Where is that guy Shane and the other dude who posts awful with the bear avatar?

I was joking about this last night. I just can't imagine there are people out there debating between voting for Hillary or Trump, like you I think that is near impossible. my guess/hope is that undecideds are choosing between:

Trump vs not voting vs write in candidate
Hillary vs not voting
Trump vs Johnson
Hillary vs Johnson

but people out there making PRO and CONS lists with Hillary vs Trump? No way. I mean yeah I guess they exist but these people must be complete loons

I can accept being undecided between gritting one's teeth for Hillary or saying "**** it, she's awful too" and voting third party* or sitting out*. I can accept, in some sort of weird world, thinking the same thing about never voting Hillary and maybe, kinda sorta, rationalizing Trump (I personally think that's insane, but there's a possible logic to it.)

But yes, if you can't decide between voting Hillary and voting Trump, you probably are too stupid to ever make an intelligent decision so just stay home.



*given these two options, voting third party is unquestionably the right move, not because you want Gary Johnson or Jill Stein to be president because that is never ever happening, but because getting to a certain percentage of popular vote means good things for more choices in future elections, according to most state laws

Empire Man is a goddamn national treasure

Assuming you live in a swing state, voting 3rd party is still a half a vote for either candidate. You're going to get one or the other - so you might want to think about which you can tolerate more.

Someone had a good line that it's like if you're on an airplane and they offer chicken or a bowl of nails and broken glass. "Neither" is not an option. You're going to get one or the other and you have to eat it.

Obviously you don't want nails and glass. But you really don't like chicken. You don't like the taste and you have deep moral reservations about factory farming. You can ask for a veggie option. But assuming the veggie option is out, which it always is, that just means the flight attendant will decide for you - between chicken or nails and glass.

Ya, but you're basically positive you're going to get the chicken. No sense being melodramatic about it when your vote doesn't matter in the pragmatic sense (sorry Thayer, I get the math tho).

Making a statement is the point, it's going to get decided for you so use what little voice you have.

if you are a low info voter and you casually tune into the news your impression could very well be "every time I hate one candidate more the other has a scandal of their own ¯\_(ツ)_/¯" I think that's why Cooper and Raddatz were trying so hard to not be remembered as part of the media that made it a wash between Drumpf and Hillary.

I still don't get why she hasn't asked Donald to name some specific provision of TPP or whatever when he starts ranting about it or to ask him to name a Supreme Court case he disagrees with or whatever. She has a Gary Johnson moment waiting for her whenever she wants it.

hes expert at shifting the focus of discussion tho, its not like he hasnt been asked gotcha questions before

'hey don you fat orange bitch, name a specific provision of TPP'

'look you know what's wrong with this country, its politicians like you who refuse to focus on the real issues blah blah ISIS behead people blah blah emails acidghazi'

this is hilarious


i wish there was more context. i dont think the leaked campaign emails make clinton look bad but theyre interesting to read.

Jumping in for a minute. The fact that Hillary acknowledged what's wrong with Obamacare and the way she broke it down won points in my book. I still think she is evil, but I think 99.9% of politicians are anyway so whatever.

I was watching the debate with a few pro Trumpers who a few times asked, "is he ever going to answer the question?" Last night he had an opportunity to win votes and he decided to turn it into a Yo Momma battle instead. I need to hear candidates break it down like my opponent wants to do A, and here's why that's not good, and here's what I'm going to do instead. Cutting the tax rate from 35% to 15% sent instant red flags to me. How about cutting it down to say 31%, a 20% tax cut doesn't seem doable. That sounds to me like the kid running for high school president who vows the soda machines will now be free. It's just not practical.

trump had concrete policy proposals

he is gonna move the lines around the states

2000 FL Nader voters say hi.

I really got the sense that this is how he thinks his campaign should work; just like he pressed all the right "Mexicans are rapists" buttons to get his base frothing and on his side, if he just pushes the right "Bernie Sanders" buttons he'll get the independents and left-wingers who don't like Hillary to vote for him. It's really like watching a guy who read a PUA booklet 30 minutes before the debate and decided to apply those techniques.

And then Cheney got the guy to apologize to HIM.

I think you gotta remember there's a difference between "winning" and "exceeding expectations." Trump exceeded expectations because he didn't literally throw an incoherent temper tantrum or make waste on the floor in a show of dominance. That doesn't really mean he won, anymore than a 35-point underdog in college football "wins" by only losing by 28.

C'mon, you don't really think Aaron Sorkin believes a woman can be president. Women only exist to be hyper-articulate flibbertigibbets who are somehow competent professionally but a mess personally and only matter when they're making a great man greater!

Weird how Dems always want to blame Nader voters, and not, say, the substantially higher number of registered Dems who voted Bush.

Hillary up 11% in a 4 way poll. Taken before debate but after Pussygate.

This is headed for an embarrassing beating.

Blame whomever you want. But don't try to say a protest vote never matters. Florida Nader voters, among a bunch of other factors, helped bring us a disastrous $2T war that left 5k Americans dead - 100s of 1000s of Iraqis - and helped give rise to ISIS.

I voted for Gary Johnson in 2012. But if I lived in a swing state I would have voted Obama.

Jesse Watters?

I didn't say that. I said we know we're getting the chicken this time and not the bowl of nails. '00 wasn't that election.

Also, it still didn't come down to a single vote so that's not really a counter.

Back to the melodrama.

lol but the bowl of nails! All of it could've been on your hands.

I really wish I never read any of the Sorkin criticisms, because man, it really stands out when going back and doing a West Wing rewatch at times. He uses CJ all the time as this dullard who the other characters break things down for. It's like really Sorkin, the White House press secretary, someone who is intimately familiar with political polling, is too stupid to figure out how the Census would be able to use statistical sampling and needs Sam to explain it to her like she's five years old?

There's some word salad going on here. If CA was in play Obama loses, period. I just told my mom the same thing about KS. Vote for whomever you want. If KS is in play it's a Mondale rout.

I'm sure the families of people who died in the Iraq war think of it as melodrama. The Bernie Bros on my FB feed are using the same logic. Two party system is bunk, burn it all down. Sure I agree. But realize that in the real world that could help hand the presidency to a disaster. And it's much more clear this time around.

I find it fascinating someone as successful as him could get busted at the Burbank airport with shrooms and crack. That has to factor in somewhere.

To generalize:

The values of the Dem who voted for Bush probably aligned pretty well with what Bush was selling.

If you buy that a vote for Nader was functionally a vote for Bush- the Nader folks functionally voted for the guy whose values didn't align with them at all.

2000 FLA seems like the perfect example of where pragmatism >>> principles.

*1/2 a vote for Bush

But that's the dichotomy with your posts, in the real world your vote doesn't matter.

Your posts here impact things more than your actual vote. Me posting about my vote not mattering has a larger impact than my actual vote or lack thereof.

Trump isn't winning, this is exactly the time for a statement vote. Comparing this election to 2000 is errant. This whole election is closer to your position in '12, ergo you're being hypocritical telling others not to make their own statement.