I'd be foolish not to excercise my right to vote for what I view as the least worst option.
Well, maybe. There's a decent argument that you want the craziest, least electable candidate to emerge from the GOP primary.
1: Yes -- in fact that is what I assumed the strategy was at first.
1: But how ill would you feel if you voted for the craziest, least electable Republican, and he narrowly won the primary, and then went on to win in the general election? I'm not sure I could live.
I'm pretty dubious that there's much value in electing a single slightly less crazy Republican to the House. The GOP is so controlled by crazies from top to bottom, and party discipline is well enough enforced, that it really doesn't matter much if one guy is marginally less of a wackjob than the other.
1: I'm of the opinion that it's in everybody's interests to reinforce a norm of non-crazy candidates for public office, even if that means putting in the occasional reasonable Republican who votes a party line with all the nutjobs.
But if the least-crazy guy gets the nod, we'll likely get a vote-siphoning third-party Tea Party challenge from teh right.
4: It might not have an immediate impact on policy, but maybe it will deter the next nutjob from running?
To rephrase: I buy that there's a decent argument that you "want" the craziest, least electable candidate to emerge from the GOP primary, but I'm not sure that argument justifies voting for said candidate.
I switched parties in 2000 to vote for McCain over Bush, only to realize you can't switch parties and vote in the primary in the same year in NY. I don't know if McCain would have been a stronger or weaker candidate than Bush, but he seemed like less of a sleazebag. One assumes he wouldn't have been as terrible a candidate in 2000 as we was in 2008. He probably would have been an even worse president than Bush, but I wouldn't realize that for, like, 8 years.
(8 cont.) ...because that's getting awfully close to an argument that would endorse donating to said candidate, or even campaining for said candidate. Which I can't abide.
He probably would have been an even worse president than Bush
If he won in 2000? Somehow I doubt this.
close to an argument that would endorse donating to said candidate, or even campaining for said candidate
Hell, in 2014, I might just *be* said candidate.
I don't buy that craziest even equals least electable here. In today's GOP, non-crazy just leaves the base sitting at home for the general.
10: To say nothing of what happens if everybody starts trying to get the worst candidate to win the primary of the other party.
I suspect McCain would have been essentially the same president as Bush.
It's perfectly fine and reasonable to vote tactically. There is no obligation to actually support, like, respect, or not hate the candidate you are voting for. Vote in whichever manner you feel best advances the interests you think important.
I shudder to think of the wars McCain would have started if he'd been elected in 2000.
10 notwithstanding, I'm prepared to offer my enthusiastic endorsement for apostropher's campaign to be the craziest, least-electable GOP candidate in 2014.
11: I don't know. He has certain habits of mind (arrogance, pig-headedness, bellicosity) I find disturbing, even in comparison to Bush. But I guess you could argue that, without Rumsfeld/Cheney in charge of foreign affairs and with less ambitious tax cuts, things would have turned out better, even if the contours of the policies would have been similar.
A KRAKEN IN EVERY POT! IT'S MID-AFTERNOON IN AMERICA! I'LL EAT THE FIRST TEN THINGS ANY AUDIENCE MEMBER BRINGS TO THE STAGE!
20: I hope my grant application titled "Investigation of the potential for Recombinant DNA Technology to create a pot-crapping dog" will be favorably received. We'll need a university, a dog, and some pot.
21: Also a very large amount of money.
I thought the desideratum was a pot-crapping pig, so as to produce bacon as well.
You wouldn't eat a valuable pig like that all at once.
24: You would if you got the munchies bad enough.
A KRAKEN IN EVERY POT!
I want this bumper sticker.
26: I want a Cafe Press t-shirt with your illustration of this bumper sticker!
Be the change you want to see, mcmc. And put me down for one.
27: This could happen. I wear my ragebunny shirt all the time.
Hmm. I think a series of Apostropher 2014 products might be a good thing. What do you want to run for, Apo?
Speaking of crazies, I was invited to a Steve Poizner http://stevepoizner.com/ townhall yesterday. I actually liked him much better than I thought I would from his commercials. But there was a whole lot of crazy in that room.
32 -- someone who knows told me he's a relatively reasonable dude pretending to be crazy. But, in my book, basing your campaign on immigration fascism makes you an immigration fascist, so the hell with him.
I did ask a question at one point, but not on Immigration. He actually approaches border security from a National Security standpoint, seeing as he was appointed to some High Intelligence Position on Sept. 4 2001, and saw firsthand the fucked uppedness that was and is our terrorism response. I wanted to tell him that he was being captured by the racist agenda, but then again he probably knew that.
Anyone else vote today?
I'm about to. The only position I'm undecided about it is Newsom; I loathe him personally but I like most of his policy stances. On some of the propositions, I'm just voting as my most politically engaged friend did, because I'm too lazy to think for myself.
33: So glad I'm not alone in this feeling.
If I lived down in Stanley's part of Virginia, I'd probably have voted as Stanley did, but I live in Alexandria and so can ignore the Republican primary, and do.
35: With Unfogged's global reach, we can start a worldwide movement, ala Andre the Giant!
With heebie on the Apope staff, no one will doubt the Vatican's infallibility!
Re: Orly Taiz (introduced in the wrong thread, btw)
It is truly sad that I found myself voting for people I had never heard of because the people I had heard of should probably be institutionalized.
41: I'll repeat my question in the appropriate thread: If she wins does she get to decide on Obama's eligibility for the ballot in 2012? I bet that's the reason she's running. The woman is relentless in her focus. I'd admire it if she had chosen a topic less malign.
And answer it:
Looking at the CA SoS website it looks like they certify candidates for eligibility, though it's not explicit about presidential elections. They certify congressional candidates, so most likely they certify presidential ones too.
That'll be fun to watch in '12, won't it.
42: Remember in Presidential elections, it's actually a slate of electors on the ballot. I don't think that Taitz could refuse to certify them just because they're pledged to vote for someone whose eligibility for office she doubts.
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In today's episode of Gun, Fish, Barrel: Sausagely on Flanagan.
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I promptly dunned them, and even drove one of them to the polls myself.
Aren't your neighbors the last people you want voting? I still hold you responsible for the reckless behavior of your neighbors in electing Scott Brown.
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Netflix, you magnificent SOB's, letting me stream content through the kid's Wii is genius.
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Turnout was very low
I read that turnout in Maine, with gubernatorial primaries and a major tax reform measure, was expected to be about 20 percent.
49: Not as genius as blaming your Wii on the kid.
52.last: Around here we call it "tuition".
I filled out my mail-in ballot last night and dropped it off this morning. I gave each proposition some thought, but in end probably could have just voted entirely based on the results of this meta-analysis.
Contra the endorser consensus, CA 16 and 17 are too close to call according to SUSA.
53: KR, what do you think of Charlie Baker's chances? I thought that he was sure to beat Patrick as a moderate Republican with a healthcare background, but now that he's aligned himself with the tea-partyers, I'm not so sure.
Bah, I hate that he said that he couldn't support the transgender non-discrimination bill, because we might be forced to have unisex bathrooms.
From a NY Times breaking news e-mail:
Senator Blanche Lincoln Wins Democratic Runoff in Arkansas, A.P. Projects
If she wins does she get to decide on Obama's eligibility for the ballot in 2012? I bet that's the reason she's running.
Orly couldn't fill out her candidacy application correctly, so I think a primary victory is pretty unlikely. The fun starts after Dunn wins and Orly starts filing lawsuits against him for not letting her finish win. But there's no doubt at all that she ran in a vain attempt to contest Obama's eligibility; she's declared as much herself.
I really doubt that Orly will win her primary, but that hasn't stopped California Republicans from treating her like a member of the family. It's impossible to be so crazy that nationally known Republicans won't embrace you as one of their own.
(I'm going to start selling "Free Terry Lakin!" shirts to Republicans now and try to get ahead of the curve.)
Meg Whitman got the GOP Governor's nod in CA, apparently.
Meg Whitman ran an ad that said that one of her opponents had something to do with the recount in 2000 (I wasn't yet paying attention), sided with the unions on some other issue, and was basically a typical Sacramento liberal (whatever the fuck that is). I thought, "sounds great!".
59: Was that the one saying he supports partial-birth abortion? I loved that. Through the whole ad I was thinking "this guy is great!"
I'm not sure; as I said I only started paying attention part of the way through. But! He's liberal on taxes, too!
Aaaand Carly Fiorina got the GOP Senate nom nom nom.
None of this is surprising so far. Maybe Lincoln.
I think another one of the slurs against him was "he supports Nancy Pelosi!"
Now that voters have put paid to a certain relative's political aspirations for the time being, I mildly regret not getting campaign t-shirts for my daughters just for posterity. But I am happy for the people of a certain place that the certain relative has been denied the desired role in making policy.
64: That one's really popular here. Against both of the people I will have voted for come November.
Further to 66 in case that wasn't clear: against both the Republican I voted for today (who apparently won {fingers crossed for the right-wing third-party challenge}) and the Democratic incumbent I'll be voting for in November
I hadn't realized he was only 3 years younger than my father. Weird.
It seems somehow appropriate to link to the Pew Survey (PDF) on interracial marriage here to note that only a quarter of all Americans are ok with a family member marrying an agnostic or atheist. This is the type of thing that makes me realize how unrepresentative the Americans I know are of society at large. I can't think of anybody I've known who would feel that way about a family member, and only a small minority whose parents would (Jewish preference for intramarriage not included since that is based on ethnicity, not religious faith).
The CA election results really suck. We got every ballot initiative wrong besides "Property Taxes and Seismic Retrofit of Buildings." Voted yes on open primaries, yes on PG&E vs. public utilities, yes on Mercury Insurance vs. consumers, no on public financing of Sec of State elections. Also my friend Nick K/rno is not winning his Assembly race.
Adding insult to injury, I thought the School Superintendent race was a toss-up between two candidates who came in second and third to someone I'd never heard of. K-sky has left the political arena, it seems.
If McCain had been President in 2000, he would probably have had a different VP from GWB. I don't care who, but it would have made him a better President than GWB even if he personally made all the same choices that GWB personally made.
Hell, in 2014, I might just *be* said candidate.
What will this site be like when half the front pagers are in Congress?
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F'cking public f'cking transport.
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Can you summarize the Mercury Insurance ballot initiative, k-sky?
re: 76
Some sort of signalling/power failure. Journey distance: 45 miles approx; journey time: 3.5 hours.
Jesus fuck. There's a signal box between Leeds and Sheffield where people nick copper cable on a weekly basis. If that game has started on the Paddington/Oxford run, you'll find that after a while the drivers start running, very slowly, through the affected sector, because they can't stand it any longer. Reduces but doesn't eliminate delays.
I think that's the 3rd time this past week I've had some sort of delay or cancellation. Although this was the longest. The previous couple delayed me by about 45 minutes - 1 hour.
78: That is really irritating! You'd think that with a rate of crime like that it'd be worth it to stake out the signal box. Or at least slap up a few cameras.
80. They probably have by now. In fact this is a few years old, when my wife was commuting on that line, which she stopped doing. But yes, it was really irritating, and they didn't respnd as well as they should
79: apparently there's some mass movement to jump in front of the trains at Radley, thus bringing the Oxford to Paddington service to a grinding halt. I expect they'll run out of participants eventually.
re: 82
That explains it! People who can't take anymore of the industrial horror, the smoking factory-laden, smog belching, furnace-glowing hell that is Lower Radley.
82. I can understand wanting to jump in front of trains if you live in Radley, but is there any motive for this beyond weltschmerz?
83
People who can't take anymore of the industrial horror, the smoking factory-laden, smog belching, furnace-glowing hell that is Lower Radley.
Hmmm. Maybe they need to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow. (Sorry, I've been watching a lot of Doctor Who lately, and some other British TV.)
re: 86
Lower Radley, in actuality, being a near perfect country idyll.
87.2: it's interesting to consider what sort of changes would need to be made to this approach for it to work in Radley.
I should say that this was also the approach practiced by the British in order to keep the passes open in the Hindu Kush. The regular bribes to the chiefs were known as "subsidies". One of the many mistakes made by Elphinstone was to try to cut these by 40% in order to save money, shortly before trying to withdraw a 12,000-strong army through the passes.
One (1) soldier made it through.
87.2: it's interesting to consider what sort of changes would need to be made to this approach for it to work in Radley.
You could threaten to confiscate their SUVs.
School places might be a good target.
Does anybody in Lower Radley go to a state school?
re: 93
I'd imagine so. The public school is just round the corner, naturally, but I'd expect there are lot of New Labour voting City-worker types who send their kids to good local CofE type schools.
I would also like a KRAKEN IN EVERY POT bumpersticker.
71: California governance not quite as bad as feared. PG&E and Mercury lose.
From 96: Wow. 372,384 people thought that Orly Taitz should be Secretary of State of California.
I'm just going to repeat that sentence to make sure I understand all the words correctly: 372,384 people thought that Orly Taitz should be Secretary of State of California.
Truly lost? With all districts reporting? That's wonderful. I hope it was expensive for them.
98: 372,384 who bothered to vote. The true number is probably much higher.
I think it more likely that 372,384 people thought it would be really fucking hilarious if Orly Taitz were the Republican nominee for Secretary of State.
103: If I knew nothing about the candidates and I saw ORLY on the ballot, I'd almost certainly vote ORLY unless the opposition was named "OH HAI" or something.
372,384 people thought that Orly Taitz should be Secretary of State of California.
That's not so bad, really. There are 17 million registered voters in California and about 1.5 million registered voters in Orange County alone. Compared to those numbers, the percentage of people who voted for Orly is about the same as the percentage of people in any population who believe they're getting messages from their pastrami-on-rye. No, the interesting question here is "Did Yosef vote for his wife?"
75: I can summarize it in three words: Yay, it lost.
From SFGate:
The measure would allow insurance companies to base their prices in part on a driver's history of insurance coverage, which is currently barred because of a voter-approved measure that passed in 1988. The initiative has been financed by the Mercury Insurance Group, and backers say that it would allow companies to offer some people lower rates.
But opponents say it will cause rates to skyrocket for first-time buyers of car insurance or those who stop their coverage for whatever reason and then try to restart it. Chief among the opposition is the Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog, which was behind the 1988 measure that created the provision.
the percentage of people who voted for Orly is about the same as the percentage of people in any population who believe they're getting messages from their pastrami-on-rye.
Which is still larger than the percentage of people who voted for Mickey Kaus, according to Salon. Mickey had a tough time getting out the goat vote.