[Ludi]

Can you explain how to get everyone to vote for a third party?

How do you go from about 1-2% of the votes to a plurality in one election season? Is that even slightly realistic? Granted voting for reps and dems is "stupid" but expecting to go from 1-2% to actually gaining a seat is - what? Dreaming, maybe?

[EnergyUnlimited]

Yeah it is, but what do you suggest other than voting or not voting?

Personally, I'll be choosing the pile of garbage, because it is slightly less offensive than the shit sandwich.

Honestly, what benefit does not voting provide - besides (I guess) a clean conscience? "Don't blame me, I abdicated my right and responsibility as a citizen."

You are voting or not - future will be the same.
So why not to go fishing instead?

"Those who are voting deciding nothing.
Those who are counting votes deciding everything" - Joseph Stalin

GWB II (and Al Gore...) should agree with above.
Don't you think so?

[Livewire713]

And the Repubs idea to fix the economy....add 4 trillion to the deficit and cut another million jobs by going back to the 2008 budget....great idea!

[Ludi]

You are voting or not - future will be the same.

I can't speak for the future, but I'm pretty damn certain the present is slightly less bad because John McCain and Sarah Palin did not win.

[gollum]

You are voting or not - future will be the same.

I can't speak for the future, but I'm pretty damn certain the present is slightly less bad because John McCain and Sarah Palin did not win.

I can't argue that, however the democrats have pissed away terrific opportunities at making things better but instead have made choices like suing Arizona over their immigration law and using stimulus money to train IT workers in India or Africans to wash their nuts as opposed to using that money to rebuild rail, nuclear power, solar power, wind power, or any of thousands of things that could have helped this country in the coming years. What a bunch of ass hats. An argument like that is no better than me saying my moms a slut, but you're sister's a whore.

[Ludi]

the democrats have pissed away terrific opportunities at making things better but instead have made choices like suing Arizona over their immigration law and using stimulus money to train IT workers in India or Africans to wash their nuts as opposed to using that money to rebuild rail, nuclear power, solar power, wind power, or any of thousands of things that could have helped this country in the coming years. What a bunch of ass hats.

100% agree. But when it comes down to reality, we really DO have to choose between the pile of garbage and the shit sandwich. I wish it were otherwise, but I do make an effort to live in reality, not some dream fantasy in which unknown third party candidates suddenly leap to power in the course of one election season. We have to choose between a bad present and near future or a less bad present and near future. Honestly, wouldn't you PREFER the less bad?

[Plantagenet]

...cut another million jobs by going back to the 2008 budget....great idea!

Check your facts. Millions more people were employed in 2008 then are employed now.

IMHO, it would be even smarter to go back to the 2007 budget----the unemployment rate then was 4.6%!

[gollum]

the democrats have pissed away terrific opportunities at making things better but instead have made choices like suing Arizona over their immigration law and using stimulus money to train IT workers in India or Africans to wash their nuts as opposed to using that money to rebuild rail, nuclear power, solar power, wind power, or any of thousands of things that could have helped this country in the coming years. What a bunch of ass hats.

100% agree. But when it comes down to reality, we really DO have to choose between the pile of garbage and the shit sandwich. I wish it were otherwise, but I do make an effort to live in reality, not some dream fantasy in which unknown third party candidates suddenly leap to power in the course of one election season. We have to choose between a bad present and near future or a less bad present and near future. Honestly, wouldn't you PREFER the less bad?

A vote for the lesser of 2 evils is still a vote for evil, I hear the same arguments you are making from republicans. The best thing a person can do is prepare himself for the day the wheels fall off this wagon, in the big picture it won't be much longer and quite honestly maybe the sooner the better.

[ritter]

the democrats have pissed away terrific opportunities at making things better but instead have made choices like suing Arizona over their immigration law and using stimulus money to train IT workers in India or Africans to wash their nuts as opposed to using that money to rebuild rail, nuclear power, solar power, wind power, or any of thousands of things that could have helped this country in the coming years. What a bunch of ass hats.

100% agree. But when it comes down to reality, we really DO have to choose between the pile of garbage and the shit sandwich. I wish it were otherwise, but I do make an effort to live in reality, not some dream fantasy in which unknown third party candidates suddenly leap to power in the course of one election season. We have to choose between a bad present and near future or a less bad present and near future. Honestly, wouldn't you PREFER the less bad?

Sorry for butting in...

But if we never vote for a 3rd party, there will never be one.

I don't really think it matters anymore who you vote for. Obama was my last hope in some honesty, integrity and intelligence in the system. He's been hamstrung by his own fucking party. The dems have had control and could have done anything to further a conscionable agenda. Instead, it's been pissed away to support the status quo. I'm done with them. But there's no way I can vote repug either.

[Ludi]

I almost always vote third party, for all the good it does me.

[Ludi]

A vote for the lesser of 2 evils is still a vote for evil, I hear the same arguments you are making from republicans.

Of course you do. But it depends on your personal view of what is "evil" which evil party you choose.

[gollum]

A vote for the lesser of 2 evils is still a vote for evil, I hear the same arguments you are making from republicans.

Of course you do. But it depends on your personal view of what is "evil" which evil party you choose.

They're both equally evil in my eyes, and really not different at all.

[Ludi]

But there's no way I can vote repug either.

You won't need to, because plenty of Republicans will be voting, whereas those who are simply disappointed with the Dems will stay home and let the Republicans win. But by golly, they will have a clean conscience because they didn't vote for evil!

[Ludi]

They're both equally evil in my eyes, and really not different at all.

Equally evil and not different even though you conceded we would be worse off if McCain had won.

So less bad is not really different from more bad.

Okey dokey

[Expatriot]

"Don't blame me, I abdicated my right and responsibility as a citizen."

I love this.
Part of the game of the 1-party system is to guilt you into participating in the charade by beating the mantra drum of "you have a responsibility to vote."
So those of us who have moved well beyond perfunctorily casting our zombie "vote" into the dreadnought are branded "irresponsible."

Ludi is a member of the group I call "Card Carrying Democrats". They're very similar to "Card Carrying Republicans". They believe that the solution to the problem is more of THEIR party. Despite Clinton passing NAFTA, Bush starting wars, Obama continuing wars, and all of the helping to bankrupt the country, CCDs and CCRs really truly believe that, if THEIR guy/gal gets in, things will be better. Or less worse. But it never happens.

It is a remarkable study in human psychology to observe CCDs defending Obama just as CCRs defended Bush.

Obama has made Bush proud.

Yet, the CCRs aren't happy with Obama. They should be.
And the CCDs aren't unhappy with Obama. They should be.

Why aren't they?

Because they cast their vote, by golly, and that makes them good citizens.

I would have loved to meet the equivalent in the CCCP.

"Vut do you mean you no vote? Me? Me vote for Brezhnev. It me duty."

[Plantagenet]

the Dems will stay home and let the Republicans win....

Now you are starting to sound like Obama. And you know what he's been saying to democrats.....

"Quit whining!" "Buck up!"

Daily Kos: Obama scapegoats his own voters

[efarmer]

The most important thing I can envision is that to protect Australia, deathly afraid of Asia and under the American defense umbrella, is that we must ask our Democorps and Recorplicans who intends to commit to protect Australia the best.

We need to buck up and quit whining, and help Australia.
After all on a clear day, you can see Australia from Alaska.

[Sixstrings]

I can't argue that, however the democrats have pissed away terrific opportunities at making things better but instead have made choices like suing Arizona over their immigration law and using stimulus money to train IT workers in India or Africans to wash their nuts as opposed to using that money to rebuild rail, nuclear power, solar power, wind power, or any of thousands of things that could have helped this country in the coming years. What a bunch of ass hats.

Here, here. +1 and a gold star for Gollum.

And, this:

Despite Clinton passing NAFTA, Bush starting wars, Obama continuing wars, and all of the helping to bankrupt the country, CCDs and CCRs really truly believe that, if THEIR guy/gal gets in, things will be better.

+1 on that too. I'm sort of a mixed bag nationalist liberal so I'm doomed to not fit in either party, but anyway I'm sick and tired of Democrats not really being Democrats. Globalist, elitist corporatism runs rampant in that party. I'm glad someone else here remembers Clinton and his NAFTA crap. And then there's say it ain't so Joe Biden from the bankster and corporate owned state of Delaware. Don't forget it was Joe Biden who was behind bankruptcy reform, which they conveniently got passed *just before* the SHTF.

How can anybody call these guys "Democrats?"

Anyhow, it's a pretty sure thing the Senate will go Republican. So that means President Obama gets a free pass and gets to fully play out George Bush's third term. Ironically, like Clinton he'll probably be happy with a Repub Senate -- since he'll be able to tell his base all their ideas are impossible now.

And the Senate may as well be Republican, since Dems have been claiming all along even one conservative Senator can shut down all legislation (they refuse to change cloture rules, and worse they refuse to FORCE Senators to actually filibuster rather than just threaten to).

[Plantagenet]

Everybody voted for change in 2008, and everything got worse.

If people vote for change again, will things start getting better this time?

[Daniel_Plainview]

Thanks to the leadership of President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid, the Democratic Party is facing the biggest defeat in midterm elections in the past 110 years, perhaps surpassing the modern record of a 74-seat gain set in 1922. They will also lose control of the Senate.

Obama's doing a great job -- unprecedented, actually -- of spending taxpayer money and increasing the national debt. Wheee!





The US federal government is suffocating and replacing private enterprise ... so what's the big deal?