The problem as I see it is that a non vote is still a vote. For every person that doesn't vote the votes that do get counted are more powerful. From my perspective I vote for the person that is the least crazy asshole (ahem Churba. I assume from Apreche's post others do the same on the forum).
So those people that aren't voting for Hillary, who are you going for?
Probably Rand Paul if some cool third party candidate doesn't spring up.
The problem as I see it is that a non vote is still a vote. For every person that doesn't vote the votes that do get counted are more powerful. From my perspective I vote for the person that is the least crazy asshole (ahem Churba. I assume from Apreche's post others do the same on the forum).
So those people that aren't voting for Hillary, who are you going for?
Probably Rand Paul if some cool third party candidate doesn't spring up.
Not gonna happen for Rand Paul. He tried and failed to court the Evangelicals, which opened him up to attack from the Libertarians that supported his dad's campaigns. Those are the committed folks he needs to support his campaign. He and Ted Cruz are also pulling from the same pool of voters generally (Tea Party), and Cruz's star is higher than Paul's.
There's also the inconvenient timing of the whole thing; he's up for re-election in Kentucky this year and won't be able to appear on the ballot twice (which he wants to do.)
The Aqua Buddha thing will likely make a reappearance (kidnapping a girl in college and forcing her to do drugs will not play well with a national audience.) More seriously, expect his proposed "budgets" from 2012, 2013, and 2014 to get a lot of press. Vox has already done some preliminary coverage, but those documents are absurdly radical. If Paul Ryan got wrecked for a document that looks like a Communist 5 year plan in comparison, what do we think will happen here?
IMHO, Jeb Bush (the current front-runner despite not actually declaring yet), Ted Cruz (who raised 31 million in a single week, and the one I personally want to see in the general because Clinton will tear him to shreds), and Scott Walker (the arguable dark horse of the three) are the top tier candidates for the GOP. Whomever gets the final nod will probably call on Rubio to be their VP if they're smart, as long as Rubio's finances are solid and the swirling rumors turn out to be baloney.
Rand Paul's only shot is that there are SO many people able to keep their campaigns going till Iowa and New Hampshire that his 10 to 20% gives him a second or third place finish and the media suddenly starts talking about momentum.
I'm not sure what he plans to do with his Senate seat since republicans didn't take control of KY they couldn't change the rules.
So I'm almost definitely voting Democrat in this upcoming presidential election, not considering the candidates, but if I were to vote Republican, I'd consider Rand Paul. Yeah, the "burn it all down" approach would likely backfire hard, but we are eventually going to get to a pretty fucked up place with respect to gov't debt, if we continue at current pace. At least Rand would actually attempt to do something (while being checked by Congress), rather than the other Republicans would lie out their damn asses about reducing spending, and instead continue to increase spending while just shifting it from good uses to idiotic ones.
In the past I had a short list of Chris Christie and Rand Paul, but Christie is out of favor. He used to be the awesome Governor who we could trust to do whatever it took to get shit done. Now he's gotten sloppy with that. His attempts to court the Republican base when he was historically very moderate are also very, very off putting.
Vote for president just determines who has veto power over a runaway Congress, who gets to appoint people to things, and what the high level national agenda is. You vote for a party.
The GOP candidates are all functionally the same: they will let the GOP do what it wants. The Dem candidates are all functionally the same: they will prevent the GOP from doing what it wants.
Vote for president just determines who has veto power over a runaway Congress, who gets to appoint people to things, and what the high level national agenda is. You vote for a party.
The GOP candidates are all functionally the same: they will let the GOP do what it wants. The Dem candidates are all functionally the same: they will prevent the GOP from doing what it wants.
One of these outcomes is a national disaster.
Correction "The Dem Candidates will "maybe" prevent the GOP from doing what it wants. :-p
Frankly it's starting to look like the Republicans are going to do what the Democrats did in 2008-2009: Have the majority in the house and senate and do nothing but bitch about how they can't get anything done.
God, we're going to have to deal with nineteen months of this shit? Can someone just, like, set up a browser filter for political news? Hell, now that I live in California, I don't even need my national vote, and the only thing that matters are ballot initiatives that I can learn the month before.
From my perspective I vote for the person that is the least crazy asshole.
They're all assholes, and I'm sick and tired of voting for an asshole. Besides, democracy is dead anyway, at least above the state and local level. America is pretty much a police state plutocracy at this point.
Hillary is eminently competent to handle the existing structures of US government and powers of the presidency. She's probably more qualified in a real sense than anyone the GOP has put forward, nevermind most of the people even discussed on the Democrat side.
She's status quo. So was Barack Obama. Status quo is sometimes the best you can get. You need someone like that as POTUS (where there is little actual power beyond tone and military) while you fight for actual change at the local and state level.
Except Liberals have pretty much F'ed on a local and state level. States that are blue in presidential have deeply conservative state and local governments outside of the cities. 2014 was not so great on a federal level but a virtual bloodbath on a state level. Do people even realize there is a election this year and it matters for their local/county/state government? probably not. Old people are not going away, more are created everyday and they look at local and state taxes and say things like "I don't have kids school age anymore, why should I care".
How can you be both, Constitution Party is pretty much the Christian Fascist party :-p I'd seriously think about my positions if I came up that high on that Third Party Crazy party :-p
How can you be both, Constitution Party is pretty much the Christian Fascist party :-p I'd seriously think about my positions if I came up that high on that Third Party Crazy party :-p
I think it mostly was because of the few questions about religious freedoms and the one on birth control. I didn't approach it from a religious angle, but my views just happened to align with theirs.
Edit: I take that back, only on one religious issue was I aligned with them. They just happen to have a lot of similar stances with Libertarians on non-fundie issues.
To balance that out I still scored 61% with Democrats, if that makes a difference.
Except Liberals have pretty much F'ed on a local and state level. States that are blue in presidential have deeply conservative state and local governments outside of the cities. 2014 was not so great on a federal level but a virtual bloodbath on a state level. Do people even realize there is a election this year and it matters for their local/county/state government? probably not. Old people are not going away, more are created everyday and they look at local and state taxes and say things like "I don't have kids school age anymore, why should I care".
Apparently Democrats, having realized exaclty what you just wrote, are trying to make a concerted effort at retaking state and local governments.
Just for the record. I couldn't remember where it tried to side me with before. I used to be slightly left in high school and its still sort of there, but I think I took this for the last election and got similar results because they were like you'd probably want to vote for Jill Stein.
Oh, I had 0% anything in common with the Constitution and Conservative parties. I didn't share a single answer on anything, even minor things or similar answers, at any point.
Comments
There's also the inconvenient timing of the whole thing; he's up for re-election in Kentucky this year and won't be able to appear on the ballot twice (which he wants to do.)
The Aqua Buddha thing will likely make a reappearance (kidnapping a girl in college and forcing her to do drugs will not play well with a national audience.) More seriously, expect his proposed "budgets" from 2012, 2013, and 2014 to get a lot of press. Vox has already done some preliminary coverage, but those documents are absurdly radical. If Paul Ryan got wrecked for a document that looks like a Communist 5 year plan in comparison, what do we think will happen here?
IMHO, Jeb Bush (the current front-runner despite not actually declaring yet), Ted Cruz (who raised 31 million in a single week, and the one I personally want to see in the general because Clinton will tear him to shreds), and Scott Walker (the arguable dark horse of the three) are the top tier candidates for the GOP. Whomever gets the final nod will probably call on Rubio to be their VP if they're smart, as long as Rubio's finances are solid and the swirling rumors turn out to be baloney.
I'm not sure what he plans to do with his Senate seat since republicans didn't take control of KY they couldn't change the rules.
In the past I had a short list of Chris Christie and Rand Paul, but Christie is out of favor. He used to be the awesome Governor who we could trust to do whatever it took to get shit done. Now he's gotten sloppy with that. His attempts to court the Republican base when he was historically very moderate are also very, very off putting.
The GOP candidates are all functionally the same: they will let the GOP do what it wants.
The Dem candidates are all functionally the same: they will prevent the GOP from doing what it wants.
One of these outcomes is a national disaster.
Can someone just, like, set up a browser filter for political news?
Hell, now that I live in California, I don't even need my national vote, and the only thing that matters are ballot initiatives that I can learn the month before.
She's status quo. So was Barack Obama. Status quo is sometimes the best you can get. You need someone like that as POTUS (where there is little actual power beyond tone and military) while you fight for actual change at the local and state level.
But I don't know who that correlates to.
Edit: I take that back, only on one religious issue was I aligned with them. They just happen to have a lot of similar stances with Libertarians on non-fundie issues.
To balance that out I still scored 61% with Democrats, if that makes a difference.