2016 US Presidential Election Thread IX

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You guys just don't understand math.

Trump: 2+2 = whatever you want it to be, we just print more.

Sanders: 2+2 = millions, the messiah could feed the nation with just one fish and one piece of bread.


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Clinton won the Washington primary yesterday but will recieve no delegates because the establishment already awarded them to the old white guy in the race in a silly, voter repressing caucus earlier in the year.

Clinton won the primary by more votes than the total number of people who voted in the entire caucus, yet will lose the delegates in the state 74 to 27 because the establishment already decided the caucus will count and not the primary.

Rigged! It's rigged!
 
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Wait, why the hell does Washington have a caucus and a primary?

Is there also going to be one presidential election by secret ballot and then a second by verbal declaration? With the exact weighting of results determined by the temperature on the day of each vote?
 
Clinton won the Washington primary yesterday but will recieve no delegates because the establishment already awarded them to the old white guy in the race in a silly, voter repressing caucus earlier in the year.

Clinton won the primary by more votes than the total number of people who voted in the entire caucus, yet will lose the delegates in the state 74 to 27 because the establishment already decided the caucus will count and not the primary.

Rigged! It's rigged!


Only rigged when It benefits Clinton, DUH

Wish the CA primary was this week. Just have it over with. There are demonstrations every weekend at Balboa (which is my backyard) so it's screwing over my parking situation and the constant horn honking is irritating haha. Lots of angry revolution talk through speaker phones


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Only rigged when It benefits Clinton, DUH

Wish the CA primary was this week. Just have it over with. There are demonstrations every weekend at Balboa (which is my backyard) so it's screwing over my parking situation and the constant horn honking is irritating haha. Lots of angry revolution talk through speaker phones


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It's hard for me to feel bad for you when you tell me in this post that Balboa is your backyard. :p


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Haha. Yeah. Wonderful view of downtown skyline and harbor. To my left is balboa. Def my favorite place I've lived so far in SD


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Change it to "if you don't vote for Clinton you therefore vote for Trump" and it is true.

A vote is a tool. That's all.


No, that's not true. Depending upon issues that people hold disproportionately near to them, that is not true. You can't be such an idealist over it. There are people out there who legitimately do not like Trump or Clinton and aren't abandoning some fictitious moral obligation to side with a party.
 
Wait, why the hell does Washington have a caucus and a primary?

Is there also going to be one presidential election by secret ballot and then a second by verbal declaration? With the exact weighting of results determined by the temperature on the day of each vote?


I'm equally confused. Yesterday I saw a bunch of friends on Facebook in Washington getting out to vote and I was rather unsure.
 
No, that's not true. Depending upon issues that people hold disproportionately near to them, that is not true. You can't be such an idealist over it. There are people out there who legitimately do not like Trump or Clinton and aren't abandoning some fictitious moral obligation to side with a party.

How is he being an "idealist"? It's just common sense. You can speak to the merits all you want, but the practicality of it is; in a 2 party system if you don't vote for the major candidate that is running opposite of the person you don't want as president then you are voting to help that candidate.
 
How is he being an "idealist"? It's just common sense. You can speak to the merits all you want, but the practicality of it is; in a 2 party system if you don't vote for the major candidate that is running opposite of the person you don't want as president then you are voting to help that candidate.


How is viewing every single voter as an asset to his side being an idealist? I don't know, maybe because it's oversimplifying the dynamics and reasons for voting.

If I'm voting for Clinton, therefore I am not voting for Trump. If I'm not voting for Clinton, therefore I am not not voting for Trump (or, I am). That's pretty much denying the antecedent in a nutshell. You're supporting argument is a total logical fallacy. It doesn't hold up.
 
No, that's not true. Depending upon issues that people hold disproportionately near to them, that is not true. You can't be such an idealist over it. There are people out there who legitimately do not like Trump or Clinton and aren't abandoning some fictitious moral obligation to side with a party.




in the American system, a third party vote is pure protest. you are in fact throwing your vote away in the mostly misguided hope that it will matter next time. in the parliamentary system you can vote your conscience and expect your chosen MPs to make a deal with whoever they find least loathsome, but not here.

you may not like it, but -- and i will qualify my statement with the following -- if you live in a state where your vote matters it is your civic responsibility to vote for the major party candidate who best represents your values. if you can't figure out who that is, it's your job to figure it out and make peace with it, down to the state and to the Congressional race. if you choose not to use it productively, you do own the result. if you believe that blowing up the American way is genuinely better than leveraging the current system in order to change it, you probably have limited experience with actual revolutions.
 
in the parliamentary system you can vote your conscience and expect your chosen MPs to make a deal with whoever they find least loathsome, but not here.

That's not how it really works.

First of all you can't vote your conscience if you are in a contested riding because so many parties can mean that the vote is split with a loathsome person coming out on top in the end so you have to vote strategically. Second, you most certainly cannot "expect" your MP to make a deal with whoever they find the least loathsome, voting is nearly uniformly along party lines.
 
How is viewing every single voter as an asset to his side being an idealist? I don't know, maybe because it's oversimplifying the dynamics and reasons for voting.

If I'm voting for Clinton, therefore I am not voting for Trump. If I'm not voting for Clinton, therefore I am not not voting for Trump (or, I am). That's pretty much denying the antecedent in a nutshell. You're supporting argument is a total logical fallacy. It doesn't hold up.

You're the one being an idealist, that's why I find this argument so amusing. You're speaking to the "dynamics and reason" behind a vote, we're just speaking to the actual outcome.

You can have moral, economic, personal reasons behind a vote, but at the end of the day that doesn't matter. It's just a number for or against a candidate.

100 people vote:

Major candidate 1 gets 50 votes
Major candidate 2 gets 49 votes
Write in candidate gets 1 vote

So the person who wrote in helped candidate 1 win, reasoning behind their write in doesn't matter.
 
And I'll just say all I see is more idealism and more denying of the antecedent. And don't figuratively point your finger at me. I am choosing to vote for Clinton, because I am on board anyone-but-Trump.

To suggest that you "own the result" if you didn't vote for the loser is stupid. The only people who "own the result" are the people who vote for the winner. Perhaps you can fault the more interesting candidate at the bottom, for choosing to run. But no, you can't fault the voters. There's not some expectation that their vote belongs to one side or the other. That's where you're wrong. There's NOT an obligation for everyone to compromise morals for your ideal world.
 
You're the one being an idealist, that's why I find this argument so amusing. You're speaking to the "dynamics and reason" behind a vote, we're just speaking to the actual outcome.



You can have moral, economic, personal reasons behind a vote, but at the end of the day that doesn't matter. It's just a number for or against a candidate.



100 people vote:



Major candidate 1 gets 50 votes

Major candidate 2 gets 49 votes

Write in candidate gets 1 vote



So the person who wrote in helped candidate 1 win, reasoning behind their write in doesn't matter.


Amusing? Are you fucking serious?

I'm not being idealistic. I'm being realistic. People vote for different reasons, whether you like it or not. That will always happen. Ideally it would just be a pure numbers game, where you could rally voters of similar ideologies. But you can't. And you can't ever expect that to happen.

You can pretend like one voter who wrote in a candidate is responsible all you want. He or she is not. 50 voters chose to vote for candidate 1. All 50 of those voters are why candidate 1 won. The write-in candidate's voter didn't magically end up with 50% of the power. That's to assume he got to vote last. He/she has the same power as everyone else. 1%. And a total of 50% chose candidate 1.
 
I'm not being idealistic. I'm being realistic. People vote for different reasons, whether you like it or not. That will always happen. Ideally it would just be a pure numbers game, where you could rally voters of similar ideologies. But you can't. And you can't ever expect that to happen.

You can pretend like one voter who wrote in a candidate is responsible all you want. He or she is not. 50 voters chose to vote for candidate 1. All 50 of those voters are why candidate 1 won. The write-in candidate's voter didn't magically end up with 50% of the power. That's to assume he got to vote last. He/she has the same power as everyone else. 1%. And a total of 50% chose candidate 1.

But your reason doesn't matter. There isn't a moral or economic checkbox on the back, once the card is in the box it's just a for or against, that's it. Your reasons and your ideals drove you to the ballot box, but after that you're just a 1 or a 0. That's why I said you're being idealistic, you're still talking about the why, they why no longer matters.

I didn't say that voter is responsible, I said they helped candidate 1 win.
 
But your reason doesn't matter. There isn't a moral or economic checkbox on the back, once the card is in the box it's just a for or against, that's it. Your reasons and your ideals drove you to the ballot box, but after that you're just a 1 or a 0. That's why I said you're being idealistic, you're still talking about the why, they why no longer matters.

I didn't say that voter is responsible, I said they helped candidate 1 win.


And you can say "your reason doesn't matter" all you want. But it does. Once the card is in the box, it's ONLY "for." To suggest "or against" would be to suggest that I have a literal "not candidate B" choice.

Regardless of what you might think, our two party system is merely de facto. And if you think people have an obligation to commit to it, you're telling them not to have any core beliefs. And at the end of the day, it seems like you're not listening to what the people of this country have been so awkwardly screaming about with their support over the likes of a Trump or a Sanders -- they want something different because they're tired of A1 and A2. They want candidate B. The only reason why they look so silly (so as to suggest Nader voters actually inadvertently threw the 2000 election) is because you insist upon inducing this social tragedy of the commons.
 
That's not how it really works.



First of all you can't vote your conscience if you are in a contested riding because so many parties can mean that the vote is split with a loathsome person coming out on top in the end so you have to vote strategically. Second, you most certainly cannot "expect" your MP to make a deal with whoever they find the least loathsome, voting is nearly uniformly along party lines.



Thanks for the important points of clarification.
 
And you can say "your reason doesn't matter" all you want. But it does. Once the card is in the box, it's ONLY "for." To suggest "or against" would be to suggest that I have a literal "not candidate B" choice.

Regardless of what you might think, our two party system is merely de facto. And if you think people have an obligation to commit to it, you're telling them not to have any core beliefs. And at the end of the day, it seems like you're not listening to what the people of this country have been so awkwardly screaming about with their support over the likes of a Trump or a Sanders -- they want something different because they're tired of A1 and A2. They want candidate B. The only reason why they look so silly (so as to suggest Nader voters actually inadvertently threw the 2000 election) is because you insist upon inducing this social tragedy of the commons.


Your anger is unwarranted, I haven't got personal with you.

I'm not arguing for or against a two party system, no one is. I'm not arguing for a compromise of values, no one is. You're still talking about the reasoning behind a vote, and of course that's important, but it doesn't matter once it's in the box. If all of FYM put a physical card in a box your card wouldn't look or feel any different than mine, it would just be something to count. Your reason wouldn't put anymore weight behind your 1 or 0 than mine. And your vote would help someone win.


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And I'll just say all I see is more idealism and more denying of the antecedent. And don't figuratively point your finger at me. I am choosing to vote for Clinton, because I am on board anyone-but-Trump.

To suggest that you "own the result" if you didn't vote for the loser is stupid. The only people who "own the result" are the people who vote for the winner. Perhaps you can fault the more interesting candidate at the bottom, for choosing to run. But no, you can't fault the voters. There's not some expectation that their vote belongs to one side or the other. That's where you're wrong. There's NOT an obligation for everyone to compromise morals for your ideal world.



What you own is not doing everything you could to keep a crazy person out of power. We've been given a lesson in how strategically one must vote in the parliamentary system, strategy exists here too, and it's not so much that one is entitled to a vote, but one loses much credibility, say, to criticize the Iraq War if one voted for Nader in Florida in 2000, fully aware of how close it was and how critical that state was well before Election Day.

People are free to choose purity over practicality all they want. They just own a measure of responsibility when they don't use the tool that they have in the most advantageous way possible to keep the crazy from power. It's not that it's my vote, it's that you are responsible for it and all its repercussions. It doesn't work to say "I voted for Nader but it's Gore's fault for losing to Bush."
 
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I'm just gonna leave this here...

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/sanders-isnt-doing-well-with-true-independents/

A lot has been made of Bernie Sanders’s appeal with independent voters during the Democratic presidential primary. He has won people who identify as independents in state after state, while Hillary Clinton has won people who identify as Democrats. Some Sanders backers have argued that this will translate to the general election; they point to general election polls that show Sanders doing better against Donald Trump than Clinton is.

The problem with this analysis, however, is that most independents are really closeted partisans, and there is no sign that true independents disproportionately like Sanders.

Most voters who identify as independent consistently vote for one party or the other in presidential elections. In a Gallup poll taken in early April, for instance, 41 percent of independents (who made up 44 percent of all respondents) leaned Democratic, and 36 percent leaned Republican. Just 23 percent of independents had no partisan preference. In the last three presidential elections, the Democratic candidate received the support of no less than 88 percent of self-identified independents who leaned Democratic, according to the American National Elections Studies survey. These are, in effect, Democratic voters with a different name.

Right now, Clinton is struggling with this group. According to a Gallup poll conducted May 15 to May 21, her favorable rating among Democratic-leaning independents was just 51 percent, compared with 73 percent among people who identify as Democrats. That’s a 22-percentage-point difference. Sanders and Trump, on the other hand, had gaps of just 3 and 7 percentage points, respectively, between independents who lean toward their party and their party’s pure partisans.

Sanders did slightly better with Democratic-leaning independents (71 percent favorable) than he did with plain-old Democrats (68 percent favorable), but that appeal does not seem to extend to true independents — those who are most likely to change party allegiances between elections and whose split between the Republican and Democratic candidates nearly matched the split in the nation overall in the last two elections, according to the ANES. In the Gallup poll, Sanders had a 35 percent favorable rating among independents who don’t lean toward either party. Clinton’s favorable rating with that group was 34 percent. Trump’s was a ridiculously low 16 percent.

One could argue that Sanders has greater potential with these true independents than Clinton: Just 63 percent of them had formed an opinion of him, according to the Gallup poll, while 83 percent had done so for Clinton. But it’s also possible that these true independents will turn against him in greater numbers as they learn more about him.


For now, though, Sanders’s big advantage over Clinton in general election matchups is his edge among Democratic-leaning independents, not pure independents. Currently, all the Democratic groups that like Clinton also like Sanders, but the reverse is not true. As my colleague Nate Silver and NBC News’s Mark Murray have both pointed out over the past week: Clinton has yet to win over a number of Sanders supporters, but Sanders does very well among most Clinton supporters.

But that we’re talking about Clinton’s need to win over Democratic-leaning independents rather than true independents is a hopeful sign for her campaign — these voters have tended to stick with the Democratic Party. If Clinton can lure these Sanders voters back into her tent, she’ll probably lead Trump by somewhere around 5 percentage points nationally, instead of the 2 percentage points she leads him by now. My guess is that she’ll probably win many of them over, considering that a large portion are normally reliable Democratic voters. This year is so crazy, though — who can really say?

So let's just try and break this MATH down.

Clinton is killing Sanders in the primary, but somehow Sanders keeps coming out ahead in polls matched up with Trump.

You could argue, as some have, that it's because if all these millions... AND MILLIONS... of independent BernieBros. And you'd be only half right at best and missing the complete bigger pixture.

Reality is the polls are that way because Clinton supporters for the most part would also support Sanders if he somehow pulled it out, but Sanders voters are still being just a bit sandy towards Clinton. Bernie or bust bro!

Trends would show you that most of these phony independents... pho-democrats, will give in and vote for Clinton when it's all said and done. You're not a real independent, bra!

Also reality... TRUE independents, not democrats who never registered, but true middle of the road voters see Sanders and Clinton evenly. Only a much bigger portion of these true independent, middle of the road swing voters, say that they really don't know enough about Sanders yet to make a true decision, whereas everyone knows everything about Hilldawg; meaning there's a lot more volatility with Sanders than with a known commodity in Clinton. He could do much better once it's him alone vs Trump, or he could do much worse. It's still unknown.

Huh.

Who woulda thought.
 
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Your anger is unwarranted, I haven't got personal with you.

Your belittling tone of being amused by me isn't personal, I know.

I'm not arguing for or against a two party system, no one is. I'm not arguing for a compromise of values, no one is. You're still talking about the reasoning behind a vote, and of course that's important, but it doesn't matter once it's in the box. If all of FYM put a physical card in a box your card wouldn't look or feel any different than mine, it would just be something to count. Your reason wouldn't put anymore weight behind your 1 or 0 than mine. And your vote would help someone win.


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Except votes for Nader kept a movement alive. Votes for Gary Johnson keep a movement alive. They open the door for these political parties to go somewhere. Whether that's for a seat in congress or for spreading their beliefs.

If you're not endorsing a two party system, who should vote for these third parties? Isn't it ridiculous that we call them "third" parties, if we aren't in a two party system?
 
Your belittling tone of being amused by me isn't personal, I know.




Except votes for Nader kept a movement alive. Votes for Gary Johnson keep a movement alive.



First, I apologize if my tone has been off today. I'm sick and flying cross country. I know you were talking to BVS above, but I mean this generally.

But can you think of anything that did more damage to the beliefs of the Nader movement than Bush/Cheney?
 
Exactly. I feel the movement may have made more progress with Gore as President. Instead, the US, and the world took many steps backward.

Not sure if Clinton will keep some of these "left" views on the table when she is the nominee, but I think she will to try and sway the BernieBros to her in the general. If she's elected, hard to say. Things change once you're in office, usually because compromise becomes key versus ideology.

One thing we know for certain, if Trump wins, we will see the US go so far back into time that the country may never recover.

Also, found this article:

Hillary Clinton Violated State Dept. Policies By Using Private Email, Watchdog Finds : The Two-Way : NPR

Clinton and her email. She has done nothing that other SOS have done in the past. The only reason this is an issue, is because she's a Clinton.
 
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