2016 USA Presidential poll for LTTforums

[corrado33]

8 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

No, having a constitution designed to limit the power of voters is how we ended up with fucking Trump and Hillary. The only way out of that one is overthrowing the government and writing a more democratic constitution.

I disagree. Ignorant people are the reason we ended up in this situation. If more people cared about who they voted for and ACTUALLY made an effort to research the candidates and look at their views, we'd be in a better situation. 

 

There are ton of people (generally older generation) who only vote one way. Always. Ask them anything about the candidate they're voting for and they'll spout one of the things constantly repeated in the media. But dig a little deeper and you'll find they truly know nothing about "their" candidate. 

 

I think we should get rid of the "Democrat/Republican" designation. Remove it from the voting card. That way people have to know who they're voting for and do a bit of prior research. 

[Misanthrope]

8 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Ok, I agree with what you say. But here's the thing. We have to live in the country for the next 4 years. This is real life. It's not hypothetical. You can say "I'm on the moral high ground" all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that you're going to be miserable for 4 years. And in all honesty... no one cares! (Please don't take this as me minimizing your argument, I'm just trying to be realistic.) 

 

Yes, voting third party is making a statement. However it is a statement that will be forgotten in months, compared to a president that will last for years.

 

Making a statement = good. Making a statement at the expensive of the country = bad. We vote for the best of the COUNTRY, not ourselves. That's what most people don't understand. The voting system is flawed, and we as citizens have to deal with it and try to make the best for our country. There's no chance that a third party (this year) will be elected. It's simple statistics. 

I didn't say it would be easy: We lived under the ruling of the same political party for over half a century. And after just 2 presidents under a different party we're back to the same old one and the same old tricks.

 

And that is to say that I don't blame people who do the pragmatic vote thing, I am just saying that is ultimately misguided: compromise usually leads to just more and more compromise until you're so far away from what you consider acceptable that there's little chance to go back.

 

Sometimes you just have to take a stance and suffer the consequences as great as they are: better to die a free man than live 100 years as a slave.

 

Quote

I think we should get rid of the "Democrat/Republican" designation. Remove it from the voting card. That way people have to know who they're voting for and do a bit of prior research. 

That's for example a good starting point.

[corrado33]

3 minutes ago, Misanthrope said:

I didn't say it would be easy: We lived under the ruling of the same political party for over half a century. And after just 2 presidents under a different party we're back to the same old one and the same old tricks.

 

And that is to say that I don't blame people who do the pragmatic vote thing, I am just saying that is ultimately misguided: compromise usually leads to just more and more compromise until you're so far away from what you consider acceptable that there's little chance to go back.

 

Sometimes you just have to take a stance and suffer the consequences as great as they are: better to die a free man than live 100 years as a slave.

 

Ok. I see what you're doing, and I respect you for it.

 

I, however, have made a different decision. That's all. I would love to support your cause, but am not willing to have Trump as president. Compromise. As you have said. You have reached your limit. I have not. (Yet)

 

Thank you for the discussion.

[Jv2391]

22 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

Then I can say we're in agreement. There needs to be a test. People with mental issues should not have guns. I will also agree that highly schooled people (scientists, doctors, lawyers) are generally ONLY smart in one area. That's how it works. As long as they are smart in the area that matters (science, medicine, law) it's perfectly fine.

 

Look at the following web page. I very much agree with the comic it draws.

 

http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

 

The black circle below represents all of human knowledge. The orange cone is what a person contributes with their PhD. It IS very specialized, and doctors and lawyers are no different. (Sorry, not the entirety of the orange cone, just the tiny bit that sticks out past the black circle.)

 

Ironically it looks like a giant boob, which let's be honest politicians, attorneys, etc. can be some of the biggest boobs of them all

I am glad we can find some middle ground. I appreciate your time and glad we can keep a level headed discussion!

[SpaceGhostC2C]

1 hour ago, Jv2391 said:

Ross Perot dropped midway through the '92 election then tried coming back like 2 weeks before the election. If Perot had not gained as much steam George HW Bush would have won that election by a very large margin. In the case of Gary Johnson, New Mexico and around 10% of America's population have paid attention to what he is saying. The issue is that people are jumping into camps because they identify as so far left or so far right. Long story short. People are being ignorant and believe you can only vote left or right.

But you are mixing two things in this and previous posts: one is the system being a two-party system, and another one is how fair is the treatment for all candidates.

I can agree with you that 2 options are prominently advertised while the rest is systematically ignored (to the point there is a presidential candidates' debate with 2/4? 2/5? of the candidates, already telling people "these are number 1 and number 2, now decide which is which"). And the list of examples could go on and on.

Now, this in itself is not making the system a 2-party one, but it is making it a Democrat-Republican system. I mean, it's not shaping the number of parties, but their actual identity. In a different system, you could think that fixing this unequal treatment, and people paying more attention to other messages would help making it an N-party system. 

But that takes us back to the first point: by design, the electoral system in the US ensures this is going to be a 2-party affair. Without changing the institutional design and electoral rules, the number of parties in office won't change from 2. What a fairer treatment and more open mindedness, and less inertia, would bring is less certainty about the identity of the 2 parties. But at the end of the day, you would have 2 parties filling all the seats, it's just that instead of always being Republican and Democrat there would be a realistic possibility for either, or both, being replaced by one of the other parties, and each election this possibility would arise again. However, under the current system, I think the only way you could have 3 or more parties actually achieving relevant positions in the federal government would be through regional parties that are not present in every state, but in the state(s) they exist they are 1st or 2nd every time. But since there is room for MCs of the same party voting different based on State-level interests, newcomers to politics don't have many reasons not to join one of the two big parties and start from there at the local level.

 

So, I'd say it's a mixture of institutional design and self-reinforcing / force-fed bi[artisanism (?)

[dfsdfgfkjsefoiqzemnd]

1 minute ago, corrado33 said:

Vote for someone other than Hillary is ESSENTIALLY giving another part of a percentage of the vote to Trump.

Funnily enough, the other side says "voting for someone other than Trump is essentially giving another part of a percentage of the vote to Hillary"

 

As for forming a march or a movement when Hillary is president : she is even more pro-surveillance as he is and just as likely to label any dissenters as a danger to society or as potential terrorists so they can be silenced or locked up. 

[Jv2391]

4 minutes ago, SpaceGhostC2C said:

But you are mixing two things in this and previous posts: one is the system being a two-party system, and another one is how fair is the treatment for all candidates.

I can agree with you that 2 options are prominently advertised while the rest is systematically ignored (to the point there is a presidential candidates' debate with 2/4? 2/5? of the candidates, already telling people "these are number 1 and number 2, now decide which is which"). And the list of examples could go on and on.

Now, this in itself is not making the system a 2-party one, but it is making it a Democrat-Republican system. I mean, it's not shaping the number of parties, but their actual identity. In a different system, you could think that fixing this unequal treatment, and people paying more attention to other messages would help making it an N-party system. 

But that takes us back to the first point: by design, the electoral system in the US ensures this is going to be a 2-party affair. Without changing the institutional design and electoral rules, the number of parties in office won't change from 2. What a fairer treatment and more open mindedness, and less inertia, would bring is less certainty about the identity of the 2 parties. But at the end of the day, you would have 2 parties filling all the seats, it's just that instead of always being Republican and Democrat there would be a realistic possibility for either, or both, being replaced by one of the other parties, and each election this possibility would arise again. However, under the current system, I think the only way you could have 3 or more parties actually achieving relevant positions in the federal government would be through regional parties that are not present in every state, but in the state(s) they exist they are 1st or 2nd every time. But since there is room for MCs of the same party voting different based on State-level interests, newcomers to politics don't have many reasons not to join one of the two big parties and start from there at the local level.

 

So, I'd say it's a mixture of institutional design and self-reinforcing / force-fed bi[artisanism (?)

That leads to what I also pointed out being a large issue. The media controls information fed to the public. The media paints the other parties in a negative light or they just don't do any news coverage on them unless it is negative. There is an issue with our news sources being bought out by the highest bidder.

[QuadNine]

Im insulted. No Vermin Supreme...

[SpaceGhostC2C]

9 minutes ago, Captain Chaos said:

Funnily enough, the other side says "voting for someone other than Trump is essentially giving another part of a percentage of the vote to Hillary"

 

And of course both are wrong  I've seen this kind of reasoning before, but it is not correct. Truly speaking, you are really not helping any of the two by not voting any of the two. Saying "you are helping Trump" is a fallacy based on presenting the question as Hillary or X, instead of Trump, Hillary or X. That's why when a Trump supporter applies the same fallacy the end result ends up in reverse.

 

Now, being less strict, you could say that voting for a third candidate will inflate the percentage difference of the winner. But to adjudicate that to wither Trump or Hillary, you must already assume that Trump or Hillary is going to win, in which case what's the point? Hence, the quasi-correct statement would be "by voting an 'irrelevant' candidate you help inflating the percentage gap between 1st and 2nd", but the identities of 1st and 2nd can't be assigned before the actual results come out.

[SteveGrabowski0]

34 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

I disagree. Ignorant people are the reason we ended up in this situation. If more people cared about who they voted for and ACTUALLY made an effort to research the candidates and look at their views, we'd be in a better situation. 

 

There are ton of people (generally older generation) who only vote one way. Always. Ask them anything about the candidate they're voting for and they'll spout one of the things constantly repeated in the media. But dig a little deeper and you'll find they truly know nothing about "their" candidate. 

 

I think we should get rid of the "Democrat/Republican" designation. Remove it from the voting card. That way people have to know who they're voting for and do a bit of prior research. 

Remove parties from the ballot? How? What's your mechanism for getting Democrats and Republicans in our legislature to do this? And you're going to overturn the first amendment? I don't think it's a good idea at all, people have the right to organize in the US.

 

[Jv2391]

1 minute ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Remove parties from the ballot? How? What's your mechanism for getting Democrats and Republicans in our legislature to do this? And you're going to overturn the first amendment? I don't think it's a good idea at all, people have the right to organize in the US.

 

You are missing his point I think. Instead of people voting just based off a party label, they have to focus on what the person's policies are.

[corrado33]

13 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

Remove parties from the ballot? How? What's your mechanism for getting Democrats and Republicans in our legislature to do this? And you're going to overturn the first amendment? I don't think it's a good idea at all, people have the right to organize in the US.

 

I never said it was possible! I also never said we should get rid of the parties themselves (although I would like to.) Just take the words off of the ballot so people have to know the names of the people they're voting for. Hopefully that'll make people even slightly more educated about who they are voting for. Also hopefully (I'm not sure if this is wrong or not) it'll dissuade ignorant voters from voting. In fact, I'm pretty sure it would. "Ever since they took the parties off of the ballot I don't know who to vote for anymore." "Well have you thought about looking up the names online" "Oh no that's too much work, who has time for that?"

[Jv2391]

1 minute ago, corrado33 said:

I never said it was possible! I also never said we should get rid of the parties themselves (although I would like to.) Just take the words off of the ballot so people have to know the names of the people they're voting for. Hopefully that'll make people even slightly more educated about who they are voting for. Also hopefully (I'm not sure if this is wrong or not) it'll dissuade ignorant voters from voting.

One can only hope.

[AlwaysFSX]

On 10/10/2016 at 7:33 AM, Hackentosher said:

You have a fair point, but i personally can't imagine trump being an effective, respectful leader. 

He doesn't need to be, he just needs to be an incompetent fool that doesn't make things worse for us and the world.

[Coaxialgamer]

On 10/10/2016 at 9:53 AM, Praesi said:

Your so called career politicians are responsible for all that shit. Its time for a change. Clinton is a dangerous maniac.

your so called non-career politician is an ex-reality TV star who bankrupted several bussiness , cannot spend a single minute on Tv without causing severe controversy , has NO experience with politics , has an unrealistic tax policy plans ( yeah , 10% tax should work , right ? Guess we can cut pretty much everything and still be on a deficit  ), is arguably unstable , cannot take any topic seriously , spews bullshit every chance he gets ( we'll just call bill gates to shut down the internet ), considers himself a better judge than the FBI , is anti- VAX and sees mental health issues as a "lack of strength" .

 

And that's without considering all the controversy surrounding him ( all the SJW stuff , along with all the talk about racism , misogyny , which i won't take a stance on ) 

 

This is the person you want to put in charge of the country , the economy and the entire US nuclear arsenal ?

[Hackentosher]

Just now, AlwaysFSX said:

He doesn't need to be, he just needs to be an incompetent fool that doesn't make things worse for us and the world.

Well leaders of nations must interact for diplomacy reasons, no? What will happen when he must speak with the PM of Germany? His sexist ass holery won't help him there. Or what happens when he gets asked a serious question? If we can't take one thing away from these debates it's that he talks about what he wants to talk about, rather than answer the question. He went from sexual assault to ISIS in 17 seconds at Sunday's debate. 

[SteveGrabowski0]

8 minutes ago, corrado33 said:

I never said it was possible! I also never said we should get rid of the parties themselves (although I would like to.) Just take the words off of the ballot so people have to know the names of the people they're voting for. Hopefully that'll make people even slightly more educated about who they are voting for. Also hopefully (I'm not sure if this is wrong or not) it'll dissuade ignorant voters from voting.

I don't agree at all with that. It's a huge violation of the first amendment. I'd also hate to see this in this election. I will be voting a straight Democrat ticket because I think it's unconscionable the way the Republican party has tried to suppress the right to vote with their voter ID laws and how they have successfully suppressed the impact of votes through the gerrymandering they have done at a state level since 2010. The straight Democrat ticket is my protest vote against the Republican party. I used to vote for lots of Republicans but I refuse to this election with all the tricks they have pulled to try to stay in power since 2010 instead of coming up with solutions that would make more people want to vote for them.

[LordXenu]

On 10/9/2016 at 6:53 PM, Weak1ings said:

Its funny how elections work:  Nobody votes for Johnson because he can't win, and he can't win because nobody votes for him.

No one votes for Johnson because he isn't really a libertarian. He's a liberal in drag. He's also an asshole.

[LordXenu]

12 minutes ago, SteveGrabowski0 said:

 the Republican party has tried to suppress the right to vote with their voter ID laws

Oh please do tell how only allowing people to vote who have the right to is in any way suppressing anyone's right to vote. I live in a voter id state and anyone who wants an ID for voting purposes can get one for free.

 

My grandpa voted republican his whole life, but since his death he votes democrat 10 or 20 times each election.

[AlwaysFSX]

20 minutes ago, Hackentosher said:

Well leaders of nations must interact for diplomacy reasons, no? What will happen when he must speak with the PM of Germany? His sexist ass holery won't help him there. Or what happens when he gets asked a serious question? If we can't take one thing away from these debates it's that he talks about what he wants to talk about, rather than answer the question. He went from sexual assault to ISIS in 17 seconds at Sunday's debate. 

As seen in Mexico, he's capable of acting presidential. And that's not really what we should be concerned about. Nobody cares if we have an unmannered moron in office so long as they don't intentionally start more wars.

 

I'm more concerned about that than whether or not Trump will run his mouth like an idiot.

 

Besides, you think Trump is the first sexist person to be in office? Not even close.

[SteveGrabowski0]

11 minutes ago, LordXenu said:

My grandpa voted republican his whole life, but since his death he votes democrat 10 or 20 times each election.

LOL spoken like a true Trumptard

[Hackentosher]

1 hour ago, AlwaysFSX said:

 

I'm more concerned about that than whether or not Trump will run his mouth like an idiot.

 

Besides, you think Trump is the first sexist person to be in office? Not even close.

That's fair, but he still will be the leader of the free world 

 

No, but society and culture is progressing past that. It's not acceptable to treat and talk to people like that anymore. 

[stconquest]

7 minutes ago, Hackentosher said:

- -

 

No, but society and culture is progressing past that. It's not acceptable to treat and talk to people like that anymore. 

Psst, it was never acceptable.  It was tolerated.

[PlayStation 2]

7 hours ago, sun2 said:

Cant imagine someone bein elected as president that already made himself enemy of Mexico, China, Russia, and some European country's. Beside all the other stupid things/lies he saidIts pretty clear that most are not going work with him. So im pretty curious about that.

Trump isn't the enemy of Russia. Hell, he has a decent relationship with Putin.

[PlayStation 2]

2 hours ago, Coaxialgamer said:

your so called non-career politician is an ex-reality TV star who bankrupted several bussiness , cannot spend a single minute on Tv without causing severe controversy , has NO experience with politics , has an unrealistic tax policy plans ( yeah , 10% tax should work , right ? Guess we can cut pretty much everything and still be on a deficit  ), is arguably unstable , cannot take any topic seriously , spews bullshit every chance he gets ( we'll just call bill gates to shut down the internet ), considers himself a better judge than the FBI , is anti- VAX and sees mental health issues as a "lack of strength" .

 

And that's without considering all the controversy surrounding him ( all the SJW stuff , along with all the talk about racism , misogyny , which i won't take a stance on ) 

 

This is the person you want to put in charge of the country , the economy and the entire US nuclear arsenal ?

Reality TV doesn't mean shit. Flavor Flav had a TV show on VH1 and didn't tarnish shit relating to Public Enemy. Trump being on TV doesn't matter here. Hell, if you wanna pull that argument, Ronald Reagan was an actor and Arnold Scwartznegger was the governor of California.