Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

https://twitter.com/dick_nixon/status/678455833957670912

oops: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXWVpcypf0w

Like I think you see some of the worst imaginable abuses in situations where the govt just takes some monopoly service (e.g. prisons) and hands it over to one or two corporations. You still have the monopoly and the lack of incentive to do anything well, but with less oversight or concern.

The private sector often does *efficiency* better than the government, because that's one of the ways it earns profit. But the benefit of every service can't be boiled down to *efficiency.* Sometimes efficiency is even antithetical to the benefit.

Donald J. Trump
‏@realdonaldtrump
McCartney is responsible for something like 5,000 suicides every Christmas due to "Wonderful Christmastime." Ask him about it.

https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/804407177368715265

just posting this to get it out of the way

it feels exhausting to blame jill stein or other third party candidates at this point

the blamefest in general is exhausting

mhm

people who still vote 3rd party in swing states are probably beyond reasoning w/ anyway

Yeah, as I've been saying on that point -- she had a pretty bad showing as a third-party candidate, you're not going to get a much weaker one than that. So, assuming this is all her fault, your options are:
1) Ban third party candidates
2) browbeat the candidates and or their supporters even harder, hoping you will finally make it so that no one runs and/or no one votes for them
3) Come up with a better campaign strategy so that someone with like 20k votes in a swing state doesn't cause you to lose

yeah and what iatee said. If you want to bang your head against a wall, spend it on the registered dem trump supporter -- they're worth twice as much as the stein supporter!

(a vote lost for Trump plus a vote gained for Clinton)

sry for weird metaphor, spending banging your head makes no sense

banning 3rd party candidates wouldn't be a terrible idea. the problem is that we have what is in practice a runoff voting system, but a few people just don't understand that and given room to pretend otherwise. bernie and trump were the real '3rd party candidates', sanders and johnson were just ways to express that you decided not to vote.

and *are given room

and ugh 'sanders and johnson' should be 'stein and johnson'

fwiw, the one thing I liked in the Stein interview I listened to was that she advocated ranked or instant runoff voting.

jill stein advocates changes to help save us from jill stein, basically

lol true

obvs you still have the problem of how many of those people would have gone Clinton. PA in particular seems pretty unlikely - you'd need nearly all of her voters to go Clinton rather than another candidate or stay home.

the weird thing about this election is that similar to brexit I think, if you had a repeat election 3 days later, I think the outcome would have been reversed. not all of those stein voters would go clinton, but many would and more importantly I imagine a lot of lethargic voters would have shown up. plus I bet there were some trump voters who were just trying to make a statement.

people love to have someone or something concrete and simple to blame, particularly when it can be tied into a moral failure on the part of voters (an extension of the "personal responsibility" ethos they've internalized from conservative talking points) xp

yeah. I think Brexit helped convince me to vote Clinton in a solidly blue state. Did not want to contribute to a "surprise." It also helped that the greens seem so flaky and useless.

people love to have someone or something concrete and simple to blame, particularly when it can be tied into a moral failure on the part of voters (an extension of the "personal responsibility" ethos they've internalized from conservative talking points) xp

― k3vin k., Thursday, December 1, 2016 3:45 PM (forty-eight seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sure, and it also means you don't have to do the hard work of thinking about what to do differently

banning 3rd party candidates wouldn't be a terrible idea

Dem blamefesters are seldom this forthright!

They will never give up on Nadercursing, and that's been 16 years. Wait til they insist All Good People vote for Cuomo or Booker in 2020.

my my, how can any citizen of a democracy possibly find fault with either of our diametrically-opposed-in-all-things parties

Banning third party would have had the opposite effect in this election and would have given Trump a bigger win; Gary Johnson with 1.4M votes peeled way more votes off Trump than Stein with 0.4M did off Clinton, even under very conservative assumptions about how many Libertarian would not have voted for Trump (in which case you would have to make the opposite assumption about Stein: that every Stein voter would have voted for Clinton)

In complete befuddlement I find myself agreeing with Morbius. Banning third parties because your team lost is not only nagl, it's undemocratic. Have your team do better next time.

The good news is that we may not have much longer to worry about whether something is undemocratic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-liberal-democracy.html

the weird thing about this election is that similar to brexit I think, if you had a repeat election 3 days later, I think the outcome would have been reversed. not all of those stein voters would go clinton, but many would and more importantly I imagine a lot of lethargic voters would have shown up. plus I bet there were some trump voters who were just trying to make a statement.

― iatee, Thursday, December 1, 2016 3:42 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I think making a big spectacle of how much she was owning him in the polls may have hurt turnout. if it had seemed closer, people would have had to more seriously consider what Trump POTUS would feel like, rather than having it both ways (cozy in moral superiority for not having had to vote for Crooked Hillary but also not having to live under Trump)

Venezuela, for instance, enjoyed the highest possible scores on Freedom House’s measures of political rights and democracy in the 1980s.

Ok, sorry, disqualified.

my my, how can any citizen of a democracy possibly find fault with either of our diametrically-opposed-in-all-things parties

the point is that our parties are very weak structures. they don't mean anything, they certainly don't believe in anything, and they barely control anything. they are just brand names that help voters figure out which candidate is more right wing and which candidate is more left wing. jill stein, the human being, could have ran as a democrat. nobody would have stopped her. and if her message were popular enough, she would have got the nomination, similar to trump. sanders came close.

instead she decided to pretend like our political system is actually a different country's political system. we give her, and people like you, the option to play make believe. I'm not sure that really benefits anyone.

In complete befuddlement I find myself agreeing with Morbius. Banning third parties because your team lost is not only nagl, it's undemocratic. Have your team do better next time.

plenty of places have runoff voting. they are not 'undemocratic' just because they prevent all the other guys from running in the 2nd round. we have what is in practice runoff voting, it just isn't formally structured that way.

Clinton voters engaged in all sorts of Make Believe.

You know what all my post-Mondale prez votes have been? This: "FUCK YOUUUUU." Nothing more or less.

the Mondale vote was "FUCK MEEEEE"

A large chunk of the electorate in this country don't vote "wings," they just eat em. They vote "Time to shake things up or not."

Banning third party would have had the opposite effect in this election and would have given Trump a bigger win; Gary Johnson with 1.4M votes peeled way more votes off Trump than Stein with 0.4M did off Clinton, even under very conservative assumptions about how many Libertarian would not have voted for Trump (in which case you would have to make the opposite assumption about Stein: that every Stein voter would have voted for Clinton)

idk it seems conceivable that a lot of johnson voters were disgusted by trump and johnson offered them a way to not actually have to vote for clinton, despite preferring that outcome. and it's not like trump appealed to the 'true libertarian' crowd either, he's pushing the party wildly in the opposite direction. I haven't seen any numbers on this though.

lol stop, the most plausible explanation is clearly flopson's

The good news is that we may not have much longer to worry about whether something is undemocratic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/29/world/americas/western-liberal-democracy.html

oh i have the perfect thread to bump w this

plenty of places have runoff voting. they are not 'undemocratic' just because they prevent all the other guys from running in the 2nd round. we have what is in practice runoff voting, it just isn't formally structured that way.

― iatee, Thursday, December 1, 2016 9:58 PM (eight minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not the same though. If in a first round this would have been the result, many Stein voters could have changed their vote in the second round. People who didn't vote could have voted anyway in the second round if they wanted to prevent Trump becoming president. Completely different dynamic in the race.

xps iatee- some of the Libertarians would have voted for Clinton, others would have not voted, still others would have voted for Trump. And not all Stein voters would have voted for Clinton. It's not impossible but difficult to split all those up in a way that gives Clinton more votes

Having said that I still don't think they should let third parties run in what's essentially a run-off election. It's like a tax on the votes of the innumerate

lol stop, the most plausible explanation is clearly flopson's

not seeing any post-election numbers, but:
http://www.people-press.org/2016/08/18/1-voters-general-election-preferences/

Gary Johnson is currently backed by 10% of all registered voters in a four-way race. When asked their preference in a two-way race, Johnson backers split evenly: 43% say they would support Clinton in a two-way contest, while 42% would favor Trump.

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."

this stupid fuck

The Electoral College, the over/under-representation of some states seem like much bigger issues with the American system than third parties running, too. The fact that Clinton got 2.5m more votes, to me (abroad) that seems bonkers. But presto, that's your system. I'd be more worried about that though. That not every vote counts as equal.

Not the same though. If in a first round this would have been the result, many Stein voters could have changed their vote in the second round. People who didn't vote could have voted anyway in the second round if they wanted to prevent Trump becoming president. Completely different dynamic in the race.

no, the dynamic is exactly the same. there was a first round election that included sanders, clinton, trump and multiple right-wing candidates. clinton and trump won that first round. the general election *is* the second round, and anyone who wanted to prevent trump from being president was given that option.

"We're losing a lot of people because of the Internet," Trump said. "We have to go see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain areas, closing that Internet up in some way. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people. We have a lot of foolish people."
this stupid fuck

― I've read Ta-nehisi Coates. (marcos), Thursday, December 1, 2016 4:12 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

where did that quote come from?

unless you live in a solid red or blue state where yer vote don't mean shit

xp

ugh sorry i really have to get better about checking dates on things that show up in my feeds, he said it a year ago http://money.cnn.com/2015/12/08/technology/donald-trump-internet/index.html

still it is an astonishingly stupid statement

xp

some speech he did around this time last year xp