Summations Only

Actually, what Rrhain actually said in his Message 1320 was: So in Rrhain's view the primary alternatives available to the potential 3rd party voter are:

1. Vote 3rd party with the possible result that the exact opposite of your goals are advanced.
2. Vote for Clinton with the possible result that a good many of your goals are advanced.

So you're not addressing what Rrhain actually said. This is something you do a lot, respond to points not made or to points modified to make them obviously wrong. I'm not sure why you dropped into the present tense, but I'll respond to this exactly the way you said it. Neither Rrhain nor I think voting 3rd party is unacceptable. That's stupid.What I believe (and I think Rrhain, too - Rrhain, sorry if I get your views wrong, I'm trying to come as close as I can) is that voting 3rd party in this particular election carried with it unique risks never before seen in our country's history because the Republican candidate was, and is still, a psychopath (this characterization only just occurred to me as more appropriate than any I've tried previously, and not surprisingly, I'm not the first to describe him this way, e.g., Donald Trump Aces Keith Olbermann’s Screening Test For Psychopaths). What rational person risks all to express a preference between two candidates 95% alike? You're saying the same thing in different terms, and the answer is unchanged: What rational person risks all to express a preference between two candidates 95% alike? Oh, yes, I see exactly what you're saying. You're ignoring the special circumstances of the 2016 election in order to argue that positions to which those special circumstances are central are wrong. Your syntax is beyond me again. My best reconstruction of this is, "Neither you nor Rrhain nor anyone else can claim to know the goal of a 3rd party voter." If that's what you're saying then you'll have to take this up with someone who said something like this, which isn't me or Rrhain. Apologies if I've mistaken your meaning, but if not then do you understand that responding to points not made in a manner designed to make it seem as if they had isn't helpful, plus it pisses people off? I'm again straining to understand you. Are you saying you're seriously comparing Trump's performance in office to some Clinton hypothetical performance in office that you're making up in your own mind? Are you nuts? Trump is a psychopathic megalomaniac. There are few people in the history of statecraft who could compare psychologically, and if you think Clinton fits in any category remotely like that then you've got serious problems of judgment.And what does it even mean "to provide any actual substance against seriously comparing the two things"? You might want to give your posts a quick scan before posting them. Further clarification isn't necessary, we understood you the first time, and you're again responding to a point not made. There are two basic points (from my side, not sure how many points Rrhain has):

• The message that the Democrats put up the wrong candidate is the wrong message.
• This election was the wrong one to risk wasting your vote in sending a message.

My guess is that you're misstating what Rrhain actually said. His actually point, I think, is that it would have been irrational for someone inclined to send a message by voting for a 3rd party candidate to actually cast their vote that way because of the nature of the 2016 election. The example of Rrhain's exact point is voting for Sanders but getting Trump. Voting for Sanders but getting any normal human being fine, but Trump, no, that's a special circumstance, one that must be avoided at all costs, including the cost of a message sent. I see the words, but they don't ring true. You view Trump in too nonchalant a fashion. All the arguments about the dangers of a Trump presidency seem to roll off you. You've even argued that somehow surviving a Trump presidency versus sending a message to the Democrats is arguably a worthwhile tradeoff. It's not, not even close. You exist, therefore it's not impossible for someone to think this way, but you're not making any sense, and if you think there's something special about the problems of the Democratic party versus those of the Republican party then you should spell that out. You're coming across as a very weird Canadian. I couldn't even name the major Canadian political parties, nor the prime minister. I can only guess that your arguments only make sense to you because you have some grudge against the Democratic party that you're not telling us about. You are, yet again, arguing against a point not made. No one is arguing against the right of people to cast their vote any way they see fit. Did I already mention how it pisses people off that you continually respond to arguments not made as if they had? Yeah, I think I said that already. Well, if you're going to keep doing it then I'm going to keep calling this very annoying behavior to your attention. I think I'm beginning to understand Rrhain's "fuck you" outburst now. Another argument against a point not made as if it had. You're a hell of a guy. Perhaps if you gave reasons why this request makes any sense and isn't absurd on its face that would work? Well let me help you out, then. Your line of thought is not reasonable or possible or rational. You're making very little sense. You say a lot, especially about proving Clinton pure and about Democratic corruption and scandal, and very little of it making any sense. Perhaps you need to provide some context. Repeating absurd requests doesn't make them any less absurd. What do I mean by nonsense? Well, let's examine what you say next: That's pretty much what I mean by nonsense. You're making absurd demands and unsupported charges of corruption and scandal and ruining lives. Plus you still have to explain all this criticism of the Democratic party. Political parties of most persuasions are made up normal people and are pretty much the same in character. The Democrats are politicians, the Republicans are politicians, and if you vote for a Democrat or Republican you're going to get a politician. If there's something particularly heinous about the Democrats you'd better spell it out. Well, I'd say everything you just said seems pretty silly, not to mention unsubstantiated and biased. You must have charged the Democrats with corruption over ten times now without mentioning a single specific thing. And again, this is pretty strange coming from a Canadian. It's the kind of specific hard feelings that come from living and experiencing a place, not watching it on the news. What's going on here?--Percy

That's because of population density. Let me explain.Assume a square state divided into square counties of equal area. Most of the state is rural, something that is true of most states. This means that most of the counties are rural, and that most of the area of the map of the state is rural. Urban areas will represent a very tiny proportion of the total area of the map.If rural counties go red while urban counties go blue, then the map can't help but be mostly red, but all the red is a result of a small number of votes spread over a great area. All the red rural districts each with, say, 10,000 votes dominate the map, while the several urban districts each with, say, a million votes look lonely and surrounded.So when you look at the map of Pennsylvania: All that red represents only a tiny proportion more votes than the small number of blue regions. And when you look at a map of the entire US: All that red represents less votes than the blue, and that's because a huge rural area with a small number of votes gets to color in a huge proportion of the map, while a small urban area with a huge number of votes gets to color in only a tiny proportion of the map. Here's a cartogram where the size of counties has been adjusted to be proportional to population. Looks a lot different, doesn't it: This map appears at Maps of the 2016 US presidential election results. This stuff has already been broken down for us, giving the particulars of states that were vulnerable to being flipped, but I can't find those websites now. I think they must still be out there, but I can't seem to find the right Google search string. Oh, wait, here's a Washington Post article. It's not very useful because the images have been blurred for non-subscribers, but it's a start if this is really something you want to pursue: The counties that flipped parties to swing the 2016 election--Percy

Sure. Since you've still got things all mixed up, I'll try again. You're repeating your original argument unchanged and ignoring the rebuttal. Repeating the rebuttal yet again, Hillary won the popular vote by nearly three million and only lost the electoral college because of unexpected shifts in votes in a small number of counties in three states. Obviously she was good enough to win the election. Your position is like saying that after a loss the Red Sox aren't good enough to beat the Yankees, even though they beat them eight times this year. Your position ignores other factors independent of whether Clinton was "good enough," such as Comey's announcement that he was reopening the email server issue one week before the election.It wouldn't be so bad that want to keep falling back on your "lost election === not good enough" false equivalency if it weren't for the fact that you insist that this is the message the Democratic party should take from election, that their candidate was inadequate. That's exactly the wrong message, because it is untrue and would cause the Democratic party to make the wrong changes. You're repeating your original argument again and ignoring the rebuttals. For instance, one of the rebuttals was that it would be irrational to vote in such a way that your worst nightmare of a candidate won. This isn't to say that Trump wasn't the 2nd choice of *some* Sanders or Stein supporters, and perhaps they had perfectly valid reasons, but we're talking about the electorate in general terms, and in general Trump would be the umpteenth last choice of any Sanders or Stein supporter.Your point comes down to, "Somewhere out there exist voters who actually had valid reasons for voting against their own best interests." Every type of person exists somewhere (doctors who smoke, fat nutritionists), so this isn't an actual argument. You make this same error with your corruption argument. When you said, "those lines are not as clear as you're hoping, and a 3rd party vote has just as much validity as a Democratic vote if one votes in an attempt to send a message along the lines of those reasons," your paragraph became a rebuttal of an argument not made. No one is arguing that if one is voting to send a message that the vote is less valid than a Democratic vote. The argument is that this was the wrong election to be using your vote to send a message, particularly in closely contested districts. Actually, your approach so far has been to ignore rebuttals and repeat your original arguments over and over again. You go on to repeat this five more times in this message. This has been the whole problem with your approach. Your response to rebuttals is to repeat your original argument yet again. Yes, obviously, as I keep saying, all you do is repeat yourself. Clearly your'e out of bullets. Now you're claiming that the rebuttals to your point have nothing to do with your point? In that case the way to show that is to address the rebuttals, not ignore them. In other words, you have no evidence of any special corruption in the Democratic party, and particularly that Democratic corruption is any worse than Republican corruption, although you might want to look into Republican gerrymandering and Tim Murphy.It's pretty reprehensible that you argued for Democratic corruption as a reason for voting 3rd party about ten times with no knowledge or evidence. It was all just a hypothetical based on the presumption that (sic) "there's corruption everywhere in politics." I think we can safely put this accusation of Democratic corruption in the category of "making things up." That's not to say there's no corruption at all, but you've admitted you have no evidence for it and that you "don't know much about it" and you don't know how it compares to Republican corruption, in other words a topic where silence was appropriate. Not that you're paying any heed to this, as you demonstrate further on. Now you're pretending that my argument is actually the thread's subtitle? Subtitle's have to be short and pithy, only a limited number of characters are allowed, that subtitle originated quite a while ago, the discussion has evolved since this subdiscussion started, and I've been pretty clear about what my arguments are. Stick to what we're discussing. The problem isn't that I think you're "trying to say something else." The problem is one you state yourself: Your response to rebuttals is to repeat your original point, as if nothing else need be said, and as if almost no attention need be paid to the rebuttals themselves. Sure, maybe there's some poor communication skills involved - which of us is writing paragraphs with garbled syntax?And then there's all the nonsense stuff, like claims of Democratic corruption based on nothing. And like, "I'm waiting on your proof that Clinton is immune to all aspects of corruption and scandal." You can't prove such things about anyone, but I'll tell you what. You prove to me that you're immune to the possibility of, say, ever stealing anything, and I'll use your response as an example of how to prove Clinton could never be vulnerable to corruption and scandal. Not that I believe that is possible of any human being, and I can't even believe you even insisted on asking that stupid question multiple times. Debate also includes responding to rebuttals, something you're doing a damn poor job of. If you entered this thread to make your point and only your point and to ignore the responses to your point, then you should not have entered this thread. Nor any thread with an attitude like that.--Percy

Unaltered repetitions of already rebutted arguments is not an argument. It's just annoying. You're again responding to an argument not made. The issue has never been one of a vote's validity. The issue has been one of casting a vote that runs strongly against one's own best interests.--Percy

Well now you're just being misleading and dishonest. You know we don't agree on this, and you had to pull what I said out of context to make your false point. What I actually said in Message 1329 was: See where it says that the 2016 election "carried with it unique risks"? That's in the paragraph where the actual rebuttal and the clear disagreement with you lies. And it's the rebuttal, repeated many times, that you keep ignoring. And just in case you decide to repeat previous responses yet again, making up stories about Democratic corruption and demanding it be proved that Clinton could never be vulnerable to scandal and corruption, are just nonsense distractions from the topic that in no way address the objections to your oft-stated original point.Just in case you're moved to repeat your original point yet again, yet me save you the trouble and repeat it for you:

quote:

---

There are valid reasons to vote 3rd party.
There were valid reasons to vote 3rd party in this past election, even if it helped Trump win.

---

This is your original statement of position, not a response to anything anyone actually said about the ways in which it is wrong.--Percy

Except that that's exactly what it was. Clinton had the biggest popular vote margin of a loser in the history of the country. That type of thing, something that's never happened before, is the very definition of an anomaly.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Add quoted text.

Well, that's an interesting response. Someone responds to a claim that something that was definitely an anomaly (the largest popular vote margin ever in an electoral college loss) was not an anomaly, and your reaction is that it's "irrelevant" (it's not, and it's even part of your first and last points in your list of points for why Clinton lost) and boring (it's not, but what's boring is highly individualistic, so if it's boring to you, so be it). Only Maine and Nebraska allocate electoral college votes by congressional district - given that only Maine split its districts (all two of them), this might not be an appropriate item for a list of reasons why Clinton lost. Or did you include this because you think there's a discouragement factor for minority party voters in gerrymandered districts? You've expressed this as if you were talking about the day of the vote, which is not the way I think you intended to say this, but I'll first respond to this exactly as written. This can never be true while the polls are still open, for obvious reasons.What I think you really mean is that excess votes beyond the number attained by the losing candidate have no additional beneficial effect. Calling them "irrelevant, wasted and unimportant" is to say things about votes that aren't true. I'm glad you changed the message subtitle, because for me that was just the original subtitle of that particular subdiscussion that I joined, not a position that I held. Plus the topic implied by that subtitle was not what's been discussed recently. The position I've been advocating is that this was the wrong election to be sending a message to the Democratic party by voting 3rd party - there was too much at stake. The policies advanced by a Trump administration would be antithetical to Stein or Sanders advocates. The truth of this was blatantly obvious before the election - it isn't as if Trump's, uh, unqualifications as a President weren't obvious before he took office. It isn't a question of accepting the results. Of course we accept the results. But one can't absolve Trump voters for voting for Trump. That he's a Republican should make no difference, and he's not even really a Republican. He's not an evangelical, either, but they voted for him, too.The real conundrum of the 2016 election is how one runs against a lying, scheming populist when half the voters are so stupid they think the sun revolves around the Earth. I think the voters deserve a large share of the blame. Too many voted for a charlatan. Many seem to realize that now, but Trump's character was as obvious before the election as now. It isn't as if they have any excuse beyond not paying close enough attention.One item you could add to your list of reasons why Clinton lost: people who voted for Trump not because they liked him or agreed with his policies but because they were unhappy with the status quo and thought he would shake things up in Washington.--Percy

For the sake of discussion let's just accept all the criticisms you just laid out. Clinton and the Democratic party treated Sanders abominably and so alienated so many voters that they didn't vote or voted third party. If that's the reason Clinton lost, that she's responsible for the fact that too many voters, in effect, threw a tantrum, picked up their votes and went home, then I think we have to blame the voters. There's a primary process every four years, and all the candidates but one lose in each party. This is obvious to everyone. How many Sanders supporters who didn't vote for Clinton do you think are now saying, "Yep, Trump's president now, and I'm happy with that, because I sure taught Clinton a lesson!"The answer has got to be, "Few, if any." No one in a position to recognize the dangers of Trump (which supposedly all Sander's supporters are intelligent enough to recognize) has any excuse for voting in a way that helped Trump get elected.--Percy

I just went through this with Stile - we're going to do this again?This was not the right election for a protest vote. Clinton earned Democratic votes by winning the Democratic primaries. There must be extremely few, if any, Sanders or Stein voters (or vote withholders) out there who are satisfied with the result that Trump is president. They might have "voted the way they felt", but they got a result opposite to what they intended. If your vote contributes to a result opposite (Trump elected) to the one you intended (Clinton elected but clearly seeing the tally of a large number of protest votes), that's a pretty strong indication that you miscast your vote. Yeah, I'm familiar with the ideas for alternative systems of voting, but the odds of any of them being adopted in my lifetime are nil, so it isn't a topic that interests me. Well, purists always have their reasons, but when the barbarians are at the gates, one doesn't refuse to fight because one wanted a different general, not if one doesn't want to be quite correctly blamed if a barbarian victory results. Trump received 57% of the electoral vote and 46.1% of the popular vote. Well, two problems with this. First, you just finished emphasizing the electoral college vote while ignoring the popular vote, but here you properly put it in terms of appealing to "more people" not "more electors," (of course the latter isn't possible in any planned way). In the 2016 election Clinton appealed to nearly three million more people than Trump. Again, I think you've identified the wrong problem. It isn't that Clinton didn't appeal to enough people, it's the way their votes mapped onto the electoral college that caused the loss. You're also ignoring the Comey factor. And running against charismatic populists is fraught with peril, as the Italians discovered repeatedly with Silvio Berlisconi, and as the Austrians just discovered with Sebastian Kurz, though maybe not so much charisma for Mr. Kurz.And second, this just repeats Stile's position using different language, that Clinton wasn't "good enough," and that that's the lesson of the Democrat's 2016 loss. As I've argued at length in messages upthread, that's the wrong lesson.--Percy

The deja vu is strong in this one. I wouldn't ask you to go off and read a research paper or a website or a thread at some other forum or another thread at this forum or even this entire thread, but it does seem reasonable to request that you read the messages I just finished posting to Stile in just the past week. When you disagree and provide the exact same arguments as Stile, you should have continued with, "Now I know that your response to Stile when he raised this very same objection was such and so...", and then continue on from there. But you seem to want me to repeat with you the very same discussion I just had with Stile.You're as remarkably blas about Trump as Stile. The international community, including the UK, understands the disaster that is Trump. It remains a mystery why you and Stile think think four years of Trump is a reasonable tradeoff to get the message to the Democrats that Clinton wasn't a good enough candidate. It's not true and not the right message. Well if you want to be that way about it then in that case nominations earn no votes. The reality is that both parties run multiple candidates through the primaries, but once one is nominated the parties get behind their respective candidates. The differences between the parties and their respective nominees are far, far greater than the differences between the primary candidates of the respective parties.There were at least 12 Republican candidates in the primaries. There is a far clearer message for supporters of the losing Republican candidates to send to the Republican party by withholding their vote for Trump, that they were not going to stand for loathsome,, misogynistic, lying, ignorant, megalomaniacal, egotistical, insulting, jingoistic, immature, vindictive, impulsive, thin-skinned, inconstant, bullying candidates. If a message needed to be sent it was to the Republicans, not the Democrats.Calling Clinton the "lesser evil" candidate is to completely mischaracterize the two candidates. Clinton may not have been the first choice of some Democrats, but she *is* a Democrat with a successful record in both elected and appointed office, not a "lesser evil" or even any kind of evil at all, and definitely not a crazy person with a platform of hate and indifference toward suffering. "Not my first choice" and "lesser evil" are not synonyms. You're repeating old arguments. Clinton was the best candidate the Democrats had, and what is this nonsense of finding a candidate who had a better chance of winning? I hope you don't mean Sanders or Stein or some mythical candidate to emerge from the woodwork, because that's absurd. Plus Clinton won the popular vote and only lost because of the unpredictable way the votes cast sometimes map onto the electoral college. She had an excellent chance of winning the election. To argue that the Democrats could have found a candidate who had an even more excellent chance is to engage in fantasy. What's this rot that you and Stile are all about that the Democrats need to be taught a lesson? What exactly is it that they did wrong before the election that needs remediation? Well, now let's not be silly. Are you seriously arguing that significant numbers of those Democrats who either didn't vote for Clinton or withheld their vote preferred that Trump be elected? Those would be pretty unusual Democrats. People come in all flavors, so I suppose there must be some of Democrats who fit that description out there somewhere, but not in any meaningful numbers worth talking about. Eh, old boy? How does that make any sense? You're hypothetical scenario is that you're a Democrat who doesn't want Clinton to become President, even though the only alternative is Trump? So it's okay with you that Trump became President, because at least that awful Clinton didn't become President and now the Democratic party can learn from that? Can you or someone remind me what was so horrible about Clinton, the only candidate with both elected and appointed experience, and the only candidate who wasn't insane? You're making as little sense writing from the UK as Stile did writing from Canada. Upon what are you basing these strong negative feelings about the Democrats and these strong positive feelings for some unnamed third party.Your idea of teaching the Democrats a lesson by getting Trump elected moves me to paraphrase something a commander once said in Viet Nam: "We had to destroy the nation in order to save it." The electoral college system is the reality. Blame it if you like, but you may as well blame the air because it isn't going to change. Well, that certainly makes no sense. By what crazy logic would electing Clinton have pushed us closer to becoming Trumpists, who, if I haven't said it already, isn't really a Republican. He's a nut job with a collection of positions that gained him a coalition of unlikely bedfellows, like rednecks and evangelicals, and who was able to use his success in the primaries to take over a very reluctant Republican party.Returning to the barbarian analogy, the barbarians overrunning of Rome in 476 AD was not step 1 of a multistep lesson plan leading to greater good in the future. In the same way, Trump is not step 1 toward a greater America. We're going to have to find the will, the resolve and the resourcefulness to survive these four years of chaos and hope that there's enough left at the end to pick up the pieces and move forward. This ignores the fact that the final tally of the votes in the electoral college is just the final step of a long process that began with people casting votes at polling stations. It makes no sense to focus exclusively on the final electoral college tally and ignore the fact Clinton won the popular vote by the largest margin of a losing candidate in the country's history, or ignore the fact that the number of votes that carried Trump over the top in the electoral college was miniscule. Uh, yeah, that's what I just said. You must have been trying to say something else, because as written this looks just dead wrong. The way the vast majority of electors cast their votes is definitely based upon the way popular votes were cast. There were extremely few faithless electoral college votes, only seven. Yes, and very true, and pretty much what I've been telling you. Candidates for President campaign for popular votes, not electoral college votes, though the popular votes eventually map onto electoral college votes. You're just a faux-general planning his strategy based on the last war, always a mistake. Certainly the Democrats should try to win the next election by an even greater popular vote margin than in 2016, and certainly they should seek the strongest candidate, but making plans for 2020 based on how 2016 was lost would be a mistake, and they should also better allocate resources toward gaining popular votes where it will help the most with the electoral college. A lot that the Democrats do will depend upon the Republican candidate. The strategy will vary widely depending upon whether that candidate is Trump or someone else. There *is* the possibility that Trump could face significant challengers in 2020 - it isn't as if the Republicans wouldn't very much like to have their party back. Again, this was not the election to pick up your vote and go home. Too much was at stake, and there was never any doubt about this. Trump is the same person as President as he was as a candidate. Those Democrats who voted (or didn't vote) in a way that aided Trump's election obtained a result opposite to their intention, and as argued earlier in this message, their intention was not Trump. There are no reasonable people out there arguing as you are that Trump is the first step toward an improved Democratic party. There's not even any reason to believe that the Democrats are the answer. Why not the Republicans (again, Trump's not really a Republican). Well, I certainly hope that the lessons have nothing to do with better ways to sell snake oil, because that's what guys like Trump and Berlisconi do. That's actually not a bad analogy. How does one counter a snake oil salesman who's telling the crowd that his elixir will cure rheumatism and indigestion and the common cold? Everyone in the crowd wants to believe this is true, the the cost of a bottle of elixir is only a nickel (analogize to a vote), what's the harm? Let's give it a try, says the crowd. Then everyone who buys a bottle has the runs for a week.Of course the analogy breaks down, because while in the analogy only the people buying the elixir suffer, here in the real world where we're talking about an election result we all suffer. It's my funeral? Huh? Are you under some delusion that I'm a Democrat? I abhor both political parties. Ain't gonna happen. You're living in fantasy land. Something equally ignorant would be to tell you that the solution to Britain's problems is to replace your Parliamentary system. But it ain't gonna happen, is it. Well that's a silly thing to say. You not only don't seem to realize how ridiculous that possibility is, you even seem to think I agree with you about it. What are you smoking? Agreed, although I expressed it in different terms when I discussed this with Stile. I said first you select your nominee, then you strategize on how to win the popular vote in ways that wins the most electoral college votes. It's the fault of the Democratic Party's voting system? Maybe you shouldn't be writing posts after midnight. Says the person from the UK while being remarkably unspecific. Trump has a base of voters who look at what is going on in the White House and think everything's normal. They are mainly to blame, but they are not going away.--Percy

The way you're introducing your "another line altogether" is a return to an argument you tried before and that I rebutted before.You do go on to make different points, but before I address them let me again reply to that old argument you just repeated and state, again, that I am not deciding what anyone's best interests are. The argument was that for almost anyone who is a Democrat, the election of Trump cannot possibly be anywhere near their best interests. If you want to argue that there's a sizable enough proportion to be worth talking about of those Democrats who didn't vote for Clinton or who didn't vote at all who consider Sanders, Stein and Trump all better options than Clinton then go ahead, make my day. It would make as much sense your earlier demand that I prove Clinton incorruptible.So now let's move on to your new argument: By "someone" I'm going to assume you mean "someone who's a Democrat". Well, we've seen that last sentence (or something close to it) before. And though I disagreed it wasn't because I didn't understand it. It was because it's the wrong argument. In a country this large any kind of voter could exist. The important factor, the one you're ignoring, is whether they exist in numbers large enough to be worth discussing.Addressing the substance of your "another line altogether":

1. Is not immediately negatively affected by Trump's positions and actions
   ​
   On Day 1 of his administration "Trump's positions and actions" immediately and negatively began affecting the entire nation, from his attacks on a free press to his incessant lying to his denigration of anyone or anything he doesn't like to his nuclear escalation to his praise of racists to his divisiveness to his treatment of Puerto Ricans as foreigners rather than as Americans and so forth and so on.
   ​
2. Is immediately negatively affected by Democratic positions and actions, but would very much like them to adjust their current way of doing things and get back to focusing on traditional Democratic positions and actions.
   ​
   Once again you're criticizing the Democratic party while saying not one specific thing you're critical of. I'm critical of the Democrats, too, but at least I'm specific about it. Their alignment with issues that John Q. Public doesn't identify with, like global warming and LGBT issues and so forth, might have too high a profile compared to issues he does identify with, like higher wages and expanding the availability of healthcare, which seem very much like "traditional Democratic positions and actions."
   ​
   Anyway, if you're going to remain critical but non-specific, I can't address this point.

But point 1 all by itself makes it possible to answer your argument that such a person can exist: No he cannot exist, not in numbers worth talking about. Trump has been bad for almost every citizen of this country, whether they grasp that fact or not. Until you can spell out what these "immediately negative effects" are that are "caused by the Democratic position", I can't even understand what you're talking about, let alone consider whether "such things outweigh" anything else. You're repeating yourself from an earlier post, which I already answered. Anything is possible, any type of person is possible, but any Democrat who voted or didn't vote in a way that led to Trump's victory is extremely unlikely to have done so with that outcome in mind. And Democrats who thought a Trump victory a worthwhile price to pay for sending a message to the Democrats must exist in exceptionally tiny numbers. If you think these arguments untrue then you're going to have to explain why, not just repeat your original argument yet again. What a worthless question! Few things are impossible. Do you know how to come to a point? In a country of over 300 million people every type of person in every type of situation must exist. There are probably few policies of any political party in any country anywhere in the world that help everyone and hurt no one. Mangling the English language again, I see. So there you go again accusing the Democrats of corruption, again with no specificity whatsoever. At least you had the sense this time to say "perhaps another word would be better," but you don't bother to suggest one. Throughout the history of this country under all political parties a week has never passed when people didn't lose their jobs. Do you have any arguments that make sense? You're offering this as a criticism of the Democrats? Are you wacko? It's the Republicans that want to take benefits away. Trump just did it again last week when he issued an executive order that will make health insurance less affordable for the poor.You're making no sense. You're criticizing the Democrats over and over and over again, sometimes in generalities that are truisms of all political parties, and other times just in plain generalities that provide no clue about what you might be talking about, which is all you can do since you've already admitted you don't know much about the Democratic party and have nothing specific in mind but are just arguing the point because (sic) "no political party is free of corruption". And today we find out that by "corruption" you didn't really mean "corruption" but some other word that you haven't figured out what it is yet. Because Trump will make things so much better for you than Clinton? The list of adjectives describing Trump would fill a page, but "dumb" isn't one of them. Perhaps you mean "ignorant" combined with "short attention span". You garbled a sentence again (I assume you mean Clinton is "destroying" your ability to provide for your family).What is Clinton doing to destroy your ability to provide for your family? Even if the result is to risk Trump's election? The guy with all the empathy for people in hard luck situations? The guy working hard to increase taxes on the rich? The liar telling you how fabulous things are going to be? Duh! That's what I've been saying all along. You're identifying a category of person that while not impossible must have very, very few members. Is Google not available in Canada? 3rd parties got roughly 4% of the popular vote and no electoral college votes. "Other" got another 1.7% of the popular vote and again no electoral college votes.By the way, what you were talking about originally was Democrats who voted 3rd party (or who didn't vote) in order to teach the Democrats a lesson. That's a different group of people from those who are actually members of 3rd parties or are independents. You mean your confidence in the "very valid reasons" that you keep repeating and that I keep rebutting?--PercyEdited by Percy, : Improve clarity.

Then you didn't read what I wrote carefully enough. I didn't say "Sanders, Stein *or* Trump," I said "Sanders, Stein *and* Trump all." Just how many Democrats who didn't vote for Clinton include Trump in their list of candidates better than Clinton? That group of people might need a room bigger than a phone booth, but not by much. That definitely is not "a sizable enough proportion to be worth talking about." Now you're dissembling. You accused the Democrats of corruption more than ten times and also of ruining families and causing people to lose their jobs. You tried to make yourself sound like someone who knew what he was talking about. All I did was ask about the specifics of these unsupported charges you were making, not have "some sort of political discussion with [you] that [you're] simply not capable of." If you don't want people trying to explore issues with you that you know nothing about, don't make it seem like you know something about them. I'm hopefully beating a dead horse here, but if you're "completely ignorant" about something, and if "it's not required to make [your] point," then could I suggest not saying anything about it? Sure there are, but not in the 2016 election where the choice was either Clinton or Trump. What "perfectly valid and rational reasons" do you think existed for a Democrat to vote 3rd party? You could even question the wisdom of 3rd party members not voting for Clinton, since obviously Stein (Green Party) supporters would be much happier with Clinton than Trump. After being led down the rabbit hole by you regarding Democratic corruption, pardon my skepticism that there are any specifics behind your general claims.By the way, if it wasn't clear from what I said in my previous post, a Democrat voting 3rd party would not be voting for Sanders, who in 2016 was a Democrat who sought the Democratic nomination and was not 3rd party. From context (Democrats sending a message to the Democratic party) it's clear that you're most often actually talking about Democrats writing in Sanders or not voting at all, not about independents or 3rd party members voting for Stein or Johnson. Let's be more precise by saying that I keep rebutting your bullshit about the Democratic party being corrupt. Now I'm rebutting your bullshit about me "rebutting ideas along the lines of 'the Democratic party isn't very good.'" I don't recall saying anything positive about the Democratic party, and I particularly don't recall ever saying it's "pretty decent." I do not now recall my exact words, but my thinking on this is that the Democratic party is not especially good or bad as political parties go. But I don't think the Democratic party is "pretty good." As a political party they're okay, like the Republican party and the Green Party and the Libertarian party are okay. None of them appear to be especially good or bad.And of course political parties receive feedback about how well they're appealing to voters through the votes they do or don't receive. But the 2016 election was the wrong election to be wasting your vote sending a message, because of the risk of Trump getting elected. Your counterargument was that sending that message was very important because of the corruption of the Democratic party, which in the end turned out to be bullshit. You really have to ask and answer stupid questions like this? I've never ever hinted that anything is perfect and can't be improved, and certainly not a political party. Is responding to what people actually say beyond your ability for some reason? Why is that not a valid reason to vote 3rd party? Because we've already established that your negative criticisms of the Democratic party are bullshit. You're postulating people who are Democrats despite that "current Democratic policies are destroying their ability to provide for their family," and you can't even provide an example of what one of these horrible policies might be. You are seriously bonkers if after all your misrepresentations, nonsense and errors you think I agree with you. Get something right first, because that's the only way we're ever going to find any common ground. I'm not likely to find much agreement with you otherwise.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Clarify a couple sentences.

No worries. Your previous message that began with the claim that 2016 was "the perfect time to lodge a protest vote" seemed a perfect echo of what Stile had just been saying, forcing me to repeat many of the same counterarguments I'd just made at length with Stile, but in this response you seem to have gone off in a different direction. I know you're trying to be brief in summarizing what I said, but "But Trump is awful" doesn't really capture the magnitude of the malevolence and peril. "The result is counter to short term interests," or words to that effect, is something Stile said, not me. My response was to strongly question his assumption that the effects of a Trump presidency wouldn't be long-lasting and enduring, mentioning climate change, the environment and using the New Deal as an example of something that has had an enduring effect (see my Message 1321).Anyway, what's important is to realize that what you called the "main gist" of my position is not actually the "main gist" of my position. What I was saying to Stile is that the 2016 election was the wrong one to be sending a message to the Democrats that you didn't like their candidate, because in sending the message you would be contributing to an outcome comparable to your worst nightmare. Since you're not sure why I think you're rather blas about Trump, let me explain that it's because you agreed with Stile that 2016 was the right time to send a message to the Democrats even if it contributed to Trump's election. It seemed to reflect a minimizing of Trump's ill effects by judging that the sending of a message to the Democrats is worth the pain of a Trump presidency. Uh, okay, but somehow it just didn't come across as taking the Trump threat seriously. I guess I wasn't clear enough. The sarcastic "Well if you want to be that way about it" part was saying that you were nitpicking about a side point that was just a lead in line to the rest of a longer paragraph that I thought was making an important point. See the 2nd paragraph of my Message 1359. You're stating the obvious. The equally obvious point is that once the parties have nominated their candidates, voting for anyone else can have unintended consequences. To the extent that sending messages to the Democrats by voting for other candidates contributed to Trump's election, those people got a result opposite to the one they intended, meaning that the candidate they thought a shoe-in lost, the candidate they thought most horrible won, and the significance of any message was completely lost in the resulting havoc. But the message to the Republican party is far more dire and of far greater consequence, so why are we talking about sending a message to the Democrats? The Democrats ran a candidate who lost the electoral college by a few tens of thousands of votes that could easily have swung the other way. Big whoop. That's not much of a message.By way of contrast, the Republicans have put a madman in charge of the country. Sending a message to the Republicans to not run Trump in 2020 seems a far, far, far more important message than sending ambiguous messages to the Democrats that Clinton lost and that means they should choose better nominees. I think you should read your own link. It makes clear that polls of that nature at that time (a year ago May in mid-primary season) are not worth much. Sanders is a democratic socialist. He would have gotten slaughtered by Trump. Many Democrats liked Sanders better than Clinton, but most realized he had no chance against Trump, or against almost any reasonable Republican candidate. That understanding probably contributed to Clinton earning the Democratic nomination. He would have been annihilated. Well, I'm not a Democrat, so my thinking would have been slightly different, something like, "He's not an insane, malevolent force, so like him or not, vote for him." But as you point out later, there are many people out there who only lean Democratic or lean Republican, and there are also a fair number of true independents, so Sanders' democratic socialist background would have been a killer in the general election. Then who? You can cross Sanders off your list for the obvious reason, so who else? No system is perfect for choosing a political party's nomineee, so maybe improvements could be made and maybe even a better system exists, but changes of the magnitude that you talk about later are simply not in the cards. Well, it's only an opinion about nomenclature, so I don't know that it matters how widely shared it is, but I look at it this way. Euphemistically characterizing a choice between two candidates you don't like as "choosing the lesser of two evils" is fine, because everyone understands what you mean and knows you don't mean the candidates are actually evil.But you can't use that phrase when one of the candidates is Trump, because Trump is truly evil in the actual sense of the word. A choice between Clinton and Trump cannot be termed "choosing the lesser of two evils" because it is no longer euphemistic. The euphemistic quality is lost because Trump *is* actually evil and Clinton is not. Sanders' history as a democratic socialist left him no chance in the general election. Come up with some specific names and transform your hypothetical into something that can actually be discussed. Then the lesson you're talking about has to be directed not at the Democratic party but at the people who vote in primaries. What you're actually saying is (sic), "I'm ignoring Trump and just considering Clinton as if she ran in a vacuum." Instead of phrasing what I said as a question let me just state it as rebuttal: The number of people who withheld their vote from Clinton while believing their action had true potential for resulting in a Trump election must be very small. The more substantive factor is that the polls showing Clinton with a substantial lead must have convinced many it was safe to vote that way. Why not? In every Presidential election year each party runs a number of candidates through the primary system and arrives at a single candidate. Clinton won the Democratic nomination. To say that it is not okay that Clinton was the only viable alternative to Trump is to ignore reality. Nothing else could have happened. There are only two major parties in the United States, and in almost every election there have been only two viable alternatives, and obviously each party's nominee had substantial numbers of people who would have preferred a different nominee.The only way for there to have been additional viable alternatives is with multiple parties, but that's not a realistic possibility in the United States. We don't have a parliamentary system of governing, which is more encouraging of multiple parties. Occasionally there have been viable third parties here in the US, but not often and not for long. Well now you're sounding like one of those sour grapes voters who says, in effect, "My party didn't nominate a candidate I like, so I'll do something (or nothing) with my vote that and risk contributing to the election of a President who is unqualified in almost every imaginable way and who represents a danger to the country and the world and who wouldn't get my vote were you to hold hot coals to my feet." Really? I don't understand you. You're sounding blas about Trump again, as if four years of Trump is no big deal.
Drawing precisely such comparisons between candidates so as to realize the ever-present dangers Trump represents is extremely important. It's critical to informed decision making. A "difference of perspective" that ignores the relative merits of the two candidates is something I will never understand. It isn't a matter of disagreeing with you - you're not even making sense to me. But that's not blaming the electoral college system, and that's definitely not what I'm doing. There *are* places to properly place blame. Part of it is the way popular votes mapped onto electoral college votes, which is just an explanation that how things break down at a detailed level in the electoral college is difficult to predict. Part of it is the polls that showed Clinton with a substantial lead. Part of it is the Comey reopening of the email server investigation just before the election.I see the electoral college as a well known reality that we have to deal with, not an object of blame. Yes, I understood that, but it's not going to happen. Changes *do* happen, but at a glacial pace. What could happen by 2020? Changes in a state or two in the way they allocate electoral college votes? That's possible. Changes in a state or two in the way states elect delegates for the convention? That's possible. Changes in the electoral college? No way.But most likely, nothing will change. Well, I'm glad you're "not interested particularly in a 'Why was Clinton problematic' debate." And of course Trump is so much further to the right than any Democratic candidate, real or imagined, that this point is moot. Democratic dreams of taking over the Senate in 2018 are just that - dreams. Far more Democrats than Republicans are up for reelection in the Senate in 2018.Democrats taking over the House is a possibility, but only that, a possibility. Between Republican gerrymandering and voter discouragement tactics and control of most state houses, this doesn't seem too likely either. Naturally Trump's dismal performance in office is helping Democratic chances, but still, they have a big margin to overcome and the Republicans have thrown a lot of obstacles in their way. That's like saying only the cake matters, not the ingredients and process that went into making it. Sure you are. You had just said, "Only former [the final electoral college tally] actually matters." That could be the dictionary example of the definition of "focussed exclusively on one thing." I think never mentioning it pretty much constitutes ignoring it. Oh, okay, I see. When you said, "They are also not based on popular votes across the nation," you didn't mean "popular votes within each of the states of the nation," you meant "the nationwide popular vote". Well, yes, of course, something I've said many times, usually saying something along the lines of the way popular votes map onto the electoral college. The fact that I didn't happen to repeat it this time doesn't mean I've forgotten or abandoned the position. Not what I meant. The analogy was with things like the Maginot Line, very appropriately "characterized as a mistake," a strategy based on the assumption that future wars would be like WWI. In other words, the Democrats are not going to win 2020 by fighting 2016 all over again. For example, putting their effort into winning those key districts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania? Not necessarily a bad idea, but probably not how they're going to win 2020. Your argument wasn't ignored. I didn't respond to it because it was a counter to an argument I never made. Their intention isn't relevant to my argument. When I say that they obtained a result opposite to their intention, I wasn't implying that their intention was to keep Trump out. I was responding to your argument that they wanted to send a message to the Democratic party. They probably thought they had the luxury to do that because they thought Clinton would be elected anyway. But they got the opposite result. The person they thought would be elected wasn't, the person they thought would lose the election didn't, and the message they supposedly sent to run better candidates than Clinton in order to pick up more votes was wrong because Clinton won far more than enough votes to win the election, more than any loser in US history, just not in the right places. Huh? How does that make any sense? The whole idea of selling snake oil is to make very appealing but false claims. How could any honest person find something to suggest that is more effective than the claims made for snake oil?It's a genuine conundrum that shouldn't have to be explained. People like to hear what the snake oil salesman tells them. It's very appealing. But the claims made for snake oil are false. How do you convince the crowd that they're false?Let me use a different and more direct example. How would you convince the people of Trump's base that most of what he says is lies? Not getting this one. Isn't that more a lesson for the Republicans? The party that got themselves co-opted by "the worst candidate you've ever seen." That's not a problem I'm putting forward or trying to solve. That's just factual backdrop that the candidate who won the popular vote lost the electoral college. I'm still arguing the same point I made when I entered this discussion, that this was the wrong election to be using your vote to send a message to the Democrats that Clinton was an inadequate candidate (Stile's view) or the Democrat candidate selection processes need improvement (you). So, you're not living in fantasy land, huh. In that case give me some real examples of how you'd change the primary process that would fix the problem of producing inadequate candidates *and* have a prayer of being adopted. Perhaps you want to change the caucuses to elections? Change the calendar? Eliminate superdelegates? Change the delegate structure? You can find the details of the process at United States presidential primary at Wikipedia. Happy hunting. Well, more accurately, you're suggesting that improvements be made. You're not actually suggesting any improvements that have a chance of implementation. That's just absurd. In every Presidential election one of the parties loses. There was nothing special in this election or its candidates that screams out "fix the voting system." I'm drawing a blank. Where did you give an "alternative method," one that has a prayer of being adopted? We'll never know if Clinton lost for that reason. That kind of data doesn't exist. What we know is that many Democrats and people who leaned Democrat were unhappy with Clinton as a candidate. My point is that to the extent these people cast or withheld their vote in ways that contributed to Trump's election, they got a result far worse than they ever imagined. And questioning what you were smoking. Don't forget that one. I think there were just the three, plus a number of comments along the lines of "you're not making any sense." I hope you're not taking those personally. I was trying to inject sarcasm as a way of emphasizing how far outside the realm of the rational a particular argument seemed to me. Keep in mind that you *are* the one making detailed comments about an election in a foreign country. You're just repeating your argument about picking better candidates. I no more know the outcome of events in alternative universes than you do. If you think you know of candidates better than Clinton then name them and we can discuss them and their chances. This is just more nonsense. You already mentioned the possibility of alternative approaches to voting, I already said I was familiar with them, I don't understand why you're raising this issue again. This kind of selection of candidates is not going to happen here at any time in the reasonable future, and certainly not within the next couple of Presidential elections.--Percy

The article's by Robert Reich, a former Secretary of Labor under Bill Clinton. I don't know what specifically he's referring to in Obama's administration, but obviously in Bill Clinton's administration he's referring to NAFTA. About NAFTA Wikipedia says:

quote:

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After much consideration and emotional discussion, the House of Representatives passed the North American Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act on November 17, 1993, 234—200. The agreement's supporters included 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. The bill passed the Senate on November 20, 1993, 61—38.[15] Senate supporters were 34 Republicans and 27 Democrats.

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Gee, more Republicans voted for it than Democrats, but ignoring that detail, passage was obviously bipartisan. So why is your hypothetical Democrat blaming NAFTA on the Democrats? And why is he voting 3rd party instead of for Trump, who during the election was openly hostile toward NAFTA? And why is Robert Reich arguing against it since he was Secretary of Labor when it was passed? Anyway, about NAFTA Wikipedia also says:

quote:

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Most economic analyses indicate that NAFTA has been beneficial to the North American economies and the average citizen, but harmed a small minority of workers in industries exposed to trade competition.

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No one thinks that policies implemented by any political party help everyone and hurt no one, and I've already said precisely that in earlier messages. These hypothetical scenarios you keep coming up with make no sense, your lists of things we agree on are things we obviously disagree on, and it is your nonsense that I argue against.What you actually originally postulated were Democrats who were "massively, immediately, negatively impacted by Democratic policies/directions", so they voted 3rd party in order to send the Democrats a message. This is your scenario that I was actually arguing against in the portion you quoted (what you quoted is just the last part of a longer conversation), and I think it's ridiculous.Where you started that I disagreed with was that people voted 3rd party in order to send the Democrats a message that Clinton was an inadequate candidate. My reply hasn't changed, that those using their vote in this way were not acting in their own best interests, since it risked the election of Trump. You're trying to prove this wrong by offering an unending parade of nonsensical hypothetical scenarios, intermixed with the occasional random, (sic) "See, we agree!". I'm not finding it persuasive.--Percy

Yes, it was bipartisan, which means both the Democrats and the Republicans were for it. More Republicans than Democrats, as it turns out. But... Instead of blaming the Republicans who supported it most strongly, he blames the Democrats. And he wants to send a message to the Democrats about NAFTA, which was passed in 1993 around a quarter century ago (so how clear do you think that message is going to be), and which is generally recognized as being beneficial for all country signatories, which makes sense since that's what free trade generally does. Uh, no. As I already told you in the very message you're responding to, Trump is hostile toward NAFTA. Well, traditionally Republicans have been for free trade, but not Trump, so it sounds like Trump's the right guy for this hypothetical Democrat. Again, did it somehow escape your attention that NAFTA was passed in 1993? Trump wasn't in government in 1993 and had nothing to do with the passing of NAFTA. But Trump repeatedly expressed hostility toward NAFTA during the 2016 campaign. Canada is a signatory to NAFTA, so this affects you, too. Here's a recent article from a Canadian source about the recent NAFTA negotiations: What is Donald Trump's NAFTA plan? Canadian experts take their best guessHow does it make sense to follow several paragraphs of error, ignorance, nonsense and contradiction with a declaration that I've somehow provided evidence for your "position". Another declaration that makes no sense. I'm not even going to try to unpack this. You can't take half of what I said, leave out the other half, and then declare us in agreement. I don't agree with you. You mostly speak nonsense and/or error and/or contradiction and/or ignorance, so it is unlikely that I would ever find myself in agreement with you. My second sentence says nothing of the sort. It's about how ridiculous your hypothetical scenarios are, and how absurd your declarations of agreement are. Gee, finally a paragraph that makes sense. Yes, people adversely affected by Democratic policies are unlikely to vote Democratic. And if they feel uncomfortable voting Republican then they might vote 3rd party or write someone in. Gee, and you were doing so well, too. As I already said and you quoted it, no one thinks that policies implemented by any political party help everyone and hurt no one. This is not what you said that I disagree with. No wonder you're confused. Uh, no. When your hypothetical scenarios are nonsensical or erroneous then all I can do is point out the nonsense or the errors. Since you haven't expressed anything coherent my responses cannot be interpreted as taking any particular position or expressing any particular opinion, such as your list above, which is ridiculous anyway. Calling one of your scenarios absurd is not to make up other people's minds for them, or any of that other stuff you list. It's an assessment of how poorly thought out what you're trying to express is. Okay, I'll stop smooshing them together. This has been rebutted nine ways from Sunday, I won't bother doing it again. This sounds fine to me. Since you quoted me saying, "No one thinks that policies implemented by any political party help everyone and hurt no one," why are you asking? Where have you ever said this that I questioned it? This isn't one of your ridiculous scenarios that I've called nonsense. Where have you ever said this that I objected to it? I never said anything like that about voters for Stein.What I've said is that this was the wrong election to vote 3rd party or do write-ins, because no reason could justify risking the disastrous outcome.--Percy