baronvonj

The Baroness

UAFX always seems to price just a bit too high.

Because there haven't been primary candidates winning their primaries on that issue. They won't do it as a party.

The Tea Party successfully shifted the Republican party farther right by running and winning in their primaries. Why is it inconceivable that progressives can do the same in the Democratic primaries?

But I don't think after a Harris win we are going to magically have RCV

I never claimed electing Harris will get us RCV. I've said pretty consistently that the presidential election is in no way connected to us getting RCV. We will only get RCV from a bottom-up effort to shift individual state legislatures.

And look how bad they screwed him by choosing Hilary. How’d that work out?! lol

She won more votes. There was non super-delegate rat fuckery thwarting the popular vote. Put that on the voters. But his campaign was popular enough that the party platform adopted some of his campaign goals:

What did he win? Included in the new platform is his call for a $15 per hour minimum wage, Social Security expansion, a carbon tax to price its impact on the environment, tough language on Wall Street reform and antitrust, opposition to the death penalty, and a “reasoned pathway for future legalization” of marijuana.

Also after his campaign we saw more progressives running and winning around the country. Just because he didn't win the nomination doesn't mean he utterly failed to achieve anything. And that's what I'm talking about with winning state races in the Democratic primaries to fight for RCV and force the party left.

It’s the very duopoly you’re stuck with that makes real change impossible without challenging it.

Indeed. But no 3rd party candidate has received a single EC vote since 1968. Voting 3rd party for president in the general clearly isn't doing a god damn thing to shift the parties.

While ranked-choice voting (RCV) is important, dismissing third-party voting as useless only keeps the system locked in place.

I never said it was useless. But it's true that voting for a less popular left-leaning is going to reduce the number of votes that the most popular right-leaning candidate needs to receive to beat the most popular left-leaning candidate.

Voting for a third party is part of pushing for bigger reforms like RCV—it’s a step towards showing there’s demand for alternatives outside the same old two-party narrative.

I don't think you will get the ear of the Democratic party by skipping the primaries or voting in a 3rd party primary. They don't know how you vote in a general, so you showing up in their primary is the only way they know reliably that you have opinions for their direction. Bernie succeeded in shifting the Democratic party left by running in the Democratic primary. Lets do that at the local levels, especially for primary candidates who support RCV. There's pretty much no chance we can get RCV as a federal law, SCOTUS would absolutely knock it down as unconstitutional, so that fight has to come through the state legislatures.

Every vote for Harris is stealing a vote from third-party candidates

Sorry but that's an absolute shit take. I didn't mention any individual candidate or party. I didn't say voting for a third party is a vote for opposite major party candidate. It's just basic math that the presidential candidate who receives the most votes in a state wins that state. If you think there is a state where any third party candidate has a chance of winning please show me the polling that backs it up. Otherwise, just admit that the winner will be the nominee from one of the two major party candidates, and admitting that acknowledge that basic math says the more 3rd party votes are cast, the fewer votes there are between the 2 major party candidates for one of them to overcome. You can be pissed off about it all you want, but it's reality.

If you really want to avoid a Trump win, supporting a viable alternative outside the two-party system is the only way to push the conversation forward.

Unfortunately that is just idealist naivete. I vote in the major party primaries to try and get either the least crazy republican (gerrymandered districts) or the most progressive democratic candidate on the ballot. The only thing that will break the duopoly is to get RCV in every state, and the presidential election has fuck-all to do with accomplishing that.

Only if you assume their vote is owed to some candidate instead of earned.

It's just math. There is no state where a 3rd party presidential candidate will win.

You cannot assume the default is voting for the candidate YOU like

I don't. That's why I used non-partisan words and didn't name any candidates.

and that any deviation from that is ‘taking votes away’ from someone who never earned them it the first place

I never said that you're taking votes away from a candidate. I said a vote for a third party is reducing the number of votes that one of the major party candidates needs to receive in order to win. The winner is the one who receives the most votes, and that is going to be either the Democratic or Republican nominee (show me a poll that shows any 3rd party candidate leading either of the major party candidates in any state if you disagree). A vote for any other candidate just lowers the total number of votes either of them needs in order to win.

I should have clarified, though, that I'm speaking of states where there is no RCV.

You're happily reducing the number of votes that the major party candidate who you think will do the most harm needs to receive in order to win your state.

Or whatever other bullshit Catholics think they can force on you.

Don't lump it all at catholics' feet, the Hobby Lobby owners who filed that first big post-ACA suit on this are evangelical protestants.

It's actually different people saying those two parts of the sentence. As a US Senator, ~~Eden~~ Wyden is positioned to submit a bill to protect abortion at the federal level. So this hearing is likely for gathering information to use in a bill to restore abortion rights nationally, rather than an attempt to bully the healthcare providers.

edited to fix autocorrect of senator's name