2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Switch Jill Stein votes to Clinton, and just half of Gary Johnson votes, and here's what you get: [View all]R B Garr
(16,950 posts)type candidate, so it's understandable that he had a larger voting coalition. He is exceptionally gifted, as was Bill Clinton, and he is more self-contained than Bill. But it's a shame that good Democrats like Al Gore and now Hillary Clinton were thrown over by third party types. Even if they weren't perfect, they would have given some stability to allow other Dems to come up in the ranks. Now it's back to swimming with the sharks.
I am glad to hear you saw through Stein and Johnson and wish more people hadn't thrown away their votes on them. Since it's a liability to have a public service record now because you have to spend so much time getting attacked over it, people off the street like Donald can waltz in and humiliate people with impunity because he has no record to scrutinize. I think people understand that the more national exposure a candidate has, the more watered down and compromising they are (hence the negative attacks on third way Dems), but look at Bernie now -- he's willing to work with Trump on a $10/hr minimum wage instead of his $15/hr proposal. That's the reality of national politics -- compromise.
So we see with clarity that the other side of the aisle keeps promoting candidates who get crazier and more anti-intellectual than ever, but Republicans vote for them so they don't lose power. Retaining that power allows them to enact their long-term policies, and we see what George Jr. had in mind when he started a war with the wrong country and blew through Bill Clinton's hard-earned surplus.
I liked your thoughts on the voter suppression and also hope we are looking into the oddities of this election. Hillary's popular votes keep adding up in an unprecedented margin that is not going to go unnoticed. I am hoping there is some challenge to that outcome, but the Dems do back away from these situations while the Republicans have no problem taking what they didn't earn. So, yes, your ideas of unity around voter suppression and Donald's duplicitous calls about a rigged system are a great rallying point. Something is wrong with how he hoodwinked everyone into looking the other way, and now we want to see what he was possibly covering up. Let's do this!