If you see me somewhere please let me know. I’ve no idea where I went.
If Stein was not in the running, some of her voters may have settled for Harris. As it is, she’s muddying the water. It’s not Harris’s fault a bunch of people are going to ignore the money trail and vote Stein. Harris is going to focus on the people who might be swayed.
As for Bush and Bowman, no argument. That was rotten & PACs need to die. Those two were doing something right for AIPAC to go after them.
Their vote puts a dictator in place and Harris is the bad guy for not stroking their egos enough? Gotcha.
Yeah watching the Dems is painful AF. They get real close to GETTING it and then fall back into their political safe zone. The 3rd party voters might not have the numbers, but they have good ideas for the future of the country that need to be considered.
We need more Bernies & AOCs on the inside to pull dems back (at least) toward centre and make them understand that 3rd party voters have some great ideas for bringing positive change and equity. Even if the Dems can’t fully embrace them, let’s nudge the needle back toward progress by paying attention to them. The Dems might do. The GOP won’t. So if there are only two viable parties in the presidential (and congressional) race there’s a clear choice if anyone really wants the opportunity to (frustratingly slowly) change anything for the better.
I always say it’s easier to shame dems into doing the right thing. The GOP have no shame to leverage.
Nope. Stein voters are lost voters. The Harris campaign will ignore them and move on. There is no message being broadcast or received during this election. Voting for a party that can only help install the worse of two evils is 100% a move of immense privilege, not a moral high ground.
They have the power to put a dictator in place by leveraging people who don’t understand the primaries are for your ideals and the main election is for strategy. Until we get ranked-choice voting (and we won’t) your moral posturing does the opposite of what you think. In reality anyway.
The Green party is already irrelevant. Their only power is siphoning away votes every 4 years. If they actually wanted to affect political change, they would establish a broad presence in local politics, establish a voting and policy record, and build a third party that’s actually viable as their local candidates advance to the national stage.
That takes a lot of time and a tonne of effort, though. Apparently it’s just easier taking money from Putin to gum up a presidential election.
Going to add as well that the only party that might actually change those policies will be the dems, since the GOP SUPER won’t, and the green party has zero chance of gaining any power.
Padme: So they’re going to cancel his defense contract, right?
I use a Kaweco Sport as my daily driver.
Bonus: Nobody ever “borrows” it at work because it confuses and terrifies them.
The legal problems he brought upon himself? By actively and blatantly criming? Boy that must suck for him.
OMG well that kills my dumb little joke then. I’m not deleting it, so hopefully other people who didn’t know about this will find your reply.
I’m not sure if it’s more awful because it’s innately horrible or because it’s that fn believable.
You know she watched the debate. And got more pleasure from that than anything he ever did, second only to getting a hush money check from him.
Sadly that won’t happen because Americans are special - and I say ‘special’ in that Midwestern-US, ‘bless their heart’ way
The US government tries to pass (or enforce) any meaningful gun legislation, a third of the country stamps their feet and tells ‘NO!’ and the gov’t backs down. Rinse & repeat
This will be interesting if allowed to play out. The president* is immune to prosecution, but none of his flunkies are. So he has to do every last thing himself because nobody is gonna risk their neck. I would pay to see that.
“Boosting their numbers” in the single biggest election doesn’t make them a viable party. Third party candidates got an average of 5% of the vote in the 2016 presidential election (unless you include Utah to blow the bell curve to a whopping 7%).
Getting that party’s candidates established in local governments across the nation so they gain a following, experience, and momentum is what does make them viable. It’s not easy, but it’s the only way. Zero people care who didn’t win the presidential election or why - it’s winner take all. No message is received.
World’s smallest cello
Not voting for them only “sends the message” that you are not their constituents, not engaged, and/or comfortable with the status quo. If you are not engaging, you literally have no say.
And all voting is of course conditional. If you help get them in office, you have more clout when you call their office and say “I knocked on doors and volunteered and worked to get you in office so you could convince Congress to stop funding genocide. Now get moving.” If they don’t, THEN vote them out.
Speaking of which, the president’s hands are tied by decades of deals, agreements and other (largely misled) laws passed by Congress to support “our ally” Israel. It’s a stupid, massive tangle that can’t be easily undone, and Congress is not interested in changing anything because it’ll make Jesus cry or something. We need better representatives AND a more progressive president before anything will move.
And finally I do agree with you - coming out and actually saying “hey I don’t support genocide” is the bare minimum she can do and it’s frustrating that she’s not.
She vaguely thinks there may be something out there but it has zero bearing on her life. I think that makes her functionally an agnostic atheist.
A Mary Sue can fail, but those failures don’t usually have a massive impact and are easily reversed without the feeling that the MS had to struggle to earn the reversal.
The more flaws a character has, the more they have to work to balance them out. Readers are more likely on the side of a character that has to work and make sacrifices to make it through the difficulties the plot throws at them.
Random Example: Diana Rowland’s “My Life as a White Trash Zombie”. Protagonist Angel has a criminal record, drug addiction, abusive home life, and generally makes very bad decisions. Because of her life course, she has very few resources (she can’t go to the cops, nobody she knows has money or connections, etc) but she can think quickly and has a sort of desperate resourcefulness. Because everything is working against her, she has to fight for any positive forward movement, and one misstep can be a serious threat - and those happen frequently, undoing any success and forcing her to burn her resources to try a new path. IIRC in one of the books the B-story is her trying just to earn her GED as the main plot around her is utter pandemonium. Just that struggle to graduate high school is a herculean task given the deck stacked against her. Readers aren’t thinking “how will she win”, they’re thinking “well what’s going to go wrong this time?”
TL;DR: If every time your protagonist has a setback the readers shout “can’t she ever catch a break?” instead of “ah she’ll just breeze through this” you should be doing okay.
I’m suggesting do what it takes to make sure we get more elections after 2024.
Since only around 5% of assault accusations turn out to be false, I would take your comment as misogyny. Your mum must be proud.