My Trump- and Walker-voting husband .....

Checkerboard Strangler said:

About 70% of the conservatives here and elsewhere are under 25 years old...and all that that implies.

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Even young people should know that apathy to the poor is wrong.

akyron said:

Seems exactly correct. Nowhere to go but up then. 2% is the new normal...Right? Who has a magic wand to make this happen?

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Two percent of stable growth is better than blowing up a bubble at record pace. Don't you see that? Jesus, you guys are so enamored by numbers that you overlook what they actually MEAN.

Amelia said:

My Trump- and Walker-voting husband hasn't completely bailed on Republicans like I have.

But last night he said he needed to make sure he found his way to the polls next month. (We moved since the 2016 election and so far he hasn't gone to any of the primaries or special elections. I have.)

My first thought was "oh great, he's going to cancel my vote".

Then he added, "so I can vote against Walker".

Yes!


He's not as pissed off at the GOP as I am, not to the point where his default vote will be straight Democratic. I'll have to make a case for any of the non-Republicans that I think I can get him to vote for, but this is definitely a good sign.

He is very disappointed in Trump. Democrats could peel him away in 2020. They're not doing a great job of that yet. (And it has nothing to do with Kavanaugh. Hubby thought Kavanaugh was making stupid, transparent lies in the matter of the yearbook, so he didn't have much sympathy there.) But in general they haven't really changed much from the party which nominated Clinton, so yeah, still some work to do. But there's an opening.

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Oh, I'm definitely voting straight Democrat this year. I believe this is the first time I will have not vote for a single Republican. Usually I find at least one who suits my beliefs, especially in business. But, this year, my vote is pure protest against the Goons.

So, it will be the first time I do not cancel out any of my wife's votes.

D_NATURED said:

Even young people should know that apathy to the poor is wrong.

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The trouble is, when young people become true believers it's exaggerated by the same youthful foolishness that drives exaggerated nonsense from failed liberal SJW's on college campuses, only this is coming from the opposite end of the spectrum, otherwise it's the same kind of dynamic.

On the upside, Evers owned Walker in the debate last night!

In addition Obama is coming to Wisconsin to fire up Democrats even more than they already are.

Wisconsin farmers know they really skewed up by backing trump, and if yard signs are any barometer the rural support for cons is next to nothing...

Wisconsin is going R. They got their iron and timber industry back under President Trump, and now, soon, maybe a new copper/silver mine.

Tom Horn said:

Wisconsin is going R. They got their iron and timber industry back under President Trump, and now, soon, maybe a new copper/silver mine.

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Not even a slight chance of that happening.

The timber industry has never been gone, we have good stewardship for that renewable resource.

The paper mills are where timber sales dropped due to the paperless age.

We will never see another sulfide mine In Wisconsin as we know natural resources are far more profitable than a flash in the pan boom and bust economy that happens from that type of mining.

In fact I expect Wisconsin to shut down the proposed mine in Michigan on the Menomonee river with bipartisan support to legally fight it.

GDViking said:

Not even a slight chance of that happening.

The timber industry has never been gone, we have good stewardship for that renewable resource.

The paper mills are where timber sales dropped due to the paperless age.

We will never see another sulfide mine In Wisconsin as we know natural resources are far more profitable than a flash in the pan boom and bust economy that happens from that type of mining.

In fact I expect Wisconsin to shut down the proposed mine in Michigan on the Menomonee river with bipartisan support to legally fight it.

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LOL........you’ve already forgotten your pal hitlery lost her presidency on the promise of shutting in coal. :snicker:

Checkerboard Strangler said:

But as far as the political parties go, a POTUS election is a FOOTBALL GAME...two teams, one winner and one loser.
Nothing is gained by a tiny handful of people from "other teams" prancing around on the field except for the fact that the prancing amounts to interference.
And historically, third party interference has benefited ONLY the Republican Party for the last SIXTY YEARS except in one instance...the 1992 election of Bill Clinton, where Ross Perot ran for the Reform Party, then pulled out at the last minute.

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From which the Republican party presumably inferred that they needed to adopt or move towards some of those Reform positions to regain the support of those voters. Similarly splashes made by the likes of Ralph Nader (and in a different manner Bernie Sanders) in theory send a message to the Democrat party, despite being equally unsuccessful and arguably in some ways counter-productive. You talk about rebooting and retooling the major parties, yet act as if one of the most important means by which voters can express their dissatisfaction - by not voting for them - is an irrelevant distraction.

Checkerboard Strangler said:

NO THIRD PARTY in the United States has ever even bothered to try to build a significant presence in Congress!
At least if they would bother to do that, then there would be better reasons to vote third party, because the POTUS winner, being also third party, could count on a power base in Congress.
Nope, doesn't happen, never has happened.

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Yeah... gotta tell you that's Grade A bull**** :lol: The Greens had candidates on the ballot for 43 House of Reps seats in 2000, 54 in 2008 and 51 in 2016, and higher percentages for available Senate seats (9, 6 and 7, respectively). The efforts of the Libertarian party have been even greater, with 201 candidates for House seats in 2000, 125 in 2008 and 116 in 2016. Those are widespread, sustained efforts (presumably going back much further than the years I checked), and almost certainly in the case of many other available seats there were eligible candidates who were prevented by ballot access restrictions from even running. It takes all of a couple of minutes' fact-checking for the fantasy that they're simply not bothering to give way to the reality that third parties often face big barriers to even getting on the ballot... never mind competing in terms of campaign funding, and perhaps even moreso overcoming the perception that a third party vote is 'wasted.'

Checkerboard Strangler said:

Should the USA change to a parliamentary system with coalition governments, where third parties could actually be more effective? There are many who think so but it would take several Acts of Congress and a Constitutional Amendment to make that happen.

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How about just reducing barriers to ballot access and, perhaps more importantly, switching from first-past-the-post to preferential/ranked choice/instant-runoff voting (as recently adopted in Maine, for example). In FPTP a third party vote is not only 'wasted' (beyond the message it sends to the big parties) but - as you've stressed - can even help a party win which is least desired by a majority of voters. Seems the only constitutional barrier to a switch to preferential voting is in Maine's own state constitution.

The real hurdle would be getting the duopoly to loosen their stranglehold on your country's elections even that little bit.