I doubt it will do any good for the Jill Stein supporters among us, but if you live in a swing state and weren’t already convinced by Betty’s mea culpa for voting for Nader in 2000, here are two more arguments for Obama. The first is from Mike Lofgren, former Republican staffer on the Hill, who addresses a number of issues, including “the worse the better” or “burn it all down so we can make a new progressive nation from the ashes”:
The most compelling argument to support Obama has nothing directly to do with him or his performance in office, but goes to the heart of what self-government is supposed to mean. Since Obama’s inauguration, Republicans have engaged in an unprecedented — in my lifetime, anyway — campaign of obstruction, feral negativity, and brinksmanship. On one occasion, they brought the country to the edge of default and a resultant credit downgrade. “The worse the better” has become, in fact, a Republican political strategy whenever they are out of power. To reward a party for such obstructionism would be like rewarding the Southern fire eaters of antebellum congresses for their efforts at shutting down the debate over slavery with the gag rule.
The second is from Kevin Drum, who points out that Double Guantanamo Romney would be worse on civil liberties than Obama.
Davis X. Machina
Chris Rock said it best: “Obama didn’t cure cancer, so I’m voting for cancer.”
JPL
Tuesday I will be excited to vote for President Obama. I’m not deluding myself that he will win GA but darn it, I want the popular vote to show my support.
Baud
We don’t need convincing, and the people who do need convincing are unconvinceble.
Ron
I voted for Nader in 2000 as well. In my defense I lived in NY, so honestly it wasn’t going to matter. Today, I also live in NY and occasionally consider voting for Stein, though in the end I will almost certainly vote for O. I think the key numbers to remember are from Florida 2000. Margin of victory of Bush for Gore in the final official recount: 537 votes. Votes for Nader in Florida 2000: 97,488. If you support Jill Stein I empathize. I think she’s got some good ideas. But I wish people would be realistic. Jill Stein is not going to win the election. If you like Jill Stein, I can’t see how you can argue that there is no difference between Obama and Romney. On the vast majority of issues, Obama is far superior to Romney. Interestingly, I see that vote swapping is apparently legal (I am surprised). Wonder if it would be a worthwhile endeavor to see if anyone on BJ is interested in such a thing.
arguingwithsignposts
There are two groups who want to engage in brinksmanship: The GOP because there’s a black guy in the white house and he’s a democrat, and the purity progressives who want unicorn ponies.
Interesting how that works.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
At this point, you can’t have better democrats until you slaughter the republicans for their pelts. If republicans win, suddenly social security and medicare will be a comm1e-soc1a15t-liberal plot that only the most “liberal” people in the senate support. After all, this will be a “Center-right” nation again, and mitt romney will be called the “center” of that center-right, which is terrifying.
Only until you send Republicans to the wilderness to think about what they’ve done will democrats be able to even start talking about actual progressive things.
Ron
I do find it amusing that there are progressives who in the same breath can mock the GOP for their purity purges and then go and say how they can no longer support Obama because they haven’t gotten their unicorns and rainbows.
the Conster
I voted for Jill Stein in the Massachusetts gubernatorial election that ended up getting Mitt elected, knowing full well that Mitt would get elected and be able to do absolutely nothing because of the Democratic legislature, because Shannon O’Brien was the worst kind of Democratic hack beholden to an even worse hack who eventually plea-copped to stay out of jail and is now disbarred. If it had ever occurred to me that Mitt would use his FAIL record in Mass. to launch himself THIS CLOSE to being a FAIL president, I would have voted for O’Brien. Lesson learned. There are always unintended consequences when trying to bank a shot.
Cacti
@Ron:
Or 5-4, depending on your point of view.
Either way, the closeness of the vote is what enabled the SCOTUS to steal it for Bush.
Kirbster
Consider how stunningly effective a Jill Stein presidency would be without a single Green Party member in Congress, or any support from the judiciary, or any Green governors in the 50 states. Are there even any Green Party legislators in the statehouses?
Davis X. Machina
@Cacti:
Bush did get 100% of the African-American vote, though, something no other Republican has ever come close to doing…
Davis X. Machina
@Kirbster:
The national security state is now almost as old as the slaveholding Republic was on the day Lincoln signed the Emancipation. And as entrenched. And as ring-fenced with settled law.
Getting rid of slavery required the demise of one party, (or two, depending on how you want to count the Democracy), and the rise of another, and the rise-and-fall of several minor parties (Free Soil, Liberty). And near eighty years. And a civil war.
On this issue, though, third-party votes should do the trick in a couple of cycles.
Ron
@Cacti: Yes, there is question what would have happened if the SCOTUS hadn’t ruled the way they did. My point is that it wouldn’t have taken a lot of Nader voters to be more realistic to swing the election. FWIW, there is a voteswapping page on FB: https://www.facebook.com/VoteSwap2012. I don’t think I personally would do it, but I can see the appeal.
aimai
I am pissed off (in absentia) at some guy here who said he would vote for Stein in Oregon because the state would go for Obama by ten points. The whole point of this popular vote vs. ec voting thing is that if we want progressive policies then we have to work harder to make sure that the most progressive candidate who can win the white house gets the largest share of the vote in each and every state. The election doesn’t start de novo every four years. The country and the individual states are becoming redder, or they are becoming bluer and we are fighting not just for this election but for the elections our children will vote in. My teenage daughters look forward to the day they can vote for the most progressive candidate, who will probably be the democrat, in four to six years. They can look forward to pushing progressive policies at the state level as well, and voting for Jill Stein for dog catcher if she stoops to work for it locally. But here in MA we still need a fucking landslide for Obama to bring in a Democratic Senator who is by any measure a fantastic candidate.. Its disgusting to me that people blather on and on about “safe states.” People in Florida (black people that is) are standing in line for nine fucking hours to vote for Obama. Neither Nader voters nor Jill Stein voters will ever do that because a protest vote is a god damned lonely thing to do when you are surrounded by people with more passionate and realistic convictions.
aimai
blingee
DVR alert.
NatGeo airing Seal Team 6 Docudrama showing the Bin Laden raid tonight. Predicably, wingnuts panties are all in a bunch. Loving it.
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/channel/seal-team-six-the-raid-on-osama-bin-laden/videos/code-name-geronimo/
amk
@Davis X. Machina: /rimshot.
jurassicpork
Even if I did live in a swing state (I live in MA), I’d still vote for Jill and not just because shes my homie. The lady & her running mate have been arrested for civil disobedience twice in the last 2 weeks and that counts for something. I’m tired of using my vote to vote against instead of for so this is a vote of conscience and, yes, moral superiority. I cannot and will not vote for a child killer like Obama.
Speaking of great ladies, here’s my exclusive video of the Elizabeth Warren rally in Hudson, MA yesterday plus a swat across Charles Pierce’s bow for his boneheaded Halloween post.
Ron
@blingee: The fact that the right is upset about this cracks me up. Do they even remember what the original “Citizens United” case was actually about? Idiots.
Poopyman
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: I have seen them on Youtube and do not find their pelts at all attractive.
Sly
@Kirbster:
The Green Party had a member in the Arkansas House of Representatives, Richard Carroll, from 2008 until 2009, when he became a Democrat. Not sure who the highest-ranking Green is today… possibly someone on a city council somewhere. Both the Libertarians and the Greens never had more than one member serving in any state legislature at the same time.
Todd
But DRONEZZZZ!!!!!
aimai
@jurassicpork:
If you have to tell the entire country that your candidate has “been arrested for civil disobedience twice in the last two weeks” during an election during which she is standing for President then she doesn’t have enough name recognition even in her home state to matter two fucks. I’m sorry to say that but you do realize that there have been more successful third party candidates before? But none of them are named Jill Stein. The Green party in the entire country is a joke–and I say that as a committed progressive who is far to the left of the Democratic party. The greens can’t organize themselves, electorally speaking, to pour piss out of a boot even if the instructions were on the heel. Speaking as a political person I’m disgusted with their incompetence, not their policies. Or what would be their policies if they could manage to organize themselves into relevance. At this point Jill Stein is the very definition of a vanity candidate and her (theoretical) supporters are self indulgent poseurs.
aimai
PeakVT
@jurassicpork: Shorter: voting is about how it makes me feel, not who it puts in power.
Idiot.
Ron
@PeakVT:
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
Shawn in ShowMe
@jurassicpork:
You do realize that our national security apparatus would be just as successful at killing babies under a Stein administration, right?
ericblair
@jurassicpork:
What happens when Elizabeth Warren votes to approve the defense appropriations bill?
Ron
@Shawn in ShowMe: no, no. don’t you know if only Jill Stein was elected, she could just singlehandedly control everything and we’d get unicorns and rainbows?
Cassidy
@Shawn in ShowMe: Don’t bother. He’s just looking for an excuse because “they’re all the same”. He found one. If his reason was disproven, another would be found.
Davis X. Machina
@ericblair:
Why, she would never do such a thing…
Directions to Global Headquarters :
Raytheon Company
870 Winter Street
Waltham, MA 02451
781-522-3000
Good jobs for Bay State voters….
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Preach it, sister! My reasons are the same.
Just think. If there were enough of us in Georgia who thought like this, we could turn the state blue again! Or at least a pale shade of lilac.
arguingwithsignposts
@jurassicpork: If you think I’m going to give you a click after the shit you just spewed about why a Jill Stein vote is worth the time and effort, you’re more deranged than your usual link-whoring suggests.
Mike in NC
Let’s just cut to the chase and call out the GOP for being the fascists they really are.
Mark S.
Who is Jill Stein?
Bobby Thomson
@Ron:
Unenforceable, and only a fool would actually honor one, but no, they aren’t prohibited by law.
Ron
@Mark S.: Green Party candidate for president.
dmsilev
Just had an interesting conversation with my parents (who have already voted for Obama/Warren in MA).
Them: “Presidential race is neck and neck”
Me: “It’s close, but the odds are in Obama’s favor”
Them: “That’s not what we’ve been told by the newspaper/radio”
Me: Explains state by state probability, using Ohio as the example
Them: “I hope you’re right”
Despite what we sometimes think, not everybody in this country checks Nate Silver’s blog every morning….
Ron
@Bobby Thomson: That wasn’t clear at one point. There were attempts to shut sites that promoted it down back in 2000. And yes, of course the idea of it is unenforceable. I could obviously offer to vote in NY for Stein in exchange for an Obama vote in a swing state, but there is no way that my vote-trading partner would know whether I honored the agreement.
geg6
@jurassicpork:
And this is why people like you are completely useless. And why people like you will never, ever, ever get what you want. You can’t be bothered to do the real work of getting the political power in order to move the rest of the country in your direction. You are clueless about anything other than your own FEEEEEEEEEEEEELINGS. How many kids did the Bush that the Naderites put into office kill? You and your confederates are not willing to even make Greens a party that can win an election for dog catcher, but you’re stupid enough to think your vote is somehow meaningful and will send a message to…well, I have no idea who you’re trying to appeal to. Other lily white “progressives,” I guess. The far left is the most pitiful bunch of entitled assholes that have ever lived. Even more pitiful and entitled than Tea Partiers.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@jurassicpork:
What, exactly?
What makes you think that, as President, Stein wouldn’t have to make a decision that results in some collateral damage? That she won’t have to make exactly the same compromises that every other President has had to make? Especially without a substantial number of Greens in Congress to support her?
I have no problem with anyone voting third party (be it Green, Libertarian, Socialist, whatever) if they honestly believe that candidate best represents their views. Voting third party for the express purpose of punishing Obama and the Democrats, on the other hand, is fucking stupid and counterproductive.
Congress is supposed to run the show; Congress decides whether or not to go to war, what laws govern that warfare, what laws govern security at home, etc. If you really want to dismantle the security state, Congress should be the focus, not the goddamned White House.
The President will take as much power as Congress allows; it’s the job of Congress to place limits on that power.
Napoleon
@jurassicpork:
Then you are a fucking idiot and just as much of a problem for this country as the wingiest wingnut.
General Stuck
It should be obvious by now, that republicans are and have been getting bolder and bolder at what they call ‘creating reality’. It started with Bush and torture and all the other unitary executive bullshit. We see it now with congress abusing the minority rights provision the founders provided, and currently to things like Ohio’s SecofState thumbing his nose at the courts to try and rig the election in his state. And a bunch of other quasi seditious bullshit trying to suppress voting.
It is not going to stop until some legal reckoning is employed, as most white voters do not seem to want to punish the guilty at the ballot box. With more republicans like Lofgren above, needing to speak up.
They are tinkering with the forces of chaos by abusing and violating our laws and processes to practice democracy via peaceful means. It may well be they have decided to personally secede from the union in various big and smallish ways of civil and criminal disobedience, based on prevailing attitudes of white supremacy.
Sooner of later a confrontation of some sort needs to happen. Maybe in a second Obama term, maybe not, but they will not stop until they are made to stop. As people who are being over run by demographics without much to lose playing by the rules.
As far as Drum’s obligatory progressive creedos of ‘Obama bad on civil liberties’, compared to most presidents, actually not – that are still presidenting under a war resolution. If you want to say we have some onerous laws on the books currently that strain if not break the constitutional prescriptions for liberty, then I agree. I don’t think a president following a dubious law is a presidential problem, as was Bush in not following existing law. I think It is a congressional problem. Though it is fair to criticize Obama for not championing the changing of those dubious laws. An important distinction in my view.
CarolDuhart2
@aimai: Not only that, aimai, but anyone who could actually pull it off won’t waste productive years trying to organize the Green Party to the point of minor competence. If you are an Obama or a Clinton, your’e going to the party that can actually get someone elected, who can actually mentor someone, who can provide funds while learning how.
This is I feel the catch-22 of third parties in the States. Get good enough to actually have a chance, and the closest major party will start adopting your ideas, poach the most effective members from that party and actually get credit for legislative gains for doing so. Stay the way you are, and increasingly members get frustrated with the lack of results or support and try other means to get things going. It’s due to the binary nature of our elections: third parties don’t get the incremental exposure and gains needed to grow.
In any event, Jill Stein is not going to be President-ever. Not even if both major Party candidates disappeared overnight.
Narcissus
If somebody could shoot unicorns and rainbows out of their butt I would definitely vote for them
Schlemizel
If you can look at the results of 2000 and what it brought upon this country and still think its OK to protest vote for some invisible puff of third party fluff then you are suffering from severe methane poisoning – please pull you head out of your ass before it kills us all.
mamayaga
@dmsilev:
Yeah, I heard a BBC report this morning that said the race was tied. You’d think they’d be better informed.
Schlemizel
@Ron:
NOT GOOD ENOUGH! I want unicorns that shoot rainbows & lollipops out of their asses & I’m sure Jill Stein can do that because she is not Obama and . . . and . . . and
Elizabelle
@Cacti:
Don’t ever forget the horrible butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County in 2000.
Thousands of votes that were miscast. Swamps the 537 “official” tally.
http://articles.cnn.com/2001-03-11/politics/palmbeach.recount_1_gore-buchanan-gore-and-reform-party-butterfly-ballot?_s=PM:ALLPOLITICS
PBC Elections supervisor inadvertently elected George W Bush by rolling out a super-confusing ballot. The Brooks Brothers riot and Supreme Court sealed the deal.
gene108
Can some of the North Carolina residents explain to me what’s happening with NC politics.
When I was growing up, Republicans won the Presidential election in the state, while Democrats had a pretty solid lock on statewide offices, with the exception of Jim Martin as governor in the 1980’s.
It looks to have totally flipped in the state, with Obama being competitive at the Presidential level and McCrory looking to steamroll Dalton for governor.
I know there was some backlash about Democrats becoming a corrupt “good old boy” party, with some of the stuff Easley got into, but I didn’t realize the backlash would be this severe or last this long.
Or am I missing something?
amk
@mamayaga: Yup, BBC has been peddling that shite for days now.
TheStone
Neither DRONEZZZZ nor unicorns nor butt-rainbows are funny anymore. The End.
Rob
I am a long time lurker – first time poster. I am a fan of your site and agree that people in swing states need to vote for Obama.
But please – Stop blaming Nader for 2000! Whenever you do this, you give the Republicans a pass for vote theft. Gore won Florida! There is enough evidence, from Voter Purges and actual number counts that the Republican, with the assistance of the Supreme court stole the election of 2000. To make matters worse, the Democrats where inept at fighting the Republicans during the recount debacle.
So please, stop blaming Nader or Nader voters for the 2000 loss. Every time you do this, you give the Republicans a pass. This kind of behavior is a main factor why the Republicans are continuing their ballot box trickery.
General Stuck
@gene108:
North Carolina, as I understand it, is similar to Northern VA, with a lot of high tech persons invading from the NE in metro areas, that has tilted the voting bucket some toward dems in both those states. Though I am not from there.
El Cid
I just really, really don’t want to live under a Romney-led government, much less a Romney-led government with a Republican house.
TheStone
Let’s get real here. The problematic elephant in the room is not the people who are voting Green, it’s the people who can still honestly say they can’t decide b/w Romney and Obama at this late point in the game. They are the schmucks who are continually driving the national discourse into deeper and deeper schmuckiness. The pandering they require and demand makes it really unlikely that any Democratic presidential candidate will ever be able to let their progressivism hang out. This fact is what makes me sympathetic to 3rd party voters, even if I am not taking that route this time out.
aimai
To DMsilev’s point I met a lot of people while canvassing who are very, very, nervous indeed. The Romney people are absolutely right to put their time and energy into the “confidence fairy” of the “close polls” because the most hysterical person of all, that I met, was a former police officer who styled himself as a trained mathematician who wanted to rant to me about how NBC/ABC announce “these polls” without giving him the MOE–like the MOE was what matters and not the crosstabs. I mean, he considers himself extremely sophisticated–he’s not watching Fox after all–and he hasn’t bothered to learn a) about swing states and b) about ground games and c) about 538.com. People are extremely passive consumers of political information and considering how convinced they are that the country is massively right wing I actually kind of honor them for being willing to get out and vote against what they feel are heavy odds.
To get back to Jurrassic Pork’s absurd arguments again: solid states should vote solidly for progressive candidates. Voting is not a solipsistic act. I wish I’d said this to one of my people yesterday: “Choosing to go to the theater is a private, personal, decision but choosing whether to build a stadium is a public act. When you choose a political party to give your vote to it is a decision to build something with other people or it is nothing at all. I am GOTV because I believe that along with my individual choice of candidate comes the duty to try to get my candidate into office. Its just that important.”
aimai
Schlemizel
Remember how the rainbow shooting unicorn voters were convinced that there was no difference between Gore & that useless sack of shit from Connecticut?
Remember how Nader said, on the record, to a reporter taping his comments, that he wanted Boy Blunder to win? He said the fool’s administration would be so horrible that America would finally turn to a true liberal like Nader to save the country. I forget, how did that work out for us?
jayackroyd
Remember this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yq0tMYPDJQ
I watch it, at least once a month.
Ben Franklin
I am praying there is no repeat of 2000.
Titmouse tight, this race, is.
hueyplong
NC is simply doing what the rest of the confederacy has done. The surprise isn’t the gradual shift to Republican statewide dominance, the surprise is the competitive nature of the presidential race.
Let’s face it; the Solid South is what it always was. It’s just that the confederates are now Republicans.
VA is the exception and that’s because so much of the population is the DC suburbs.
[Florida seems to be its own universe. I don’t pretend to understand its complexity.]
Shawn in ShowMe
@TheStone
.
How do you determine whether folks who claim they are undecided are honestly undecided? How do we know they aren’t just closet racists who are afraid of letting their freak flag high in public?
pseudonymous in nc
@aimai:
It’s a test of your own self-indulgence.
@gene108:
It’s mainly Bev Perdue’s fault: it’d be nice to blame it simply on both houses of the GA going to an especially batshit GOP for the past two years, but she hasn’t exactly acquitted herself well during that time period — her approval ratings are in the shitter — and her decision not to run for re-election fucked things up.
Dalton had to pull together a campaign quickly, the Dem primary was fairly divisive, a lot of good ol’ boys are putting their money elsewhere. Pat
McGroinMcCrory — who, frankly, has the affect of a child molester, especially in his final ads — has been fundraising for four years on the back of his rich friends, has a similar attitude to disclosing his tax returns as Mittens, and fuck knows what’s going to happen on a state level once he wins, since the legislature’s now gerrymandered within an inch of its life.blingee
@jurassicpork: Say again, everything after “the president is a niCLANG”
Whatever your selling we ain’t buying.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, duh, Obama is NOT going to lead us to the atheist socialist Islamist utopia we all want, one where Christianists are put on a conveyor belt into an oven without even a delousing shower reach around.
However, the alternative is infinitely worse than Obama. Jill Stein isn’t going to get elected to anything. In my utopia, her followers, too, would get the ovens without a shower treatment. But my utopia is not going to happen. As a half measure (at best) I’ve already voted for Obama, and here’s hoping that before I am put on a conveyor belt into an oven without a delousing shower, we’ll stick it to the Mammon worshiping asswipes of the GOP.
MeDrewNotYou
Let me preface this by saying I fully intend on voting for Dems in any of the competitive races. For example, as much as I dislike Joe Donnelly, he’s still got my vote. I also respect Obama a ton.
I’m in Indiana, which by all measures is a safe state for Romney. (Even though Nate Silver got it wrong last time, he still predicted it to be pretty close. Voting for a 3rd party here in 2008 would’ve been dumb.) I’m considering Stein because even though I think Obama’s done a fine job on most things, I don’t like his drug and terror policies and I’m a lot closer to the Greens in my beliefs. I see a vote for her as a vote for the left rather than as a vote against Obama. Since my presidential vote won’t really matter and I’m supporting the right people in winnable races, am I doing something awful?
Cermet
@jurassicpork: As the perfect person that lives in a fantasy world where only a leader who is not gonna fight back can be in power you’ll live by this principle no matter the cost to others; so rather than accept reality, you will help a person that will kill thousands of children and far more adults? You are worse than that monster – you will knowingly aid murders by helping them get into power to kill – you are a very sick individual.
geg6
@TheStone:
They never were funny. Sadly, they are true representations of how a very small subset of the left thinks.
Narcissus
What if Jill Stein could make unicorns and rainbows shoot out of YOUR butt
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@PeakVT:
Am saving this to reuse again and again when the firebaggers start in with their usual nonsense.
Or to quote Robin Williams: “Assholes do vex me!”
@Napoleon:
I don’t call em the teabaggers of the left for nothing, aka firebaggers and the firebagger surrogates (like the original poster) over at Teh Orange.
Shouldn’t you be begging for rent money somewhere…else?
pseudonymous in nc
@hueyplong:
Nah. It might be nice to think that from a certain perspective, but it’s just not true.
McGroinMcCrory is a Mittens-lite: no God/guns/gays in his ads, he’s the bidness-friendly big-city mayor who wants government to treat the people like customers. (Which boggles my mind, but there you go.)jayackroyd
@aimai:
Oh I so well remember VP candidate Winona LaDuke. But there is a real problem with the Dem leadership. They are really selling out liberal ideals. They really are going down the road of private/public partnership. Of centrism–the president is really committed to reducing the deficit, which is terrible public policy, and doing so through the social insurance programs that are both incredibly effective and incredibly popular. If he had fullthroatedly committed to SS and Medicare, this would not be close.
sal
“The other guy is worse” is not a recipe for enthusiasm. Which doesn’t mean the reasons mentioned aren’t good reasons to vote for Obama (and every other Dem – need to keep Reps away from any power), but perhaps explains why some people don’t share the burning passion that some here have. It’s not really inexplicable.
TheStone
@Shawn in ShowMe: I have no doubt that many of them are closeted racists. But I have had the good fortune to talk to some of these Swingers and most of them are just genuinely clueless. They will be voting based on things like the candidates’ body language in the debates, or whether Romney reminds them of their favorite uncle, or whether Obama seems like a cool guy to play in a game of Madden, etc. Or they bizarrely latch onto random issues in isolation, which they are typically viewing thru the prism of a single news source. Even if they aren’t Foxnuts, many are getting their political info from 30 second spots on the local news. Or from skimming headlines in the local rag. While this may be less morally reprehensible than casting a racist vote, it’s not much less damaging to the national prospects.
Mike in NC
@gene108: Only lived here for 5 years, but supposedly NC didn’t go all Southern Strategy like the rest of the ex-CSA in the 60s. For some reason Governor Purdue was very unpopular and decided not to run this year. Teabaggers took over the state legislature in 2010 and gerrymandered the Congressional map. Looks like the Presidential race is a tossup, as many of the retirees moving here are conservatives from NJ and NY. My two cents.
Gwangung
Co sign.
What people like Jurassicpork ignore is that the problem isn’t with Democrats or progressives…it’s with reactionary Republicans who remain a viable political force.
Growing a progressive base I’d all well and good, but you AlLSO need to smash those mother framers on the right to bedrock so they don’t snatch any power for themselves.
Cermet
@MeDrewNotYou: If you do want the drug laws to change, than vote for the President – this is the ONLY way that the laws will be changed – within the system. Until a billonaire comes along and buys the congress (and they better make Gates look poor considering the money that lives off the drug war), voting for Obama is the ONLY way to change things in this world in a realistic manner.
gnomedad
@amk:
Heh, wonder if goopers will become BBC fans after an Obama landslide: “But the BBC said it was tied! ACORN!”
pseudonymous in nc
@MeDrewNotYou:
Is there a ballot access threshold in Indiana that’s based on the number of votes a party receives in the previous election? If so, I’d consider that passably worthwhile. Otherwise, it’s a vote with a symbolic value equivalent to giving the finger to a Rmoney lawn sign: it might make you feel better, but it’s going to count for fuck-all in the grand reckoning.
You want to build a genuine party of the left, start with city and county races.
Bostondreams
@gene108:
Well, I’m a somewhat new resident here, but Dalton is a lousy candidate, honestly, especially with Purdue so unpopular, and McCrory is popular as result of his time as mayor of Charlotte.
As an employee of the state department of public instruction, I am looking for work, as he has promised to slash us tremendously.
TheStone
@Narcissus: It seems like the unicorn would hurt more than the rainbow. What with the horn and all.
Davis X. Machina
@jayackroyd:
A.) Drag the party to the left. From within the party.
B.) Form a new party and wait thirty years.
Call it, friendo.
Punchy
Why the fuxs is Jim Cramer on ESPN countdown? Goddamn what an unsufferable bastard.
PeakVT
@MeDrewNotYou: I can think of at least three reasons not to vote for Stein: 1) there’s still a remote possibility Obama might win in your state (IN is far closer than WY or ID), and 2) the popular vote is important for Obama for legitimacy reasons (his job will be more difficult if he doesn’t win the PV), and 3) it just encourages the far left to fixate on presidential candidates and avoid doing the hard work of building a party from the ground up, which is the only way that they will ever become influential.
Shawn in ShowMe
@MeDrewNotYou:
Until the Green Party can seat some of their folks in Congress — the policy-making body — it’s simply not possible to vote for Green policies. That’s the Greens’ fault, not yours.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Grumpy Code Monkey: Very well said. Thank you.
Cheers,
Scott.
jefft452
@Sly: “Both the Libertarians and the Greens never had more than one member serving in any state legislature at the same time.”
At the turn of the century, Gene Debs never had a chance of being elected President, but the party he led spent its time electing city councilmen, mayors, and state reps. They even gained seats in congress .
These elected officials were disparaged as “sewer socialists” because the spent more time getting indoor plumbing into working class neighborhood then they did railing about the evils of wage slavery
Yet despite Debs never getting elected President, those sewer socialists got absorbed into FDRs camp and had an influence in New Deal legislation
That is how 3rd parties are successful
The Libertarian and Green parties put on a vanity campaign for President once every 4 years –compare and contrast
geg6
@MeDrewNotYou:
Yes. You are. That is one less vote, whatever state you live in and whatever way it votes on Tuesday, for the president. Who, if he wins (and I think he will), will be challenged on legitimacy even more and with a better argument from moment one of his second term. Every vote in every state for Obama counts and helps avoid that outcome. Are you ready, so soon, for Election 2000, The New and Improved 2012 Version now with UNLIMITED CORPORATE CASH!?
Fuck that shit and fuck anyone who thinks throwing away their vote to satisfy their vanity is okay in any election, let alone this one.
Another Halocene Human
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: Exactly.
Prime example from Florida: John Mica.
John Mica is a Republican Rep who has been calling for the end of Amtrak for years.
However, after the Dem wave in 2006, Florida rail advocates convinced him to sign onto the SunRail commuter rail project in Orlando (to get the federal capital money) and when Obama and Biden swept into office, Mica spearheaded efforts to get the Orlando-Tampa HSR project funded. Which would be operated by… Amtrak.
The Florida Lege under Charlie Crist–Republican, by the way–reversed many years of rail-hate and provided the state funding for SunRail in a show of good faith to convince Ray LaHood to fund the HSR project.
In 2010 Rick Scott came into office and immediately canceled the Orlando-Tampa HSR (completely destroying whatever “I won the election” honeymoon he had with Florida). John Mica personally appealed to Scott to relent. Many believed at first that it was a negotiating tactic and the vendors actually indemnified the state to get the project rolling. Scott, however, was adamant, and the DOT finally pulled the money and reallocated it to numerous projects in other states.
This year, Mica was on the floor of the Republican-controlled House spewing misleading information about Amtrak’s Cafe Car service, painting a picture of waste, fraud, abuse, and union intransigence. Back to the old well.
So, who are you going to believe–a fringe party trying to grift that sweet public campaign funding money, OR YOUR LYING EYES?
Baud
@MeDrewNotYou:
You’re putting into practice a destructive principle that says we’re not all in this fight together, and doing so for something that won’t move the policy debate one iota.
TBogg
@jurassicpork: Stein’s being arrested had nothing to do with “civil disobedience” and everything to do with “pay attention to me”. Like PETA, she is using other peoples causes to advance her own: in this case, her vanity campaign.
Cassidy
@MeDrewNotYou: Awful, no. Counterproductive, yes.
Davis X. Machina
@jefft452:
There were firebaggers even then? Who knew?
PreservedKillick
@pseudonymous in nc:
Start within the existing party. Working outside that party is only going to splinter support for it, and give more power to the right. The opposite of what you want to accomplish.
If you are thinking you want cannot vote for Obama and want to do something for progressives, vote for the Libertarian. Getting them on the ballot would really move things to the left by drawing votes away from the republicans.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@PeakVT:
This is the problem with the Democratic party nationwide: reduced emphasis for a generation on building the party from the ground up at the local and state levels. Just look to Dem parties in states like Texas and here in Misery and you’ll see what it’s like.
The Repups didn’t get to this spot overnight: they worked hard for the last 30 years to recreate the party into the crazy entity it is now. The Bachmanns and Ryans didn’t just spring out of nowhere in the so-called teabag tidal wave of 2010. Thus, they did #3 in PeakVT’s list of how to change the party.
It’s one thing Howard Dean obviously understood and pointed the party toward during his tenure at the DNC. Alas, I don’t think it lasted long enough to really take hold.
Another Halocene Human
@the Conster: I voted for Jill Stein in the Massachusetts gubernatorial election that ended up getting Mitt elected, knowing full well that Mitt would get elected and be able to do absolutely nothing because of the Democratic legislature, because Shannon O’Brien was the worst kind of Democratic hack beholden to an even worse hack who eventually plea-copped to stay out of jail and is now disbarred. If it had ever occurred to me that Mitt would use his FAIL record in Mass. to launch himself THIS CLOSE to being a FAIL president, I would have voted for O’Brien.
You asshole. Not showing this to my wife because her head would explode. I wasn’t able to get married because of Mitt Romney. Oh, and what about his whole “renaming the MDC because I’m the big dog and I piss on things to mark my territory”? Mitt did plenty of damage as governor. He also failed to do what he ran on, which was to keep the corrupt lege in check. Apparently a lot of the suckers in the ‘burbs believed him because they had those broom signs up.
Mass has a weak governor state but that doesn’t mean he can’t sign executive orders and other lame shit like that.
I voted for that machine hack O’Brien, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.
jefft452
@Narcissus: “What if Jill Stein could make unicorns and rainbows shoot out of YOUR butt.”
That depends, is this a promise if I do vote for her? Or a threat if I don’t?
Ben Franklin
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
This is the problem with the Democratic party nationwide: reduced emphasis for a generation on building the party from the ground up at the local and state levels. Just look to Dem parties in states like Texas and here in Misery and you’ll see what it’s like.
Yeah the TOP-DOWN emphasis has not been a success, but turnout in local elections is normally dismal. It’s not as sexy.
Shawn in ShowMe
@TheStone:
So they’re morons. They’ve always been with us. Have their numbers as a percentage of the electorate increased significantly since Obama was elected? And if it has, what exactly about this president has provoked this outbreak of stupidity? Hmm…
Another Halocene Human
@Cacti: Either way, the closeness of the vote is what enabled the SCOTUS to steal it for Bush.
The closeness of the vote is what motivated Rick “Lord Voldemort” Scott to take away the reforms Crist had put into place for restoring civil rights to felons.
jayackroyd
@Davis X. Machina: Yep. I’m not an idiot.
NobodySpecial
Fixt for accuracy. Plus straw itches.
Another Halocene Human
@Kirbster: Consider how stunningly effective Jill Scott would be on any level of government, even if she caucused with Democrats?
We don’t have to wonder, because she would lose the primary. Just happened here, a Jill Stein-like stoned-appearing environmentalist (not, in fact, stoned, just no idea how to convey stuff effectively) lost badly to a Mitt Romney style flip-flopping opportunist with a history of being an asshole who looked, er, polished.
Run an airy-fairy candidate, get a soul-less social dominator in office. Yep, that’ll keep us moving forward.
aimai
@MeDrewNotYou:
If you want to send a message–send it Western Union. At the end of the day your vote for Jill Stein in Indiana will make the same sound as a grain of fluff falling down a well. If you feel passionately about the drug war or any other war why don’t you put up a huge sign on your house saying so and then vote for Obama in the election. Voting for Stein will neither inform nor enliven your neighbors, the people to whom you wish to “send a message.” So why would you choose that method of communicating? I’m perfectly serious about this. If you want to see a change in local laws, or national laws, you are going to need to actually organize your neighbors to agree with you–not wave your fist out the window of your car every four years.
aimai
KG
If third parties really were interested in having a vote in actual government (something I’m not actually sure they do), they’d be pushing states to switch to proportional representation in the legislatures (not sure if they can do it in Congress, or even if it’d be constitutional at the state level)
jefft452
@PreservedKillick: “Start within the existing party. Working outside that party is only going to splinter support for it, and give more power to the right. The opposite of what you want to accomplish.”
Or
There are many races where there is no D on the ballot, many more where the D is a sacrificial lamb with no funds, organization, or chance of winning. If you want to be a 3rd party alternative, try running in those races
Humanities Grad
@jayackroyd:
Eh, deficit reduction is a matter of timing. In the long run, reducing the size of the federal budget deficit and the national debt is a good idea, if for no other reason than doing that would reduce the % of the federal budget that has to go toward paying interest on the debt. (*)
But in the short to medium term, prioritizing deficit reduction is a terrible idea. It boggles my mind how many conservatives are able to pretend that money spent by governments in the U.S. is somehow not part of the national economy. Why the national media didn’t go absolutely apoplectic when there were calls for government austerity in the middle of a private-sector economic meltdown is the best evidence we have of that media’s collective stupidity. In 2009, government spending was the only thing propping up a very-shaky national economy, and there were people who were seriously calling for that spending to be dramatically cut? I wasn’t sure whether to weep, shake my head, or drink heavily. I think I compromised by doing all three.
(*) Insert obligatory Keynes comment about how in the long run, we’re all dead.
MeDrewNotYou
@pseudonymous in nc: @PeakVT: I hadn’t thought much about the popular vote/legitimacy issue, that’s a really good argument in Obama’s favor. As for building a leftist political party, I know that the work needs to start from the ground up. To be honest, my question is kinda all about making me feel good. At what point does my desire to feel good for saying the US needs to go further left become outweighed by Obama and the Dem’s need for my vote?
A friend brought up voting for Stein a few days ago and since then I’ve gone back and forth. (He ultimately went with Stein after emailing me a terrifying picture of the Romney/Ryan box being checked.) I’ve been leaning towards the President lately (and honestly I’ll probably stick with him) but the whole exercise is a healthy way to keep myself from blind support.
Baud
@KG:
Actual governing tends to be much harder than complaining about how other people are governing.
Another Halocene Human
@aimai: Well said, aimai.
I think some of the people who post essays about voting third party online are frustrated social dominators who want to spoil what others have created because they can’t be in charge. I’ve met a number of Stein voters in person who agree in principle with her ideas but have switched their votes to Obama–granted, this is Florida–because the Republicans scare them.
arguingwithsignposts
@TheStone: Is that you, Corner Stone? Or just another rock?
weaselone
@jurassicpork:
Too bad your choice isn’t actually the morally superior one. Either Obama or Romney will win this election and serve as head of state. The morally superior choice is to vote for the better, or at least the less awful candidate. Your choice to vote for Stein is a self-serving and selfish one. It’s all about you making yourself feel better.
Another Halocene Human
@Sly: Look lower, like City Councils.
I think Chuck Taylor was Green-Rainbow party, but the Machine put him in prison, and he’s rotting in there even today.
Obama should pardon him when he leaves office, just for the howls from the wingnut quarter, but somebody would probably shoot the man. It is Boston, after all.
arguingwithsignposts
@TheStone:
Unicorns, being magical, do not have horns that are painful, unless you’re into that sort of thing.
JPL
@arguingwithsignposts: The power of magical thinking.
aimai
@MeDrewNotYou:
I don’t mean to pick on you but you do know that here in MA we are actually having two important ballot issues: assisted suicide and marijuana legalization–all put here and organized for by people other than greens. And they will be voted for by people other than greens. I’m not even sure why anyone bothers with the green party since their good policies, such as they are, can be effected entirely without their (imaginary) help.
If you are serious about having an effect on your local political universe it can be done–but it can’t be done by throwing you time, energy, money and vote away for someone who can’t repay it by even organizing herself into a low level local position. There’s a reason why the Jill Stein’s run nationally every four years: to attempt to get public funding and attention for their national party (taxpayer money, btw). They don’t have enough clout or local presence to even register for school board, local initiatives, city council. That takes more than money–that takes organization, strong legs, determination which the greens consistently don’t show outside of California.
ThresherK
Nothing about the National Popular Vote?
(I have my own idea, but want to hear others’ first.)
arguingwithsignposts
@Baud:
Bumper sticker and tag line worthy.
mamayaga
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
.
It’s a valid critique of Obama as well. As you noted, Howard Dean had made a good start with his 50-state strategy, which was dismantled by Obama’s people just in time to leave no local defense against the Tea Party onslaught. As mentioned in another thread, OFA also became moribund after the 2008 election, so two potential counterweights to the Tea Party were lost. It was a strange mistake for a community organizer to make, though it’s certainly possible that he and those who worked for him were so overwhelmed by the multiple massive crises at hand that they just couldn’t stay in perpetual campaign mode. I really hope that after all he’s suffered for the past 2 years a different decision will be made this time and we won’t have to relive 2010 in 2014.
El Cid
In Georgia where I live the more votes Obama gets — with zero chance of winning the states — the more it is a statement that plenty of people dissent from the ignorant loudmouth mean selfish neo-Confederate douchebags who dominate the state.
Here it is seen as much more a challenge to the average white conservative to support (even if it’s just the context of a single conversation in which you’re not giving into whatever rightist claptrap they’re spewing) Obama than it would be to support a 3rd party, however leftist.
Here it’s a vote which expresses solidarity with a black and brown population which the white people who assume that I (as a white male) must share their opinions tell me all the time are the root of our problems.
A rightie to whom Obama means all things interrupting his preferred fantasy 1780s / 1850s / 1890s / 1920s / 1950s / Reagan Reagan white South would be more comfortable with my voting (or telling him I would vote) against Obama, because then it would mean we both opposed this nation-destroying anti-Christ.
Not that such appearances should entirely dictate one’s voting choice, but the impact of a vote and its appearance really varies with context.
TheStone
@arguingwithsignposts: Just another rock. Sorry to disappoint.
jayackroyd
@Humanities Grad:
Whenever anybody cites that Keyne’s quote, I post Larry Summer’s rejoinder–Death is endogenous to the model.
One of the things freaking me out for the last decade or so is the commitment by our leaders to obviously bad public policy. I have a show scheduled with David Cay Johnston where we’ll talk about this, in the context of his new book The Fine Print.
arguingwithsignposts
@Another Halocene Human:
He made some awesome tennis shoes.
El Cid
@mamayaga: All the factors which one uses to analyze power and hierarchy and complex alliances of interests that one would do with any large organization must also be used with the Democratic Party and all the Democratic parties.
There are real structures, and it isn’t some sort of structural imperative that those organizations welcome change directed from below in favor of policies benefiting the majority much more than the wealthiest.
Those sorts of interests don’t go away just because they might not be the concentrated diamonds of evil which are the GOP organizations.
Another Halocene Human
@Shawn in ShowMe: You do realize that our national security apparatus would be just as successful at killing babies under a Stein administration, right?
People in Mass get confused about stuff like this because it’s a state with strong mayors. Mayors can f@ck shit up, so you’re conditioned to believe a President is just like a mayor and can do the same.
Not true. Presidents can shuffle the deck in terms of who runs executive agencies, and they can threaten to veto shit that comes out of Congress, assuming the public hasn’t given the other party an overwhelming majority. But they fundamentally don’t have the power than a mayor does. It’s like the people who think stopping a war is as easy as declaring one. (Sure, let’s leave soldiers and materiel behind and just stop the payments at the bank.)
Stein would be castrated so quickly as chief executive it wouldn’t even be funny. I don’t think she’d be an effective Cambridge City Councillor. She wouldn’t. She might care, but she doesn’t understand power. She doesn’t even get why civil disobedience was effective in certain contexts in the civil rights movement and not working for her now. It’s a tactic without a strategy. Hey, I came up through that–went to protests, walked off before the old DFHs made the human chain around a City building and the cops rolled their eyes and moved in. It’s a ritual. A tradition. It’s not a movement builder or a shout-out to the world like filling the jails of Birmingham with Freedom Riders. Tactic without a strategy.
ericblair
@Davis X. Machina:
George Orwell railed against British Soshulist firebaggery in his time, basically against “crankiness” in the literal sense and a failure to address actual real-world problems and drone (heh) on about ideology. The last half of the Road to Wigan Pier cause quite a flap among the sandal-wearing set when it was published.
arguingwithsignposts
@TheStone: No disappoint, just wondering if there was a nymchange to be aware of. He’s made that comment about drooooones before. cheers.
Another Halocene Human
@arguingwithsignposts: Chuck Turner. I always make that mistake. :P
Another Halocene Human
@Davis X. Machina: Good jobs for Bay State voters….
Fuck yeah. Raytheon is by no means the only one. Litton or whatever the fuck they’re calling themselves now has a big outfit.
Mass needs something since all the damn manufacturing left during the GWB admin.
Another Halocene Human
@Mark S.: Who is Jill Stein?
The John Galt of progressive politics. Taking her ball and heading into the wilderness. See how you like it!
TheStone
@arguingwithsignposts: cheers back
the Conster
@Another Halocene Human:
Remember the Mitt of 2002 was not the Mitt of 2012 – he ran to the left of Ted Kennedy in his previous state-wide outing, which factored into my calculation. Like I said, lesson learned.
Soonergrunt
@Rob: I can do both at the same time, because both are true.
The Republicans conspired to steal the election in Florida and they were very successful.
But they were only successful because of Ralph Nader and the dumbasses who voted for him made the difference between Gore and Bush small enough for the Republicans to steal.
Another Halocene Human
@geg6: Other lily white “progressives,” I guess. The far left is the most pitiful bunch of entitled assholes that have ever lived. Even more pitiful and entitled than Tea Partiers.
They’re waiting for their big Communist Party Daddy to come back and whip them on the behind like old times. They don’t realize that Daddy went away and he isn’t coming back any more.
aimai
@Another Halocene Human:
Actually, Cambridge (For example) has a weak Mayor and a Business Manager. That’s why our politics are relatively uncorrupt and also not very progressive. The Business Manager has been running things for ever in a very bourgeois way. The Mayor and the City Council propoe and the Business Manager disposes.
aimai
Another Halocene Human
@General Stuck: As people who are being over run by demographics without much to lose playing by the rules.
As FDR said, all we have to fear is fear itself.
The party grifters have something to lose, but the party faithful have nothing to lose but their chains.
merrinc
@pseudonymous in nc:
I find your summary both accurate and depressing. I was shocked at how the Tea Party took off here and was able to flip the state in such a short period of time. Bev has been a huge disappointment but I see her decision not to stand for re-election as basically waving the white flag of surrender. The Amendment One travesty energized the churchgoers and despite OFA-NC’s optimism, I think those same churches will be a big part of why Romney will win NC.
And yeah, we are pretty much fucked statewide after McCrory takes office. I’m north of Charlotte and I don’t know what’s going on with the Dem party here. Thom Tillis runs unopposed every two years, ditto for the Repub running for state senate. The liberal leaning college town I lived in was re-districted from Mel Watt’s district to that currently held by Sue “Mooslims are EVERYWHERE” Myrick and I’m just crossing my fingers that Jennifer Roberts will win that seat over Robert Pittenger. But Pittenger spent $2 million of his own money to win the GOP primary so she’s got an uphill battle. NC is my adopted state (spent most of my adult life here) but lately I think longingly about moving north.
ChrisNYC
@mamayaga: Absolutely not true that OFA was dead after 2008. I went to my first 2010 organizing meeting in the third week in January 2010. I and a hell of a lot of other people then made regular (once a month, twice a month, eventually weekly trips to swingy districts and did the 4 day GOTV for the midterms). The work for the ground game that is being done today was started then (matching sister-neighborhoods for GOTV, testing methods to re engage intermittent voters, picking over the data from 08).
I can understand tho that a lot of realer lefties than I would have missed that because there was a lot of work to be done in the drive to first kill and then discredit the healthcare bill.
taylormattd
But you see, once you point out things like “Romney is worst even on civil liberties”, that argument flees (until later) and is replaced by “isn’t there a line that cannot be crossed???????????”
There is no reason at all to attempt to have a discussion with these people. They should simply be called what they are: immoral, narcissistic morons.
taylormattd
@ChrisNYC: This OFA canard is a favorite among Obama-hating kossacks and firebaggers.
scott
OK, you convinced me. I hope when the election’s over we can talk about having a better Democratic Party and how to go about doing that.
Another Halocene Human
@Rob: But please – Stop blaming Nader for 2000! Whenever you do this, you give the Republicans a pass for vote theft. Gore won Florida!
Bullshit. The other side wants power at any cost. We can only stop them by running up the score.
That’s why Obama votes are so damn important in blue states and in red states.
You can also flip House votes in any kind of state except the really, really empty ones.
Run. Up. The. Score.
MeDrewNotYou
@aimai: Thanks Captain Bringdown.
Seriously though, after reading that and what I just said about feeling good, I now feel a bit immature and selfish. The old bit about wasting your vote seems to apply. (Like Kang, when exposed as an impostor replies to a man musing about voting 3rd party in Treehouse of Horror VII: “Go ahead, throw your vote away!”)
I think the situation might be different if the Greens or whoever had a viable structure behind the top of the ticket every 4 years. In that case, even if they had no hope of being pres and you lived in a solid red state, a ‘statement’ vote makes more sense. There you have people working all the time to pull the country left. Supporting them seems very different from supporting what is essentially a vanity candidate.
As it is, I’m having more trouble justifying voting for someone who only wants to work at moving us left once every 4yrs or so. How I feel, even if my vote in a particular race isn’t important, is looking more and more like a shitty way to decide things.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
And organizing and running for office is a hell of a lot more work than bitching and whining about lack of ponies and making an occasional protest vote. Thus the huge disparity between the number of firebaggers and the number of people who are actually running for available offices.
Another Halocene Human
@aimai: I doubt they’re uncorrupt, you just don’t know about it.
Weak mayor/council is a mice will play situation. Oh, sure, no brown paper bags of money in elected officials’ offices, but just watch how money gets spent. Hmmm, if you can even find out.
Cacti
@hueyplong:
NC is more like VA than the deep south in terms of demographic shift.
Much of the growth in the white population over the past 30 years has been in the highly-educated, high tech, triad area. NC’s hispanic population has also more than doubled since 2000, and combined with the higher than average African American population, it’s made the state 30% racial or ethnic minority.
That’s why a Dem POTUS is now able to compete there.
Another Halocene Human
@General Stuck: North Carolina, as I understand it, is similar to Northern VA, with a lot of high tech persons invading from the NE in metro areas, that has tilted the voting bucket some toward dems in both those states. Though I am not from there.
You also have “half-backs” from Florida who were attracted to how nice everything was in NC but now that they got theirs have no interest in paying taxes to keep it that way and will vote for the Norquistiest, Tea Partiest yokels on the ballot.
What contact I’ve had with half-backs, the older ones are white supremacists and not terribly closeted about it.
geg6
@scott:
I would have no problem with that discussion. But, again, that’s a discussion that has to bubble up from the bottom. Get active in local Dem politics. Become important within your local organization and they will listen to you. That’s where the change will come from, not from any sort of national discussion. You can be the change you want to see. Hmmmm, I seem to remember a recent and very successful Dem on the national level making that very argument. What was his name again? Bronco Bama or something like that?
mamayaga
@ChrisNYC: I stand corrected. The lack of OFA’s visibility during that time might be laid to media attention to the shiny object that was the Tea Party, I don’t know.
Cacti
@Another Halocene Human:
“Floridiots” are what they were unaffectionately called in the 11 years I lived in western NC.
gwangung
@MeDrewNotYou:
Yeah, pretty much this.
I mean, you pull the country left a little bit at a time, every day, at every level. That means winning elections at every level….and governing.
What kind of “message” are you sending if you’re voting for people with no experience at governing and no bloc of votes to work with? (In other words, what message you THINK you’re sending is NOT the one that’s getting received).
aimai
@MeDrewNotYou:
Don’t feel bad–in your state the Obama vote IS the protest vote you are looking for. It will be understood as a vote for a socialist, muslim, baby eating, atheist, traitor. That’s way more shocking to the local powers that be than a vote for Jill (who?) Stein. I think that’s basically El Cid’s point upthread. Context matters. Your vote for Obama is way more of a shocking attack on the system, in Indiana, than any vote for any third party fruitcake on the left. If you want to drag all your friends to the polls to vote for the Constitution party or the National Socialists, of course, that also would be quite destabilizing to Indiana politics if those votes would have gone to Romney.
aimai
Maude
@aimai:
I voted early today, NJ. It took an hour. People were still coming in when I left.
One woman is an appraiser and was talking about the shore. She saw Obama and said, he’s gonna win. Another woman almost spit, she is a RMonsy type.
I know how to fill out forms, I’m on SSDI. I told others at the table how not to confuse matters on the forms.
A woman working for the county said it was so wonderful to see people voting.
Only one whiner. Impatient sort. I said she would be casting her vote before 12:45 a.m.
No ID was needed.
Edit to add, Voted Obama and all Dems. Yes I did.
Another Halocene Human
@sal: “The other guy is worse” is not a recipe for enthusiasm. Which doesn’t mean the reasons mentioned aren’t good reasons to vote for Obama (and every other Dem – need to keep Reps away from any power), but perhaps explains why some people don’t share the burning passion that some here have. It’s not really inexplicable.
Fuck the rest of the Democratic coalition, I didn’t get my pony, poopyheads!
Gindy51
@MeDrewNotYou: As a fellow In resident, yes you are. Stein is closer to my political leanings but I would never, ever throw my vote away to assuage my ego (make me feel better). As a female, I am scared to death of a Romney presidency so you’re damned right I am voted Obama and every other D on that ballot (already mailed mine in weeks ago.)
ChrisNYC
@taylormattd: Drives me nuts that people (not this commenter here particularly, just generally) who are supposedly all about roll up your sleeves, grass roots, empowerment, people power lip service invariably revert to “this is for someone else to do, not me BUT REMEMBER I CARE SO MUCH!” when it comes time to get up and go.
Cacti
@aimai:
Same thing in Arizona.
In the second most Mormon state, and possibly the most anti-brown state in America, my protest vote was for the not-white, not-Mormon guy.
ruemara
@mamayaga: OFA was moribund after 2008? I’ll let my fellow members know, considering we were working on ACA, the 2010 Elections, et al . Sure didn’t seem moribund.
mamayaga
Interesting in this discussion is no comparison of the potential effectiveness of Jill Stein in office compared to Elizabeth Warren. Warren is clearly a step in the right direction, and will be in a position to actually affect policy. Her rise to senatorial candidate was pretty fast, but it was built on a solidly earned reputation both within and outside government.
NotMax
ThresherK
In the last days of the campaign (and with multiple, multiple hours to fill and a dearth of anything new, campaign-wise, being done), it’s just electoral masturbation, part of the usual slew of “but what if” stories at this time.
Part of it (for TV at least) is techno worship (techno-bation?). Sort of “We have these fancy, glitzy touch maps and visual effects that cost a lot to set up, so we MUST use them whenever possible, so come up with some scenario to do so.” Doesn’t matter if the supposition being demonstrated or displayed is a reasonable one or not.
Also too, what I call Sesame Street Syndrome (audience will only stay tuned in if it keeps lighting up and moving) plays into it.
Davis X. Machina
@mamayaga:
We flipped a red state-house seat in 2010, taking out a three-term incumbent, in an election when the ME state legislature, both houses, flipped the other way. On the third try.
Little by little….
Paul
@jurassicpork:
And if your vote for Stein causes Romney to be elected, he will EASILY kill more children than Obama. War against Iran for example…Or how about eliminating ACA, which will also kill children.
And you sir will bear responsibility for that. You could have helped stop that. You chose not to. With all due respect, you do not have any moral superiority.
By the way, how the heck do you know that Stein would be ANY different than Obama in the child killing department?
Finally, how did 2010 turn out for people like you? You tried to punish Obama and the Dems by either not voting or voting for 3rd parties. The tea party and the GOP thanks you!
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Halocene Human:
What is/was MDC and what was the renaming thing all about? Google is no help.
SiubhanDuinne
@Another Halocene Human:
What is/was MDC and what was the renaming thing all about? Google is no help.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@arguingwithsignposts:
And I guarantee you that a substantial percentage of those young ‘purity progressives’ end up being card-carrying Republicans by the time they’re 50.
mamayaga
@ruemara: Please see my comment at #147.
taylormattd
@ChrisNYC: Yes, exactly. I pissed me off big time whenever I’d see this from 2009-2010. And there was a lot of it, likely because some people believed attacking OFA would help their goal of making Obama look bad.
But it completely ignores all facts. I can’t tell you how many Congressional legislative, Congressional election, and local election battles OFA mobilized for during that period of time.
Another Halocene Human
@arguingwithsignposts: @TheStone: Is that you, Corner Stone? Or just another rock?
The stone that the builders rejected
Has become the corner stone
He thinks he’s Jesus.
Jasmine Bleach
I voted Jill Stein already! Why? Because she supports the things I want a president to support. Period.
Those here ragging on Stein are really something else. “Vanity” candidate (what the hell does that even mean?), voters who vote for Stein are “self-serving/selfish,” “magical thinking”, etc. So much insulting insecurity flowing outwards . . .
Don’t you worry though. I’ll never regret my vote–being the vain, self-serving, magical thinker that I seem to be.
Davis X. Machina
@SiubhanDuinne: Metropolitan District Commission, a greater-Boston-parks-plus-water governance unit, left over from the anti-machine (i.e. anti-Curley) goo-goo days of Republican rule in MA. They had their own police force, and some other parallel structures. The State Police got the law enforcement part, the state Dep’t. of Conservation and Recreation got the rest.
A power-play with strong internecine police-union struggles overtones…. sold as an efficiency measure.
Another Halocene Human
@weaselone: Your choice to vote for Stein is a self-serving and selfish one. It’s all about you making yourself feel better.
I don’t think blogwhoreboy has thought this through. If Romney wins, a “Don’t Blame Me, I voted for Stein” bumper sticker gets him flipped off, his car keyed, maybe even his ass kicked if he rolls into some rough Bainport.
If Obama wins, only the white sheet KKKrew and some insane greedheads are going to be butthurt about it.
The potheads who think Obummer sux are going to be sporting Gary Johnson stickers because reasons.
My point is it doesn’t exactly win friends or influence people after election day.
NotMax
@Cacti
So far as numbers are available, percentage of declared Mormons by state in descending order is:
Utah (~68%)
Idaho (~26%)
Nevada (~6.5%)
Arizona (~6%)
Cacti
@Jasmine Bleach:
Running as a “national” candidate who won’t carry a single state, electoral vote, congressional district, municipality, or local precinct.
Speculum Spatula
Here in Boston, I’ll be pulling the lever with great pride in exercising my right to vote as I see fit, for Elizabeth Warren and Jill Stein.
Another Halocene Human
@aimai: I don’t mean to pick on you but you do know that here in MA we are actually having two important ballot issues: assisted suicide and marijuana legalization—all put here and organized for by people other than greens. And they will be voted for by people other than greens. I’m not even sure why anyone bothers with the green party since their good policies, such as they are, can be effected entirely without their (imaginary) help.
In Florida we have the Labor Party. At first they were looking into running local candidates but as their advocacy developed they have turned into a well-run and effective advocacy organization. When you have limited resources but a lot of passion, issue advocacy can be more effective than running candidates. Of course, they have tried to support liberal candidates running under the Dem banner but even with a coalition this has not been successful… the other side just has too much money. (By other side, I mean the wealthy Dems.)
Ben Franklin
@Another Halocene Human:
Hmmm….totally unnecessary AdHom.
MeDrewNotYou
@aimai: That’s a nice way to look at it. Considering I have full-on birthers in my family, outside of my parents and sister, I’m probably a full-on commie for supporting Dems. Like you and El Cid said, if I told, say my aunt, that I was voting for Stein, she’d have no idea who that was and she’d probably congratulate me for finally seeing how awful Obama is.
(This was the same aunt who during the HCR debate, when my sister was in the ICU after a perforated ulcer nearly killed her, sent my mom an email saying that by voting for Obama, she had voted to kill her own daughter. At least my sister found it kind of funny.)
Speculum Spatula
@Davis X. Machina:
This is also why Chris Rock is not generally regarded as an astute political philosopher.
Bobby Thomson
@Rob: multivariate causation, how the fuck does it work?
Davis X. Machina
@Another Halocene Human: Legislative advocacy for fusion voting, and multi-line ballots, is IMHO a good issue to start in on.
You could conceivably get some help from a fractured GOP, from butt-hurt, sold-out Tea Partiers who want their own ballot line.
JasonF
Is anyone else following Revenge-gate?
geg6
@Jasmine Bleach:
I’m sure you won’t regret your vote. And I’m sure you think you are morally superior. But you aren’t. You are just someone who think his or her feelings are more important than anything that might happen to people whom you will never encounter or consider, living in that morally superior bubble you live in. You will never get what you want, but keep on fucking that chicken. All while simultaneously patting yourself on the back. You’ll be tied up like a pretzel, but you FEEEEEEEEEEEL good about it.
taylormattd
@Jasmine Bleach: Why didn’t you just write yourself in? You have the same chance of being elected and implementing the policies you like.
Dumbshit.
Hill Dweller
@Speculum Spatula:
Why do you think Warren is supporting Obama over Stein?
Speculum Spatula
@aimai:
Chortle.
Fuck off with your self righteousness.
Carl Nyberg
Are the argument for progressives in swing states to “suck it up” and vote Dem for POTUS ever accompanied by encouragement for Dems in non-swing states to vote for a more progressive alternative?
Another Halocene Human
@the Conster: So you missed that whole bit about how he was CEO of Bain and what Bain did to companies, did you?
And the previous three shitty Republican governors were not a deterrent?
Truly, Carpetbagger Deval Patrick was blessed. It took insufferable prick Willard Romney to convince Mass to put a Dem in the statehouse… any Dem. Any Dem at all.
Davis X. Machina
@Hill Dweller:
Because it’s never too early to sell out, of course! You’d think a blue state like Massachusetts could produce a real progressive to run for Senate.
taylormattd
@Speculum Spatula: Why don’t you write yourself in for president?
Speculum Spatula
@jurassicpork:
Jamaica Plain, here. Voting for Warren and Stein too.
I know: How dare we.
Cacti
@JasonF:
I saw a couple of blurbs about it.
If Ro-mentum existed anywhere besides the right wing imagination, would there be any need for these last minute desperation heaves?
Speculum Spatula
@aimai:
OH…so THAT’S what you tell yourself…
hahaha…
liberal
@aimai:
By most measures, yes; I’ll definitely be rooting for her to win.
But AFAICT she’s pretty awful on the issue of Iran. Just because 95% of Congress is awful on Iran doesn’t mean she’s OK on Iran.
JustAnotherBob
@Mark S.:
What was the Green Party?
Jasmine Bleach
Right. Because all of us Keynesian-economics loving, anti-war/anti-police state pacifist, renewable energy championing, union labor supporting purity progressives are just ready for that republican plunge! Oh, and I’m not that far from 50 as it is.
Seriously, have fun with your Geithner economics, unregulated default swaps and CDOs, soldiers dying in Afghanistan for no reason, and no huge moves or projects to curb global warming. That’s what you’re voting for, essentially. And the trillions of dollars of finance debt continues to rise, and the climate shifts, and people continue to die in pointless duty. Eventually, it’ll be catastrophically hot, and our economy will really collapse, and you can say you voted for it. Congrats to all of you. Because I’m vain and self-serving after all.
At the very, very least, a progressive president could shed a lot of light on these issues and change the national discourse. Something Obama has not done at all (well, except the Afghanistan thing–but only 2 years from now). Yes, Rmoney would be worse.
arguingwithsignposts
@Speculum Spatula:
That’s pretty fucking rich coming from you.
gwangung
Yes, there was a semi-long thread in a late night thread about pairing up progressive votes to build power blocs and getting things done.
Basically, right now, voting for Stein without building a Congressional or local constituency is just saying “I am powerless” while being too damn lazy to get off your ass and wielding the power you do have to effect change.
Cacti
@NotMax:
You’re right.
We’re 4th in percentage, and total number.
NV is 3rd in percentage, but has less than half the total number of Mormons as AZ.
Speculum Spatula
@geg6:
Yet your entire comment is about how Obama is entitled to our votes.
Macaroon.
Davis X. Machina
OT but interesting.
The only thing keeping the Washington Post afloat is having broadcast stations in swing states, and the advertising revenue that comes from that.
NotMax
@Carl Nyberg
Short answer: Yes.
gwangung
Not without a solid progressive bloc in Congress.
Which you’re too damn lazy to make happen.
Don’t insult my intelligence with these arguments. Think about things, don’t regurgitate.
lacp
As many have previously observed, third parties need state and local infrastructure. That’s why most of the money I’ve tossed to the Greens (which isn’t very much, because I don’t have very much) is specifically for state and local candidates.
Another Halocene Human
@ChrisNYC: “this is for someone else to do, not me BUT REMEMBER I CARE SO MUCH!”
The aspirational vote.
Sir Nose'D
When my prog friends complain about how little Obama has accomplished, am I the only one with this scene running through my head:
Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Some random attendee: Brought peace?
Reg: Oh, peace – shut up!
Speculum Spatula
@General Stuck:
Gee, Stuck, ya think?
JustAnotherBob
@MeDrewNotYou:
Yes.
We need to pile up the popular vote.
If you want a viable third choice then take the wise route and build a third party from the ground up. Don’t win a few city counsel seats and then front a presidential candidate. It’s how the Greens destroyed their party.
Scott S.
@Speculum Spatula: Shorter Republican troll: “Don’t vote, Democrats! I’ll be back here to laugh at you on Tuesday night if we manage to suppress enough of the vote!”
ThresherK
@NotMax: Doesn’t matter if the supposition being demonstrated or displayed is a reasonable one or not.
Hope you caught “CBS Contributor” Frank Luntz doing his projection job on CBS Sunday Morning, wherein he said “Even a stopped clock is right twice a day”, referring to Nate Silver.
We’re getting the worst combination of old-school idiots with snake-oil to sell, and new-school gee-whiz tech displays.
Another Halocene Human
@Jasmine Bleach: Those here ragging on Stein are really something else. “Vanity” candidate (what the hell does that even mean?), voters who vote for Stein are “self-serving/selfish,” “magical thinking”, etc. So much insulting insecurity flowing outwards . . .
Jill, I guess you think we don’t know that you get public dollars to run this campaign. Beats unemployment, right?
Emma
@Carl Nyberg: I would if I didn’t know exactly what we’re up against.
In this election every vote counts even if your state is bright red. We need the popular vote numbers high. Do you remember how BUsh “had a mandate” even when he had lost the popular vote? I want Obama to be able to say “we got the majority of Americans voting for our policies. What’d you got?”
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
It also required a group of power elites (the urban, Yankee capitalists) who were tired of the slave owners running the show and wanted to throw them out and sit on their throne. Who’s the equivalent against the national security state? Who could it be?
And heck if the KGB could not only survive but thrive from the collapse of the USSR, what’s it take to kill a national security state?
Hill Dweller
I’m still waiting for some of the Stein and Warren supporters(FWIW, I like Warren, too) to explain her support for the President over Stein.
Keep in mind, Warren saw the President up close.
Speculum Spatula
@Rob:
Thank you, Rob, a thousand times, for saying this again, and more clearly than have I.
And yet you hear people hear voicing the brave battle cry this time around in Ohio: “We have to win by enough votes so the Republicans can’t credibly steal the election!”
How codependent can a political party be? ONE fucking vote ought to be enough if the Democrats thought it worth fighting for.
Another Halocene Human
@gwangung: Not without a solid progressive bloc in Congress.
There is a progressive caucus, although a lot of them got tossed out in 2010 and will have an uphill battle coming back following redistricting.
They just happen to be within the Democratic Party.
And unlike the Tea Party Caucus, they have not threatened to throw their sabots into the gears of government because they’re having a tantrum now daddy, OKAY! I’M REALLY MAD NOW! DADDY!
Sellouts, all of them. /
Another Halocene Human
@Ben Franklin: Like your nym.
Jasmine Bleach
@gwangung:
Sorry, I don’t regurgitate (unless I have food poisoning or something). These are my own thoughts.
Sorry if I’m insulting your intelligence. If that’s the only comeback you have, though, you might want to think more about it.
And I’m hardly lazy. You don’t even know me.
The president has a bully pulpit and can change narrative. I’d rather have a president that tries loudly and fails, rather than not trying at all. (YMMV)
Shawn in ShowMe
@Jasmine Bleach:
What Congressional candidates did you vote for to support Pres. Stein’s agenda?
Tripod
@geg6:
I suspect not having to engage the Democratic Party hoi polloi at union halls, community meetings and county fair booths is part of the allure of the true left.
That’s what sellout party hacks do.
JustAnotherBob
@Jasmine Bleach:
Well, you pissed away you opportunity to help keep Mitt Romney out of the White House.
Right now you should be sweating bullets hoping that the rest of us make up for your folly.
Bruce S
Jesus Christ – a blog run by a guy who bought the idiotic “WMD” bullshit and a contributor who voted for Nader. Yeah, mea culpa and all that, but how dumb could one possibly be?
I’m getting a queasy feeling.
I’m critical as hell of a lot of the Obama policies – and a fervent supporter of others. I have zero respect for Tim Geithner and consider him a disaster. I also happen to support the “drone wars.” Folks are welcome to disagree. I have never believed that anyone who becomes President will be following my particular wish list. Obama is the best President in my lifetime, in unusually bad objective circumstances, dealing with a GOP in the grip of racist and extreme ideological bullshit for “good measure.” He’s doing a good job and he’s an extraordinarily decent human being – certainly as very successful politicians go. Anyone who would vote for some negligible Green twit in a national presidential election is a total idiot. It’s masturbation. (As for folks like Cole who supported the Iraq war as some sort of national security necessity…words fail me. I am glad our host and poster have shown that one can come back from the intellectual and moral wasteland represented by those positions. But frankly, I’ll never really trust the judgement of anyone who made such fucked up choices at key moments in our nation’s fraught history.)
As for the “don’t be mean to Nader” BS – there were a dozen reasons that contributed to Gore’s loss in 2000. The useless, fruitless Nader candidacy without queston was one in a series of events – any one of which could have changed our history dramatically for the better and saved hundreds of thousands of lives, among other things. Nader is a narcissistic piece of shit and deserves everything one could possibly dump on him. He’s also made some racialized comments about Obama,thinking that he’s got some sort of special liberal cover. Fuck Nader, ever and always. As for Jill Stein – who the fuck is Jill Stein?
The most telling criticism of Nader is that had he run in the Democratic primaries, he could have debated his burning issues with Gore and Bill Bradley on national television and actually achieved some of his protest goals, garnering votes among Democrats who agreed with him on much of his argument. That could have been a powerful and useful public service within the liberal community. He chose…something else – which made no sense except to terminal narcissists who think politics is about their uncompromised feelings. The only moral high ground in politics is – according to one’s values – getting the best outcome possible for the most people. Nader and his fans didn’t give a shit about other people – not the poor, not the folks in the military, not the country’s fiscal health, not the best government possible. Just themselves under guise of some “ideal.” Fuck ’em.
AA+ Bonds
Next up: we condemn unicorns and hippogriffs for their anti-Obama ways
NotMax
@ThresherK
Heh. As if anything emerging from Mr. Luntz’ mouth contains even a scintilla of credibility.
Even better, he made that statement on the very day (for the vast majority of the country) when that proverbial stopped clock can be right 3 times in a day.
Still shaking my head over some doofus on MSNBC yesterday or the day before who pontificated in deep seriousness that “voters are all either men or women.”
AA+ Bonds
@Hill Dweller:
THY ORTHODOXY IS UNMATCHED MY SON, GUIDE US IN THIS, THE END OF DAYS
pseudonymous in nc
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
There’s no glitz in running for school boards or other local positions, and it takes a genuine institutional effort to support it.
But that’s where the wingnuts have been doing their thing. There was a piece in the local fishwrap the other week about one school board member who is “shaking things up” by proposing whatever half-digested shit she reads on wingnut blogs, and is trying to get more wingnuts elected this time.
Mnemosyne
@Jasmine Bleach:
A vanity candidate is someone who runs not to support the other people in her party who are running for Congress or governor, but to aggrandize herself and get her name out there. See jefft452‘s explanation of how Eugene Debs’ unsuccessful runs for president nevertheless helped Socialist Party candidates get elected to other offices.
Tell us, what does Stein’s “civil disobedience” do to promote the campaigns of Green Party candidates who are running for other offices? How many Green Party candidates can expect to be elected this year with Stein’s help the way Socialist Party candidates were elected with Debs’ help?
AA+ Bonds
I’m glad at least you built this playpen to corral the Conserva-Dems; as we all know, the true enemy of the left-wing party is the left
Seriously though: please try not to lose this election for your guy in the last few days, okay
Another Halocene Human
@Davis X. Machina: You could conceivably get some help from a fractured GOP, from butt-hurt, sold-out Tea Partiers who want their own ballot line.
I’ll be shocked if the R splitters (Con party, etc) last longer than an election cycle. They’re authoritarian followers and they’re not that dumb. (Too dumb to know why they hate, but certainly smart enough to know who they hate.)
I’m not fond of suicide pacts. And from what I’ve seen with these novel voting experiments out west, they don’t really amplify anyone’s voice or get the purity pony in office. They do result in some pretty perverse results, at least if you think that an elected official ought to convince more than 15% of the voting public to vote for them.
The only thing that would change things would be proportional representation, but we would still have the same coalitions, the same compromises, and it would still be extremely close.
And I still wouldn’t vote far left in that sort of election because in Europe they have a track record of forming majority governments with hard right parties.
Jasmine Bleach
I like Warren a lot. I like Tammy Baldwin a lot. I pretty much support all progressive Democrats.
They seem to be getting rarer and rarer, though.
rdldot
A little levity to break things up a bit.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Jasmine Bleach:
It amazes me someone that old could forget McGovern, Carter, and Mondale.
AA+ Bonds
The hard truth is that Balloon Juice still doesn’t understand the Internet
Build an anti-Jill-Stein thread, and suddenly there will be as many “Jill Stein supporters” on Balloon Juice as your Messiah-complex needs require
I hope everyone is having fun in this flailing farce of a thread at least?
arguingwithsignposts
@AA+ Bonds: Do you assholes work in shifts?
Hill Dweller
@Jasmine Bleach:
Why are those progressives supporting Obama?
Bruce S
“I voted Jill Stein already! Why? Because she supports the things I want a president to support.”
That is just fucking stupid. Really. There are two possible outcomes in this election. You lent your vote to increasing the likelihood of the worst. It’s that simple. Dumb fuckers.
pseudonymous in nc
@Another Halocene Human:
Lots of unreconstructed Birchers in certain places on their Medicare-funded mobility scooters.
ThresherK
@NotMax: Yep. When I saw the blurb for the piece, I said to Spousal Unit, “That’ll be Nate Silver v. some Beltway Inbreds.”
That Silver got half the airtime is a bonus.
Note the exchange.
Interviewer: “So you’re saying Obama will win?”
Silver: “No, I’m saying if you are stupid enough to give me an even bet on the outcome, I’ll put my money on Obama. Not even 2-to-1 odds are worth it.”
(I may have added the “stupid enough” thing to Nate’s response.)
That exchange represents an uptick in actual journalism, letting a fact-monger get his succinct point across. The sick puppy in me is imagining how our press corpse would have covered the dawn of Germ Theory.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@AA+ Bonds: Its more entertaining than the NFL pregame shows.
Bruce S
@Hill Dweller:
Because they’re not 12 years old! Which is the mental age of these Jill Stein – whoever the fuck she is – supporters.
Mnemosyne
@Jasmine Bleach:
Really? So when the president failed to close Guantanamo because the Senate voted 90-6 against it, you told everyone that you were happy even though he failed because at least he had tried to do it?
Uh-huh. Pull the other one.
Speculum Spatula
@TBogg:
TBOGG, I’m really kind of amazed that you are such an Obama authoritarian.
Fuck that shit.
Another Halocene Human
@Jasmine Bleach: At the very, very least, a progressive president could shed a lot of light on these issues and change the national discourse.
Here it is. The reason labor activists get fed up with pony progressives. The notion that talk is more effective than action.
If unions took that attitude we wouldn’t have unions at all.
AA+ Bonds
Hey, I, uh, I like, um, I like this rock for President. It’s not Obama but it could leech off support on Election Day! QUICK BURN IT, BURN THEM ALL, EXPEND A TON OF ENERGY, NUKE IT FROM ORBIT OR YOU CANT HAZ CHEEZEBURGER
Soonergrunt
@Carl Nyberg:
I don’t know. Are Progressives in swing states doing the hard work to build constituencies within the community? Because the ones bragging about voting third party on this site never mention any of that. It’s all “I didn’t get the magical progressive ™ blowjob I deserve just for existing and doing fuck-all else”
gwangung
See, this is the same problem I’ve alluded to. You’re not engaging with people who disagree; you’re moralizing from a supposedly higher moral position.
It’s LAZY. You’re not making an effort to engage with people WHO AGREE ON THE SAME OVERALL GOAL. You’re dying on a hill over tactics–which is stupid.
And all I know about you is what you’re posting–which seems extremely lazy because you state a goal and have stated no way of getting there and seem to have no conception of how to get there.
(And since it’s MY intelligence that you’re insulting, it’s not MY job to do more thinking).
AA+ Bonds
@arguingwithsignposts:
Do sharks work in shifts; do komodo dragons – you’re ascribing social behavior to a feeding frenzy after the FPers let their own blood on the front page
This FP could be rewritten “Don’t come in here and provoke us with fake support for the Green Party or we SWEAR we will throw a temper tantrum up to 200 posts or more”
Frankensteinbeck
I wish to point out, yet again, that Obama does not have a bad record on civil liberties. Saying Obama has a bad record on civil liberties is almost exactly like calling him a sokkirist. It’s a bullshit narrative based on wild distortions of what he’s actually done, combined with ignoring how the law works and comparing him to a mythical pacifistic uber president, not every single actual president we’ve ever had.
I’ll throw out one random example. Warrantless wiretapping. Obama’s FBI does it. So have all FBIs for the longest time. It was an outrage under Bush because Bush broke the law that said he had to get approval from a specific court. That law no longer exists, thanks to congress’s fanatic eagerness to exonerate Bush’s abuses. Obama cannot follow a process that has been removed, and he’s not doing anything unusual. If you want a president to completely forbid wireless wiretapping… yeah, good luck with that.
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@Jasmine Bleach:
I couldn’t tell you the number of times that I’ve flipped a coin in my life, but I can tell you how many times it fell on its edge: Exactly once. Sadly, no one else was in the room to see it, and this was long before we carried cameras with us 24/7. But I was there, and I did see it happen.
To this day, however, I still call ‘heads’ or ‘tails’ when I flip a coin. Because those are still the only two realistic probabilities.
I oppose most of the same things you do. But one must deal with the world as one finds it.
AA+ Bonds
The Kochs couldn’t do a better job dividing the Democrats from the votes they need
Here’s a hint: when left challenge candidates aren’t actually a threat to you, fucking ignore them
The right works hard to rope Democrats into denouncing their own supporters; they know the confusion Democrats must maintain between pragmatism and voting for the right-wing Democrat and seek to exploit it
Another Halocene Human
@Jasmine Bleach: I’d rather have a president that tries loudly and fails, rather than not trying at all.
Not if your livelihood depended on it, you wouldn’t.
But risks–that’s for other people, right?
Shawn in ShowMe
@Jasmine Bleach:
Progressive democrats support the Democratic baby-killing president over 90% of the time. Why is that?
Soonergrunt
@JustAnotherBob: “Right now you should be sweating bullets hoping that the rest of us make up for your folly.”
You are hoping this person is possessed of self-awareness. Recent behavior suggests otherwise.
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Dude, if you’re so above it all and find this bickering useless, why the hell are you even posting comments to the thread?
Mr Stagger Lee
All this talk about Jill Stein, and none for Rocky Anderson?
What is he Chopped Liver?
*Note I voted for Obama.
Jasmine Bleach
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
I’m sorry, I don’t remember a president McGovern or Mondale. Did they have the bully pulpit?
Carter was a very smart president, and a lot of the stuff he warned about is being proved true. I liked him a lot. But, he didn’t come across as strong, the hostage rescue eff up, and the mediocre economy sank him.
And if you are implying that a progressive could never be a good president, well, then you’ve basically assigned the country to economic disaster at some undetermined point in the future, accepted global warming, and have forgotten about past folks like FDR, who implemented hugely progressive reforms and essentially saved our bacon.
AA+ Bonds
Everybody knows that the most radical surfer dudes vote for Obama and they always remind their friends to check the batteries on their smoke detectors! Play it safe and be the coolest guy in school!
pr
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Uh-uh, the pretty unicorns would stop them.
Another Halocene Human
@Tripod: I suspect not having to engage the Democratic Party hoi polloi at union halls, community meetings and county fair booths is part of the allure of the true left.
The Lumpenproletariat need the Students of the Revolution to guide them with right-teaching and true revolutionary consciousness. The unconscious masses are like shambling zombies without the gnosis of skinny, nicotine-stained, slumming it urbanites who fucked off in the middle of their Master’s Degree in English or Wanking but can get by only working part time because they have connections to score weed that earn them that spot on the couch plus they still get some interest income off their Late Uncle Fester’s legacy and they are totally fomenting revolution man. Ferreals!
Bruce S
@taylormattd:
Unfortunately, OFA had no strategy for organizing anything other than keeping people around for GOTV. Had OFA done serious organizing around issues – and I know for a fact that they didn’t have a clue how to deal with health care, because “they didn’t know what would be in the bill” (an OFA organizer’s words to me) or had they counter-organized to the insane crap around the economy that the Tea Party was capitalizing on, they would have done a much greater service to Obama and brought a lot more activists who cared about issues into their ranks. But they chose to become a strictly top-down DNC operation. OFA didn’t want anyone around who wasn’t a low-expectations “We Stand With The President” type, who believed it was all about Obama. Obviously, that’s not serious political strategy.
OFA blew a huge opportunity to capitalize on what was organized in 2008. It became personality-driven, and Obama’s relatively narrow victory this time is a sign of OFA’s lame strategy, not it’s brilliance at “being there” between elections. OFA didn’t do shit to impact the political landscape after 2008 – unfortunately the morons of the Tea Party were far more effective. OFA is technocratic organizing – not “community organizing” nor even political organizing except in the narrowest electoral sense.
AA+ Bonds
@Mnemosyne:
As usual, I betray my brethren and attempt to motherfucking assist the liberals in snatching victory from the jaws of the defeat that they in turn try to snatch from the jaws of victory
Because socialism depends on liberals understanding that the parts of “liberalism” that separate liberals from libertarians are actually socialism, and what they condemn as unrealistic actually represents the desire that they must deny and repress within themselves for actual, practical improvement in America
And shit, I’m not above bickering, this is fun, Jasmine Bleach (no doubt a long-standing Balloon Juice handle that all of you recognize!) is just rolling through here like a tank
Speculum Spatula
@weaselone:
Fool.
By voting for what you believe to be the “morally superior choice,” you are just making YOURSELF feel better. There’s no fucking difference. So maybe everyone should just vote for whom they choose to vote for and you should butt out.
Davis X. Machina
@Jasmine Bleach:
1936 House; 334 D; 88 R
1936 Senate 76 D; 16 R
There was some bacon-saving, and some grounds for debate about who did it.
Another Halocene Human
@Bruce S: The only moral high ground in politics is – according to one’s values – getting the best outcome possible for the most people.
Utilitarianism is so– so– middle class!
Another Halocene Human
@pseudonymous in nc: But that’s where the wingnuts have been doing their thing. There was a piece in the local fishwrap the other week about one school board member who is “shaking things up” by proposing whatever half-digested shit she reads on wingnut blogs, and is trying to get more wingnuts elected this time.
And that shit will really be the end of NC. Scary.
NotMax
#Jasmine BleachI’d rather have a president that tries loudly and fails, rather than not trying at all. (YMMV)Like Dubya and Social Security, for instance?
Sheesh.
Mnemosyne
@Jasmine Bleach:
… while allowing African-Americans to continue to be lynched with impunity in the South and imprisoning Japanese-Americans based on their race. But somehow people always gloss over that part so they can pretend that FDR never compromised with the right wing of his day, like when he agreed to have the original Social Security law written in such a way that it wouldn’t cover most African-American or female workers.
Pinkamena Panic
@MeDrewNotYou: Speaking as a fellow Indiana resident? YES YOU ARE.
NotMax
Whoopsie. Let’s try formatting that properly.
@Jasmine Bleach
Like Dubya and Social Security, for instance?
Soonergrunt
@Mnemosyne: Or when he approved a policy of total warfare on the enemy nations’ infrastructure, industry, and civilian populations…
The Manhattan Project didn’t just appear overnight.
Another Halocene Human
@Jasmine Bleach: I’m sorry, I don’t remember a president McGovern or Mondale. Did they have the bully pulpit?
That is, truly, a breathtaking display of goal post moving. Did you break a sweat heaving them around?
Mnemosyne
@AA+ Bonds:
Sorry, the correct answer was, “By choice, man.”
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@ChrisNYC:Thanks.
I’ve always felt that the conventional wisdom on this (OFA-dropped-the-ball meme) had to be too simplistic. As good as Obama’s team is and was, it’s hard to imagine that they would simply fold up and go home after winning – knowing they would need two terms and the support of Congress.
It’s almost always an uphill battle not to lose seats in the mid-terms after a new president is elected. A bloodbath in 2010 should have been (and was) expected, unfortunately.
538 from 2/20/2010:
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
redshirt
@Speculum Spatula: Why don’t you write your own name in for President? Same difference – piss away your vote.
Soonergrunt
@Jasmine Bleach: “I’m sorry, I don’t remember a president McGovern or Mondale.”
Maybe you ought to try thinking about why that is.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Jasmine Bleach:
At least you’re self aware enough to know your vast limitations.
Oi fucking vey. It’s one thing to be trolled from the right but from the left? It’s Judean People’s Front all over again.
Please take your no-regret vote and go elsewhere because you’re sure as shit not about:
1) Enacting real, liberal change, and
2) Holding off the barbarians at the gate.
Bruce S
@Mnemosyne:
I love it when people invoke Imaginary FDR. You forgot to mention that he ran on balancing the budget in 1932, and actually cut back on spending after his re-election in ’36, causing a predictable resurgence of the depression. And, of course, he was ultimately not even a great Keynesian, so much as the worlds’ greatest “military Keynesian” – because it took the force of federal spending on WWII to finally drag the country fully out of the depression. He also had a serious Left to contend with, that largely supported his initiatives and re-election, while pushing him with grass-roots organizing, union campaigns, and the rest. Great president and all that, but hardly the incarnation of progressivism had he been left to his own devices. He also held together the old Dem coalition that relied on racists. And he did some terrible things…
Bruce S
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
The question isn’t about them folding their tents, but touting “community organizing” when all they were was a GOTV operation being held in place with some BS rhetoric to make folks feel good about themselves. A lot more could have been achieved – the country needed strong progressive organization in the wake of the 2008 economic disaster and OFA could have contributed to that. The Tea Party proved that there was a need for something more than bromides about the administration, which is pretty much all OFA was good for. Obama himself put organizing to his left on the table – to provide the “push” that, for one, FDR had – as essential in his 2007-2008 incarnation. OFA was totally absent in this regard, at best. Maybe it was too much to expect, but they shouldn’t have lied about what they wanted to do – which they did, if you talked to any of the organizers about this strategy. “Community organizing” around issues was NOT the reality – it was a top-down operation, geared to electoral organizing pure and simple. Nothing wrong with that, but don’t bullshit me.
Mnemosyne
@Bruce S:
Don’t get me wrong, despite his flaws FDR is still one of our greatest presidents. It’s just been driving me nuts that people complain about Obama compromising with the right unlike FDR did. FDR may have said lots of harsh things about the banksters that we love to read 80 years later, but he did plenty of compromising with the right wing of his day that would not fly with Democratic voters today.
It’s always freshly astounding to me that the same people who shriek about Obama throwing this group or that group “under the bus” are apparently completely unaware that FDR happily threw African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, and women under the bus when expediency called for it.
Though no one will ever beat mclaren for sheer cognitive dissonance when she first claimed that FDR was better on civil liberties than Obama and then, when challenged, claimed that the internment of Japanese-Americans on the basis of race did not violate their civil liberties because shut up, that’s why.
Mr Stagger Lee
@Bruce S: He had also to deal with the insurgent rise of Huey P. Long the senator from Louisiana and his Share Our Wealth movement, which forced him to go left. (long had a long term goal of defeating Roosevelt in 1936, then become the white knight in 1940 to defeat the GOP incumbent) The only thing that saved FDR from being a one term president was an assassin’s bullet to Long in 1935
JustAnotherBob
@Davis X. Machina:
Add to that the fact that the country’s economy had been in the crapper for several years by 1936. People were past the panic stage and deep into the suffering stage and were ready to support a new path.
FDR and his helpers had a few years to contemplate how to rebuild the economy. They didn’t enter as things were collapsing and have to first work to stop the disaster.
Hoover rode things to the bottom. Obama took over right in the middle of the worst of the mess.
Paul
@Jasmine Bleach:
Good for you. Good luck with your war against Iran. And good luck with your healthcare when ACA is eliminated.
I will vote for Obama. And I will never in hell regret my vote. At least I’m not voting for war with Iran or repeal of ACA.
Paul
@Jasmine Bleach:
Oh yes, FDR who decided to put 110,000 Japanese Americans in internment. Yes, what a true progressive. People like you crack me up. You bend over backwards to find fault with our African-American President, yet you ignore worse faults with previous Democratic white Presidents. Why is that?
jl
@Mnemosyne:
Good points. And if you read the details of the New Deal legislation, FDR sometimes had an Obama-like caution. For example, FDR dragged his feet on some parts of Social Security out of fear it was going too far to fast for the country.
Some Republicans in Congress, out fear for their seats who were more in touch with popular opinion joined with Dems to push FDR to go ahead.
JustAnotherBob
@Jasmine Bleach:
Jasmine, were the two of us to sit down and compare our desires and goals for the country I suspect that we would find ourselves in great agreement. I might actually be left of you in some areas.
The difference between us, I suspect, is that I accept the realities of our political system. The great bulk of the folks in the middle make the actual decisions, not those on the progressive/left end nor those on the regressive/right end.
There’s no way to quickly move that great bulk of the middle to a new position, except for conditions which create panic such as 9/11.
The route I see to achieving our goals is to work to convince the great bulk that we have a better idea and to see that the people closest to our philosophy occupies as many offices as possible. If we give over offices to the right then that makes repair work for us later on.
Just imagine what we wouldn’t have to be doing right now had Al Gore gotten a few hundred more votes in Florida. We lost the eight years while Bush was in office and we wasted a large part of PBO’s first four years dealing with the Bush mess.
Taking any chance that Republicans gain any office is not acceptable.
FlipYrWhig
Look, if you think of yourself as further to the left than the Democratic Party, yes, you’re sort of in a bind. The reason that you’re in that bind is that too few people are willing to decamp from the Democrats to stand with you. A party that represents 5% of the public can’t accomplish fuck-all. Unless you have a strategy for how to get from 5% to 26%, at which point you could potentially overcome the Democrats, you’re just pissing into the wind. And I don’t see anyone trying very hard to do that. If anything, I feel like there’s a dedicated subset of that 5% bent on pushing that number down to 3 or 4% by railing against the squishiness of the right side of the far left.
Ultimately, it seems like a rather cheap way to declare yourself a radical. It’s a way maintain that self-image via almost literally the least you can do. Why then is there such an atmosphere of martyrdom around it? It’s reminiscent of those people we all know who really like to tell everyone that they don’t have a TV.
A Humble Lurker
@Speculum Spatula:
Do you have reading comprehension problems? Dude didn’t even mention Obama.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Mnemosyne:
The firebaggers and bullying Obama-hating kossacks who seem to be trolling us to death today (hey kids, your screechy, bullying crap works to silent discussion at Teh Orange and make the site outside of the Front Page a joke, but not here) would have, had they existed back in 1936, condemned FDR for his shortcomings and voted for whatever 3rd party vanity candidate who espoused pure, Democratic thoughts.
Jeezus, FDR’s administration wasn’t pure by any stretch of the imagination but in 1936, you sure as hell shoulda voted for him. It’s deja vu all over again.
Carnacki
I voted for Jill Stein. I traded my Obama vote in WV for a friend’s Stein vote in Ohio. I owe her a favor to be named later as well.
Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JSBhI_0at0
If anyone says “both parties are equal”, i just remember this video, and all the consequences, and think of how silly these people are.
redshirt
I hope these Stein votes are cancelled out by Libertarian votes.
Stein votes = Idiotic.
lol
@mamayaga:
Not this shit again. People who claim “Obama dismantled the 50 state strategy” never had a fucking clue what the 50 state strategy was in actual practice.
The *only* thing the 50SS did was pay the state parties to hire a couple people. That. was. it. No restriction on what positions or who was hired for those positions or what they did once hired or any accountability. It resulted in a hodge podge of quality people and incompetent party hacks. Some parties used it to hire new people, some used it pay the salaries of people they already had.
Please explain how this would’ve stopped the mid-term elections of 2010 going against the sitting President.
In contrast, OFA 2.0 directly hired for specific positions (state director, field director and so on) with a minimum of 2 in each state (same as 50SS) with most getting far more than that.
As for OFA “not doing anything”, it reminds me of the GOS front-pager (Chris Bowers?) who complained about all the emails from OFA to volunteer and thus unsubscribed and then complained about not knowing what OFA was up to. OFA had its volunteers calling people to get them to call their members of congress during the health care fight. OFA was organizing volunteers for the 2010 elections.
Sorry, but the hard truth is that the 50SS had dick all to do with the gains in 2006 and 2008. Who seriously believes that 100 random staffers nationwide makes that much of a difference?
Edit: Actually addressed to mayayaga
JustAnotherBob
Gore lost Florida by 537 votes.
Nader got 97,488 “Green Party” votes.
Does anyone believe that if Nader was not on the ballot at least 48,208 of Nader’s Green Party votes would have gone to Bush? About half of Nader’s votes came from the county where the University of Florida is located.
Up until that election I was a Green Party supporter. When Nader stayed in the election I decided that the Green Party could go to Hell.
Bruce S
@Mnemosyne:
I totally agree that FDR was one of our greatest presidents. As was Lincoln. But our greatest Presidents are all marked by compromise, periods of indecision or apparent resistance to their “better angels”, the political terrain that surrounds them – be that a congressional majority, overwhelming congressional resistance, social movements forcing their hands on various issues, plutocrats pushing back with threats, etc. etc. etc. Being President of the United States generally entails compromise with certain evils inherent in war and nationalism – which is why saints never get elected – and the need to be very strategic in use of actual presidential powers.
It’s a horrible fucking job. We’re lucky a few men as decent and talented – and able to deal with the complexity – as Obama still aspire to the office. Romney is an example of personal ambition unhinged from even minimal integrity at it’s worst. And my job, especially given my admiration for the man, is to be constructively critical when I think the administration or situation necessitates it – while being as realistic and supportive as I can of his re-election and the firewall this administration represents in the face of insurgent GOP crazy. If you’re a true progressive and believe in the potential of social movements around issues that reflect your deepest values, guys like Obama and FDR offer a window and an opportunity. Simply trashing them is total idiocy.
JustAnotherBob
@Bruce S:
Not giving the Presidents Carter/Clinton/Obama massive support and praise when they do things we want is also total idiocy.
That, IMHO, is where “progressives” have really shit the bed. Rather than support the President when their goals were being achieved they often have chosen to attack.
Wrong and stupid.
Bruce S
@JustAnotherBob:
Actually Obama arguably took over as the worst of the mess – in term of impact on average folks – was just getting started.
Also, even with “years to contemplate”, FDR ran on a sort of reactionary “balance the budget” economic platform in ’32. Not sure if he knew it was total bullshit or not, but it was an utterly stupid “plan” for ending the depression. Luckily, saner ideas prevailed when he was in office.
Ruckus
Let’s get real here.
In a 2 party system – which we have, it was designed that way – you always vote one of two ways:
1. For the least objectionable
2. …
Almost none of us like everything about any candidate but many hate everything about another.
At this point in time, if you are in any way a thoughtful person and want to live in a world better for the most number of people, you vote democratic. It really is that simple. And if you are selfish and your feelings are more important that actual living people then you vote for either the conservative or the person who can’t get elected. If you vote for the conservative and they win, you will get what you deserve. Unfortunately the rest of us will get what we don’t deserve. If you vote for a third party you will get bubkus, or in a more direct answer, shit. And you may cause the rest of us to get what we don’t deserve. People who voted for Nader, rather than the least objectionable, got us the idiot son of bush.
aimai
@Jasmine Bleach:
He “didn’t come across as strong?” So you are voting for Jill (nobody knows my name) Stein? What the fuckity fuck? You are the very definition of a solipsistic, vanity voter searching for a blowhard daddy/mommy to parade your childish wants on the national stage. We have a President, he/she runs the executive branch for four years. During those four years his/her enemies in the other party, the climate, the environment, other countries and a shitload of other stuff will happen that he/she will have to handle. To reduce your choice of president to “some guy who loudly proclaims (some) progressive views” even if he/she can’t actually effect change, and some guy who “comes across as strong” enough to be remembered credibly (your carter complaint) is to reveal your political thought as utterly puerile. Presidentin’ isn’t just cheerleading and it NEVER should go to the one who looks best in the swimsuit competition for purity trolls. Such a person wouldn’t have the flexibility, intelligence, or strength to handle the unexpected realities of day to day politics and just plain life chances on this planet.
aimai
Bruce S
@JustAnotherBob:
I don’t know what “progressives” you are talking about. I don’t pay a lot of attention to people like Jane Hamsher, who catches a lot of vitriol around here. Actually, I pay zero attention – also zero attention to the Green Party, etc. But progressives like Bernie Sanders in the Senate and Congress were correct to push for a better health care option than we actually ended up with. And it’s a damned shame OFA didn’t take the lead in pushing for a robust health care plan that ordinary folks could understand – outside of the horse-trading and obscurantism of the congressional sausage machine that dominated the process. This would have given Obama a much stronger hand to play and the bill that was actually passed would like have had more support – and might have included an opt-in for Medicare or some such. What OFA actually did was not issue organizing – it was lame and timid. While the Tea Party was out making noise and spreading the most obscene lies about the President. OFA gave into political hack instincts rather than a coherent issues-organizing strategy.
aimai
@Speculum Spatula:
There’s a not insignificant difference between doing the right thing, and feeling good about yourself. While it is true that I will proudly pull the lever, or fill in the blank in our case, for President Obama and that I consider it an honor to be able to vote for him I don’t vote for him to feel good about myself. That’s the difference between wanting to act politically and wanting to be seen to act politically. Your secret ballot is, of course, being published precisely because it is more important for you (both) to pretend to be a certain kind of voter than to effectuate a certain kind of politics and political change.
I’m willing to work for my candidate because I think the country needs the work he will do as President. I know we neded him right after Bush left the White House. Ms Bleach here, and you too cupcake, are voting for someone who has zero ZERO Not a SAUSAGE worth of a chance of every having the slightest influence over the world around her—let alone the political world, the policy world, or even the street lights and sanitation world. You are choosing to privilige your identity as an (imaginary) progressive over the reality of the world of work that real progressives confront every day.
Yutsano
@aimai: Forget it, aimai. It’s Special Timmeh Town.
Bruce S
@aimai:
This: “You are choosing to privilege your identity…over the reality”
That’s the dividing line. Which is why the word “Vanity” so often comes up in these discussions.
JustAnotherBob
@Bruce S: I see no evidence that a stronger/Bernie Sanders health care bill could have received enough votes to pass.
I am happy that PBO got us as much as he did.
Note: I’m not saying that he took us all the way to the end zone and scored the winning points.
We never get all the way in one giant step, part of the PPACA was fixing problems with the 50 year old Medicare program. I imagine that we’ll find things with the current health care bill that will require more legislation fixes.
The only thing that I fault PBO with, and this he has talked about himself, is not doing enough to let everyday Americans know what is in the bill and how it will improve their lives. Over and over I encounter people who are active on the left who really don’t know much about the PPACA.
aimai
@Bruce S:
I know its silly to engage with Spatula, let alone Ms. Bleach, but I’ve just gotten in from GOTV and I am so energized by the people who are getting out to vote, and so repulsed by the (small) number of spite voters who are voting for Brown/Romney and so bemused by the way a large number of voters seem to cling to the idea of their vote as a magical reflection of a hidden superpower.
There are quite a few people who want to be recognized as voting for something more than they want to work for it or even bring it about. Talking to these people is often like watching a child begin to potty train–some of them become constipated because of their inability to “share” their productivity with the world, some try to hang on to their little poops to gloat over them, some of them producly display what they have achieved. Its just a fucking vote. If all of your fellow citizens voted lets say that it would be 1/150, millionth of a tiny brick needed to build the edifice of our political system. While I believe everyone should be willing to put in their brick, the point of doing so is to build a better society not to dance around waving the godd amned brick and shouting ‘look at me!! look at me!!! my brick is the best brick!!1″
aimai
calabi-yeow
I live in the red state where McCain/Palin ticket had the highest vote percentage of all the states in 2008.
I live in the red state where Randall Terry actually garnered more votes than Obama in some of the counties during the primaries in 2012.
I’m voting for President Obama, even though this is a “safe state” for Romney.
The descriptor, “safe state,” is a ludicrous and deceptive term. The election of POTUS is a national decision. There’s nothing “safe state” about it! Yes, the ultimate election of the POTUS will be through the electoral college, but if Obama loses the popular vote (but wins the EC), all hell may break loose in this country (thinking election 2000). What in the hell is SAFE or SANE about repeating that scenario?? Not to mention that it would further weaken the perception that he has a majority of voters who would support more progressive policies in the next four years!
I am disdainful of any progressive voter in a “safe state” who casts a protest vote against Obama or doesn’t bother to vote at all. When you consider that the swing state liberals are working their asses off because their state actually has a chance to deliver their state in the electoral college, it’s seems the height of selfishness and self-indulgence for safe state liberals to either sit the vote out or vote against the country’s best chances for progress in the next four years.
My vote for Obama in 2012 will be a lonely vote in my area……but it will be one more vote that will add to the popular vote…..and it will be one more voice that screams “NO” to the crazy right-ward lurch of the GOP.
For all those liberal ditherers and purists………What the f*ck is so hard to understand about this concept??
By the way, I was raised Republican and voted Republican for decades…..until GWB’s tenure opened my eyes. It’s embarrassing to admit, but there you have it. My only paltry defense is that I was “too busy”” to pay attention to politics. Not any more….
Ben Johannson
@Ruckus:
The only people responible for electing Bush were the Democrats and their shoddy efforts to persuade voters. If Mitt Romney is elected then Democrats, including Barrack Obama, will have no one to blame but themselves.
Bruce S
JustAnotherBob Says:
@Bruce S: I see no evidence that a stronger/Bernie Sanders health care bill could have received enough votes to pass.
But that’s not the point. The point is exactly where your comment eventually went. Had not necessarily the President himself, but OFA and an organized, energized Democratic grass-roots pushed for a coherent set of principles for a health care bill, which is what Bernie did by making a clear, understandable call for “Medicare for all”, we would have had a more solid constituency for whatever actually was compromised into reality by the Congress and Senate. And don’t kid yourself that a push from below couldn’t have impacted what became possible in the Congress. Letting it get sausaged up by characters like Max Baucus was what increasingly made the bill an easy target for its real enemies. I’m not saying the politics that prevailed could have been circumvented, but there was no organized effort to even impact it or set the terms of discourse, except by the crazies of the Tea Party. And they came within an inch of killing it when Dems lost 60 in the Senate (which they barely had.) You might recall that even Lieberman supported – rhetorically – a Medicare option at one point. One OFA organizer I talked to admitted they were stymied by what to do in organizing around health care “because we didn’t know what was in the bill.” That’s just butt stupid. Shockingly inept and irresponsible. But the same person touted their “organizing strategy.” They had a huge picture of the President in the OFA office window with the slogan, “Stand With the President.” That’s as idiotic a strategy as a football team that makes “Stand By the Quarterback” their offensive play. You’ve got to have a ground game in politics that’s not about Washington DC or the President as the center of everything. Pretty much politics 101 if you’ve ever actually worked in any social movement. Obama knows better. But he’s got other shit to do. Plouffe, et. al. are pretty much just the smartest, most tech-savvy campaign hacks you’ll see. They use some organizing techniques to their advantage. But they aren’t about political organizing – they’re about winning the next election for their guy. That’s about it. It’s not enough. I don’t have anything against those guys for what they do – it’s that OFA sold itself as something potentially more early on. And then consciously determined to limit their scope, while maintaining some feel-good BS that exploited that deliberately stifled potential that actually did exist in early 208.
Bruce S
@Bruce S:
That should have ended “early 2009”
taylormattd
@Bruce S: “OFA didn’t do shit to impact the political landscape after 2008”
That is true only in the fevered minds of delusional hacks that hate Obama’s guts, like Jane Hamsher.
Ruckus
@Ben Johannson:
That would be true if nader was a candidate who wanted the job instead of a person who could not get the world he wanted so he tried to move the political world in a way which doesn’t work. We have a two party system, mainly because when this whole shebang was started that’s how it was envisioned. Third parties have never gotten much if any traction politically so anyone running as their standard bearer has little if no traction politically. The only effective change comes from within a party. Look at the conservatives today. Effectively they aren’t a different party than they were 60 yrs ago, it is just that they have embraced the loons in order to for them gain power. And it has worked.
But voting for a Nader or Stein or Perot or Paul will not get you power. It is a “vanity” vote at best or a stupid vote at worst. Voting for Nader to move the party to the left accomplished exactly what? It moved the votes that would have saved this country and the world from the idiot son to a place they could do no good and for which they did great harm. That you want to blame democrats that they did not move far enough to the left to get those voters, think how many they would have lost from the middle had they gone that far left. In the real practical world a vote for Nader was a vote for the idiot son. Like it or not each of us is a part of the political whole and when we act like we are not we get unintended and sometimes disastrous consequences.
JustAnotherBob
@Ben Johannson:
Do you not suspect that at least 538 of the 97,488 who voted for Nader in Florida were fully well aware that their vote for Green could give Bush the presidency?
Do you think that more than 99% of Nader’s voters were delusional enough to think that Gore would win without their help? Or at least delusional to take the chance.
I’d say at least 538 Florida voters made a dumb decision.
Even if some of the 97,488 would have preferred Bush over Gore they, too, made a dumb decision.
Andrew
I wrote something along these lines as well. Voting for Romney is absolutely inimical to the values that you claim to serve in voting against Obama.
AxelFoley
@TheStone:
U mad, bro?
JustAnotherBob
@Bruce S:
As I said ” I see no evidence that a stronger/Bernie Sanders health care bill could have received enough votes to pass.”
I see your Monday morning quarterback analysis that argues had PBO done this or that the results would have been different.
I’m sure that someone opposed to health care for all could make a convincing after-the-fact argument that had Republicans done this or that they could have prevented anything from passing.
—
(Nothing personal, but paragraphs please. They were invented for a good reason.)
LD50
@Ben Johannson: Ahhhhhh, a Nader apologist blaming the 2000 election entirely on Gore and taking no responsibility whatever. That takes me back.
the Conster
@calabi-yeow:
I have so much admiration and respect for you, you have no idea. The stories of lifelong Republicans finally looking around and walking through the dark to end up here with Obama, like Cole did, is a never ending source of inspiration to me. Seriously, it sounds goofy, but yours are the stories that for me, point to the way forward. Thanks for sharing!
Ben Johannson
@JustAnotherBob: I have bo evidence whatsoever of Nader voters conspiring to hand the election to George Bush. To say otherwise is nothing but supposition because neither I nor anyone else can read minds. President Obama won by double digits in 2008 and now that support has collpased in a race against a cartoon character named Mitt Romney. Those people didn’t go out and decide to become racists over the last four years. The President and the Democrats simply have not done a good job in maintaining good relations with the voters who made his election an historic event.
Shawn in ShowMe
@Ben Johannson:
On what planet?
Sherlock Hound
@Another Halocene Human:
You may slap me as well since I did the same. If O loses, I promise as
Sherlock Hound
@Sherlock Hound:
FYWP
I will apologize in the full old Japanese way if R wins.
Ben Johannson
@Shawn in ShowMe:
Obama. McCain
Popular vote 69,456,897. 59,934,814
Ten million people, many of whom have, for the current race to be so tight, have changed their minds on the President. The idea that they’re now traitors, jerks, racists and stupid progressives does’t wash. This race has always been Obama’s to lose.
Bruce S
@JustAnotherBob:
This isn’t “Monday Morning Quarterbacking” – it’s been my feeling from the beginning of the health care brouhaha and it’s a perspective that was solidified in my view by candidate Obama back in 2007, the very first time I heard him talk to supporters up-close-and-personal. It’s Politics 101, for anyone who really gives a shit and isn’t mostly about Blog/Cable News Quarterbacking as “Politics.”
aimai
@Ben Johannson:
Uh…the word you are looking for is “white male voters.” It should be incredibly obvious, with the polling that has been done so far, that Obama is meeting or exceeding his targets for committed voters in every category with the exception of older, white, male, voters. It is absurd to argue that they “suddenly became racist” in the last four years, so no one is arguing it. Rather, what we are arguing is that a tiny fraction of white, male, voters who voted for Obama/the democrat last time around are returning to their basic Republican/racist roots and can’t see a reason to stomach Democrats in the white house or black people in the white house. If the voter was previously a democrat, or a reagan democrat, the reason they vote against Obama remains the same reason they voted against other democrats in the past: because of Nixon’s southern strategy, civil rights: i.e. racism. If they vote against Obama because they were always republican and either sat out McCain’s run or voted for Obama because they were momentarily chastised by Bush’s craptacular behavior well….they are just returning to their anti democrat roots. That isn’t the fault of Obama or the Dems. That’s just the reality of that swingy older white male voting block.
aimai
JustAnotherBob
@Ben Johannson:
And I said nothing to that effect.
If someone wanted Bush to win why would they have voted for Nader?
All I’m saying is that if 538 Nader voters had voted for Gore we would not have had eight years of George W. Bush. I give them great blame for voting as they did.
slightly_peeved
@JustAnotherBob:
Note that the ACA does include two national nonprofit plans contracted for by the federal government, through the OPM. It’s not quite a public option, but it’s close. Also, the odds are good that once Green Mountain care is up and running in Vermont, a lot of states may fill that gap.
The ACA has some aspects of the public option and gives states the ability to easily create one. It is a massive improvement over the existing system, and that becomes more apparent the more you read it.
General Stuck
@JustAnotherBob:
Two words, one asshole/ Joe Lieberman.
Yutsano
@slightly_peeved: If OPM does what I think they’ll do and use GEHA for the national on-profit insurance plan…it’s pretty much game over. They already exist in all 50 states and were non-profit from the get-go. I’m sure the wingnuts will cry foul…but they’d become the nation’s largest insurer almost by default.
Bruce S
@slightly_peeved:
The ACA is a better “start” on universal health care than SS was on universal pensions when FDR first enacted it. That said, there wasn’t a good grass-roots outreach on the basic fundamentals of universal health care from the beginning, so far as I can see. “Medicare for all” would have been an easier sell among the public – and when it hit the sausage machine in DC, at least folks would have been more sold on the basic principle. Also there’s still huge misinformation out there – that most Dems tend to reinforce – about Medicare being some sort of “problem.” In fact, while overall health care costs are a problem moving forward, Medicare is closer to the long-term solution than any other insurance that’s actually available in the US. Vouchers need to be rejected not just for cost to seniors out-of-pocket, but because it will raise the % of health-care $$ to GDP (unless seniors simply go without care, which will happen in many cases no doubt.) The Medicare-costs scare is total bullshit and needs explicit push-back. I don’t see Dems doing this consistently.
Related, I think California will go the way of Vermont and use ACA to enact something like single payer within a decade.
NR
@calabi-yeow:
And one more voice that screams “YES” to the crazy right-ward lurch of the Democrats.
The Democrats are now advocating for and implementing policies championed by the Republicans 20 years ago. And if nothing changes, 20 years from now, they’ll be advocating for and implementing policies championed by the Republicans today.
Just watch. If Obama wins re-election, the signature accomplishment of his second term will be a “Grand Bargain” with the GOP on Social Security and Medicare cuts.
jshooper
The Green Party and their promoters are nothing but agents of the GOP / right wing….they get funding from republicans and groups like the koch brothers…They have absolutely ZERO interest in working with democrats on ANY ISSUES…their sole purpose is to undermine the democratic party and hand close elections to the GOP candidate…I’m glad that some of their ratfucking agents are finally confessing to their true agenda
jshooper
The idea that letting republicans win and destroy the country is the only way to a progressive utopia… is so fucking stupid that EVERYONE should instantly realize the person peddling it is a con artist…You’ll never hear a right winger say…” We should let the minorities, gays, atheists and socialists take over and turn America into Switzerland…and only then people will realize how awesome conservatism / racism / theocracy is
NR
@jshooper: The Democrats are agents of the GOP/right wing. They’re the ones who implement their policies.
Paul
deleted.
jshooper
@NR: What a lazy half hearted effort…Rove is paying you guys to come up with better bullshit than that
AxelFoley
@ChrisNYC:
Pwn’d.
JustAnotherBob
@NR:
I call bullshit on that one.
The Republicans have never advocated for full equal rights for all. That is what the Democratic party is working toward.
The only thing that Democrats have done that looks like something Republicans were advocating years ago is the health care law. It is what it is, it is what was possible to pass.
I really don’t think the Republicans were serious about “Obamacare” when they suggested something along those lines, they were just looking for a way to derail “Clintoncare”. I suspect they would have pulled a Lucy and snatched it back when the time to vote appeared.
NR
@jshooper: “Anyone who disagrees with me is a paid shill.” Talk about an intellectually and morally bankrupt argument. You’re perfect for today’s Democratic party.
jshooper
@NR: Come on man…you’re slipping…It’s “democrat” party…didn’t your bosses at AFP teach you anything?…Also, I like how you haven’t even attempted to refute my original claim that the Green Party is nothing but a ratfucking organization funded by the GOP…they have ZERO interest in getting candidates elected to local office…or working with liberal democrats on issues…Their SOLE PURPOSE is to undermine the democratic party and hand close elections to the GOP
calabi-yeow
RE: # 313 The Conster
Thank you for your nice comment.
——————————————————————-
RE: # 326
NR says: “And if nothing changes, 20 years from now, they’ll be advocating for…”
I understand your general point, but resorting to absolutism (“nothing” is an absolute, after all) in referring to what is actually a myriad of potential outcomes for the future is not only unnecessarily pessimistic, but is unrealistic. Everything changes…..and each one of us can nudge future potential outcomes in the direction we hope will result.
Former Republicans (like myself) have changed their political perspectives. That’s not “nothing”…..that’s a BFD for this country as a way forward in the coming decades. The country is changing…..slowly, but inexorably….especially on the cultural issues which engage people’s deeper emotions (and render them more susceptible to cynical political manipulation, especially by the GOP).
Thanks for your response.
NR
@jshooper: Your original claim was pure bullshit and you clearly aren’t interested in reasonable discussion, only in blindly defending conservatives from progressive criticism. Therefore arguing with you is a waste of time.
Yutsano
@Bruce S:
I give it three years. They already had a bill sitting on Ahnold’s desk that he oh so kindly vetoed. It wouldn’t take much to revive that effort again.
FlipYrWhig
@JustAnotherBob: Long experience has shown NR to be far beyond the reach of facts or reason. Triage dictates moving on to a different conversation partner.
JustAnotherBob
@FlipYrWhig: I sorta figured that. But I like to post stuff somewhat attached to reality just in case some innocent children wander through.
Hate to see the youngsters mislead….
jshooper
@NR: LMAO…”pure bullshit”
Evidence:
http://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/GOP-donors-funding-Nader-Bush-supporters-give-2708705.php
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/001256.php
As a Texan this one PISSES me off
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/state-politics/20100606-GOP-consultant-in-Arizona-pulls-strings-9939.ece
http://halfempth.blogspot.com/2010/06/smoking-gun-perry-chief-of-staff-funded.html
You can’t refute what I said…so you simply ignore it
NR
@jshooper: You’re an idiot. Try looking up how many Republican donors also give to Democrats sometime. It’s way, way, way more than those who give to Greens.
jshooper
@NR:
Are u really that fucking stupid ?
Republicans donate to democrats because they want the democratic candidate to win.
Republicans donate to the fucking Green Party because they want the Republican to win !!!
Hell they even run FAKE Green Party candidates in tight races to shave off points from the Democrat.
What I love the most from the links I provided (which u prolly didn’t read)…Is where Nader’s own VP running mate urged him to reject GOP donations…and he REFUSED to claiming that he had earned them…LMFAO…a ratfucker’s got ratfuck I guess !!!
AxelFoley
@jshooper:
Yes. Trust me, NR really is that fucking stupid.
Paul in KY
@aimai: Preach it, sister!
Paul in KY
@Rob: 93,000 dumbasses voted for Nader in Florida in 2000. If 5,000 had come to their senses, GWB NEVER would have been President.
Paul in KY
@MeDrewNotYou: Pres took Indiana last time & can this time if idiots like yourself pull your heads out of your asses & vote for the ONLY candidate that will beat Rmoney.
RCTID
Good people writing such condescending, arrogant, self-righteous, bullying, and mean-spirited comments. If that’s what’s in your heart you need to check-out for a bit and ground yourself a little.
There’s two types of third party voters. Those who are registered with a major party and cast a ‘protest’ vote, and those who are registered with a third party. I can understand trying to bring disaffected members of your own party into line (although the approach taken by the testosterone-fueled bullying here seems to be the least effective method possible – so using variations of the word ‘stupid’ in your posts is a bit of a self-indictment). But the argument asking third party voters to switch their vote in the national election comes down to saying how much worse the other major party is. And this is very true, they are. So maybe I can help you to see why that argument still wouldn’t be very effective, and how it would be better to take a different approach. I won’t vote for most Democrats because they don’t share my values. It’s the same reason I won’t vote for any Republicans. It’s not a ‘purity’ issue, or that I’m better than you, or more ‘liberal’, (because I’m certain I’m none of those things) or any of the other ineffective, self-righteous, bullying crap that get’s thrown out because this statement makes you angry and you can’t control that emotion online. It’s because I won’t vote for people who don’t share my values. It’s like expecting a Republican who believes that abortion is ethically indistinguishable from murder to vote for a candidate who is pro-choice. No one expects that to happen, that’s just their priorities when it comes to voting and more broadly in how they choose to live their lives. I’m going to stay true to my values in how I vote in the same way as I try to do with other decisions in my life and my interactions with people and the world around me. In order to convince a person in my position that I should switch parties in my vote you would need to show that your party actually does share my values. Tens of millions of good people who are just as important as you, just as smart as you, and just as worthy of your respect as people who vote for Democrats, are going to vote for Republicans. If President Obama does not win reelection that will be the biggest reason why, not disaffected Democrats or third party supporters.
I don’t see why it would be so hard to start from a point that is respectful of individuals making choices in their lives that are consistent with their values. If you want to change peoples’ minds that should be the point where you start. Turning up the volume on your lizard-brain and telling me how stupid I am won’t actually help your party, or achieve your goals, or suport your values, in any way at all. It may help you feel better, but if it does I’m glad we don’t share that value.