His most die-hard supporters will hang on to the bitter end - and they're the least capable of doing so. I've gone from mocking them => feeling sorry for them => fear them - these people are definitely not harmless.
It's surprising that we would actually vote for this of our own free will.
That's gotta be something historians will puzzle over for the next two hundred years. It's mind blowing that we did that.
Stepping a level lower even, how, on Earth, could our system possibly have produced Harris, Vance and Trump as the options? Then you step a level lower than that, and even the challengers were like, DeSantis and Haley?
It was corruption and ineptitude the entire way down. How could that have happened?
The two party system, forced on us by plurality voting, is the reason people feel they don't have a choice.
Pick one of two very different sides. If a third candidate tries to enter the race, they harm themselves and the person they are similar to, and they help the opposition.
Any form of ranked voting will rid us of this restriction and allow more candidates to run for an office, and allow citizens to vote their true preference.
Yesterday, HR 3040 was introduced by a GOP member from Arizona, which intends to ban ranked choice voting from federal elections. The GOP has already banned it in the state of Florida.
A radical party is terrified of a system that enables more electoral competition and throttles radicalism.
Right. The last serious third-party presidential candidate was Ross Perot in 1992. In terms of political platform and voter appeal he was slightly more similar to the incumbent Republican candidate George H. W. Bush, which probably enabled the Democrat candidate Bill Clinton to win (although it's impossible to know what would have happened if Perot didn't run).
Some political analysts claim that Perot entered the race not really intending to win but rather as retribution against Bush. In 1979 the Iranian regime imprisoned two of Perot's EDS employees. Perot asked Bush, who was then Director of the CIA, to get them out. Bush refused to act and Perot held a grudge against him ever since.
"In 1979 the Iranian regime imprisoned two of Perot's EDS employees. Perot asked Bush, who was then Director of the CIA, to get them out"
Most interesting part of that story is that once the government failed to help he organized and trained his own operation and successfully extracted his employees.
> Stepping a level lower even, how, on Earth, could our system possibly have produced Harris, Vance and Trump as the options? Then you step a level lower than that, and even the challengers were like, DeSantis and Haley?
I guess you forgot about the corpse of Biden. Harris belongs in that "challengers" category except she had less support than DeSantis and Haley (from both Democrats and Republicans!). Harris has never received a vote in a presidential primary.
The Democratic party enabled Trump to win by not forcing a clearly incapable Biden out of the race earlier, allowing them to run an actual primary and then choosing a terrible candidate because they backed themselves into a corner with identity politics. Remember, the Democratic party was totally fine with Biden until he was forced in front of the American people and they got as good of a look at him as the party had.
That's how our system produces these horrible candidates. Each party acts in their own self-interest because they have a stranglehold over the electoral process.
It started in 2008. The Democratic party tried to rig it for Clinton.
I'm sure she's a wonderful person in real life, but she's one of the most unpopular people to ever run for office.
Obama actually is likeable, easily winning the primary and both elections.
The Dems, because deep down they'd rather have the GOP over real progressives. Decided to rig it for Hillary again in 2016. Sanders had an actual base, but the DNC didn't want him to win.
Biden was a rigged candidate too, but the pandemic swayed things in his direction.
With Harris, the Dems decide to skip the rigged primary, the little people (the actual voters) don't need to have a say. Here's your moderate Republican from the mid 90s.
At least the Republicans didn't rig every primary they've had since 2008. They don't play the super delegate dance.
Well... Time to try and establish residency elsewhere.
> The Dems, because deep down they'd rather have the GOP over real progressives. Decided to rig it for Hillary again in 2016. Sanders had an actual base, but the DNC didn't want him to win.
Sanders was a candidate in the Democratic primary (which is already a significant accommodation, with Sanders not even being a member of the Democratic party), and was strongly rejected by Democratic voters -- twice.
The constant whining from Sanders fans about the DNC is simply annoying, and is basically the same conspiratorial thinking that MAGA adherents display when they complain about the "deep state".
Oh ffs, Harris in charge would've been just fine. If we're talking about economy/stock market only, even Vance as president would've been fine as well, although he'd destroy American democracy way more efficiently than Trump.
