2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumA One Party System is Unacceptable for This Nation, its Unacceptable to Go On Like We Are Now Too
So what should be done. Its clear that the Clinton era ushered in a new dishonesty in the form of so called "triangulation" where the Democratic and now Republican Parties attempt to distinguish themselves from one another by various tricks, not policy, and as such its a contemptible dragging of our nation through their dirt.
Frankly, this nation has enough problems as it is and the selfishness and dishonesty of this gaming has crossed some kind of line. It needs to be rejected by a bipartisan alliance of Americans who wish to see democracy restored without gaming.
Perhaps the solution is a shift to a multiple choice voting system where people can vote for a first and second and third choice candidate, or simply vote for one if they do not want to vote for a second choice. We also should encourage parties based on issues and not people. So that way when people went off the edge of a parties platform, they would be on their own and there would be no implied expectation that either the party or any particular people would follow them.
I vote for the Democratic Party in its pre-Clintonian state - a hope that we could get back to being the party of people and common sense has been keeping me here, but I feel that with her soliciting of GOP support Clinton has abandoned us. I do not feel comfortable giving my vote to a neoliberal neocon who is a de-facto militarist and supporter of intolerable policies which turn the Party into an oligarchy.
Also, Hillary's much vaunted health care plan was a cover up of negotiations on a contemporaneous scheme to make affordable health care impossible forever with a little known allegedly irreversible world services deal. Which has largely worked to BLOCK needed changes in policy there and also in education and innumerable other services. It is a defacto preemptive war on the future policy space of the entire human race for corporations benefit only.
Which the Party is hiding for her, leading to decades of dysfunction and a lot of needless deaths. (Nobody should trust her or the Democratic OR Republican Parties for BOTH hiding that.)
If this is the Democratic Party now, it should be left to sink or swim on its own. If it doesn't care about Americans or the core values that made it a great party in the past, it doesn't need our votes, and we don't need it.
We would be smarter voting for somebody who does.
whatthehey
(3,660 posts)Baobab
(4,667 posts)And its supremely dishonest.
whatthehey
(3,660 posts)Only one of two people will be the next POTUS - the D nominee or the R nominee. We can piss amd moan and stamp our feet that this isn't fair and that we want option C, but the effective choice we are given is binary, and only an utter fucking moron doesn't know how to tell the difference. If you think the presumptive Dem is so bad that you prefer the Rep that's up to you, but to pretend that there is no difference is willful dishonesty on a laughable scale.
Sure you can vote Stein or Johnson or write in an infinite number of names. Many time wasters and idiots do every cycle. But they don't change the equation that our system forces a binary choice for who actually gets to do something which affects our lives and the nation's political path. The nature of that choice is clear, and the distinction between the choices is also clear. Pretending otherwise is pointless drivel.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)we can do if Hillary wins the D behind her name but that does not mean that she is the total of the Democratic Party. This election we have clearly had two parties in the D party - the corporatists and the populists. Unity is a laugh.
It is most likely not the GE that you have to worry about. It is what we populists do after the GE. I for one will no longer be a registered Democrat.
VulgarPoet
(2,872 posts)Until I look at all of the foreign policy issues she's overseen, until I look at all of the things she's flipped on-- how do I trust she won't flip on anything here?
CrowCityDem
(2,348 posts)Yavin4
(35,454 posts)Can you imagine John Ashcroft doing the same?
CrowCityDem
(2,348 posts)Thinkingabout
(30,058 posts)as Republicans, there is an effort to say they are the same, maybe we do not conform the thinking of those who wants to destroy the Democratic Party.
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)I say the same for all others I have seen promote the argument. The differences in the two parties are extreme.
AZ Progressive
(3,411 posts)NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)Gore equals Bush was only promoted by idiots. Clinton equals Trump is only promoted by idiots.
Yavin4
(35,454 posts)Which lead to the Climate Change treaty in France last year. What has Nader done since 2000?
NCTraveler
(30,481 posts)Waiting For Everyman
(9,385 posts)And I'm really alarmed that Obama has bought into that too, and has chosen to make a public statement of that fact via the honoring of Kissinger done yesterday. That tells me that the top of the establishment in DC, both Repub and Dem, is Kissinger. Unelected Kissinger, please note.
That makes Hillary much scarier than Trump, Trump is not an insider, at least not yet.
As to the two parties, they may have different platforms and different ideologies but they are run by the same establishment. The Repubs spend for a while on wars or have a crash and run up a bill, and then the Dems cut services and pay for it while telling us to lower expectations. Rinse, repeat.
The establishment is like a pyramid, the higher you go up, the more unified it becomes.
Meanwhile, most people are too self-propagandized to defend themselves from it. And those of us who know better are unable to benefit from being right, because we get screwed over along with everyone else by the choices of the stupid or corrupt among us.
SidDithers
(44,228 posts)Sid