Election 2016

[Kaelik]

but we've already established that you and Kaelik cast spoiler votes literally every chance you get and laugh while doing so.

Without getting into the issue of whether voting for the least conservative Republican who was also a Republican who is to right of literally every Republican presidential candidate in my life time counts as a spoiler vote.

It would only be accurate to say that I used to cast votes in the Republican primary, since I moved to New Jersey many years ago.

[erik]

https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/statu ... wsrc%5Etfw

Pack a venue full of Sanders supporters and Trump supporters? Sure, what could possibly go wrong?

[DSMatticus]

The part I don't get is where you think this is at the "expense" of the voters. Political parties exist to advance the agendas of their coalitions, nothing more, nothing less. Those coalitions are made up of voters. The fact that the Republican Party spends its time thinking up new ways to be dickish to trans people who want to go to the bathroom is not a failure of democracy or the voters being disenfranchised, that is what the Republican voters want the party to do!

You are seriously making a libertarian argument in which corporations political parties will obey the wishes of their customers voters because it is in their best interests to do so. The entire point is that when there are only two firms those arguments fall the fuck apart because it is inherently difficult to express dissatisfaction by choosing a competitor. Meanwhile, the start of this conversation is you complaining "Washington state's primary and caucus had different results and that's bullshit." How does letting voters clearly state their desired agenda in the primary and then deliberately fucking ignoring them in favor of an easily gameable low-turnout caucus fit into your "political parties exist to represent us" worldview?

No, political parties do not exist purely to represent voters. They are complex organizations with complex motivations, and many of those motivations are inherently undemocratic. The majority of Republican voters actually support background checks on gun ownership, but the gun lobby promises to reward individual politicians with fat sacks of cash if they toss those voters under the bus and so under the bus they go. The entire Republican primary was designed to be a disenfranchising clusterfuck, and when it didn't look like the results would go their way a great deal of the Republican leadership got behind a brokered convention so they could just straight up fucking ignore the results entirely. So forth and so on. And the two-party system makes it easier for them to get away with things like this for the same reason that the total lack of competition makes it easy for ISP's to fuck people up the ass. The less options the people you're screwing over have, the less likely they are to be able to do anything to hurt you in retaliation.

Now earlier you were saying that spoiler votes weren't real, but we've already established that you and Kaelik cast spoiler votes literally every chance you get and laugh while doing so.

This is a fairly minor point, but I don't actually think that's a spoiler in the technical or ethical sense. Strictly speaking, a spoiler candidate is a non-viable candidate whose presence flips the result between the two leading candidates. So if Bernie goes third party, he's a spoiler because we go from almost certainly Clinton to very likely Trump. We are using spoiler votes to talk about something slightly different that is also bullshit; helping nominate deliberately weak primary candidates in order to flip the results of the general. That is very obviously malicious and disenfranchising, because the entire result of the election is being overturned by a bad-faith show of support for the weak candidate.

I am not going to flip a district with my actions. The problem is that with FPTP voting, a minority group in a voting district may as well not exist. They are completely voiceless and they will receive zero representation. That is fundamentally bullshit, and in a better system (single-transferable vote with more than two candidates per race; "larger" districts with proportional allocation of seats; etc, etc), minorities would just be a moderating influence and that'd be a fuckton fairer and more representative of the people living in those areas. But as is, the only way for me to achieve that result (i.e. being represented in the results of the election) is to vote in competitive Republican primaries.

[Username17]

The entire point is that when there are only two firms those arguments fall the fuck apart because it is inherently difficult to express dissatisfaction by choosing a competitor. Meanwhile, the start of this conversation is you complaining "Washington state's primary and caucus had different results and that's bullshit." How does letting voters clearly state their desired agenda in the primary and then deliberately fucking ignoring them in favor of an easily gameable low-turnout caucus fit into your "political parties exist to represent us" worldview?

You aren't making any sense, because you're attributing a position to me that I have never espoused. The political party's purpose is to advance the agenda of the people in the coalition, and its means of doing that is entice as many people from outside the coalition as it needs to come vote for it so that it wins elections and has the power to do that. Because this is electoral politics, the act of enticing outgroup voters may necessarily involve compromising some of the coalition's agenda. That is what a political party is, that is what it is for.

And because of that, a political party has a responsibility to give a voice to as many people in the coalition as possible and an equal responsibility to not start compromising on that agenda until it starts needing to attract outgroup voters. Having Obama negotiate the stimulus down with himself before trying (and ultimately failing) to win Republican votes was bad. It wasn't just bad tactics or bad for the economy, it was fundamentally not how this game is supposed to be played.

A closed primary is the best system we've developed. It maximizes ingroup contribution and minimizes outgroup trolling. That is the fucking ideal. Once that is done, the exhausting and expensive task of wooing waffling moderates can begin. But the Democratic Party's agenda needs to be set by Democrats. Because fucking obviously.

I don't really get where you think I support Caucuses, because I don't. They disenfranchise party members from having a voice in the party direction. Similarly, I do not support party membership fees like most European parties. Because those set a barrier to having your voice be heard in the coalition you are a part of. But for identical reasons, I do not support members of the coalition having their voices canceled out by outgroup members casting contrary votes for the purposes of trolling.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

Again, nothing about the Democratic party's decision to hold a caucus helps them advance the agenda of the people in the coalition. It very specifically tells people that are actually in the coalition to shut the fuck up and accept results they don't like issued from a minority of the coalition because reasons. That is what actually happened in Washington state. The voters spoke and the party ignored them. It sure as fuck isn't part of a strategy to entice outgroup voters, because no one ever cares about the structural minutia of the primary until they're participating in that primary. Again, nothing about the Republican party's decision to stand firmly against background checks on gun sales helps them advance the agenda of the people in the coalition. It very specifically involves telling the majority of voters in the coalition to go fuck themself so specific politicians will get more blackjack and hookers out of the equation. This also sure as fuck isn't part of a strategy to entice outgroup voters, because for Republicans outgroup voters are even more pro-background checks than the ingroup.

You're not even fucking responding to me. I gave specific examples in which the parties betrayed the ingroup. We aren't (only) having the discussion about whether or not "independent" voters who are in fact straight ticket blues every election deserve access to a Democratic primary ballot. We are talking about how you are fucking delusional and naive to think that the parties are committed only to the interests of their constituent voters. You are describing some lofty utopian ideal that we are in fact wildly short of it and then complaining how letting independent voters participate in primaries will ruin your fairytale.

I am not claiming you support caucuses. The fact that you don't support caucuses is supposed to be the thing that makes you realize "oh yeah, I'm completely fucking wrong and the parties do kind of shit on their voters to varying degrees in various ways, and our voters would be better represented if we stopped them from doing that."

[virgil]

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politic ... -1.2651043

Because misery loves company. This link and others like it have been circulating around my social circle on this massive scandal...and they just...won't...shut...up.

[Mechalich]

The Hillary email scandal is so frustrating. The whole thing only happened in the first place because the IT situation of the federal government is so impossibly horrible. It's so horrible that everyone outside the government fails to even imagine how horrible it actually is. Every single federal employee who logs on to a computer on a daily basis from lowly ticket booth operator all the way up to the President is violating the accepted policy in some way if they're doing pretty much anything more than staring at the screen blankly.

Did Hillary commit a somewhat greater number of technical violations than the average employee? Sure, she's a hard charging person in a high powered position. Complying with the minutiae of federal records law as it applied to email is probably not something she cared about and, importantly, not something any of her subordinates were prepared to call her on. Aside from the fact that she that she chose to run for President, none of this is meaningful at all.

The real story is not any wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton, but that government IT is so bad the Secretary of State needed to use a private system to feel confident her email would work when she needed it too!

[Ancient History]

http://thedailybanter.com/2016/05/six-r ... president/

"Our president is fucking cool."

I think this needs to be repeated, because it's something that is going to be a lot more important going forward.

[Eikre]

Yes, of course it's important. That is, indeed, what happens when your head-of-state and head-of-government are the same person. Obama's service as the former has been essentially beyond reproach. He's like the fucking Queen Elizabeth, over there.

Trump's popularity is predicated on the same exercise in cache. The kind of Americanism he happens to exemplify is terrible, but it's what his constituents earnestly want to see and that, too, is important to remember. Playing up his blowhard demenor will no more put certain people off of him than you or I would be by an emphasis that the current president is black.

[hyzmarca]

The problem is that with FPTP voting, a minority group in a voting district may as well not exist. They are completely voiceless and they will receive zero representation.

With FPTP voting a minority group gets exactly the same representation as everyone else. The difference is that they don't get the representative that they want, but the representative they get is still obliged to represent them and serve their interests.

[DSMatticus]

The problem is that with FPTP voting, a minority group in a voting district may as well not exist. They are completely voiceless and they will receive zero representation.

With FPTP voting a minority group gets exactly the same representation as everyone else. The difference is that they don't get the representative that they want, but the representative they get is still obliged to represent them and serve their interests.

That's... not true? Unless you mean in some feel-good sense of how we're all in it together and the winners need to work with the losers to make everyone happy. Because that shit don't happen.

Realistically, you are "obliged" to represent the interests of exactly as many people as you need to win re-election, and even that makes some assumptions about sufficient competition and informed, rational voters. Votes that don't go towards claiming a seat don't matter. Those people could spontaneously stop existing without changing the results of the election, so why would someone whose goal is "win elections" care about them? These kinds of votes are called wasted votes. If you smash a bunch of districts together and allot their combined seats proportionally, you'll (ideally) reduce the percentage of wastes votes. If you do have a single seat voting district, single-transferable vote (and more than two candidates) will also reduce the number of wasted votes (since you're more likely to end up with a candidate somewhere in the middle who has a huge percentage of the final vote share).

[Kaelik]

The problem is that with FPTP voting, a minority group in a voting district may as well not exist. They are completely voiceless and they will receive zero representation.

With FPTP voting a minority group gets exactly the same representation as everyone else. The difference is that they don't get the representative that they want, but the representative they get is still obliged to represent them and serve their interests.

I know you believe in the magic power of the free market and shit, so you believe all sorts of nonsense because you can't understand how incentives actually work, but uh... No, not at all.

Hillary Clinton will continue to get all the Atheist votes even if she makes it her official fucking policy to shoot all atheist congressmen (all zero) on sight, and build a monument to the ten commandments on every federal building. Because Donald Trump will still murder us. Hillary Clinton gets all the Mexican votes even if she promises to build a 10ft wall, because she's not promising to build a 30ft wall and deport all the citizens who aren't even illegals.

FPTP's primary specific effect is to take 100% of the voting power away from the left and right most 24% of voters. That can be fought against if that class includes all the fucking money, but since it doesn't on the left, it means that the left most 24% of the voting block gets to rot in the whole of being ignored forever. Even if Sanders were actually a good candidate who really did represent the leftmost edge instead of a crazy man, he still wouldn't win the nomination, and Clinton would still go into the general counting on the lefts support, while knowing that the number one most important goal of her life is to never ever ever ever ever ever ever admit that she is as left leaning as she actually is, because even though Hillary Clinton is a classic triangulator who may have actually invented the concept, she is still to the left of what she has to pretend to be to get the votes that actually matter, which, again, aren't ours, because the left is going to vote for her no matter what.

[erik]

We could be in trouble...

Trump finds running mate:

[hyzmarca]

The problem is that with FPTP voting, a minority group in a voting district may as well not exist. They are completely voiceless and they will receive zero representation.

With FPTP voting a minority group gets exactly the same representation as everyone else. The difference is that they don't get the representative that they want, but the representative they get is still obliged to represent them and serve their interests.

That's... not true? Unless you mean in some feel-good sense of how we're all in it together and the winners need to work with the losers to make everyone happy. Because that shit don't happen.

No. I mean in the sense that that's the fucking job. A representative's job is to represent all the people in his district. The President's job is to represent all the people in the country. His job is not to represent only the people who voted for him.

Winning elections isn't a job. An election is a job interview. The actual job is representing everyone.

[DSMatticus]

With FPTP voting a minority group gets exactly the same representation as everyone else. The difference is that they don't get the representative that they want, but the representative they get is still obliged to represent them and serve their interests.

That's... not true? Unless you mean in some feel-good sense of how we're all in it together and the winners need to work with the losers to make everyone happy. Because that shit don't happen.

No. I mean in the sense that that's the fucking job. A representative's job is to represent all the people in his district. The President's job is to represent all the people in the country. His job is not to represent only the people who voted for him.

Winning elections isn't a job. An election is a job interview. The actual job is representing everyone.

Have you told them that yet? I don't think they got the memo.

[MGuy]

With FPTP voting a minority group gets exactly the same representation as everyone else. The difference is that they don't get the representative that they want, but the representative they get is still obliged to represent them and serve their interests.

That's... not true? Unless you mean in some feel-good sense of how we're all in it together and the winners need to work with the losers to make everyone happy. Because that shit don't happen.

No. I mean in the sense that that's the fucking job. A representative's job is to represent all the people in his district. The President's job is to represent all the people in the country. His job is not to represent only the people who voted for him.

Winning elections isn't a job. An election is a job interview. The actual job is representing everyone.

hyz are you at all familiar with what happens in reality or are you just trolling?

[Mechalich]

No. I mean in the sense that that's the fucking job. A representative's job is to represent all the people in his district. The President's job is to represent all the people in the country. His job is not to represent only the people who voted for him.

Winning elections isn't a job. An election is a job interview. The actual job is representing everyone.

The only performance reviews an elected official gets are...wait for it...other elections. So you can be incredibly horrible at your job of representing the needs of your constituents, but so long as 51% of them think that you're better at it than your opponent (less if there are more than 2 contenders) that doesn't matter. If your constituency is divided such that say, 60% of the voters think your general approach is awesome, but 40% hate it, those 40% are screwed.

In practice, there are admittedly some limits to this. If things get sufficiently bad for the minority portion that a sufficient number of them start rioting in the streets the majority tends to blame their representatives for not keeping order and maintaining their pleasant status quo, so there are limits on just how badly you can fuck over the disadvantaged. Notably, the less the majority group identifies with the plight of the minority, the more the elected leaders can stick it to the minority, so if there are differences of race, religion, and major socioeconomic divides, you can screw over the minority much harder. Thus conservative majorities in say, the southeastern US, can do way more to the liberal minority because it tends to be black and poor than liberal majorities in places like New England can do to the conservative minorities there because New England conservatives are usually just as white and comfortably well-off as the majority liberal groups. Which is why someone like Mitt Romney got to be Governor of Massachusetts, but why the chance of someone like John Lewis becoming governor of Georgia is effectively zero no matter how bad the Republicans screw that state up.

[Ancient History]

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Hillary ... id/731574/

[Shatner]

http://www.newsmax.com/Politics/Hillary ... id/731574/

I maintain that Texas is bluer than its reputation would imply, though FPTP combined with gerrymandering and the like further skew things.

That said, I would be very surprised if this happened. Not because I think it's impossible, just because "Texas votes Republican" is one of those things that has been written in permanent marker in my brain. After all, this has literally been true my entire life.

[Ancient History]

The thing about Texas is that the cities are very liberal, but the sparsely-settled greater portion of the state is very conservative and full of fucking millionaires. And they've been working the gerrymandering angle and voter suppression as much as possible. But it's only going to work for so long. Texas will flip - and when it does flip, it's going to flip in a big way.

[DSMatticus]

State-wide popular votes in Texas are very winnable for Democrats. I think the perception that it's such a safe red state discourages people from turning up even when it does matter; if hispanic turnout were as high as Texas as it were in some other Democratic strongholds, the governor's office and the state's electoral votes would both be up for grabs.

I don't think Hillary is wrong, and I think just talking about it improves her odds. It's still a long shot, of course - turning "eventually" into "now" will be an uphill battle.

[Username17]

Trump's campaign and the RNC are rather cash strapped. Forcing them to spend money on ad buys to defend Texas is a huge boon to down ticket Democrats all over the country.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Is this cash-strapped thing a case of their big sponsors growing sick of their string of failures (and in Trump's case, his purse running low from just a regular string of failures), or them blowing so much money on attacking each other already, or good old fashioned embezzlement of their money?

On a probably related topic, given the alleged point of SuperPACs is to coordinate donors and make sure it's spent on campaigning and not lovely cruises and coke, how do so many Republicans end up spending it on precisely that during the primaries?

[Ancient History]

The massive divided field split a lot of GOP donors and blew through an impressive amount of cash - but they've also raised far less than the Democrats. A big part of that seems to be donors, large and small, who are unsure about contributing now to Trump's campaign. That might change as he goes fundraising, but right now the Dems have a sizable lead...although as we saw with Jeb, money isn't everything.

SuperPACs are basically independent corporations where people buy the cocaine for you and sniff it themselves. They're great for buying advertisement, but officially they're not supposed to coordinate with the actual campaign (yeah, right) and oversight on to how they actually spend that money is...I don't want to say nominal, but very ephemeral. The top guys at SuperPACs take home six-and-seven-figure salaries but don't necessarily have to produce anything.

[Ancient History]

Well, that was inevitable:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/pow ... ald-trump/