Senate confirms Amy Coney Barrett 2 the Supreme Court by a vote of 52 - 48

[HorusRa2 5,005]

23 minutes ago, caulixtla said:

There are plain simply not enough of those far left (center-left anywhere else in the first world) voters in the US to win elections. We know this for a fact because Sanders, this spring, was unable to get even 10 million votes. If there were a legion of left-wing voters who both supported those populist positions and actually voted, they would had voted for Sanders and he would had won the Democratic party primary. But there weren’t.

Read this from the NPR (hardly a right wing source): https://www.npr.org/2020/03/06/812486517/bernie-sanders-call-for-young-voters-isn-t-working-out-the-way-he-planned

 

I think your take here is a little disingenuous though. If you go issue by issue that was part of Bernie's platform, support for the policies that the "left" purports is supported by an overwhelming majority of democrats and independents (both make up more than republican voters not to mention that some of those policies are supported by republican voters as well). Bernie did not get the votes because he was not perceived to be electable against Donald Trump. Biden and Bernie had the same favorability ratings throughout the primary among dem voters. They had similar favorability among all voters. They agreed with Bernie and not Biden on policy but believed Biden to be the most electable because he would "appeal" to moderates and republicans. Polling suggests that Biden is winning less republican votes than Hillary so that notion appears to have been an illusion in the voters minds about who Joe is. Bernie had more enthusiasm than did Joe but at the end of the day the voters chose Biden because they saw Donald Trump as a unique threat and they wanted what they perceived to be the safest choice to get him out of office. It was never about whether or not they agreed with left ideas. 

 

[stevana229 1,916]

the Supreme Court is 100000% going to repeal nationwide gay marriage and Obamacare. 

[FATCAT 60,888]

On 10/27/2020 at 10:51 AM, Agunimon said:

I'm honestly SO shocked that Susan Collins voted no.

She was allowed to vote no by Moscow Mitch to help her in her election this November, that's how these votes always go with R's voting No.

[FATCAT 60,888]

On 10/27/2020 at 5:32 PM, HorusRa2 said:

You are just simply vote and are pushing for people to vote between republican and republican-lite.

Even if that were true, which it's clearly not, Republican-Lite isn't trying to take people's rights away or actively make people's lives worse. I know you want to feel like you're on some moral high ground because you're voting for some irrelevant 3rd candidate, but all you're really doing is making it easier and easier for the party you agree less with to win & make it harder and harder for the party you agree more with to win. 

You're not only hurting your own cause, but you're hurting actual people when you throw away your vote by not voting for Biden.

[HorusRa2 5,005]

37 minutes ago, FATCAT said:

Even if that were true, which it's clearly not, Republican-Lite isn't trying to take people's rights away or actively make people's lives worse. I know you want to feel like you're on some moral high ground because you're voting for some irrelevant 3rd candidate, but all you're really doing is making it easier and easier for the party you agree less with to win & make it harder and harder for the party you agree more with to win. 

You're not only hurting your own cause, but you're hurting actual people when you throw away your vote by not voting for Biden.

Except as ive told you and others for the quite possibly the hundredth time, your assessment is wrong. On the one hand you say that voting 3rd party is fine if they have a chance to win. On the other hand you vote shame others who talk about why a third party is needed. Moderator you are, but correct you are not. 

The fact also is that I am not hurting my cause because the democrats have no plans to implement a genuine progressive agenda. No healthcare as a right (not insurance as a right). Free quality education. Ending foreign wars. Saving the planet from climate change. The democrats are not going to do any of that. Neither will republicans. And neither will a third party for as long as you and others continue to bully others into voting for the democrat that doesnt believe in their values and will not change once elected. 

[FATCAT 60,888]

30 minutes ago, HorusRa2 said:

Except as ive told you and others for the quite possibly the hundredth time, your assessment is wrong. On the one hand you say that voting 3rd party is fine if they have a chance to win. On the other hand you vote shame others who talk about why a third party is needed. Moderator you are, but correct you are not. 

The fact also is that I am not hurting my cause because the democrats have no plans to implement a genuine progressive agenda. No healthcare as a right (not insurance as a right). Free quality education. Ending foreign wars. Saving the planet from climate change. The democrats are not going to do any of that. Neither will republicans. And neither will a third party for as long as you and others continue to bully others into voting for the democrat that doesnt believe in their values and will not change once elected. 

We aren't bullying you, we're literally giving you the facts. A third party candidate did not launch a campaign that sustained even 5% of the countries electorate. Therefore, it is a race between two parties, Republican and Democrat. If you vote for anyone other than those two candidates, you're throwing away your vote because there is no chance they can win from the outset. Because it's impossible in our current system, your vote is useless. If you don't want to make it useless, you vote for one of the 2 candidates. 

You might not like either option, but in that case you choose whichever party will hurt you and others less. You yourself admit that the Democrats are the lite version of the Republicans in your opinion, so the logical next step is for you to vote for the democrat. 

If you don't, you're literally throwing away the opportunity to be that push to the left. I'm sorry, but your reasoning is just plain ignorant of our current political predicament.

[HorusRa2 5,005]

5 minutes ago, FATCAT said:

We aren't bullying you, we're literally giving you the facts. A third party candidate did not launch a campaign that sustained even 5% of the countries electorate. Therefore, it is a race between two parties, Republican and Democrat. If you vote for anyone other than those two candidates, you're throwing away your vote because there is no chance they can win from the outset. Because it's impossible in our current system, your vote is useless. If you don't want to make it useless, you vote for one of the 2 candidates. 

You might not like either option, but in that case you choose whichever party will hurt you and others less. You yourself admit that the Democrats are the lite version of the Republicans in your opinion, so the logical next step is for you to vote for the democrat. 

If you don't, you're literally throwing away the opportunity to be that push to the left. I'm sorry, but your reasoning is just plain ignorant of our current political predicament.

Your argument is that voting third party is useless unless they get votes. The only way they get votes is if people actually vote third party. They will never get the votes when you argue that they have to vote Dem. A third party will never get 0 votes in one cycle and win in the next. So youre really arguing for people to never vote third party. Surely you see how ignorant youre being right now. 

[FATCAT 60,888]

43 minutes ago, HorusRa2 said:

Your argument is that voting third party is useless unless they get votes. The only way they get votes is if people actually vote third party. They will never get the votes when you argue that they have to vote Dem. A third party will never get 0 votes in one cycle and win in the next. So youre really arguing for people to never vote third party. Surely you see how ignorant youre being right now. 

I'm saying that they can't get 5% of the electorate in polls, not in election results. If a serious third party challenger rose up, then sure vote for them, but to vote for someone that barely anyone even KNOWS is pretty ridiculous..

[caulixtla 2,170]

3 hours ago, FATCAT said:

it is a race between two parties, Republican and Democrat. If you vote for anyone other than those two candidates, you're throwing away your vote because there is no chance they can win from the outset. Because it's impossible in our current system, your vote is useless. If you don't want to make it useless, you vote for one of the 2 candidates.

To be fair here, if HRa happens to live in Maine, it is possible to vote for Hawkins (Green) party without it throwing away his vote; Maine uses the form of Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) where we can eliminate multiple candidates per round. It works like this: On the Maine ballot this year, we can rank candidates (favorite candidate, second favorite, and so on).  So six of us do that:

GaGaDaily regular: 1) Hawkins 2) Biden 3) De La Fuente 4) Jorgensen 5) Trump

Libertarian 1) Jorgensen 2) De La Fuente 3) Biden 4) Hawkins 5) Trump

Suburban moms (2) 1) Biden 2) Jorgensen 3) De La Fuente 4) Hawkins 5) Trump

Bigots (2) 1) Trump 2) Jorgensen 3) De La Fuente 4) Hawkins 5) Biden

Point being, we have six voters: Two bigots, two suburban moms, a libertarian, and a GaGa Daily regular. With ranked choice voting, we only look at people’s first choices each round, but we eliminate whoever has the fewest first choice, then run the vote again with the revised lists.

In Round one, Trump has two first choice votes, Biden has two votes, Hawkins (Green) has one vote, and Jorgensen (Libertarian) has one vote. De La Fuente (Can anyone tell me if he actually stands for something) has no votes. So we remove De La Fuente from the ticket and get this:

GGD: Hawkins, Biden, Jorg., Trump

Lib: Jorg., Biden, Hawkins, Trump

SM (2): Biden, Jorg. Hawkins, Trump

Bigots (2): Trump, Jorg. Hawkins, Biden

In the second round, Trump and Biden get two votes each, but Jorgensen and Hawkins only have one vote. So we eliminate both and get this ballot:

GGD: Biden, Trump

Lib: Biden, Trump

SM (2): Biden, Trump

Bigots (2): Trump, Biden

Biden has four votes, Trump has two, so Biden wins.

---

I have heard the theory espoused multiple times that we have a large number of voters who aren’t voting because they dislike both Biden and Trump, but would come out to vote if a viable third party candidate was on the ballot. The evidence supporting this theory is that over 50% support Medicare for All (it’s more complicated than that; a more detailed discussion is at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/15/poll_medicare_for_all_support_is_high__but_complicated_140327.html) and similar ideas.

I don’t believe this theory because there’s a big difference between supporting an idea in the abstract and supporting an actual candidate who espouses the idea; as per what happened with real-world support (not just support in the abstract) for Medicare for All back when Warren was beating that drum really loudly.

The real world evidence is that when we have an actual candidate, there are not a large number of third party supporters: In the 2016 Presidential election, Stein (Green) only got 1.36% of the vote in California, a safe blue state. In Hawaii, the state where she got the most votes, she didn’t get even 3% of the vote. 

In Maine, we can now test this theory again with another real world experiment: If this theory is indeed true, we should see evidence of this by the large number of voters who vote for Hawkins as their first choice and Biden as their second choice.

Personally, I support a constitutional amendment supporting national ranked choice voting so that we don’t have to keep giving people the “Voting for Hawkins is voting to support Trump” lecture over and over again.