2016 Presidential Race Thread

[John Wilkes Booth]

Originally Posted by fiddler

That's just the thing. Where I come from you don't make the menu at someone else's house. You sit down and eat it, smile and swallow.

where are you from? sounds like a ****hole

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by Isbjørn

But... why? I'm from Europe, so I don't understand what the hell is going on when Americans are interested in politics but won't vote, for some reason.

Look at it this way: you live in a country of five million people, while we live in one of three-hundred million. My one vote is worth 1/60 of what yours is.

Also, many European countries have a parliamentary system, where the number of votes for each party decide the percentage of seats they get in the legislature, so even if your party doesn't "win", your voice was still heard. Here in America, with our winner-take-all voting system, if you vote Democrat, but a Republican wins, you've pretty much just wasted your time. Sure, the percentage a candidate wins by can show how much support he has from the general public, but the candidate is still going to ignore the opposition for the most part.

And when you're constantly being bombarded by negative campaign ads that make the person being targeted look like a scumbag, and the person endorsing it/being endorsed by it look like just as big of a scumbag for allowing it to happen, you kind of lose interest in hearing what either of them have to say, cause you already know that whatever comes out of their mouth is likely to start with "Well, my opponent blah blah blah...". I don't know if negative campaign ads are as pervasive or ridiculous in your country, but over here, I could probably count on one hand the number of ads I'll see each election that don't concentrate on trying to make the other candidate look like the Antichrist.

[Xurtio]

Re: JWB, Obama would make a great Caesar.

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by Xurtio

Re: JWB, Obama would make a great Caesar.

But if he ended up getting stabbed it would just reinforce a stereotype.

[Xurtio]

Et tu Cruz?

[RoxyRollah]

9.5. You sweet sweet sad little monster.

Edit: Gents I think Im lost...scrolls up* yup, I am ..

[John Wilkes Booth]

Originally Posted by Xurtio

Re: JWB, Obama would make a great Caesar.

i would just get a kick out of watching all these rednecks that live around here freak the **** out

reminds me of a while back when i was at work... i was friends with this black guy that used to work there... and we were sitting there talking about some random bull****, i can't remember what... and out of nowhere our boss comes up to us, and (to the black guy) says "i'm sorry but someone's gotta take a gun to the white house and get rid of this obama guy, letting all these ****ing mexicans in.."

honestly though obama is the perfect symbolic figurehead when you think about it

black enough to make us feel like we're progressing as a nation and get the young jeezy/nas nod of endorsement, but not so black as to seriously shake up the white status quo

and at least he's not a mormon or a woman

[John Wilkes Booth]

wall of text approaching... to address briks/peter joseph/etc on "why not vote..."

when i really think about it, deep down, beyond all of the rationalizations, i'm just lazy. and sort of apathetic. i think maybe you guys are right that i should vote. i could come up with a complex rationalization for why i shouldn't. but deep down i think really i just don't feel like standing in line to vote just so obama can win over mitt romney or hillary can win over ted cruz. and also... i really dislike the way that politicians and their supporters come across. and i prefer not to be associated with them.

i won't say there's no difference between the parties.. because there are. but as far as i can see it, in terms of economic policies, this country seems to be on a more or less gradual shift towards the right for the past 3-4 decades. the real fight seems to be between conservatives who want to continue this trend and moderate democrats who want to very passively resist it. and i just don't think it's really a big deal one way or the other who wins, cause both of those approaches aren't all that appealing to me. maybe i am being overly idealistic/my standards are too high... or maybe my moral character is flawed enough that it is more important to me that i can ignore the whole cluster**** and go about my day than it is that say, obamacare isn't overturned or some**** like that.

peter makes the point "but other people are affected besides yourself." and this is true. but let's take obamacare. i know people who have been both positively and negatively affected by it. for me, the young low-earning relatively healthy yet uninsured male, it was looking like the only difference obamacare was going to make for me was that it was going to force me to pay a few hundred dollars to a grand a year. this money will be used to either buy health insurance that i won't use, cause i still can't afford to regularly go to the doctor even with health insurance, and i don't have any serious health care issues that i would need to go to the hospital or anything like that. or else it would just be taken from me in the form of a tax penalty.

so really, although i would favor a single payer system that actually made it feasible for someone like me to get real health coverage, being 'pragmatic' and 'compromising' in this case leaves me with nothing but money flushed down the toilet. and yet i understand my money is being used to help other people like my mom afford health insurance. and i also know there are other people who run small businesses for whom obamacare is really presenting a huge obstacle and a nightmare towards their primary source of earning income. and so for them it's an even more serious problem. so i won't complain either way if it's not overturned or if it is. because honestly i could take it or leave it.

but above all i really dislike the way partisan politics sort of poison the population in this country and divide them into camps of red and blue drones. i have an uncle who has his fair share of character flaws, but in general is an overall funny and like-able guy except for the fact that he obsesses over partisan politics and makes everything into an us-vs-them argument.

and i see this **** on both sides. so it's not just a matter of not wanting to vote... it's the fact that if you are voting/taking a vested interest in which party succeeds over the other, you are expected to take a sort of active interest in partisan politics and keeping yourself informed on whatever the current debates are. and yet the current debates to me are so polarized, toxic, non-engaging and tribal in nature that i would really prefer to steer clear of them for the most part.

i have an interest in politics because i have an interest in civilization. i think it's interesting to ponder ways in which a civilization can organize itself and tackle problems. but inevitably, it seems, in this country anyway, whenever people try to take that and apply it to a political movement or campaign it just once again devolves into an us-vs-them scenario, where it's all about scoring points more than it is about obtaining actual results. and that's just a bit distasteful to me. so i rather not fund their careers and lend my ideological support to them since that is how they insist on behaving. i'll just let them do what they do and worry about myself.

[The Batlord]

Originally Posted by John Wilkes Booth

and i see this **** on both sides. so it's not just a matter of not wanting to vote... it's the fact that if you are voting/taking a vested interest in which party succeeds over the other, you are expected to take a sort of active interest in partisan politics and keeping yourself informed on whatever the current debates are. and yet the current debates to me are so polarized, toxic, non-engaging and tribal in nature that i would really prefer to steer clear of them for the most part.

i have an interest in politics because i have an interest in civilization. i think it's interesting to ponder ways in which a civilization can organize itself and tackle problems. but inevitably, it seems, in this country anyway, whenever people try to take that and apply it to a political movement or campaign it just once again devolves into an us-vs-them scenario, where it's all about scoring points more than it is about obtaining actual results. and that's just a bit distasteful to me. so i rather not fund their careers and lend my ideological support to them since that is how they insist on behaving. i'll just let them do what they do and worry about myself.

Definitely this. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but if I start really engaging in politics, then eventually I am going to take one side over the other, and then I'm going to start identifying with that side and demonizing the other, and then I'm going to be just as annoying, and just as much a part of the problem as the people I can't stand now. I'd rather be an apathetic non-voter than one of those people.

[Chula Vista]

Un-f*cking-believable. How to pander to a base 101.

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