is either a vile torturer (Barack Obama), or a vile torturer who also wants to destroy the domestic economy (Newt Gingrich)... Option A is still less bad than Option B.

I'd understand your argument if the choice was between a vile torturer and a non-torturer who wanted to destroy the economy. Because then, anyone who votes for A is saying he cares more about the economy than about civil rights. Anyone who votes for B is saying the opposite.

But I don't understand the argument so well when we get the same outcome on civil liberties whether we vote for A, vote for B, vote for C through Z (who aren't going to win no matter what), or just stay home.

I think we have different concepts of what it means to vote in an election, as a statement of personal values and ethics.

To you, a vote seems to be a strong statement of personal endorsement- anyone I vote for is someone I approve of with few or no reservations, and if I don't like the candidates I shouldn't vote at all, because it's better to have no political voice than to speak in favor of anything that is bad.

To me, a vote is an attempt to influence the outcome of the election- to get the best available set of leaders. Raising a better crop of leaders is a different project, linked to the vote but also linked to all sorts of other political activity that goes on all the time, not just on election day. If the choices actually on offer on election day are bad, but not all identically bad, then I just don't see the sense of refusing to express a preference.

Actually, the longer this discussion goes on, the more I come to the conclusion that it might be in the interest of Third Party/Democrat voters to have Ron Paul win the race, and then vote for him and vote for a congress that supports all his ideas. Or to use him as write-in candidate...

God damn but I'm sick of accelerationists. Especially accelerationists who want to stand safely on another continent and watch the fireworks...

Your argument comes down to "if things go to shit faster, people will be forced to deal with the shit." I'm not sure it works like that. The problem is that a few crazy years don't automatically yield good reforms on the other side- they can just as well lead to a breakdown and general internecine warfare (Yugoslavia 1989), or to a tyrant (Russia 1917), or to a system too crippled by its past to improve its future (Russia 1990-2000).

Environment (and to an extent medicine) are fucked - but aren't they already almost broken, anyway? But give it a bit time under the new non-regulated scenario, and most people will realize that federal oversight is needed, and public healthcare is a good idea.

You'd be amazed what people can get used to. That's the entire problem with the present situation- making things worse also makes people more beaten down and lowers their standards. Making people a lot worse off fast may not make them more likely to react politically, especially since corporatist politicians will still be trying to blame everything that goes wrong on the liberals, and succeeding in convincing half the electorate.

Also, with most powers reverted to States, the important stuff will be done there, anyway. So you can regulate pollution and medicine on a state level, and branch out to all other states, one after another. People can finally vote with their feet again...

People cannot vote with their feet when they're genuinely being harmed- especially in times of high unemployment, because there aren't many jobs to be found even in the good places to live.

Suppose you live in Georgia (ask Mayabird about why Georgia is an especially bad state and would be made even worse by the decline of federal power). You're being squeezed economically, so you want to move- but where? There are millions of people in Georgia, and other similar states, looking for places to live elsewhere; the jobs and opportunities and, hell, housing aren't really there. You might want to move to a place like Washington state where the state government is willing to tax people to provide social services instead of treating Obion County fire service as a model for the nation... but Washington state can't accomodate a million people suddenly moving in.

In times of economic growth, or when the land is sparsely populated and there's plenty of room to put up new housing, this is easier. But the US hasn't handled major population migrations gracefully since the Great Depression, and even then the people 'voting with their feet' were a bunch of glorified refugees with no property and few prospects. Mass migrations caused by bad government and economic policies are not something to be desired.

Conclusion:
It would be a hard time, but in the end, you'd get your third parties into power much faster than if you actually try to use the current system and have slow progress. I also think that this route would actually cause less damage than further decades of Repocratic/Depublican leadership. And let's be honest here, thinking you can change the system through the system within your life-time is ambitious, given the current state. As crazy as it sounds, your chances are better Paul crashes the system in the way he proposed to do so.

I disagree.

Also, I would like to point out that the system has been changed through the system in everyone's lifetime: the world does not look the same as it did in 1985, let alone 1960, and 1960 is well within the "lifetime" of people still alive today. The system looks static to you- but how long have you been watching it? I'm not sure you can say with that degree of confidence that it's stuck the way it is.

[Thanas]

No, the problem is that the two mainstream candidates are going to be identical (bad) on civil liberties, and some other issues like free money for financial corporations. Meanwhile, they are going to be different on other issues (bombing Iran, abolishing welfare, blocking any movement on gay rights, cutting taxes further and cutting spending further still to match so that we can balance the budget in the middle of a recession...)

By your argument, because all available candidates with a plausible hope of victory are identically bad on some important issues, it would be better not to vote at all than to vote for any of them.

For the more utilitarian people in the thread, that doesn't make a lot of sense. If the outcome is either a vile torturer (Barack Obama), or a vile torturer who also wants to destroy the domestic economy (Newt Gingrich)... Option A is still less bad than Option B.

I'd understand your argument if the choice was between a vile torturer and a non-torturer who wanted to destroy the economy. Because then, anyone who votes for A is saying he cares more about the economy than about civil rights. Anyone who votes for B is saying the opposite.

But I don't understand the argument so well when we get the same outcome on civil liberties whether we vote for A, vote for B, vote for C through Z (who aren't going to win no matter what), or just stay home.

I think we have different concepts of what it means to vote in an election, as a statement of personal values and ethics.

To you, a vote seems to be a strong statement of personal endorsement- anyone I vote for is someone I approve of with few or no reservations, and if I don't like the candidates I shouldn't vote at all, because it's better to have no political voice than to speak in favor of anything that is bad.

To me, a vote is an attempt to influence the outcome of the election- to get the best available set of leaders. Raising a better crop of leaders is a different project, linked to the vote but also linked to all sorts of other political activity that goes on all the time, not just on election day. If the choices actually on offer on election day are bad, but not all identically bad, then I just don't see the sense of refusing to express a preference.

No. You. Just. Don't. Get. It.

A vote is a validation of that person's politics, or at least that is how it will be interpreted by the winner of said vote. You can't say "I do vote for this aspect of you but I oppose X" in the booth. A vote, for all intents and purposes of todays democracy, is a full-blown validation of all the candidate's policies. If you vote for somebody and he wins, there is little reason to expect him to change. If you vote for a guy, you will also not change the current crop of leaders. Changes like that have only come when the party in power loses the election. That is just the way it is when primaries are not held. Torture (by proxy?) and assassinations are a fundamental aspect of Obama's policies. One cannot divorce them from his other policies as they are, together with the highly questionable drone warfare, cornerstones of his foreign policy, as much as the security state is a cornerstone of his domestic policy.

You might very well pick and choose when the choices are not some that concern fundamental values. "Do not torture, do not kill without a court approval" were basically the foundations the USA was formed on. Yet Obama is looking for validation at the polls for scrapping these and you are willing to provide it to him.

And providing any sort of validation for torture and assassination is not what one should doing. It is one of the very few issues that to me completely overshadow everything else because supporting those kind of things is simply despicable. Don't support them or don't validate the by giving your consent to them (guess what, that is also the function of the vote in a democracy).

[Simon_Jester]

If I vote for Obama I validate his policies of torture and assassination.

If I vote for the Republicans I validate the Republicans' identical policies of torture and assassination.

If the Democrats stick to their past pattern, the party leadership will react to a defeat by thinking they failed to pick up 'moderate' voters who lie between themselves and the Republicans. Since they're pro-torture and the Republicans are pro-torture too, the Democrats have no reason to stop being pro-torture in order to pick up those 'moderate' voters.

So if I vote for the Democrats, I (as a person who disapproves of torture and assassination) lose. If I vote for the Republicans, I still lose.


If I don't vote at all, or vote for a person who isn't on the electoral radar at the national level because he isn't even on the ballot in most states, what then?

Personally, I may be able to say that I have not validated anyone's policies. That is, perhaps, the most important thing. It certainly seems to be the most important to you.

I get that. OK? I understand that you have said this, over and over, and that you really believe it, and that it is important, and that you think I'm a moronic asshole for not agreeing. You have conveyed all of that very effectively.


But there is this thing that bugs me. If I don't vote, or vote for someone who isn't on the radar and who the major political parties don't even perceive as an opponent, my vote goes under the radar. They don't even notice my opposition to their policy. All they see is that X percent of people voted for Democrats, and Y percent voted for Republicans. And if the Democrats win without my vote, their leadership won't change, and if they lose without my vote, their leadership will change for the worse.

And either way, the real consequences don't happen in any useful way until the election of 2016, when either Obama is out of office or the Republican who ousts him is out of office, because then we can have a race where both sides hold meaningful primaries, and maybe a third party will make a credible challenge like Perot did in 1992. Then, anti-torture candidates can get on ballots and I can vote for them.

But that happens whether Obama wins (because he leaves in 2016 whether he wants to or not) or whether Obama loses. The situation is just as bad without him as it is with him. The only difference is that I lodged a completely unnoticed protest vote or protest non-vote.

That bugs me- that my refusal to vote Obama out of protest for his torture policies cannot actually hasten the day when anti-torture politicians have a chance to take the reins and put an end to the foulness. And that by making this the single central issue that governs all my voting decisions, I totally abandon any hope of influencing any other issue, including rather important ones like "poor people not starving to death."

Does this not bother you? Do you not see how this can bother me, and make me reluctant to accept the idea that everyone who votes Obama is a rat for validating torturers?

[Thanas]

If I vote for Obama I validate his policies of torture and assassination.

If I vote for the Republicans I validate the Republicans' identical policies of torture and assassination.

If the Democrats stick to their past pattern, the party leadership will react to a defeat by thinking they failed to pick up 'moderate' voters who lie between themselves and the Republicans. Since they're pro-torture and the Republicans are pro-torture too, the Democrats have no reason to stop being pro-torture in order to pick up those 'moderate' voters.

Or they might actually shift considering it happened two times before (first FDR, then civil rights movement). The point is, you do not know until you try.

I understand that you have said this, over and over, and that you really believe it, and that it is important, and that you think I'm a moronic asshole for not agreeing. You have conveyed all of that very effectively.

I do not think you are a moronic asshole. I think you are simply too afraid to make a stand for your principles, no matter how important it is. You are compromising your principles willingly for no gain and continued bad effects. That is spineless and cowardly.

But there is this thing that bugs me. If I don't vote, or vote for someone who isn't on the radar and who the major political parties don't even perceive as an opponent, my vote goes under the radar. They don't even notice my opposition to their policy.[ All they see is that X percent of people voted for Democrats, and Y percent voted for Republicans. And if the Democrats win without my vote, their leadership won't change, and if they lose without my vote, their leadership will change for the worse.

Again, you do not know that. The Democrats certainly went for the "left" Obama over the "center" Clinton in the past, or have you completely forgotten that?

As for your protest vote going unnoticed, what they will see is that you did not vote for them. As I do not think you have ever written a letter to Obama or done anything else to protest his policies (for that would actually require an effort) that might be the most meaningful thing you have ever done.

That bugs me- that my refusal to vote Obama out of protest for his torture policies cannot actually hasten the day when anti-torture politicians have a chance to take the reins and put an end to the foulness. And that by making this the single central issue that governs all my voting decisions, I totally abandon any hope of influencing any other issue, including rather important ones like "poor people not starving to death."

Does this not bother you? Do you not see how this can bother me, and make me reluctant to accept the idea that everyone who votes Obama is a rat for validating torturers?

No, because you once again base your arguments on a bad premise, namely that losing the election (fat chance considering the clowns the GOP will put out) will cause the democrats to swing right, when in fact they swung left after the last elections.

[Formless]

@Formless
Your entire rant would have had merit had you included something about changing the voting system to a two tier style. Like the Finnish or French. As it stands now in the US your whole anger management failure just ignores reality.

Of course, perceptions aren't the only obstacles in the way of third party and independent candidates getting into office-- obviously something has to be done about funding, media representation, and our retarded "first past the post" voting system. But perception is one aspect of democracy you have the most control over, and thus responsibility for. Remember the party known as the Whigs? Exactly.

Alternatively, we could admit that Bush won the election because 1) our first past the post system didn't allow Nader voters to fall back on Gore and thus get a preferrable candidate over Bush[...]

Please read the thread before commenting. Failure to do so only makes you look like a dumbfuck, and further infuriates me. Thank you, and fuck off.

[Formless]

Actually, the longer this discussion goes on, the more I come to the conclusion that it might be in the interest of Third Party/Democrat voters to have Ron Paul win the race, and then vote for him and vote for a congress that supports all his ideas. Or to use him as write-in candidate...

Ron Paul has run on third party tickets before (Libertarian party), so...

Of course, don't take this as me endorsing Paul any more than I endorse Obama, its merely an observation. I can't truly endorse a man who wants to rid us of the EPA when I'm also a Green party member.