So, we've got a new guy at work. Real interesting guy to talk to, funny as fuck. He's got a bit of a pipe dream gambit going on. He is actively hoping that Trump turns out stronger than expected and grabs the Rust belt, but that Johnson gets into the debates and is able to take Utah and Nevada. Crazy motherfucker is hoping that nobody will hit 270 and that the House gets to decide. His Rational Guy thinks that both Trump and Hillary are too dangerous to let into office, and that the slight chance that they pick Johnson is worth the chaos. (As the House is limited in selecting only from the top three vote netters). Do I think that will work? No. Johnson wouldn't get enough votes to win. He might get enough to tip the house to Hillary, but I wouldn't hold my breath for that either. HOWEVER I do think that the House getting to decide the president would probably be our best chance for meaningful electoral reform in the foreseeable future. The backlash over throwing out the entire nation's votes and handing the choice to the fucking HOUSE would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay bigger than deciding results of a state by a group nine people who can be grudgingly respected even if you disagree with them.This objection accepts the position that voting should be strategic. But it is mistaken, in that it views “voting third-party” as necessarily advancing left-wing political goals. Here’s the important thing to remember about American elections: you either win them or you lose them. If Jill Stein gets 3% of the vote, she does not get to control 3% of the Executive Branch. She gets to control precisely the same amount as she does now: none of it. Unless there is a plausible world in which a third-party candidate could win the electoral college, no number of socialists voting for a third-party candidate will produce a useful electoral outcome. There are simply not enough socialists. Voting for a third-party presidential candidate must therefore either (1) be purely symbolic or (2) increase the likelihood of achieving left-wing outcomes even while losing.
Like all that meaningful reform we had back when the Supreme Court picked the president? Gary Johnson was the governor of New Mexico. He sucked at it. HARD. Anybody who wishes to actually humor his run by acknowledging it will club it like a harp seal. Libtards are libtards are libtards. I don't care if their god climbed Mt. Everest.I do think that the House getting to decide the president would probably be our best chance for meaningful electoral reform in the foreseeable future
I have a confession: I wasn't old and/or aware enough that I could accurately describe the mood after that happened. 9/11 is the moment I really woke up and said "Hey, I should pay attention to this stuff." Before that I was just aping my parents. My impression is that people were upset and frustrated, but that you couldn't describe half the country as livid. If you voted outside of Florida, your vote counted for what it was (if you managed to live in a swing state). The court tipped the election, but they only changed the results of one state. How wrong is that impression? I don't remember mass protests about the 2000 election. I do think that the loosing side across the entire nation would be livid if it went to the house in place of a run off. The House are a bunch of clowns, and their approval ratings might as well be a rounding error. Not to mention the fact that less people will have voted in the mid terms that brought some of those representatives to power. AND the fact that each state would only get one vote, so people in a district that is represented by someone in the minority for that state will feel even more alienated. Which is why I said: Am I saying reform is likely under such an event? No. The nation is pretty apathetic to changing the electoral system. But I think it would be better than nill, which is the amount of reform I would expect to see in the next decade without the House deciding an election. Are you more optimistic?Like all that meaningful reform we had back when the Supreme Court picked the president?
The backlash over throwing out the entire nation's votes and handing the choice to the fucking HOUSE would be waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay bigger than deciding results of a state by a group nine people who can be grudgingly respected even if you disagree with them.
Your impression is incorrect. We were outraged, we were heartbroken, we were rending shirts and tearing hair. There were comparisons to sub-Saharan Africa, there were conspiracy theories about ties between the Supreme Court and Halliburton, it was ugly. Because keep in mind: Gore won the popular vote by half a percent. That's a greater margin than Kennedy. But then, as now, the entrenched political structure wasn't interested in upending 200 years of tradition and gaming to satisfy the immediate anger of a disaffected populace. So here we are: two wars and a recession later, again acting as if a third party candidate makes any kind of sense.My impression is that people were upset and frustrated, but that you couldn't describe half the country as livid.
Do you have a book/subject matter that you'd recommend I read to start getting myself closer to understanding your point of view of where we are now and maybe save some #kbsillyseasonbitchslaps to me in the future? Whenever you talk politics I know my internalization of where we are, and what yours is are very different. I'm young enough that I don't have the not-yet-historical living memory context to pick out a path and get at where you are coming from. I was planing on reading Robert Oppenheimer: A Life Inside the Center. As one of the poor bastards that settled for Sanders after years of wishing that Lessig would run only to see him decide to run-but-not-really-run, what should I read before I pick that up? (When I think KB, I picture a guy brimming with on point book suggestions.)
The Hunting of the President by Joe Conason and Gene Lyons. Here's an excerpt. It pretty much covers the transition from Lee Atwater to Matt Drudge, and the "vast right-wing conspiracy" that Hilary got mocked for but absolutely existed and continues to persist to this day. The electoral cycle matters, but it matters much less than your civics teacher would have you believe. For me, one of the key indicators that Trump is going to lose is the fact that the Koch Brothers refuse to give him money.
I'm not really following. His rationale is that Congress picking one of three terrible candidates is better than the voters' doing so?
As I understand it, he thinks Johnson would be meh as president, but that the nation can recover from Congress selecting one term of meh easier than voters setting themselves up for possibly two terms of terrible. I don't think he's left-wing (he's just out of the military and more vocal about Trump than Hillary), but I thought about him because of this line: Replace "left-wing" with "non-damaging". He sees a narrow path in November where voting third party could increase the chances of a non-damaging outcome. He doesn't think that result would be illegitimate because the pathway to the outcome has been around for a long time, and no one has cared enough to plug it.Voting for a third-party presidential candidate must therefore either (1) be purely symbolic or (2) increase the likelihood of achieving left-wing outcomes even while losing.