In essence: they don't care and can't be bothered. It isn't going to buy them anything, no matter who they vote for they're fucked, and they have more immediate worries.

In other words, lazy and ignorant.

How does "no matter who they vote for they're fucked, and they have more immediate worries" translate into "lazy and ignorant"? The premise and result seem to suggest a logical and efficient use of resources in damnable situation.

Why is it people still are still have a hard time differentiating between not getting all you wanted and getting ass raped with a knife?

Why is it that Hillary supporters don't get that she was specifically what a large cohort of voters did not want?

Why can't you tell the difference between a cold and cancer?
It was a binary choice.

I can; Hillary's type is a cancer that will forever perpetuate that binary choice, while Trump is a nasty cold that'll leave a lot of orange stained tissues, but be gone shortly.

That is about the most foolish thing you have said in the 10 years I have been listing to you.

I'll let that speak for itself.

I love me some foobar but that is nowhere near the most foolish thing he has said in ten years.

Definitely in the top 50.

Why will Trump be gone shortly? From all the conservative voices I read, they are getting nice and comfy with this so-called "cold".

How do you imagine Trump being gone? Also, any assumptions you are making about the American people in this regard I'd love for you to go into detail about.

He's passed below Bush the Lesser's second term approval rating. Unless the DNC forces through another neo-lib, they really can't reasonably lose. (Though yes, they're very good at losing unreasonably.)

The majority of Democrats in power are probably neo-libs. In my state of Vermont we have a Progressive Party that is distinguished from the Democratic party. I'm afraid we won't find such distinction officially throughout this big country of ours.

But i also fear you underestimate the repub/Conservative voter. The house is red, the Senate is pretty much red powered, the scotus is about to get real red with at least two more Christian conservatives. And I have a strong suspicion young people are getting duped hard into hating everything progressive. AND it's not looking good for dems in 2018...and I fear this will easily carry into 2020. And repubs can do this while being wildly unpopular.

Sometimes I think we have neo-liberalism because it's the only way a liberal can win - compromise with your crazy relatives or have your crazy uncle be in power.

Problem is I personally don't see major or pure progressivism in the cards for the US. The well seems too poisoned.

Sometimes you just have to let the crazy uncle break some things to convince the others to compromise.

I do not believe your metaphor to be apt.

The crazy uncle would not be breaking things, you'd be allowing him to molest the children. Now, this will get everyone's attention, and you will have proven your point about how crazy the uncle is, but the damage would remain long after the uncle was kicked out of the house.

Trump isn't going to molest anyone. Well, at least not any more than he would have otherwise.

You do still have an at least somewhat functioning government with checks and balances. You won't if you keep accepting the lesser evil over and over again.

Wow...you still don't get it do you. When you get more than 1% of the vote you can force those kind of choices...but on November 4th 2016 you had only two choices if you wanted your vote to have any consequence...and you knew it

Yet progressives holding their votes did have a consequence.

Are you ready to come to the table, or are you going to continue to let it burn?

You make it sound as if progressives are people who feel personally not threatened by Trump and don't care about people who are.

Of course he's threatening. So are the almost-Republicans the Democrats insist on running.

Sometimes you just have to step back and let people make the mistakes they insist on making.

Just as I thought.

Are you willing to come into the tent or are you going to stand outside a rail about how unfair it all is? Can any coalition count on your vote?

Sure. I'm happy to be a part of a progressive coalition.

I'm not going to vote for a neo-liberal just because they aren't entirely a conservative, though.

So you are back to your 1% voting block..good luck with that. I will be busy trying to actually get people elected.
It is not who is the most progressive person on the ballot it is about who is the most progressive person you can get elected.

You mean Bernie Sanders?

Comment of the day! I laughed!

A larger cohort was willing to settle for her.

But not one large enough to elect her on their own. It was unwilling to compromise, so; Trump.

So voters "unwilling to compromise" for a candidate a "large cohort of voters did not want" is why Trump got elected?

Well talk to me in two years..the knife should be good and bloody by then...but it will only be 1/2 done.

I'm a man of practicality so i can respect and understand the value of the argument your making. But just so we're clear, it is fucked up that the Democratic party doesn't want to engage or spend resources on vast portions of the country. It is fucked up that their pitch to their own recalcitrant party supporters boils down to something Capone would make to small family business owner. This is all supposed to make sense since the Democratic Party has a winning strategy based on numbers and models that would guarantee victory if only reality would cooperate.

I mean honestly, having Big Pussy
come up and whisper in the ear "Vote Big D up and down the line next time, or else you get the knife" is less of a inducement to vote your way and more of a sign of something really fucked up. Something downright cancerous.

" it is fucked up that the Democratic party doesn't want to engage or spend resources on vast portions of the country."

Couldn't agree more. The 3 special elections we had show exactly how that works.

It is almost to late to get a candidate into 2018. But if 3rd parties want to be considered they need to work at the state and local level and build a base. Running the same candidate over and over not being on the ballot not having matching funds...is wasted time and energy.

The smarter strategy is to do what the T-Party did and what Sen. Sanders is trying to do. Take over and existing party. either way you need candidates...getting harder to find than hens teeth.

But if it comes down to Tuesday, election day, and you vote for somebody who has no chance to win realize you just abdicated your vote...if the third party candidate has at least a chance at %5 of the vote go for it if you are building a party you may have to do it that way.

The only person who had a chance to do that ran as a Democrat and as a consequence of that controls a good percentage of the levers of power...and is building a network as we speak...but there are some that want to throw all that away.

That's the thing, how the tea party took over the Republicans was not just by putting out candidates, but by making sure the old guard couldn't win. Even if that meant letting the Democrats win.

That's exactly what progressives will have to do as well, and giving the boot to Clinton is a good start.

They did it in the primaries...they are still doing it in the primaries. To do that you need to vote...all of you every time.

Not every time; if there isn't a progressive on the ballot, that vote has to be withheld.

If you don't vote every time....you lose.

If you'll never withhold your vote, it has no value.

Prisoners dilemma as applied to a democracy. Republicans back trump because he had loud supporters and they feared Hilary's nascent liberal supreme court. Democrats back Hilary because she's the only one who can defeat this looming disaster. Red state constituents who will be decimated by Trumpcare still back their reps because their scared of what a liberal agenda would look like so they take the hit. Everyone is coming to the table looking to see how fast they can underbid because they're frightened of not winning. We don't have an American dream anymore, just a nightmare we run from. From the left of from the right we just run. Its not ideal, but it would not be so bad if it wasn't for Putin. Because the only constant in regards to where we are always running is that its always out of Putins way.

Because there's a lot of space in between those options and the closest you are to either extreme the less motivated you are to vote and that is truer by magnitudes if you are closer to the knife raping end of the spectrum because it doesn't make immediate sense to lose your job to take an hour-long bus ride to stand in line for hours more to vote not for the guy who will ass rape you with a knife but for the one who will simply pummel and handcuff you and abandon you.

So the question is, why are we blaming the victims. Why do those with means not support candidates that may do little or nothing for themselves, but do have helpful plans for the downtrodden, those in the shadows of life, as Humphrey put it, the sick, needy, handicapped?

A lot of space? Having you been paying attention?

next chance

"the sick, needy, handicapped?" have you not been paying any attention?

There were 132 words between those two points, did you pay attention to them? As for the "next chance", it is in 497 days. Let's hope there are plenty of good candidates by then.

Do you want to talk about motivation to vote or the undeniable consequences of electing Donald Trump because they are two different things. The denial of what the consequences of a Trump administration at this late date is like Trump himself questioning Russian intervention into the elections. A bit of connotative disconnect due to the memory of ones own actions.

There maybe some people who were unaware of what a Trump presidency would bring but certainly not people here....Cause I personally warned people... like 20 times. And there were others warning of a possible Trump victory so lack of interest meant you were letting other pick for you...You only had three choices...any of this sound familiar.

Today Three Supreme Courts justices voted to impose a religious ban to entry to the US....3.

"This election is all about the courts"..any of this ring a bell?


Donald Trump Is In The Perfect Position To Dramatically Remake The Courts
With 100+ judicial vacancies and a Senate eager to fill them, conservatives are salivating.


If you think the election of Hillary Clinton is even mildly comparable to what will happen and continue to happen for a decade because the election of Trump...you are at the least very misinformed.

“Today Three Supreme Courts justices voted to impose a religious ban to entry to the US....”

No. They didn’t.
Supreme Court Judges don’t “impose bans”.
The court upheld key portions of the President’s travel directives.
The distinction is important (and basic).

It was a 6 to 3 vote read the dissent.

Finally, weighing the Government’s
interest in preserving national security against the hard-
ships caused to respondents by temporary denials of entry
into the country, the balance of the equities favors the
Government. I would thus gr
ant the Government’s appli-
cations for a stay in their entirety.

Yep, we were having two completely different discussions. I have nothing to add to or counter your assessment of the damage of the Trump election.

We shall meet again on another post to discuss the other matters. Carry on.

I would like to talk about 3rd party politics vs. a wing inside one of the major parties but that conversation is not relevant to 2016 as there was no viable 3rd party candidate but it is the time to start to and decide for 2020 right now.

There's a third party president right now, and he'd have faced a similar opponent had the DNC not committed electoral fraud.

I disagree. It all boils down to what your expectations of "A Democracy" live up too. If you feel misled by those in power and believe your vote is so worthless, then I don't see anything wrong with it.

You can argue till the cows come home about the great democracy we have for example in the U.K. or U.S.A. and then look exactly how those in positions of power today run those said countries, then think "why bother!".

After the last British election I am sadly in that boat. Either that or my expecations of democracy are higher than yours.

We can only truly have a viable democracy when one persons vote counts for one person. No politicians want that, because it'd give the little guy far too much power to knock them from their perch.

Whose votes don't count in the UK?

EVERYONES!

I voted Democratic through an absentee ballot. Did you vote?

Hand to god, the only way you could be a bigger cry for attention would be to start pitching your snapchat where you do semi nude yoga to chronicle your journey to health and wellness. #Namaste #Blessed #MAGA

If you consider UAE to be one of the world's most vicious autocratic states, you really are not paying attention. But I have tried in the past to educate you, to no avail. Salaam.

An "apologist". Huh. New one to me.

Flogging is a rare punishment- in fact, I don't know of it being applied once in the past five years. Most of the things you cited are generally not prosecuted- especially alcohol and kissing- unless they are causing enough of a nuisance to be really offensive. I see Emiratis openly drinking in national dress, a definite crime, as an example. Arrests made in regard to alcohol are in conjunction with refusal to obey police orders ("Stop that now or we arrest you") or traffic accidents or similar circumstances- much like in the US.

By that same token, look up the blue laws around the US that are still on the books but seldom enforced. Ever gotten a blowjob? (I know the answer to that- but let's say you have for the sake of argument.) Then you've committed a felony in many states. It's sodomy, a punishable offense.

I've never claimed UAE to be wonderful and liberal, other than in comparison to other Arab countries- but it's certainly not as you paint it. Having lived there I would say that my knowledge trumps your assumptions.

But whatever. Believe as you like. Go in peace, dude.

Amputation is a legal punishment in the UAE.

Crucifixion is a legal punishment in the UAE.

Apostasy is punishable by death in the UAE.

Homosexuality is punishable by death in the UAE.

These are not “assumptions” as you dishonestly suggest. These are facts.

You are an apologist for a theocratic shithole and are not in a position to "educate" anyone.

If that's true, then taking your logic to its conclusion means you don't know jack shit either, and are in no position to "educate," or more accurately, contribute any reasonable content to this website.

But I didn't need to follow the logic to arrive at the same place.

Register to vote, get put in the Jury Duty pool... at least, that's what I've heard, and really, why bother with that silliness? Civic duty? Pssssht. Fuck that.

*yes, I'm registered
**yes, I vote
***haven't been called to jury duty in 3 1/2 years
****I guess I'm due. Fuck.