2020 US Election (Part Two)

[Timsup2nothin]

That's why you choose carefully exactly what behaviors you want to happen. Figure out what you want the landscape to look like when you are done. This is not a "do as a lark" type exercise. I'd even run a few limited tests first to see what happens. There is process to do this kind of thing and it must be taken on seriously and thoughtfully. Try things out at the county level and see what happens. Figure out the barriers and how to overcome them. Talk to people to see what would motivate them.

The problem is that the behavior you are rewarding does in fact take place in a very private booth. If they go in, they voted, as near as anyone will ever know.

 

[Birdjaguar]

The problem is that the behavior you are rewarding does in fact take place in a very private booth. If they go in, they voted, as near as anyone will ever know.

After you vote and it is recorded, you usually have to do something before you leave the building. A machine responds, you turn in a paper, walk by an attendant. They give you the reward once they are assured you have voted. Technical issues tied to process tend to be solvable once you know what you need to have happen. Once I know I want to give you 75% off your next GOG purchase if you buy 4 games, then there will be a person who can make sure you get the coupon and turn it in when you buy.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

After you vote and it is recorded, you usually have to do something before you leave the building. A machine responds, you turn in a paper, walk by an attendant. They give you the reward once they are assured you have voted. Technical issues tied to process tend to be solvable once you know what you need to have happen. Once I know I want to give you 75% off your next GOG purchase if you buy 4 games, then there will be a person who can make sure you get the coupon and turn it in when you buy.

I get all that, but the point is that "you go in there and check some boxes" is pretty much the limit of what you are rewarding. And that really isn't necessarily "voting."

 

[Birdjaguar]

I get all that, but the point is that "you go in there and check some boxes" is pretty much the limit of what you are rewarding. And that really isn't necessarily "voting."

Of course it is. I would guess that 25% of voting is 90% that.

 

[Ironsided]

First, Trump DID run against Obama. He jumped on the birther waggon and kept harping on it. His platform was to repeal the Affordable Care Act and roll back environmental protections and the like. His vision ‘terrible but still’ as you rightly call it, was simply doing whatever the Democrats and their cotton-picker (insult actually used during the campaign on live unscripted TV) had managed to do. And all he is doing is exactly that. Less taxes for the rich? Done. Breaking climate agreements? Check. Starting trade wars? Check. Undoing the ACA? It's defunded. Packing the Supreme Court? Check.

It's all about destruction.

Obama was the president and Trump was set on leading the opposition. If you want to call that “run against”, fine and fair enough, but I think many will find that confusing when he ran and won the general election against Hillary.

Saying it’s all about destruction on the other hand is too simplistic. Trump ran on populism. Trump can read a room and tell people what they want to hear. He does that very well with his special brand blunt charisma, humour and loose ties to reality. Trump is a very able demagogue. Fact is many Americans care far more about their taxes and immigration than the environment. Many American rightfully hated the trade agreements in place and rightfully considered ACA a weak compromise. Trump sold his candidacy very well on these populist issues. Now, put up a chump like Biden talking just as much out of his arse as Trump does – only ten times less coherent and with a terrible public voting record on all those populist issues – is a terrible plan. To defeat a demagogue, you want to be trustworthy and like a laser beam on the actual issues. Demanding answer after answer until people for themselves see the façade crack and fall off.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Biden will struggle against trump, he's not going to win the Democratic nomination through his own efforts but because the institution can't afford to risk anything other than a bland centrist, a continuation of hillary Clintons failing politics

 

[Zardnaar]

Biden will struggle against trump, he's not going to win the Democratic nomination through his own efforts but because the institution can't afford to risk anything other than a bland centrist, a continuation of hillary Clintons failing politics

Under normal circumstances.

Probably gonna need a new new deal.

 

[cardgame]

Clinton would have won [November] if she weren't a woman

this country is terrible

 

[IglooDame]

Clinton would have won [November] if she weren't a woman

this country is terrible

I don't agree with your conclusion. Yes some people refused to vote for her because she was/is a woman. But other people voted for her because she was/is a woman. Same with Obama, in being black. I suspect the overwhelming vast majority of people would have voted against and for Hillary and Obama for the usual ideological positioning reasons anyway regardless of gender or skin color. Personally I would prefer to vote for anyone other than an elder straight white male, all other things being vaguely close to equal.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Nah, this country is an abomination and in the future people will condemn us for how cruel American society has been, is and was, to our citizens let alone others.

 

[Sommerswerd]

I think a simpler way we could incentivize voting is to get rid of the electoral college.

Note that I don't think that this would be easy, just that it is simple, and could potentially produce immediate results. For one thing, it eliminates one of the main excuses people cite for their decision not to vote. There are a multitude of people who have been, for years, using the electoral college as their main reason for not voting. So at a minimum, these folks are would have to come up with a new excuse.

The other thing that this could help do is eliminate the restriction to voting in particular places by nationalizing the voting rolls. If you have a dogsqueeze polling location nearby with ridiculously long lines you just go to another one. It wouldn't even matter what state you voted in.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I think a simpler way we could incentivize voting is to get rid of the electoral college.

Note that I don't think that this would be easy, just that it is simple, and could potentially produce immediate results. For one thing, it eliminates one of the main excuses people cite for their decision not to vote. There are a multitude of people who have been, for years, using the electoral college as their main reason for not voting. So at a minimum, these folks are would have to come up with a new excuse.

The other thing that this could help do is eliminate the restriction to voting in particular places by nationalizing the voting rolls. If you have a dogsqueeze polling location nearby with ridiculously long lines you just go to another one. It wouldn't even matter what state you voted in.

That only works if you isolate the presidential election from all other elections, or are you saying that your neighborhood polling station should be stocked with a ballot that includes "mayor of Palmdale" just in case I'm visiting you on election day?

 

[Samson]

The lowest hanging fruit is making it easier to vote. To have to take the day off work to exercise your democratic right is ridiculous.

That only works if you isolate the presidential election from all other elections, or are you saying that your neighborhood polling station should be stocked with a ballot that includes "mayor of Palmdale" just in case I'm visiting you on election day?

They could have a printer and Palmdale could print their voting slip remotely.

 

[Sommerswerd]

That only works if you isolate the presidential election from all other elections, or are you saying that your neighborhood polling station should be stocked with a ballot that includes "mayor of Palmdale" just in case I'm visiting you on election day?

Only for POTUS elections, but I see your point. I guess for that part of it you would have to use a "POTUS only" ballot... which tbh, I think a non-insignificant portion of the electorate would be perfectly fine with.

Even considering your very astute point, that wouldn't be an obstacle to eliminating the electoral college, just to allowing cross-jurisdiction voting.

 

[Zardnaar]

Saturday elections here and post in is very easy.

I registered in 1996. Just update your address. Haven't moved for ten years, I get voting card in mail. Walk to school about 5 minutes away they gave a list of the electoral roll or flash your card with a number.

If it's not that busy it's walk in and out. Only polls that tend to be busy are the student area ones.

Special votes are mail in and kiwis living overseas.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The lowest hanging fruit is making it easier to vote. To have to take the day off work to exercise your democratic right is ridiculous.

They could have a printer and Palmdale could print their voting slip remotely.

Print the ballot is one thing...counting the ballots is another. Modern technology probably could solve that problem though. Ballots wherever they are cast could be digitally transferred to where they belong, routed through servers in Moscow.

I have an odd observation on the "national holiday to vote" idea too, from having worked in retail and in public utilities. Retail workers are always screwed into working when everyone else is off. Weekends are for shopping. So do we say "stores must close" for this voting holiday? I'm not opposed, but current events indicate that there are stores we consider to be essential. Do we close pharmacies?

And "essential" leads to public utilities. I can tell you from experience that the staff at facilities that run 24/7/365 are screwed, always. There is just no good way to divide up a seven day week. But that's not the issue here. The issue here is that those places just can't close, period. When everything else closes for the day you "eliminate the excuse" but they are still gonna be stuck. I can see this national day off to vote turning into "well, we don't need vote by mail, and we don't need this, and we don't need that, since we are giving everybody the day off anyway." And that really screws the people who you just can't give the day off.

I think I prefer universal vote by mail, myself.

 

[Samson]

Print the ballot is one thing...counting the ballots is another. Modern technology probably could solve that problem though. Ballots wherever they are cast could be digitally transferred to where they belong, routed through servers in Moscow.

I have an odd observation on the "national holiday to vote" idea too, from having worked in retail and in public utilities. Retail workers are always screwed into working when everyone else is off. Weekends are for shopping. So do we say "stores must close" for this voting holiday? I'm not opposed, but current events indicate that there are stores we consider to be essential. Do we close pharmacies?

And "essential" leads to public utilities. I can tell you from experience that the staff at facilities that run 24/7/365 are screwed, always. There is just no good way to divide up a seven day week. But that's not the issue here. The issue here is that those places just can't close, period. When everything else closes for the day you "eliminate the excuse" but they are still gonna be stuck. I can see this national day off to vote turning into "well, we don't need vote by mail, and we don't need this, and we don't need that, since we are giving everybody the day off anyway." And that really screws the people who you just can't give the day off.

I think I prefer universal vote by mail, myself.

To be clear, when I say "no-one should have to take a day off to vote", I mean you should have enough capacity at voting stations that queues are not long. Having votes on the weekend would help too.

 

[Birdjaguar]

A day off to vote! Cool lets go to the beach.

 

[Traitorfish]

I disagree with your characterization of "the official narrative" I feel like "Russian Interference" is another thing that mixed in there for example. But even putting that aside... That's only in your subjective view, which is predisposed/biased towards seeing it this way, because of your deep preference for Sanders.

If I was interpreting the 2016 election through a lens of relentless pro-Sanders bias, I would surely prefer Clinton's defeat to represent a damning rejection of her politics by the American voters, and not a fluke generated by your dumb eighteenth century electoral system.

I don't imagine that Sanders would have out-performed Clinton by sweeping margins. It's plausible that, in terms of the popular vote, he may actually have done worse. But it has widely been observed that what pushed Trump over the finish line was the support of working class white voters in the Rust Belt who were not a natural Republican constituency. Even those who point to Russian electoral interference are largely arguing that this interference allowed Trump to win these voters. Sanders would appear to have been better-positioned than Clinton to sway these voters to the Democratic Party. If this is untrue, it is because there are other voters of comparable strategic importance that Sanders would turn away. Do you have a proposal for who that might have been?

Yes. He lost and has all but lost again to Biden. What better proof are you looking for? I can believe with all my heart that my favourite ball club is the greatest team that god ever gave man, but my belief will not deliver them to victory. If the other team is better, they will lose. My response shouldn't be to claim that their loss proves that the game is flawed, rather than considering that my team just wasn't as good as I thought.

Biden has been successfully because he has successfully mobilised Democratic Party loyalists. His core constituency was people who were almost certainly going to vote, and almost certainly going to vote Democratic. The chances of Biden pimary voters switching to the Republican ticket in the general are limited; the chances of Biden primary voters switching to Trump in the general are, let's be technically precise and say "non-zero".

This has been possible because the Sanders campaign has failed to mobilise as many marginal or disengaged voters as they hope, or I daresay expected. This is undeniable, and it casts doubt on his campaign's potential to achieve this sort of mobilisation in the general, which was always part of his pitch. It is not good for Sanders. But the way in which Biden has achieved his lead in the Democratic primary, by marshalling the highest number of inevitable Democratic voters, does not point in any clear way to his achieving a lead in the general. His campaign has proven even less convincingly than Sanders that it can win the support of people who otherwise would have voted for Trump, or would have abstained altogether, and therefore that it can avoid repeating the failures of the Clinton campaign.

If Sanders' campaign is doomed from the start, then the primary is nothing so much as two men arguing about exactly how they should lose the election, and you are simply expressing your preference for the candidate who proposes to lose the same way they always do. To believe otherwise, you must accept that Sanders has the potential to win in the general, even if you maintain that he has is less well-positioned to do so than Biden, or you must contend that Biden is better-positioned than Sanders to mobilise marginal or disengaged voters, despite having no tangible record of doing so.

The only way you can maintain simultaneously that Sanders is a no-hoper but that Biden is poised to take a majority in the electoral college is to assume that large numbers of Republicans will defect in the general. But that is to assume that people who were willing to swallow their distaste for Trump in 2016, who were prepared to support him long after it had become clear what a comical monstrosity he was, should change their minds at this point, after his administration has shown itself to be far more moderate and more cooperative with congressional Republicans that many assumed it would be. Is that really credible?

If everyone is disenfranchised, then why the heck is Sanders running? Why not go straight to the armed revolution?

The movement around Sanders is quite explicitly an effort to enfranchise working class Americans. This is like asking "If you're already hungry, why bother eating?"

 

[Timsup2nothin]

If I was interpreting the 2016 election through a lens of relentless pro-Sanders bias, I would surely prefer Clinton's defeat to represent a damning rejection of her politics by the American voters, and not a fluke generated by your dumb eighteenth century electoral system.

I don't imagine that Sanders would have out-performed Clinton by sweeping margins. It's plausible that, in terms of the popular vote, he may actually have done worse. But it has widely been observed that what pushed Trump over the finish line was the support of working class white voters in the Rust Belt who were not a natural Republican constituency. Even those who point to Russian electoral interference are largely arguing that this interference allowed Trump to win these voters. Sanders would appear to have been better-positioned than Clinton to sway these voters to the Democratic Party. If this is untrue, it is because there are other voters of comparable strategic importance that Sanders would turn away. Do you have a proposal for who that might have been?

As an alternative...those lesser educated midwestern state white voters that are suggested as "the difference makers that would have gone for Sanders" are among the most susceptible USians to the "scary socialist" campaign that would have been run against him. Without even looking for a strategic offset, it's not really a certainty that Sanders would have done better than Clinton there in the first place.

On the other hand, that block of voters are specifically the block that Obama targeted to bring into his coalition by selecting Biden as his running mate. They have always been the Biden block.