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[misko27]

I would love for Bernie Sanders to form a coalition with certain segments of the Libertarian party.

That seems as likely as Donald calling himself "The leading socialist candidate in America today".

[SalmonGod]

So sixty days from now the republicans and democrats are going to be looking at the wreckage of the election and they will be tallying up the green vote. 
And the democrats will say "wow, we had an environmentalist candidate who has been known for two decades as an advocate of human rights and who was the original target of Citizens United but there were still millions of people who would rather vote for a Green party clown.  There is nothing we can do to win their vote, we need to write them off and focus on appealing to voters in the middle who didn't care about any of this stuff." 

As usual, mainiac, your differences with people here are in interpretation. 

I personally am not convinced of Clinton's sainthood on human rights and environmentalism, and it's my belief that most people who would vote Green or Socialist or whoever aren't doing so as a protest vote against their nebulous concept of 'the establishment' and dogmatic opposition to the two-party system.  It's because they're also not convinced that Clinton is their candidate.  We don't trust that she will represent our interests if we vote for her.  So the only reason we would vote for her is in opposition to Trump.

And the problem is I'm 33 years old and this has been the nature of every presidential race of my adult life.  We're always told that preventing the super-villain from gaining power takes priority over everything.

So the message that people like me believe we're sending when we vote for Hillary is that this narrative works.  That all they have to do in order to count on our vote is be less bad than the other guy.  So you're telling us that if we don't vote, then they'll decide that our vote doesn't matter.  But if we do vote, I believe that sends the message that our interests don't matter.  So it's lose/lose.

[RedKing]

I think we just need to reach a point where "the lesser of two evils" is so terrible that no one's willing to put up with it.

It would be one hell of an election year, that.

We aren't there yet?

[Dorsidwarf]

I love how panicky and desperate mainiac has become in his attacks on other candidates now that the race is close.

Btw, a left candidate attacking a dishonest center-right candidate is not all that extraordinary. They're different parties, they aren't even close to each other on the political spectrum. After Bernie you made the case that the Democratic party should unify as one. That anyone being disruptive was not following the rules. As much as I disagree with that statement at least there was the veneer of "the party choosing Hillary". Now though you're suggesting that a candidate from a completely different party isn't allowed to argue against Hillary.

That's just plain undemocratic.

Since when is he saying that?

He's attacking Stein for being a lunatic, not because of her political affiliation.

edit: I appear to be behind the discussion

[Sheb]

I think you're missing part of mainiac argument SG. There is no vast majority of elite liberals that are being used by some centrist elite. There are some, but not a majority. In order to get a left majority, you need the more centrist element of the voters, so that means settling on a candidate which is to your right. Voting Clinton is not being used by being scared for a Trump. Voting Clinton is settling on the compromise candidate of the left.

[Max™]

I would love for Bernie Sanders to form a coalition with certain segments of the Libertarian party.

That seems as likely as Donald calling himself "The leading socialist candidate in America today".

I give it a week, week and a half tops.

Trump managed somehow to turn "skeezy businessman" into "one of us" with "them" being cast as the actual politicians. He says something, turns around and immediately contradicts it, then when the spin machine winds up and is pushing for him to go back and take a penalty by spending an apology and retraction card, he shouts "YAHTZEE" and eats one of the dice.

Everybody who is trying to play by the rules is briefly horrified, and then they turn to everyone else and say "see, he isn't even playing the right game, he shouldn't be here" expecting people to turn their noses up at him, but he goes along with what they are saying, parading the "actual outsider" penalty card around like a medal, then he eats the little pewter shoe and skips off to say something crazy across the country.

This sounds like the best game of Monoparcheesi ever.

Except he's gonna end up crapping them out at some point, maybe on the debate stage after calling himself the leading socialist candidate?

[Rolepgeek]

I would love for Bernie Sanders to form a coalition with certain segments of the Libertarian party.

That seems as likely as Donald calling himself "The leading socialist candidate in America today".

They're both decently isolationist. *shrug* One hates corps, the other hates government.

It would be unlikely, sure, but still. Donald ain't exactly supportive of the Republican platform as it usually stands, after all.

[RedKing]

Voting Clinton is not being used by being scared for a Trump. Voting Clinton is settling on the compromise candidate of the left.

Except it is. Rather than voting self-interest and hopefully showing the Democratic Party that "hey, the demographics of the party are further to the left than you think, run a more lefterly [if that's not a word,  it should be] candidate next time", they vote for the "safe" pick because the alternative is billed as too hideous to even consider. And SG's right, this ain't the first election that's happened by a longshot. Hell, every electoral cycle is spun as "the fate of America rests on your vote!"

A major purpose of a primary (beyond the obvious electoral one) is to give parties an updated view as to the demographics of their electorate. But that's not how it works, because everyone in the establishment urges people to think about the long game and who's most electable in November. I would argue that if the majority of your party choose someone who isn't electable in November, you need better candidates or you don't deserve to get into power. A strong showing from a Bernie Sanders (as compared to similar past candidates like Kucinich or Dean) should be a message to the party that its membership has shifted further left. But you and I both know there will be little to no movement by the Party to the left, because that goes directly against the people in charge of the money spigot.

If anything, the Republicans seem to be the ones finally acquiescing to the demographic information they got from their primary -- their primaries told them that their membership, by and large, embraces an anti-immigrant rich guy who dogwhistles to white supremacists, and the Party apparatus, as much as they're probably horrified at a personal level, are responding to that (either by falling in line, or abandoning the Party altogether). And if Trump truly isn't electable, then they'll rightly be shut out of the WH. Though I still have this ugly suspicion that neither of them are "electable" in the sense of gaining a majority vote on the basis of their own candidacy, and rather we're seeing a referendum as to who's more unelectable.

I've said it before, if the Dems had run anyone* other than Clinton, this would have been a slam dunk.
And if the Republicans had run...well, maybe not anyone, but a not-horrible person like Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, this would also have been a slam dunk.



*Anthony Weiner comes to mind as someone who would do as badly or worse at this point.

[PTTG??]

Apparently the only time it's fair for people to vote third party is when both the establishment candidates are great and will definitely win. When third parties actually have a chance to make a difference, though, that's when they absolutely must not be voted for.

[Harry Baldman]

Apparently the only time it's fair for people to vote third party is when both the establishment candidates are great and will definitely win. When third parties actually have a chance to make a difference, though, that's when they absolutely must not be voted for.

Do they have a chance to make a difference, though? If Gary Johnson does land 9% of the vote, what exactly changes from this? It was a plurality that landed Trump as the Republican candidate, and potentially a plurality that stands to put him in the White House. American politics has a more solidified notion of coalition and opposition, so in any election it really comes down to the choice to either pull left or right. Except the democrats can't pull further left because people don't really seem to go for that too much, as evidenced in their sample study of the populace that was the presidential primary.

Actually, that might be a decent idea. Let the Republicans vote in the Democrat primary as well. And vice versa. It might stand to produce less displeasing results, and you might get more moderate candidates across the board, and minimize shitflinging at both candidates so that they might compete less along tribal lines and more on policy. It'd be objectively more representative at the very least.

[Harry Baldman]

Assuming, of course, that the tribalism doesn't kick in and they don't just try to shit on the other side's primaries to give themselves the win. Prisoner's dilemma.

But that would require a massive campaign of coordinated sabotage on the part of what, at least 7.5 million people? I think the effect of sitting down and voting for the opposition's candidate would somewhat offset tribalism by its very design. Dislike the candidate or not, it may very well be the candidate you voted for once already. And if you didn't vote for said candidate, you likely weren't in the majority.

[mainiac]

Redking is salty because he blames tactical voting for his minority. Encouraging more tactical voting isn't going to help this.

Also a more centrist candidate isn't really better. There is a reason Democrats took one look at Jim Webb and Lincoln Chaffee and moved on.

[RedKing]

Assuming, of course, that the tribalism doesn't kick in and they don't just try to shit on the other side's primaries to give themselves the win. Prisoner's dilemma.

But that would require a massive campaign of coordinated sabotage on the part of what, at least 7.5 million people? I think the effect of sitting down and voting for the opposition's candidate would somewhat offset tribalism by its very design. Dislike the candidate or not, it may very well be the candidate you voted for once already. And if you didn't vote for said candidate, you likely weren't in the majority.

I'm with Ispil. If I got to vote in both primaries, I'd vote my conscience in the Dem primary and vote for the biggest shitmonger imaginable in the Republican primary. And I'm not even a Democrat -- I'm an independent that detests the modern Republican Party. I was actually planning to vote for McCain back in 2000, and would have voted Perot in 1992 (missed the age requirement by just a smidge). If I've gone fullbore leftist since then, it's more because the Republican Party has swung so far to the right.

And salty? Really? That's amusing coming from somebody whose handle should be Morton.

[BorkBorkGoesTheCode]

I think we just need to reach a point where "the lesser of two evils" is so terrible that no one's willing to put up with it.

It would be one hell of an election year, that.

IS this actually possible?

[misko27]

"The Obama Administration's obsession with toppling the government in Damascus is fundamentally inconsistent with winning the fight against ISIS," Stein asserted. "US pursuit of regime change in Libya, Iraq, and Syria created the chaos that promotes power grabs by extremist militias. Many of the weapons we are sending into Syria to arm anti-government militias are winding up in the hands of ISIS. This isn't a clever foreign policy - it's disastrous militarism."   

That's Jill Stein, Greens

Jill Stein said that? The woman talks a lot of sense.

Did you miss the anti-vaccine and anti-wifi stances? She's not speaking sense, she's just parroting the anti-military line currently popular. Rand Paul has probably said the same, as would Johnson if he knew where Damascus was. The fact that it is a cohesive viewpoint doesn't say much about her.

I would love for Bernie Sanders to form a coalition with certain segments of the Libertarian party.

That seems as likely as Donald calling himself "The leading socialist candidate in America today".

They're both decently isolationist. *shrug* One hates corps, the other hates government.

That might work if their primary issues were isolationism. As it stands, both of them center their ideology on fundamentally opposed concepts: that the government has an important role and needs to do more vs. The government is doing too much and needs to pull back. The most they have in common is being fringe elements. And as for the Donald Trump argument, Donald Trump took over an existing party using support no one knew existed. You are arguing for a new party to be formed out of elements with nothing in common and no institutional support. Does that sound like a recipe for success? What do you even want out of such a party in the first place?