Election 2016

[Ancient History]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S2G8jhhUHg

British Milhouse.

At this point, it would be nice if one of the parties vowed to reform and clarify their nomination process.

[MGuy]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_S2G8jhhUHg

British Milhouse.

At this point, it would be nice if one of the parties vowed to reform and clarify their nomination process.

Just watched this earlier today and now that he's said it I can't get the image out of my head.

[Username17]

Now as for the governor of Washington specifically, that is a stupid place to draw battle lines about super delegates voting wrong. Bernie Sanders didn't get every delegate from the pledged side. A quarter of them went to Clinton because people voted for Clinton too. While he could be seen as obviating the votes of people in Washington by voting for Clinton, he'd be obviating the votes of (substantially less but still significant numbers of) people if he changed his vote to Sanders. But more importantly, Washington had a fucking caucus. Caucuses are undemocratic bullshit. The last gubernatorial race in Washington had over three million votes, the caucuses had 230,000. Causes are so exclusionary and shit that Jay Inslee won the election to be a superdelagate where more than ten people voted for every one person who voted in the bullshit caucus election that Sanders won. Sanders would have won a real election if there had been one, but there fucking wasn't because caucuses are bullshit.

So Washington State has now had a Primary. It's non-binding. While it made no actual difference to delegate totals, because Washington's Democratic Party hands out all their delegates based on the stupid and undemocratic caucus, it nevertheless had a turnout of more than double that of the caucus that preceded it.

Hillary Clinton won 54-46. In Washington. All the angry Berners shaking their fists at Washington State Superdelegates for voting for Hillary against "the will of the people" can officially suck all the dicks.

-Username17

[Maj]

I wonder if the caucus/primary difference would inspire change among the Dems. I mean... Participating in WA's primary is so easy: get your ballot in the mail, fill in a bubble, send it in or drop it off. (And yet only 28.4% of people can actually be inspired to do that. WTF, Washington?).

Caucusing is so much more a pain in the ass. And in Washington's case, the delegates were chosen based on the process that supported the not-preferred candidate. So do you think that the DNC would be more likely to push for the primary over the caucus next time?

[Kaelik]

I wonder if the caucus/primary difference would inspire change among the Dems. I mean... Participating in WA's primary is so easy: get your ballot in the mail, fill in a bubble, send it in or drop it off. (And yet only 28.4% of people can actually be inspired to do that. WTF, Washington?).

I don't know, if I already knew what every single delegate was going to do before that even happened, regardless of what the primary result is, I'd be hard pressed to give a shit about the Primary.

Not sure if the Primary is relevant to other races or not, which might change it, but if it is literally meaningless, could easily see just not doing that.

[Maj]

I don't know, if I already knew what every single delegate was going to do before that even happened, regardless of what the primary result is, I'd be hard pressed to give a shit about the Primary.

Not sure if the Primary is relevant to other races or not, which might change it, but if it is literally meaningless, could easily see just not doing that.

That's actually a really good point. Though the caucus has a rough participation rate four times smaller than the primary.

[Mechalich]

Considering that the Washington State Democratic Primary was only for President, and there were no down-ballot races attached, and everyone knew it wasn't binding at all, it arguably wasn't worth the cost of a stamp.

[Kaelik]

I don't know, if I already knew what every single delegate was going to do before that even happened, regardless of what the primary result is, I'd be hard pressed to give a shit about the Primary.

Not sure if the Primary is relevant to other races or not, which might change it, but if it is literally meaningless, could easily see just not doing that.

That's actually a really good point. Though the caucus has a rough participation rate four times smaller than the primary.

I think that's just further representative of how incredibly bullshit caucuses are.

[Username17]

Washington State law requires an open primary. Neither the Democratic nor Republican party actually likes open primaries, because of the relative ease of spoiler votes being thrown (see: Virginia, West). Both parties have tried and failed to get the state to adopt closed primaries, and the Democratic Party in the state has taken its ball and gone home by declaring that they were going to hold their own caucuses with blackjack and hookers and ignore the primary results completely, so there.

After this fiasco, where the caucus results were so wildly different from the better attended primaries and more importantly where someone got arrested for threatening to cut out the tongue of a congressman for saying that he was going to vote a different way from the caucus, I suspect the impetus for giving up and going back to the primary will be pretty strong. But the logic of wanting closed primaries rather than open primaries in a world of strategic voting and billionaire funded social media campaigns has not changed.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Yeah, open primaries are still kind of dumb, there are some times they are beneficial like in Texas where there are more "Republicans" voting in the primaries than there are votes for Republican candidates (who still win anyways) in several counties, because Republicans literally run unopposed in the general, so if you care at all, you vote in the Republican primaries.

But for the most part, I can see why you might oppose an open primary, just wish they could have a closed primary then an open primary later that doesn't count, instead of a caucus.

[DSMatticus]

We have talked about West Virginia before in this thread. West Virginia is full of conservative Democrats. Yes, that's a real thing. Yes, they are conservative. Yes, they are registed Democrats. Yes, they do vote for Democrats - West Virginia has had a Democratic governor for the past 15 years. Yes, they do consistently vote for Republicans in presidential elections. Yes, the Democrats they do elect are some of the most conservative Democrats in the country. But they are registered Democrats and the West Virginia State Democratic Party puts forward candidates they genuinely like. West Virginia does not tell us the story "Bernie Sanders propped up by spoiler votes." West Virginia tells us the story "conservatives hate Hillary Clinton and like anti-establishment candidates."

Seriously, as of the last published count (October 2012), West Virginia had 637k registered Democrats, 354k registered Republicans, and 217k registered voters with no party affialition. 51.7% of all registered voters were Democrats, and yet a month later Mitt Romney would win the state (and every single county) with 62.3% of the vote. I also feel the need to point out that West Virginia had a semi-closed primary; if you are a registered member of a party, you may only vote in that party's primary. The deadline to change your party registration was about a month before Cruz dropped out. If you don't have a party affiliation, you can vote in either primary. "But wait," you say, "doesn't that mean you should always register as an independent?" Yes, it does, but as you can see more than three-quarters of voters haven't figured that out. West Virginia is also something like 90% white, i.e. the exact demographics of the kinds of states Sanders sometimes wins big to begin with. There is really nothing suspicious about the West Virginia results. A bunch of conservatives voted against Hillary Clinton. You can pretend to be surprised by that if you want, but it just makes you look thick.

There really isn't a lot of evidence of successful primary spoiling in modern political history, even though there are some very notable examples of general election spoilers. Considering how many independents actually consistently vote for one party or the other but are registered as independents as some (arbuably misguided) gesture of dissatisfaction with the political system, I view closed primaries the same way I view voter ID laws. You are proposing something that will genuinely disenfranchise a large number of legitimate voters in order to protect our elections from a threat which you have not even demonstrated exists - while conspicuously ignoring a fuckton of better solutions.

[Username17]

You are proposing something that will genuinely disenfranchise a large number of legitimate voters in order to protect our elections from a threat which you have not even demonstrated exists

Spoiler Voting, unlike voter fraud, is a very real thing that totally exists. Interference in the primaries of the other party is a thing that extends from campaign spending through to the voting booth itself. Remember that Claire McCaskill ran an ad "attacking" Todd "Legitimate Rape" Akin for his "pro-family agenda." Karl Rove spent millions of dollars trying to get people to vote for Bernie Sanders.

Crossover voters aren't reliable, and they don't often change a result. But to say that they haven't been proven to be a real thing is laughably disingenuous. In the Michigan primary, 4% of the voters in the Democratic Primary were registered Republicans and Bernie Sanders won the state by 1.5%. The Democratic Primary is proportional and not winner take all, and Michigan ultimately doesn't mean anything to the overall race. But if Hillary and Bernie were running for President of Michigan, then the Democratic primary would have been decided by Republican votes. In Ohio, the number of Democratic crossovers was even higher - 8% who voted overwhelmingly for Kasich. Now Kasich's margin of victory was 11% and he turned out to not need Democratic ratfuckers to carry Ohio (and Kasich was an unlikeable loser in any case and never got close enough to the Republican nomination to see it without a telescope), but if that race had been important or close the Democratic spoilers would have successfully shat on the process and given themselves high fives for doing it.

And that's just this year's presidential nomination contest. A contest which from the beginning has been not particularly interesting or close on either side. And nonetheless, spoiler voters have figured out how to cause upsets and fill news cycles with hand wringing about how the election is in a state of flux or some shit for both sides. If this was a close race like Hillary v Obama or a legit three person race like Mondale v Hart v Jackson, spoiler votes could easily end up changing who was president of the United fucking States.

The way our system works, you join a political party. It's not hard, and it doesn't cost anything. We need the media to stop treating being "unaffiliated" as if it was some kind of fucking moral virtue and get people to fucking bite the bullet and sign up. And asking people to be a member of a club before they get a say in who that club's leader is is not unreasonable. It's far more reasonable to ask people to be Republicans before they can vote who the Republicans run for president than it is to not let the people of Italy vote in the general election for President of the United States. Are you saying the Italians aren't stake holders in whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump leads the free world? Why do you gotta disenfranchise all the Italians?

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

In the Michigan primary, 4% of the voters in the Democratic Primary were registered Republicans and Bernie Sanders won the state by 1.5%. The Democratic Primary is proportional and not winner take all, and Michigan ultimately doesn't mean anything to the overall race. But if Hillary and Bernie were running for President of Michigan, then the Democratic primary would have been decided by Republican votes. In Ohio, the number of Democratic crossovers was even higher - 8% who voted overwhelmingly for Kasich.

This will probably depress you to learn, but Kasich is genuinely popular among Ohio Democrats, particularly so-called moderates. There is every reason to believe that a significant number of registered Democrats would cast their ballot for Kasich in the general, and it would not at all be surprising to see Democrats crossing lines to support him in the primary because they want to vote for him in the general. As for Michigan, well... here's some food for thought:

At the start of March in 2016, 42% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents viewed Donald Trump unfavorably.

At the start of March in 2016, 41% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents viewed Ted Cruz unfavorably.

At the start of March in 2012, 31% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents viewed Mitt Romney unfavorably.

The lesson you should have learned one of the times I had to explain West Virginia to you is that people do not always support their party's candidates. Mitt Romney won West Virginia because a bunch of registered Democrats voted for him. If West Virginia had open primaries, and those registered Democrats had crossed lines to support him in the Republican primary - as they would later in the general - would you still call them ratfuckers? Would you demand their expulsion from the Democratic party and ban them from participating in future Democratic primaries until they repented and promised to vote straight Democrat in the future?

I really shouldn't have to explain this to you, but America is big and diverse. Both political parties are a coalition built from a variety of voting blocs with different values who do not agree on every single issue. This year's Republican primary made that painfully obvious, but honestly you already fucking knew that because we've been talking about it here (in the context of the growing Republican schism) for years. But this is also true of Democrats (to a lesser extent, it seems, but no less true). Some voters are going to genuinely support candidates across the aisle some of the time. In Ohio, a Republican primary candidate who is genuinely popular among Democrats pulled a bunch of registered Democrats to vote for him. Were some of those votes genuine? Yes. Were all of those votes genuine? Almost certainly not. In Michigan, a Democratic primary candidate who isn't Hillary Clinton pulled a bunch of registered Republicans away from a Republican primary whose two largest contenders were some of the most unfavorable in history even among their own party. Were some of those votes genuine? Yes. Were all of those votes genuine? Almost certainly not. What's the worst case scenario? Sanders picked up two delegates from Republican ratfucking. Meanwhile, best estimates suggest he's lost ~50 to closed primaries locking out Democratic-leaning independents. Clearly, you have your priorities straight.

The fact is that while you and I are so far left that the notion of flipping sides is absurd, not everyone in America feels that way. And those people's votes count exactly as much as our's do. Any scheme that prevents ratfucking by forcing people to choose a ballot in advance is objectively going to stop voters from turning up to support the candidates they genuinely support. It's going to stop an absolute fuck-ton in a country where a significant portion of voters refuse to register a party affiliation in protest, but even in a perfect world where all voters register exactly like you want them to there are going to be Democrats who look at Clinton and Sanders and say "Kasich," and there are going to be Republicans who look at Trump and Cruz and say "Sanders." Locking those people out of the primaries their preferred candidate is participating in isn't nobly protecting our democracy. It's the exact opposite.

It's very, very important to understand that the reason malicious crossover voting is bad is not because it is crossover voting, but because it is malicious. And it's also really important to understand that no matter how stupid you personally think it is, there are a bunch of Democratic voters who aren't actually registered Democrats and there are a bunch of Republican voters who aren't actually registered Republicans, and they deserve exactly as much representation in the process as you do. That's the reality, and you absolutely can't write policy ignoring that and then blame it on your victims.

[Username17]

I really shouldn't have to explain this to you, but America is big and diverse. Both political parties are a coalition built from a variety of voting blocs with different values who do not agree on every single issue. This year's Republican primary made that painfully obvious, but honestly you already fucking knew that because we've been talking about it here (in the context of the growing Republican schism) for years. But this is also true of Democrats (to a lesser extent, it seems, but no less true). Some voters are going to genuinely support candidates across the aisle some of the time.

Who gives a shit?

The fact that you might support a candidate from a different party is why you are allowed to vote for candidates of the other party in the general election. The idea that you supporting a candidate in another party entitles you to a say as to who that party endorses for office is fucking absurd.

A party is obligated to nominate candidates that reflect the interests and opinions of its members. It is not obligated to nominate candidates that members of other parties want them to. I want the Republicans to nominate Ben "Sleepy Eyes" Carson, and the Republican Party owes it to its members to ignore my opinion because I hate them and want them to lose.

The primaries are about selecting candidates for a party to endorse. The very idea that people who are not members of the party or even members of overtly hostile parties would have any say at all into which candidates are selected is bizaro land crazy talk. If you are fighting a war, you do not give the citizens of the rival country an equal say in the dispensation of your forces. If you are a sportsball team, you do not listen to advice from fans of the other team as to which players you should send out on the field. Politics is an adversarial activity and allowing people from the other side to select your side's strategies is fucking retarded.

Once the candidates are selected, by all means try to convince people in your camp to come out and vote, convince people in your opponent's camp to sit out the election, and even convince people in your opponent's camp to cross over and vote for you. But Republicans should not get to pick Democratic candidates and Democrats should not get to pick Republican candidates. This is so blindingly obvious that I can only suggest that you've been drinking too much if you think anything different.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

I think this may be a state thing DSM, where are you from. Being from Texas, I can't possibly be okay with closed primaries, but maybe if you live in states with actual back and forth it seems more acceptable.

[Starmaker]

Are you saying the Italians aren't stake holders in whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump leads the free world? Why do you gotta disenfranchise all the Italians?

And then Putin has billions of Russians born in 5508 BCE and later vote Tramp Trump.

[RobbyPants]

I'd be more okay with closed primaries if we had more than two candidates to choose from in the general election. If closed primaries are to work, the deadline for registering for each state has to be close enough to the primary date that people can actually learn about the candidates. Otherwise, you're basically saying "only blue voters can vote for blue candidates and only red voters can vote for red candidates", and are excluding anyone who is actually genuinely more concerned with issues than tribalism.

A month out is probably fine. I think a lot of states use something like that as their benchmark.

[DSMatticus]

I think this may be a state thing DSM, where are you from. Being from Texas, I can't possibly be okay with closed primaries, but maybe if you live in states with actual back and forth it seems more acceptable.

I'm from Ohio, but the district I'm in is solidly Republican. I benefit from open primaries in much the same way you do, just to a lesser extent. That said, it's mostly just a difference in the way we see party affiliation.

I believe that party affiliation should be no more than a "best fit" choice people make in order to gain access to one of the only two primary ballots that matter. Frank believes it's a commitment to participate in shaping a particular party's future through its primary or to GTFO (or to do neither, but stop complaining about how you didn't get to support the guy you wanted to in the primaries). I would be more amenable to Frank's way of thinking if we didn't have a two-party system, but we do. Swing voters, moderate Democrats, and moderate Republicans are not myths. They're real people, and they are far more likely to have to reach across the aisle to support the candidate that they genuinely prefer. If we deny them the right to participate in the other party's primary, then their voice is just objectively not as important as someone like mine's (who will be able to support their preferred candidate in both parts of the electoral process), and that's bullshit. The particulars of our electoral system - along with a bunch of arbitrary red and blue lines in the sand - have failed them, and that's not okay.

You could make an argument that throwing those people under the bus is a necessary evil in order to stop spoiler votes, and that we can't pursue any of the reforms that would make the entire debate moot because we don't have the political capital to do so. But that sort of "you deal with the world you've got, not the world you want" argument would require convincing me that allowing spoiler votes is more harmful than kicking Democratic-leaning independents out of the Democratic primary. If the number of Democratic-leaning independents is bigger than the number of spoiler votes, then "in the world you've got, and not the one you want" your fix is net disenfranchising and it belongs shoved up your ass.

[violence in the media]

So, some guy on another forum I visit is going on about violent liberals at Trump rallies and the poor peaceful conservatives and I just can't organize my thoughts enough this morning to form a coherent response.

My first thought is that is seriously small beans in terms of conflict, and that this guy seems to think that the presence of any violence in part of a group de-legitimizes the ideal of nonviolent protest as a whole.

My second thought is that this is pearl-clutching bullshit (someone else went and dug up a huffpo article claiming there were 61 arrests and 28 reports of violence at Trump rallies as of April 6th) and/or a profound misunderstanding of the confrontational nature of demonstrations/protests coupled with a lack of awareness of the concept of agents provocateurs and false flags.

My third thought is of course it's primarily liberals, you dumb fuck, conservatives only demonstrate when they're supporting segregation, or the KKK, or other horrible bullshit. Otherwise, they stay home. When was the last time you heard a group of protesters out there chanting "Hell no! We won't go! Until you support the status quo!"

Quotes from the dude are below.

So I've noticed something very very disturbing in regards to this year's presidential race. We've been hearing about these protesters outside the Trump rallies that are now setting fires, throwing rocks and generally causing a lot of mayhem, most recently in New Mexico. At the recent Democratic get together here in Vegas, again, we saw fighting amongst supporters of Hillary and Bernie (his supporters started it). We haven't seen any protesters or angry Trump supporters at Democratic rallies, the worst we saw from the Trump supporters was when some Dems (again Bernie supporters) came in to heckle Trump and cause a bunch of mischief and ended up getting punched by some Trump supporters and tossed out for causing the trouble.

So my question is when Dems claim (as a generality) that they are the ones against violence/hate (wars and guns and everything else) that they are the ones starting the fights and showing up to cause the general mayhem and spewing their hate? Serious question, I'm curious because it's not going the other way at all and most of the media outfits are liberal and none of them are reporting anything close to what the liberals are doing at the conservative rallies.

Oh, to me it's the common denominator here, to make my point this is where I'm coming from:
1) Violence at Trump rallies when Protesters clash with his supporters, most of the protesters with Bernie signs/shirts/banners.
2) Violence at Nevada Democratic Caucasus a couple weeks ago between liberals, fighting between Hillary and Bernie people, from what I've heard it was the Bernie people who started it.
3) No Trump OR Hillary protesters at Bernie rallies, no violence, but Bernie is stirring his mob up like a bunch of angry hornets.
4) No Trump OR Bernie protesters at Hillary rallies, her's are very quiet seeming and she isn't stirring them up with anger.

[Username17]

They're real people, and they are far more likely to have to reach across the aisle to support the candidate that they genuinely prefer. If we deny them the right to participate in the other party's primary, then their voice is just objectively not as important as someone like mine's (who will be able to support their preferred candidate in both parts of the electoral process), and that's bullshit. The particulars of our electoral system - along with a bunch of arbitrary red and blue lines in the sand - have failed them, and that's not okay.

What the fuck?

Look, you are possibly unclear as to what a primary is. It is the selection of an endorsement by a club. That's all it is. Now, it happens to be an endorsement that is very important, but it's still in the end just an endorsement by a club. If you want to have a voice in what and who the club endorses, join that fucking club or shut the fuck up! That's the beginning and end of it. You have no right to a say in who the Sierra Club or the Club For Growth endorses if you are not a member of those clubs, and you have no right to a say in who the Democratic or Republican Parties endorse if you are not a member of those clubs either.

I understand that you and Kaelik live in areas where you've determined that the most effective thing you can do to influence your local political future is to throw spoiler votes at the Republican party. But you know what? You are not voting to advance the interests of the Republican Party and the Republican Party should ignore your recommendations. You are purposefully voting for whatever candidates you think will be least effective at advancing Republican Party goals, and the Republican Party should tell you to fuck all the way off.

As for the argument that the system disenfranchises waffling moderates... that's totally bugfuck insane? Like, I don't even know how to respond to that, because it's so fucking out there that the most reasonable response seems to be to post a bunch of meme pics of children laughing at you. Committed party idealists have no say in the General Election, which I remind you is the one that actually fucking matters. In 2008, if the Democrats nominated Edwards I would have voted for Edwards. If they went slightly more centrist and nominated Clinton I would have voted Clinton. As it happened, they went even further to the right and nominated Obama and I still voted Obama. Because I am a dedicated leftist and I will fucking vote for whoever the Democrats put up because the alternative was having Caribou Barbie a heartbeat away from the presidency. Or think about 2012 and all those American Taliban people in the religious conservative movement. Do you think they were actually happy with R-Money? Not only did he flip flop on all their abortion shit, he's not even a real Christian. But they all had to vote for him anyway because they predicted - correctly as it happens - that if we lived in the Obamanation then all the girls would get their slut pills on demand and we'd all be forced to bake cakes for gay weddings.

Meanwhile, swing states and swing voters get catered to left right and center, with hundreds of millions of dollars poured in to various dumb projects to keep them happy and attract them to one party or the other. The Democrats don't spend a thin dime to try to convince me to vote for Hillary over Donald because they don't fucking have to. But the total ad buy for this election is expected to be about $4.4 Billion dollars. And they aren't spending it to entice me. They are spending it to entice those waffling moderate swing voters.

Those dumbass mouth breathers who can't figure out whether they'd rather have the free world run by a dedicated public servant with a long history of running successful programs in the United States and around the world or a reality TV star and insult comic, those are the fuckers who have all the power in our stupid fucking electoral system. And we do not need or want them being able to pop in at all hours of the day and night to tell us what candidates we are allowed to run on top of that.

-Username17

[Username17]

As for violence at Trump rallies, the common denominator is Trump supporters. Although members of the Rubio staff did attack one of the guys dressed up as Rubiobot.


There's a liberal protester and violence is happening, but if you blame the violence on the liberal protester you're simply wrong.

The reality is that Hillary Clinton gets protested all the fucking time. And her supporters don't put them in headlocks or sucker punch them.


These protesters were not attacked, even though they are really offensive.

So the real question is: why do Trump Supporters constantly physically attack protesters when Clinton Supporters don't?



Possibly because he is a literal Nazi.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Look, you are possibly unclear as to what a primary is. It is the selection of an endorsement by a club. That's all it is. Now, it happens to be an endorsement that is very important, but it's still in the end just an endorsement by a club. If you want to have a voice in what and who the club endorses, join that fucking club or shut the fuck up! That's the beginning and end of it.

This is the core of our disagreement, because you say shit like this and I immediately think you sound like a gigantic jackass whose beliefs are unconscionable piles of shit (because in this instance you absolutely fucking are, but whatever). If I were to lecture you on the threats monopolies pose to the power of consumers, you would tell me no shit, but I point out that the two-party system invests entrenched parties with a substantial amount of power at the expense of voters, and you start screaming "it's just a club, it doesn't owe you anything!"

No, fuck you, and fuck that. For the same reason that we have a stake in regulating the conduct of powerful corporations, we absolutely have a stake in regulating the conduct of literally the only two political clubs that have held a significant amount of political power at any point in your fucking life. The primaries of the two major parties genuinely are an important part of our democracy, and we don't live in a world where you can tear down the entire institution and replace it everytime it steps even the tiniest bit out of line.

The choice of the Democratic party to hold caucuses is deeply disenfranchising, and it should be illegal. If you disagree, you are wrong. People are being pushed out of an integral part of the democratic process by that decision, and that is fucking disgusting, and we owe it to them to make it stop. You can have a semi-legitimate debate about whether or not it is better for parties to protect themselves from spoiler votes (which is disenfranchising*) at the expense of locking independents and some portion of swing voters out of the process (which is disenfranchising), but that is mostly a utilitarian calculus argument about which causes more harm. But the argument about whether or not we should protect people from being disenfranchised by political parties? That's a short argument; of course we should, fuck you.

*I do not actually think spoiler votes are disenfranchising when the result of the general is a foregone conclusion. The fact that your votes don't fucking matter at all (because the candidate you vote for in the primary isn't going to win, and the candidate you vote for in the general isn't going to win) is the result of FPTP and arbitrary lines on a map. Ideally you'd have proportional representation (when possible), two or more candidates from each side of the political spectrum (say, through multiple parties) + single transferable vote, and all kinds of other shit that naturally meant at the end of day every vote counted (or at least a lot fucking better than this shit, obviously not every actual vote is going to count unless everything is decided by one vote and that is impossible) - if only because vastly outnumbered liberals/conservatives helped pull the majority's more moderate candidate forward. You deserve representation in government even if 9/10 of your neighbors disagree with you, even if you obviously are only going to get a small fraction of the representation you actually want.

[John Magnum]

So, in my head, I can imagine a hypothetical setup where we have lots of political parties, and all of them have basically competent suggestions for how to run and improve the country, and voting is a matter of deciding which tactics or emphases are most important. That sounds great and cool.

But when I try to imagine injecting additional parties into things as they currently stand, even with some very optimistic assumptions, it's... Well. Let me try to run through a scenario.

Suppose that we get a bunch of electoral reform and a left-wing third party becomes viable. Maybe Greens, maybe Labor, maybe a Communist party, lots of possibilities, but they're definitely further left than the Democrats. Let's suppose that they get a bunch of people into the Senate, and the split is something like 40 Republicans, 40 Democrats, and 20 Leftists. This is being really generous to the left-wing, of course, because even getting 60 Democrats in the Senate was a huge deal back in 2008 and only lasted a few months in any case. But let's say America is feeling particularly progressive and so the third party gets this level of congressional representation.

What exactly is gonna be different about the legislation this hypothetical Senate passes, compared to legislation passed by a Senate that's just 40 Republicans and 60 Democrats? I can think of three broad-strokes kinds of things that can pass. There's things where the Leftists and Democrats band together and pass, there's things where Leftists and Republicans band together, and there's things where Republicans and Democrats band together.

If the Leftists and Democrats both agree to legislation, that really to me sounds like something that would be pretty damn similar to something from the 60 Democrats version of this scenario. The same few rightmost-leaning Democrats will have veto power, for instance. So while this stuff will probably be basically good, it's not really something that's uniquely permissible thanks to our third party.

Can we think of anything that the Leftists and Republicans would vote for together? Maybe some kind of anti-drone deal...? Even that assumes a level of good faith in Republicans' attacks on Democratic foreign policy that I think is far, far too kind to the Republicans.

And hey, maybe we get Democrats and Republicans banding together to obviate the Leftists. This seems unlikely, but maybe we get some really shitty centrist "balanced" budget passed, or an increase in the eligibility age for Social Security, or any of the things that the pain caucus asking for shitty "bipartisan" initiatives wants.

The point is just. The existence of a viable third party doesn't somehow get rid of the tens of millions of people who vehemently want far-right bigots in charge. All the people who put Cruz and Rubio in the Senate are still there and still politically engaged. The problem isn't that we don't have enough flavors of left-wing parties to choose from, the problem is that an absolutely massive part of the country is voting for the opposite of all of them.

[Maj]

Look, you are possibly unclear as to what a primary is. It is the selection of an endorsement by a club. That's all it is. Now, it happens to be an endorsement that is very important, but it's still in the end just an endorsement by a club. If you want to have a voice in what and who the club endorses, join that fucking club or shut the fuck up! That's the beginning and end of it.

This is the core of our disagreement, because you say shit like this and I immediately think you sound like a gigantic jackass whose beliefs are unconscionable piles of shit (because in this instance you absolutely fucking are, but whatever). If I were to lecture you on the threats monopolies pose to the power of consumers, you would tell me no shit, but I point out that the two-party system invests entrenched parties with a substantial amount of power at the expense of voters, and you start screaming "it's just a club, it doesn't owe you anything!"

No, fuck you, and fuck that.

This is pretty much what my state has said. Party affiliation isn't even on my voter registration. And when almost half the country doesn't belong to the clubs that are choosing the candidates for the next president, there's a problem. Why shouldn't those people have a say in who they want to run?

[Username17]

If I were to lecture you on the threats monopolies pose to the power of consumers, you would tell me no shit, but I point out that the two-party system invests entrenched parties with a substantial amount of power at the expense of voters, and you start screaming "it's just a club, it doesn't owe you anything!"

The part I don't get is where you think this is at the "expense" of the voters. Political parties exist to advance the agendas of their coalitions, nothing more, nothing less. Those coalitions are made up of voters. The fact that the Republican Party spends its time thinking up new ways to be dickish to trans people who want to go to the bathroom is not a failure of democracy or the voters being disenfranchised, that is what the Republican voters want the party to do!

Now earlier you were saying that spoiler votes weren't real, but we've already established that you and Kaelik cast spoiler votes literally every chance you get and laugh while doing so. I think we can dispel with the notion that spoiler voters aren't real. They are real. You are one of them, and the fact that they exist is genuinely obscene.

It's important at this point that I lay down the caveat that I don't think you should stop doing it. Politics ain't bean bag, and there's no point in fighting with one hand behind your back. If a dirty trick is allowed, you should use it. There is absolutely no chance that the other side wouldn't use it on us. Indeed, it's been exhaustively demonstrated that they have and do and will continue to do so.

But a primary election is still the members of a coalition of interests letting their voices be heard as to what those interests actually are. People who are not in that coalition should not have their voices be heard for that, because theirs are not the interests being tabulated. Indeed, when the Republican Party asks its constituents what it should do each cycle, you and Kaelik tell them in the clearest possible manner you can think of that the next big action should be "Kill Yourself, LOL." The fact that open primary rules in your area prevent the party from being able to immediately banhammer both of you trolls and ignore your disingenuous "contributions" is, as previously noted, genuinely obscene. And when, not if, Republican trolls do it to Democratic primaries, that's not only an obscenity but it's also something that every Democrat with their head screwed on correctly would stop if they could.

The way the elections work is the party decides on their strategy and leaders, and then they try to cater to the whims and prejudices of independents to collect enough swing voters to win. If those bobble headed swing voters also get to pick the party's agendas, then the party partisans are completely disenfranchised at all stages.

-Username17