• Welcome to the new Internet Infidels Discussion Board, formerly Talk Freethought.

Are we running out of reasons to vote Democrat?

If so many people are disillusioned with both major parties, and voting third party isnt a viable option, then why isnt there a massive push to change the election system?
 
Jolly_Penguin said:
If so many people are disillusioned with both major parties, and voting third party isnt a viable option, then why isnt there a massive push to change the election system?
Click to expand...

The big question is how would we change said system, and what would it take to get it done? If it requires Constitutional Amendment(s) it might not be doable politically. I don't think you could get the 2/3 of the House, 2/3 of the Senate, and 3/4 of the States to agree. Someone is bound to lose power with such changes, and would likely fight tooth & nail to keep said power.
 
Quick change of subject here.

Let's talk about:
A) Causation
B) Fault

I agree with Jimmy Higgins that Nader's 2000 candidacy was A cause of Gore's loss. That's distinct from it being the cause. Despite Samhain's (uncited) Exit Poll indicating that the Nader took more votes from Bush than Gore in Florida, I still say, based on my knowledge of the messy guts of exit polls, the tendencies of Gore and Nader voters and the ridiculously slim margin involved, that it is very probable that in the absence of a Nader candidacy Gore would have won in either Florida or New Hampshire. Thus Nader's candidacy was a cause.

If you prefer, we can revise that and say it was a "factor".

With that said, almost everyone agrees that there are a number of causes or factors that also contributed to the Bush victory in 2000.

This is an entirely separate issue from fault. To my mind, I can't fault Nader or his voters because they A) did not know that Bush would be as atrocious as he was; and B) had no good reason to believe that their votes would act be a factor in Gore losing. It's a very improbable thing for a Presidential race to be close as that one was in both Popular and Electoral votes.

Since Nader had the (basically good) intention of breaking the the two party duopoly, had no idea the race would be as close as it was, and especially could not have predicted the Iraq war, I don't think he can be faulted for the Bush victory, even though it is likely there would have been no such victory if he had not run so strongly.

Now Gore on the other hand, is at fault for the factors in his candidacy that could have produced a better campaign. He could also have chosen to stand aloof in favor of a more popular and charismatic Democratic candidate.
 
[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo[/YOUTUBE]

Here's the problem with voting for a 3rd party. In fact, the tea-baggers may be helping the Dems.
 
http://www.gregpalast.com/one-milli...-lost-if-some-politicians-want-it-to-be-lost/

In the 2000 presidential election, 1.9 million Americans cast ballots that no one counted. "Spoiled votes" is the technical term. The pile of ballots left to rot has a distinctly dark hue: About 1 million of them -- half of the rejected ballots -- were cast by African Americans although black voters make up only 12 percent of the electorate.
Click to expand...

Florida's Gadsden County has the highest percentage of black voters in the state -- and the highest spoilage rate. One in 8 votes cast there in 2000 was never counted. Many voters wrote in "Al Gore." Optical reading machines rejected these because "Al" is a "stray mark."

By contrast, in neighboring Tallahassee, the capital, vote spoilage was nearly zip; every vote counted. The difference? In Tallahassee's white- majority county, voters placed their ballots directly into optical scanners. If they added a stray mark, they received another ballot with instructions to correct it.
Click to expand...
 
Sajara said:
[YOUTUBE]Here's the problem with voting for a 3rd party. In fact, the tea-baggers may be helping the Dems.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't that mean you'd want to be nicer to the tea party protesters, in order to encourage them to hurt the Republicans?

But the Democrats don't know how to play the Third Party Game - again, from my blog.

The Third Party Game refers to all the ways the major parties use or manipulate third parties for their own advantage. The Republicans are far better at it than the Democrats are.

One way that it is played is to make donations to third parties that rival the opposition party. Democrats are still complaining about how Ralph Nader "stole" the 2000 election from Al Gore, but what made that "theft" possible was Republican donations to Nader. It is no secret that many of the donations for Nader's campaign came from Republicans.

If someone were to suggest to a Democrat that a donation be made to, say, the Constitution Party, the response would be shock and horror. "Oh no, they're evil, they want to destroy everything I believe in, I could never donate to them." Republicans didn't donate to Nader in order to advance Nader's agenda, but their donations weren't intended to advance Nader's agenda.
Click to expand...

Can you imagine Democrats cynically supporting a "right wing" candidate? I honestly cannot. They may be pleased when they see one poised to split the opposition vote, but they cannot, in general, force themselves to give support to said candidate in order to encourage vote splitting. The most they can do is give it coverage, and even then they cannot bring themselves to say anything nice about the splinter candidate. To use your video as an example, a lot of gorillas, turtles, and monkeys donate to tiger or snake in order to hurt leopard, but leopards, snakes, and tigers cannot seem to donate to monkey or turtle. And with a FPTP system, a donation to a reptile can be enough to split off enough votes to cause a victory.

Then you have the owlish libertarians with no choice in FPTP.

The other way that the Third Party Game is played is to nullify threats. Republicans also are better at this, sending Patrick Buchanan into the Reform Party, Alan Keyes into the Constitution Party, and sending Bob Barr into the Libertarian Party. Patrick Buchanan was able to destroy the Reform Party through an internal civil war. Alan Keyes didn't get the Constitution Party nomination, but did get the ballot line in California and thus lowering the nation-wide totals for their candidate Chuck Baldwin. Bob Barr (who has since endorsed Newt Gingrich) and Wayne Root (who has since endorsed Mitt Romney) alienated a sufficient portion of the Libertarian Party base that many wrote in Ron Paul, and thus lowered the totals for the Libertarian Party as well.
Click to expand...

As much anger as the Democrats have for Nader, they were unable to actually attack him. Republicans are unabashed in their disdain for libertarians (just look at Underseer for an example) but Democrats seem to think that Greens are basically good people but are misled into voting against their own interests. Not bad, just misguided. They don't mean to do harm, they're still good people, they're just doing harm unintentionally. The only attacks made against Nader were about how he was splitting the vote, not any sort of attacks on his platform.

No Republican would be that gentle about a Constitution Party vote.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom