Are You Voting Democrat?

[Ted Striker]

I condemn the American elections

Me too. We need foreign observers, and being 100% serious about that. Voter suppression is real.

[SlowwHand]

[FlameFlash]

Me too. We need foreign observers, and being 100% serious about that. Voter suppression is real.

AGREE

[Lorizael]

Me too. We need foreign observers, and being 100% serious about that. Voter suppression is real.

Russia can probably help us with that.

[Elok]

Might've liked Yang, more for his temperament and basic decency than for any specific policy. Bugger the rest of them, and Bloomberg twice.

[dannubis]

So talking about decency and continue to support trump (either directly or indirectly by not voting democrat) doesn't bother you ?

[Elok]

Yang's decency and thoughtfulness were appealing, yes. He didn't have any policies I found grossly offensive or dangerous, and he didn't strike me as incompetent. I can't say that for anyone else.

As for Trump, he's mostly a nonentity. Russiagate was nonsense from start to finish; he should have been ejected over Ukraine, and Biden too, but neither was and here we are. He gets a lot of hate for being a very effective troll, which is more or less the only way in which he's very effective. When he isn't pooping on the internet, he's being massively and transparently corrupt, which is unseemly but causes little macro damage to the country as a whole. You can make a fair case that his tariffs are harmful, but most of the hate he gets is for being a big fat Ugly American. His warmongering is about level with Obama's in real terms, and I believe Hillary's would have been worse. I'm not happy with his cruelty to immigrants--but what's the alternative?

I suspect that, if Bernie got elected, the result would be a weird mirror image of Trump. Bernie has been a professional gadfly for so long, and done so little with it, that I don't believe he actually knows how to lead. I like that he's anti-war, and I like that he's honest, but he wouldn't have the slightest notion how to implement any of his visions. He certainly couldn't heal the post-Trump divide; he'd face such massive resistance from Trumpians that he'd struggle to accomplish anything, and Democrats don't cohere the same way Republicans do. You'd just have another addled old man yelling divisive things and getting nothing done.

Bloomberg is roughly as authoritarian as Trump, but far more competent. He might actually do something, which frightens me. Trump over Bloomberg.

[ZEE]

Elok is a nerd.

[Jon Miller]

As for Trump, he's mostly a nonentity. Russiagate was nonsense from start to finish; he should have been ejected over Ukraine, and Biden too, but neither was and here we are. He gets a lot of hate for being a very effective troll, which is more or less the only way in which he's very effective. When he isn't pooping on the internet, he's being massively and transparently corrupt, which is unseemly but causes little macro damage to the country as a whole. You can make a fair case that his tariffs are harmful, but most of the hate he gets is for being a big fat Ugly American. His warmongering is about level with Obama's in real terms, and I believe Hillary's would have been worse. I'm not happy with his cruelty to immigrants--but what's the alternative?

I suspect that, if Bernie got elected, the result would be a weird mirror image of Trump. Bernie has been a professional gadfly for so long, and done so little with it, that I don't believe he actually knows how to lead. I like that he's anti-war, and I like that he's honest, but he wouldn't have the slightest notion how to implement any of his visions. He certainly couldn't heal the post-Trump divide; he'd face such massive resistance from Trumpians that he'd struggle to accomplish anything, and Democrats don't cohere the same way Republicans do. You'd just have another addled old man yelling divisive things and getting nothing done.

Isn't this (from your perspective) just a case for Bernie?

Basically has less downsides of Trump, even if you don't think he is a good leader, since he is anti-war, anti-cruelty, and anti-corruption?

I understand that you want someone you think is a good leader, but since that doesn't seem to be a choice you are likely to have, isn't it better to take someone who is 'just as bad' on leadership but better on cruelty (by being against it), war (by being against it) and corruption (by being against it)?

JM

[Elok]

Well, I forgot to add that most of Bernie's ideas strike me as terrible anyway, and there's a nonzero chance that they could force through some sort of metastasized corporate-pork version of any one of them. Trump is a more-or-less reliably useless mushroom in the Oval Office. Devil you know, devil you don't? And then there's the part where Bernie's health ain't the best. At any rate, I live in Florida, so it doesn't much matter what I think if Bernie becomes the nominee. This state is composed of rednecks (who like Trump), retirees (who don't like self-declared socialists), and Cubans (who don't like anyone offering even qualified praise for Castro). Wiki says Clinton took the state by a crushing margin in the '16 primaries.

[giblets]

"I'm not happy with concentration camps, but what's the alternative?" holy **** the conservative brain worms.

[Lorizael]

Trump is a more-or-less reliably useless mushroom in the Oval Office. Devil you know, devil you don't?

Even accepting this premise, I think there's still ample reason to oppose Trump unconditionally. He is an openly corrupt and authoritarian bully who has been given official approval by the United States Senate to continue being so. That is a giant flashing neon sign that our checks and balances are no longer working and are ripe for abuse by politicians who might not be quite so "useless." As such, we in the electorate must reject that possibility in the strongest possible terms. Making sure Trump is only a one-term president is the first step in sending that message.

[Jon Miller]

"I'm not happy with concentration camps, but what's the alternative?" holy **** the conservative brain worms.

This is why I decided not to support Biden. If I thought the 'moderate' and 'conservative' swing voters and those opposed to Trump could be convinced to vote for a D running on unity (like Biden), I would support Biden. But I have not seen it.

I think the only path forward is to focus on excitement and turnout. And Bernie looks to be that.

JM
(I Also prefer Bernie's politics to Biden's, but the most important thing is to end this Trumpist regime.)

[Elok]

Even accepting this premise, I think there's still ample reason to oppose Trump unconditionally. He is an openly corrupt and authoritarian bully who has been given official approval by the United States Senate to continue being so. That is a giant flashing neon sign that our checks and balances are no longer working and are ripe for abuse by politicians who might not be quite so "useless." As such, we in the electorate must reject that possibility in the strongest possible terms. Making sure Trump is only a one-term president is the first step in sending that message.

I view the problem differently. Like I told BUncle, authoritarian revolutions have historically never happened in places like the US; we're in very good shape, all things considered. We're not Weimar Germany, or late Imperial Russia, or post-WWII China, or mid-seventies Cambodia, or even Ancien Regime France. We're a fantastically wealthy and prosperous country with several centuries of democratic norms. Like all countries, we have problems, and I could see those problems getting worse in the future. But this is not, at present, the kind of country where the poor starve in the streets and you can't get anything done without a bribe. Our riots are performance art by Twitter-based LARPers. We were considerably more turbulent in the Sixties and Seventies, and no tyrants took over.

Bloomberg still scares me because an actually competent authoritarian ghoul is not an improvement, but at this point, it looks like Bernie is going to be the nominee anyway. If he were merely another senile old man trying to get things done by yelling, it might be tempting to support him. I'd still hesitate, partly because he has some authoritarian impulses of his own (see: "hey, look at those Cuban literacy rates!") and is an unknown quantity where actual executive power is concerned, but mostly because Bernie would tend to exacerbate the existing problem of polarization and the domination of national discourse by loudmouthed malcontents. Which is how people proposing to solve problems with mountains of imaginary money--like Trump or Bernie--get close to power in the first place.

Ultimately, this is the internet's fault. Never before has it been possible for information to flow so fluidly, or for so many voices to speak so loudly with so few resources. That privileges the loud, obnoxious, ignorant, and inexperienced. At some point, we're going to have to adjust to this as the new way of things--to develop cultural antibodies, as SSC would put it. My "goal," as a powerless person on the sidelines of a hideously irrational process, is to hope that things remain more or less stable in the meantime, which is why I wanted a relatively sane and conciliatory voice like Yang. I would even tolerate Buttigieg, and he strikes me as a smarmy calculating phony and probably not competent to lead. Biden would be okay too, I suppose. As-is? Euugggghh. We've got some growing pains before we discover some way to pull the country back together.

[SlowwHand]

Biden is brain dead and can't remember what decade he's in.
I fully expected many here to go Bernie, since he's a Socialist career politician.