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[quote=Anonymous][quote=TheManWithAUsername]Re “protest vote,” I didn’t think that anyone was trying to be offensive, and I don’t take great offense. I just wanted to point out that, for me, I’m not voting in protest of anyone or anything. I’m voting for whom I think would be best for the job, subject, as I said, to the significant limitations of my research.

[quote=jsteele]At this point, I probably will cast my vote for TheManWithAUsername.[/quote]
So weird, dude – I was going to write [b]you[/b] in. (This is where those who think I’m your alias can have a field day.)

Re the rest of Jeff’s post about the respective strategies of Obama and the Reps, I wanted to point out that it could just as well have been written about the Clinton administration. This has been the pattern for decades.

[quote=Anonymous]Let's assume for a moment that you would like your vote to count as something other than a protest vote[/quote]
We might not be able to get far past that, b/c I suspect we have different ideas of what “count” means. As I said in our past exchanges, no individual vote for president “counts” in a practical sense.

[quote=Anonymous]Let's further assume that there are, interspersed among the nutcases and corporate whores running on the GOP side, one or two candidates who still have the interest of this country at heart and would feel compelled to address its fundamental problems (I'm thinking for instance of Buddy Roemer and campaign finance laws).[/quote]
At this point, I would consider compromising on an awful lot to support someone who wasn’t a corporate whore; Buddy Roemer is a good example. I doubt that I would compromise enough to support any modern Rep though, especially since there’s no need – I can just vote for a person of integrity who also agrees with me on lots of other things. I’m very glad that Roemer – and for that matter Ron Paul – is out there, though.

[quote=Anonymous]In the absence of a worthwhile candidate among the Democrats, do you see someone like that being able to work with, say, a completely Democratically controlled Congress, to address the rot that is pervading our institutions?[/quote]
To some degree. I don’t know if one leader could fix things like campaign financing – and if s/he could, the Supremes are dead set against democracy – but many other things are possible. Reid and many others like him are destructive hacks, but I’ve always acknowledged that the Dems differ from the Reps in that the latter are lunatics seemingly willing to say and do literally anything, from exposing undercover CIA agents to holding our economy hostage. I think a FDR or LBJ could reliably ride herd on the Dems, and I guess the right Rep could as well.

[quote=Anonymous]Once we get to the general election in November and it is obvious that one of two people is going to win, you are simply wasting your time voting if you do not choose one or the other.[/quote]
Let’s modify that just slightly: “Once we get to the general election in November and it is obvious that [b]exactly one candidate[/b] is going to win, you are simply wasting your time voting if you [b]vote for anyone other than the winner.[/b]” For example, anyone voting for Obama in a decisively red state will be wasting his or her time with a “childish” vote.

Ridiculous. So why is it less ridiculous to say that you must vote for one of the top two? Why not top one or top three? At what point does it become legitimate, not “childish,” to vote for someone – only once s/he becomes at least the second-most popular candidate? Someone explain that principle.

[quote=Anonymous]It is childish at this point to vote for a third candidate. It has no impact, no one cares.[/quote]
Unlike your individual, secret vote for the Dem, which regularly decides the election. That’s why everyone [b]does[/b] care about [b]your[/b] vote.

[quote=jsteele]I live in DC. My presidential vote will be insignificant regardless for whom I vote.[/quote]
As it will everywhere else as well. Whether a candidate takes your state by a 70% or 1% margin, an individual presidential ballot secretly cast in a voting booth will be insignificant.

[quote=Anonymous]And thus, you become completely meaningless in the general election.[/quote]
As opposed to the case if you were to vote for a major party like a good boy. THEN your individual, secret vote would be deeply meaningful. Voters for nominee Bachman or Santorum, for example, would be casting legitimate, meaningful votes, unlike those degenerate freaks on the left voting their consciences.

[quote=Anonymous]But if I lived in Pennsylvania, or Ohio, or Florida, or Virginia (although Virginia may be a lost cause), I wouldn’t dream of it.[/quote]
There is no reasonable chance that any of those states will come down to one vote, or even to 500. If you honestly believe that the election may come down to one vote, then there's nothing for us to discuss, because we simply have a fundamental difference in what constitutes odds worthy of consideration. If you agree that there’s no reasonably likelihood of it coming down to one vote, you're wasting your vote exactly as much as I am.

[quote=Anonymous]Let me ask the protest/principled voters a question – in hindsight, what do you think the lefties in Florida that voted for Nader 2000?  Are you pleased with their principled votes?  I’m not.  Do you wish Gore had been elected instead of Bush?  I do.  Why is this situation any different?[/quote]
Similar discussions occurred here a few months ago, and as I said then, if I were controlling 50,000 (or maybe even 1,000) votes in Florida this would be a very different conversation. Why is this situation different? Because, as I've beaten to death, my vote won't decide this any more than any one of those Florida votes did.

Assuming a hypothetical single person holding the fate of one state, I'm not sure what s/he should do. Bush was one of the worst things ever to happen to this country. But the lesson learned there, and in 2004, and then without any doubt in 2008, is that the country keeps moving to the right and the Dems keep struggling for votes because they keep abandoning the left. As someone said before the 2000 election, whichever candidate won, the other guy was the only one who could have lost to him. If the Dems had put up someone with true principles and backbone in 2000 or 2004, things may have been very different.

If you think, as the Dem leadership has for decades, that the lesson of these elections is that the Dem voters need to keep compromising, I’ll just ask: how’s that working out for you? Are you happy wishing that a leftist Democrat – say, about where Nixon was on the spectrum – would run instead of Obama?

So, I don't know what I would do this election if I controlled one swing state. It would probably depend in part on whether I was going to control it forever, so that my threats would have some meaning.

But I don't have that tough decision; I have one vote, which I will cast secretly. I cast it as if I am deciding the entire election. I don't cast it as if I control 50,000 votes in Florida, or as if I can only vote for one of two people.
[/quote]

Yawn.[/quote]

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