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Tom High's avatar

Good grief. Why is it that liberals are so quick to respond to Democratic Party critique by assuming that the critic will be voting for Trump? It’s as absurd as responding to critique of the U.S. role in the proxy war in Ukraine by assuming the critic is a supporter of Putin.

One more time. I despise Trump, and did long before he ever entered the political arena. I would never vote for him, just like I’ve never voted for any other GOP candidate. As to why people would vote for him, I can completely understand that. He has tapped in to two populist threads, and despite not caring about either, he has used them to augment the racist, Christian (fascist) Nationalist majority of his base. The first issue is the continuing war on the middle class and working people by the political establishments of both parties. The second is the power wielded by intelligence agencies and America’s continuing proclivity of involvement in endless war.

Admire Frances Perkins. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has abandoned the tenets of her theory, since Reagan, in favor of fealty to monied interest donors, the people be damned. It sat on the laurels of association with the New Deal, and instead of aggressively pursuing FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, adopted a strategic defensive posture to increasing GOP advances by courting Wall Street and Silicon Valley to win elections, and again, the people be damned.

I will be voting for a third party candidate for POTUS, as neither party in our current duopoly is worthy of my vote, imo. Both place donor interests ahead of working people, neither support a single-payer health care system, both support endless war, and both, currently, are complicit in the most horrific genocide of my lifetime.

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Joan Grabe's avatar

Your last paragraph is totally true, Tom, but voting for a third party candidate gives you a sense of honor and defiance. You are also wasting a vote and a vote in the next election is a precious thing. Please reconsider and choose the lesser of your 2 evils.

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Tom High's avatar

No, voting for a candidate that most aligns with the policy agenda that

I think would be best for the country is an expression of democracy. I don’t give a damn about honor or defiance; your Dr. Phil armchair analysis is laughable.

Get off of your sanctimonious high horse about wasting a vote. It’s a repulsive, anti-democracy mindset, especially coming from one purporting to having a desire to ‘save’ democracy.

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Joan Grabe's avatar

If anyone is on a” sanctimonious high horse” it’s you. Happy New Year.

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Tom High's avatar

No, sorry. Sanctimonious high horse people don’t accuse others of wasting their vote, so that can’t be me. Happy New Year to you as well. It’s going to be an interesting year, that’s a given.

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Richard Sutherland's avatar

Tom, respectfully, you are bright enough to know that it is possible to waste a vote and in fact, to do more damage than good. Frankly, it's a simple process involving the lesser of two evils. Throwing away a vote could get you the worst, such as in 2000 when Ralph Nader's candidacy cost Al Gore the win in Florida, giving the presidency to Bush. Look at the disaster that followed: Iraq and the near depression that resulted.

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Tom High's avatar

No. No. A thousand times no. What cost the Dems were…. wait for it, registered Democratic voters who voted for Bush, in a vote total that dwarfed Nader’s numbers.

If Gore wins Tennessee, his home state, he wins the election. If he doesn’t put Clinton in the closet because of Monica, he probably wins. If he doesn’t pick a Republican as a running mate, he probably wins. If his assembled team in Florida contesting the election result cared about winning the messaging war as much as the GOP suits/thugs did, he probably wins. And if he spoke truths about the illegitimacy of the SCOTUS decision post-Bush inauguration, he probably kills Dubya’s second term, though Kerry’s clueless response to being Swift Boated might still have carried the day to another Dem loss they had no business losing.

One more time; lesser evil voting by Democrats is what brought us Trump. Dems need to start thinking long term, instead of focusing narrowly on the next election cycle. The ratchet effect is real, and has shifted the political landscape/Overton Window to the right since Reagan, election by election, regardless of whether Democrats happen to win, or hold Congress.

Respectfully, every vote cast for a Democratic candidate for President since Mondale has been a wasted vote, because every Democratic candidate who has won has betrayed FDR’s vision of a Party aligned with a working class base, and made it more likely to alienate voters who used to identify as Democrats, by caring more about donors than working people. And as long as we’re talking wasted votes, anyone who didn’t vote for Sanders in the Dem primaries in ‘16-20 wasted their vote, because they voted for incremental pragmatism in the face of economic and climate catastrophe, either out of fear or cowardice.

How do like them wasted vote apples?

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Richard Sutherland's avatar

Tom, without a doubt, one must choose one's fights carefully, just as one must cast one's votes wisely. The obvious normally only comes into focus until after the fact.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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Tom High's avatar

Same to you, my brother! It sure portends to be one of the more interesting ones in my 71 years on this earth.

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Marilyn Fenton's avatar

…perfection is the enemy of the good…

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Tom High's avatar

Cliche much?

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Herb Harris's avatar

A third party candidate in 2016 gave the election to the despicable. That was Jill Stein, and she's on her ego-trip again to try to ruin this country. (I don't disagree with many f her positions. But she should not be a third party candidate.) Also, and I know there were other elections as well in the past, the 2000 election went to Bush because of Nader's third party candidacy. So, if you must, hold your nose, but vote for democracy and the Democratic candidate. Do you really want to see this country fall under a narcissistic autocrat who doesn't care about the Constitution and will ruin everything our founding fathers (and most of the readers here) wanted? Look at the reality of the situation. For better or worse, as of now, we're a two-party country. One of the two candidates will win. A third party has no chance of winning--only subverting the process. So, keep voicing your opinions on issues that are important to you, but vote sensibly. Help save our country!

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Tom High's avatar

Sorry, Herb. We’re in the position we’re in today because Democrats can’t renounce their corporate donor fealty, and do right by the working class and the poor, and it turns millions of voters off.

I already debunked the Nader fallacy to Richard above. As to Stein, do you know why Clinton lost Michigan? It wasn’t because of Stein; her vote totals were exceeded by the number of ballots, many of them around Flint, in which voters had marked a preference for Democrats in every race on the ballot but the one for POTUS. They left that one blank. Why? Because instead of aggressively going after the corporations shilling for the GOP governor who allowed the water crisis to unfold, Obama actually showed up and told the people in the area the water was safe to drink. It still wasn’t. When you betray people, they usually remember.

I will not vote for a hold your nose party, nor candidate. That’s a ridiculous strategy to save a democracy, which we don’t currently have, btw. In case you haven’t noticed, we live in an inverted, totalitarian corporate state, which both parties, and their voters, have been complicit in creating. I will vote for the candidate who most aligns with the policy Rx I believe will best address the pressing issues we face as a nation. Would it be that most Americans voted that way, instead of holding their noses.

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JennyStokes's avatar

Well said.

Neither party deserves to win in my opinion. Two parties owned by money! This is Democracy?

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Richard Sutherland's avatar

How do you figure it, Jenny? Biden wanted to forgive $1.6 trillion of student debt owed by 40,000,000 Americans. Trump and the Republicans, by contrast, gave a $2,000,000,000,000 (two trillion) tax break to a vastly smaller number of wealthy individuals and corporations. Biden's plan would have given a huge boost to the economy, which is now growing better than all the other nations in the world.

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