this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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United States | News & Politics
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Don’t blame me. I held my nose and voted for her. That was hard. I travelled to a neighboring state to canvass door to door for Bernie’s first campaign. I swore long ago that I would never vote for anyone who authorized the Iraq war, as she voted to do. And I happen to be LGBT, and she has never been much of an ally to us.
I set all that aside and voted for her.
There’s no feeling quite like giving up your dignity for absolutely nothing.
My friends and I are all huge Bernie supporters. We still voted for Hillary. We weren't happy about it, but we voted. All the blame against Bernie supporters bothers me. It wasn't us... And to use Bernie as the scapegoat is hiding the real problems in the system and the idiotic choices the democratic party makes. She still won the popular vote. We voted. Gerrymandering sucks.
It's hilarious because the amount of Hillary 08 supporters who voted McCain instead of Obama is much than Bernie supporters who voted Trump.
The whole "Bernie bro" thing was 90% astroturfing. I'm sure a few individuals hopped onto that artificial bandwagon, but I don't expect it was too many.
It's funny because this was supposedly some huge movement and yet i never actually met any of them.
Gerrymandering makes no difference in a presidential election.
It does when the gerrymandering leads to policies and practices that make voting more difficult.
The clumping of whole states into winner takes all buckets, and the way that can subvert the overall popular vote, is identical to the dynamic of the “gerrymandering” proper term usually used with regard to congressional districts. To correct someone like you just did requires ignoring the entire meaning of the word to uphold to a strict definition of the word.
Even with a strict definition, gerrymandering is still absolutely a thing with presidential elections, with Dakota boundaries being drawn to break it into two states to give Republicans twice as many electoral votes.
It's technically not gerrymandering, but the electoral college is a very similar issue.
I didn't vote for Hillary but I voted for Biden.
I completely regret voting for Biden.
Meaning you have decided you would have preferred another Trump term?
Yep. Then democrats might learn to stop running candidates who just look out for different rich people.
Now we're gonna get another wet noodle like biden and history continues to repeat itself.
I don’t believe in this “that’ll teach them and THEN they’ll turn it around” dynamic.
Just think about it. After Trump beat Hillary don’t you think they got just about the biggest wake up call of all? And then who did they run? Biden.
That's because they thought biden could win and they were right.
If they lost twice in a row, then even their constituency would be nominating someone else.
As you say, they were right. Biden won. As long as the wet noodles keep winning, they’re going to keep coming.
Personally I don’t think another 4 years of Trump is worth the low chance that a loss to him would really, finally force the Democrats to change. If that change comes, it will be over time. The old guard is finally falling away as their health fails.
And with the Supreme Court, Roe, etc, I can’t possibly sanction more Trump years just because I think Biden is a wet noodle.
And the Biden administration has been pretty good. Not great. We're hardly moving the ship, but at least it's in the right direction.
I'd rather move two knots in the right direction than ten in the wrong one.
They absolutely will not, that's the whole reason they're there. For change to come they must be replaced.
You vote your conscience in the primary and you do your duty in the main. Simple as that.
I agree. As a Bernie supporter, though, I got a heck of a lot of pressure to “do my duty” even in the primary, because “we have to nominate the candidate who has the best chance of winning.” The shitshow is doing everything it can to move upstream.
This drives me bonkers. The candidate who has the best chance of winning is the one that gets people talking and actually interested in voting. It’s not like there’s a cage match between the candidates and it’s not like the debates actually matter in terms of who wins. Votes are what wins. Votes are caused by interest. Interest is caused by lots of things but it’s not by making sure the milquetoast center right “progressive” candidate is the one who makes it to the main event.
The other side isn’t going to vote for “our” candidate no matter what. We need to get “our” side actually interested in voting. The number of people who vote in this country is pathetic to begin with. It completely defeats the legitimacy of our elections from the off.
Sanders won in polls vs Trump. Clinton lost. The party just decided they'd rather Trump be president than Sanders.
Yeah, and that relates to why I think the focus on ranked choice voting or more parties is a red herring.
I'm cool with both of those, but they're not a silver bullet for our problems. We already have parties within parties, which isn't terribly different than coalitions. And we have at least two rounds of voting to narrow the field.
No matter what you do, democracy is going to be about compromise. It makes sense that you have to compromise more and more as the field narrows. Voting for Bernie in the primary and Hillary in the general isn't that different from voting ranked choice Bernie #1, Hillary #2.
Ranked choice would absolutely still help. The two party state is utterly awful. And while primaries exist and people should use them, let's be honest: most people won't. We need it to be easier to vote for who people like. Primaries aren't that, since they're an extra vote you have to be aware of and take the time to research and vote for.
As an aside, ranked voting isn't what I'd consider ideal for the general election, either. It's still heavily disproportionate. Proportional voting is far superior for ensuring representation. Eg, suppose 25% of the population likes progressives, 50% likes centrists, and 25% like conservatives. Any form of single winner ballot (ranked choice or FPTP) is gonna favour the centrist, even though that means 50% of the population don't get their ideal representation.
Depends which form of ranked choice. The naïvely-designed ones like Supplementary Vote, Contingent Vote, Instant-Runoff Voting, Top Four, Final Five, etc. don't fix the two-party system at all, since they only count first-choice rankings in each round, just like our current system. Unfortunately those are the only ones being advocated in the US. We need Condorcet-compliant systems if we actually want to fix the spoiler effect and end the two-party system. Total Vote Runoff/Baldwin, Ranked Robin, Schulze, etc.
Yes!
Actually, both FPTP and RCV suffer from the "center-squeeze effect", so centrist candidates are at a disadvantage and they favor more polarizing candidates.
As an Alaskan voter, ranked choice is the only reason we have a female, Native American, Democrat congressional representative instead of Sarah Palin filling Don Young's deep red legacy. RCV is equitable and works, but not in the way progressives hope. It allows for the most centrist candidate to be chosen that appeals to the most possible people. A two party system just becomes a battle of political extremes. And like it or not, being progressive is far left for a reason, especially in America. And I consider myself fairly progressive leaning.
Peltola would have won under FPTP, too; RCV didn't change the outcome. The real issue is that there were two Republicans on the same ballot vs one Democrat, splitting the vote with each other.
No, it suffers from the center-squeeze effect and is biased against the candidates that appeal to the most possible people. In Alaska's special election, for instance, Begich was preferred over both other candidates by a majority of voters, but RCV incorrectly eliminated him first. This flaw gave an unfair advantage to progressives in that election, which you may like, but it could just as easily give an unfair advantage to conservatives in a future election, which you wouldn't. (If there are two Democrats and one Republicans the ballot, for instance.)
In my opinion, for single-winner elections, we need better voting systems that do always elect the candidate who appeals to the most possible people, which will allow third parties and independents to become viable, which will open people's minds beyond the two-party false dichotomy.
Yes, and RCV perpetuates that polarization because of the center-squeeze effect.
yeah, my state consistently goes red within minutes after polls closing [obama aside]. it's fucking draining and depressing to even think about