Democrats represent the people more than Republicans

[Elixir]

Because they want to make sure you don't deviate from the one true faith.

Or (in this case) because if the election was anything like close, we'd probably be in a civil war right now.
But don't let mundane shit like REALITY bother your addled little brain.

 

[RVonse]

Of course most Americans don't "want" Biden in any absolute sense, b/c most Americans would never "want" any candidate, b/c there are countless views on countless issues, such that no person could plausibly represent the ideal combination of positions held by more than a small minority of society.

But there are many more things common to most middle class people. Such as favoring a moral norms and equality of opportunity for all. These are not even Republican vs Democrat values, they are the values most Americans possess. And it is also a fair bet that most Democrats AND Republican voters do not agree with our politicians enriching themselves with raises and special interest gifts. There are candidates out there who could represent these interest things. But the main obstacle is that neither ruling party wants to allow that to happen. Put a third option of "no vote for either guy" and that forces the parties to become more competitive to the wishes of the public.

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Because they want to make sure you don't deviate from the one true faith.

Or (in this case) because if the election was anything like close, we'd probably be in a civil war right now.
But don't let mundane shit like REALITY bother your addled little brain.

Your position is against third parties. You are preaching the one true faith, and hate the heretics like me who go beyond.

 

[Bomb#20]

Or (in this case) because if the election was anything like close, we'd probably be in a civil war right now.
But don't let ... REALITY bother your addled little brain.

Would you people quit frying irony meters? Oh for the love of god, no, we would not be in a civil war right now if the election had been close. Reality is, the sides would have just screamed at each other even louder, before going back to their respective facebook bubbles. Name-calling is not what causes civil wars.

 

[ideologyhunter]

Right, and it's more than facebook bubbles. America's obesity corridor is the lower Mississippi Valley. Them fat asses aint getting out of their Lazy Boys to play Robert E. Lee. If they leave the house it's to get the sausage biscuit (or bikkit) with gravy at Mickey D's.

 

[ronburgundy]

Of course most Americans don't "want" Biden in any absolute sense, b/c most Americans would never "want" any candidate, b/c there are countless views on countless issues, such that no person could plausibly represent the ideal combination of positions held by more than a small minority of society.

But there are many more things common to most middle class people. Such as favoring a moral norms and equality of opportunity for all. These are not even Republican vs Democrat values, they are the values most Americans possess. And it is also a fair bet that most Democrats AND Republican voters do not agree with our politicians enriching themselves with raises and special interest gifts. There are candidates out there who could represent these interest things. But the main obstacle is that neither ruling party wants to allow that to happen. Put a third option of "no vote for either guy" and that forces the parties to become more competitive to the wishes of the public.

"Moral norms"? About 45% of those who voted 2 months ago think it's okay for cops to kill unarmed black men, and to deny homosexuals equal rights, and to spread deadly toxins in the community. Basic morality and support for equality are absolutely a partisan thing and there is no such thing as "values most Americans possess". Sure people don't want politician getting rich on kickbacks but that is a single issue swamped by many other issues that most people care more about.

Most decent intelligent Americans recognize that while the politicians they vote for are far from perfect they are not nearly the enemy posed by the racist anti-science theocratic misogynists that comprise about 1/3 of their coworkers, neighbors, and even family members.

 

[Bomb#20]

In a better world, the public would vote for someone and not vote against anyone.

^^^^ This ^^^^.

^^^^ This ^^^^ is incredibly naive and ignores the inherent realities and probabilities of democracy in a pluralistic, heterogeneous society.

Of course most Americans don't "want" Biden in any absolute sense, b/c most Americans would never "want" any candidate, b/c there are countless views on countless issues, such that no person could plausibly represent the ideal combination of positions held by more than a small minority of society. Simply as a function of probability, and not some unjust political system, the odds that any candidate would be your ideal is extremely small. Imagine there are 3 distinct stances on each issue and 100 issues (which is very low for both). That results is 162,000 different possible combinations of stances across the issues, making the random odds that you and any other person share the same ideal 1 in 162,0000. So, even in a perfect system w/o any bias in who in society becomes an electoral candidate, you would almost never in your lifetime encounter a candidate that perfectly represented you. Which means, that you'd never vote "for" your ideal, but always mere vote for the person who was less far from your ideal relative to the others.

Well, in the first place, 3¹⁰⁰ is a bit bigger than 162,000 -- you might try 10⁴⁸. And in the second place, I can't seem to find the place where I said a politician has to agree with me about everything in order for me to be voting for her. Can you point out where I said that, please? You simply made up your own idiosyncratic definition of a word I used, and then called me naive because I used the word and you imputed your definition to me for no reason. You even had to snip out the entire rest of my post to do it -- I made it perfectly clear that if a person had fifty choices he'd most likely be able to find someone to vote "for".

Now combine with that the fact that no candidate can plausibly win unless they get support from a sizable % of the population, and that inherently requires exposure. Outside of people voting within tiny little clans/groups where every person is well known to everyone, amount of exposure always has and will depend upon resources. Thus, there is an inherent bias where those with more resources are more likely to have a chance of getting the exposure needed to garner democratic support to win. The only way around that fact is to not only eliminate variability in amount of resources, but eliminate people's basic freedom to use their resources how they want to.

So what? Is there some place you've shown that anybody getting a head-start in the race means everybody has to vote "against"? (Without relying on your absurd mis-definition of "for".) If a rich and well-known politician agrees with me 90% of the time I can perfectly well like her enough to vote for her even if there also exists some obscure poor guy I've never heard of who agrees with me 95% of the time. This ain't rocket science.

In sum, to complain about the fact that we vote mostly against worse candidates rather than "for" people we ideally want is to complain about probability and the inherent nature of human society where desires and preferences widely vary across many issues.

No it isn't; and I made it perfectly clear in the text you snipped what it actually is: it's to complain about specific unreasonable election laws that limit a voter's realistic choices far more than there's any good reason to. Most notably, geographical districts and first-past-the-post decision algorithms. We wouldn't even need to do anything as radical as the system I described. In Finland people can vote "for". (It's proportional representation with a twist: the order in which a party's N seats are filled is chosen by the voters instead of the party bosses.)

But there are many more things common to most middle class people. Such as favoring a moral norms and equality of opportunity for all. These are not even Republican vs Democrat values, they are the values most Americans possess. ...

"Moral norms"? About 45% of those who voted 2 months ago think it's okay for cops to kill unarmed black men, and to deny homosexuals equal rights, and to spread deadly toxins in the community.

Oh, for the love of god! You can't even keep your put-downs non-self-contradictory! Up above you abuse me for allegedly ignoring the inherent reality of democracy that requires voting for the lesser evil even though he disagrees with you about any number of a hundred issues, because the probability you can find someone who doesn't is infinitesimal; and one day later you take it for granted that everybody who voted for your opponent must necessarily agree with him about all his positions.

Of course I know why you did it. It's not that your mirror neurons forgot how to reason about other minds in those few short hours. It's just that you mentally model your ingroup as humans and you mentally model your outgroup as subhumans.

 

[Harry Bosch]

Clearly democrats represent more people than republicans as demonstrated by millions more in votes every four years. Democrats have huge advantages in social justice issues, the environment, and etc.

Our weaknesses are that we are perceived as anti-business, tax everything, hate corporations, want to take everyone's gun. Most Americans (especially those in democratic cities) work for corporations. Cities are more and more filled with professionals with college education and training who are entrepreneurial and pro-business. The frustrating part is that most people are pro-increasing the safety net. Most people want to help others and lower barriers. And that requires higher taxes. But the problem is that dems lead with increasing taxes and take away people's stocks. If we lead with lets help people and we need to finance these programs with fairer taxes; rather than the other way around. Most people that I know who remain republican do so because they fear dems will take away their guns (I can't argue this craziness away) or they think that dems just want to tax the shit out of them for no reason.