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The [2012 Presidential Election] Thread Needs Moar Panic, Less Stacey...Dash? Who the...?
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What statement? To whom?
You are yelling at a house plant in a locked bathroom and no one else is in the house. No one is around. The only person who hears this statement is YOU.
It's only about making yourself feel good cause no one else hears your protest.
You may not be interested in the government, but the government is very interested in you.
Someone else I was talking to recently said something like this, and I cringed.
The political parties both have positions on very divisive issues. Often they are different, sometimes they are the same.
Regardless, if you assume a 50% chance the party agrees with you on yes/no issues like abortion, same sex marriage, legalizing marjuana etc, you'll soon find that there are some (multiple) things that you strongly believe in that both parties believe the opposite on. And that sucks a bit... but the parties will both end up disagreeing with you on things you feel strongly about.
The answer to this is to pick the party that most closely adheres to your ideals, because at that point someone is going to win the presidency, and with a choice between bad and worse you are best off picking "bad". Picking someone like Gary Johnson, unless you literally agree with him on every policy position that HE has, does nobody any good- at least the Paulites are voting for Ron Paul because they agree with his policies, which is I guess a bit better than picking a random third party when the main ones don't happen to line up exactly with what you believe in.
If for some reason your parents tried to abort you but you ended up coming out anyway, and this has made abortion the most important thing for you, feel free to vote republican. If Pot is your thing, vote Democrat, since they are at least MORE in favour of it. If you disagree with Obama on a couple things but agree with the him on the rest, and you disagree with Romney on 5 or 6 points, vote Obama.
Like...it's not hard. It is in your best interest to choose elected officials that best represent you. Feel free to not do that, but you may regret it.
Consider the strategy present in the Democratic Convention. The party went REALLY hard on social issues, connecting them (as they should be) to the opportunities and lives of real people. I think that this is a winning strategy in the United States—it’s all too often that we see social and economic issues separated into separate spheres when they’re not even vaguely separate, and talking about marginialization in the context of giving non-core groups a fair shake is a good way to go about it.
But imagine if Obama loses.
If that happens, imagine the narrative. Obama went too far on the left on social reforms, non-white people don’t even show up to vote that much anyway, supporting gays, supporting PoCs, supporting women, it’s all good and all but politically it’s a lost cause.
Even though the modern democratic party is way behind on social policy compared to where they could be, consider where they would be if Obama lost because people thought he 'went too far to the left'. The 'progress' people talk about would cease for a decade.
Personally, I am voting. That's not a question. I just don't agree with the mockery given to those who don't vote for the two options presented.
The way you presented it just highlights the problem. It does not align with certain moral structures to knowingly support any evil. It is also a personal protest against a system that essentially forces individuals to choose the lesser of two evils as opposed to the greater good.
At any rate. This is not my personal stance. But I do have good friends who were born and raised in this system and through all their voting have never seen it edge towards their personal standard of good. After years of voting, it remains a choice between two evils. They now no longer vote for either, and I can't say as I blame them. I can imagine it's rather disheartening. The irony is, if they finally did choose a topic that really mattered to them and voted on it, there would be a large crowd accusing them of being "one-issue voters". No real way to win here.
Your position is more reasonable, and one that aligns better with my personal views.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
Governing involves compromise because if you don't compromise you produce policy that gets shut down 1 term down the road. Policy never stands on its own, it always requires influence and persuasion to continue to exist, and policy is always judged not only on its own terms, but in the way that it contributes to the American discourse.
So, without a lot of hard work, you're not ever going to get some 3rd party into office that's going to pass perfect or 'good' policies; 'evil' (meaning something you disagree with? Because construing it in any other way makes it sound stupid) always taints governing because you need to agree to things you disagree with in order to pass things you agree with. No one is going to immediately end every American war and pull our troops out of everywhere. No one is going to end the fed or whatever, not with a massive change in the American discourse.
The issue isn't that the American system is broken, it's that people start paying attention to politics every 4 years, think "oh man these two idiots are a choice between two evils!" and don't do anything about it.
They can't "win" because they're not being reasonable. Being a one issue voter is slightly better then not voting but that doesn't mean it's not a terrible way to participate in politics.
This is also known as life. Well, anyway, life outside of Walden Pond.
Voting in the general election is quite literally the absolute least that you can do to influence the political process. Did they ever put in some sort of effort to promote their ideas or ideals through the party that they most strongly identified with?
Indeed, I'm sure each candidate has one one poll in every state by this point.