Voters want change, but still remain unsatisfied with their options

    • Dreckard@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      Especially an old man just restored a chunk of the social safety net. No, it’s not enough yet, but Republicans are making sure of that.

    • parrot-party@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      The main fear with an old person is the instability it could cause if they grew ill. But the other two options are guaranteed instability. So I think I’ll take my chances.

      • Flaky_Fish69@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        Also keep in mind that trump is basically as old as Biden.

        And shows far more signs of being old. (The memory recall test thingy is not something given to someone of obviously sound mind,)

    • zalack@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      Yeah. Strong “one of those things is not like the others” energy to this headline, lol.

    • Clairvoidance@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      The thing about an old president is that even if he grows senile, there’s the entire rest of their administration that generally have the same goals in mind as them.

        • Clairvoidance@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          idk who rumor mk Ronnie is, but presidents assign who is on their team, most presidents assign people who are educated on what they’re assigned to, and most presidents receive advice from those people on their topics of expertise in the first place.

          • Maeve@kbin.social
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            2 years ago

            Yeah you found the mobile user. “Most” is past-tense, now. But you know, I’m old so I obviously know nothing and haven’t been around to witness watergate and on.

      • Maeve@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        It’s the illusion of choice, like one may give a toddler: would you like to have bacon or sausage with your breakfast? It’s the same product, different flavor.

        • Flaky_Fish69@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          Maybe in the worst funded public school system breakfast ever conceived …

          Bacon is a cured pork- usually belly, and typically sliced.

          Sausage is a seasoned ground meat… er… product… that might be cured or smoked or not, might be stuffed into casings or not, might (usually, unless specified,) be pork. Or not.

          The two products are vastly different. And, in point of fact … Biden and the other two are also vastly different.

          You might have had a point if you had said “it’d be like asking if you want cheap sausage or dogs shit.” I’ll let you figure out which is what.

          • Maeve@kbin.social
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            2 years ago

            Typical liberal. I’m left of that but thank you for the pedantry. It’s still pork and that goes to the wealthy and corporations, is the point. I’ll let you figure out which group works for the commoners.

            • Julian@lemm.ee
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              2 years ago

              I’m leftist too and would love for someone other than old centrist men to run the country but saying Biden and Trump are the same is just ignorant. One is a straight up racist, misogynist fascist who has done irreparable damage to the country, and the other is at least somewhat competent and has enacted policies like the COVID relief stipend and pausing student loan debt payments. Yes, he also is a shill for big companies and should be doing way more. But it does make a difference for millions of people. All you do by treating them as the same is discourage people from voting, and that voter apathy is what got us trump, and could get us desantes. Short of a political revolution, that still is our best way to enact actual change. Plus, those things aren’t mutually exclusive.

              • Maeve@kbin.social
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                2 years ago

                Good politician-bad politician ruse imo. It’s not the age so much as the recorded history. That Overton Window is so right, it’s wrong, now.

                • Julian@lemm.ee
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                  2 years ago

                  So what’s the solution? Again, voting is the only real way to get any change done right now, and while it’s minimal, I’d rather have a politician that has a minimal good effect vs none at all. The right thrives on voter apathy, they want you to feel like both sides are the same so they can take power, strip away voter rights, and stay in power - exactly what’s happening in conservative states like Florida and Texas.

                  Trust me, I want there to be another option, some sort of large-scale protest or revolution. But in lieu of that, the least we can do is make sure the minimal amount of damage is done.

            • HubertManne@kbin.social
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              2 years ago

              This is actually what I find funny about conservatives. They paint someone like me as way extreme left anarchocommunist or something and its like. This is rediculous. Im just left of center and the party I vote for is just right of center. Your party is the one so extreme you see center as left.

    • two_wheel2@lemm.ee
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      2 years ago

      Why is that the option, though? The majority of people who complain about the choices probably know who they’ll vote for even if it’s not a great choice, but how are these 3 the absolute best our country has to offer? Who’s pulling the strings to force this choice down our throats?

      • SterlingVapor@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        The fourth pillar of American democracy, media.

        By buying out news media they control the narrative. Now they’re coming for the platforms to control the narrative of public discourse

        There’s protection for these things from government ownership, because these are how democracy works. If you control the flow of information (or worse, convince them of false facts), you can warp the consensus in a certain directions

        One side is advocating all sorts of crazy shit (much of which they don’t actually want) and spreading easily consumed nonsense to justify it, and the other side is pointing at them and going “this is who will be in charge if you don’t go with us”

        This whole thing is a performance - sure, they’re actually competing and have slightly different goals, but all this fighting over social issues is just a way for them to act freely on the issues that actually matter. They don’t actually care about abortion or trans people, they care about the money.

        They just use hot button issues so they can give us a choice between people who are going to lie to our faces and screw us over, and we’ll fight each other over them instead of attempting to actually change anything. The effects may matter for us, but no matter who we choose-they’ll win and we’ll lose.

        When someone gives you a false choice, the only right choice is to attack the contrivance that took away your choice - we need to take back our media and organize

      • bangover @lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        In the end, the fault lies with the structure of the democratic process itself. The system of party delegates who then choose the presidential nominee from each political party, the first past the post electoral system by state (instead of a nationwide popular vote system)… These are all ways to effectively make elections in the US less democratic. Looking back at the founding fathers and which social and economic class they represented, the conclusion is that this supposedly flawed democratic system was implemented by design, allowing them to put a hand on the scales and tip the balance of power in their favour. Compare this electoral system with the representative democracy of western European countries for example, and you’ll see some differences.

  • IninewCrow@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    It’s the state of politics that the wealthy elite owners of the country absolutely enjoy

    Voters no longer vote for who they want

    They vote for the best of the worst that is given to them

    • Izzgo@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      They vote for the best of the worst that is given to them

      Nothing new about that.

        • parrot-party@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          Romney was a corporate stooge, but at least you knew it was just going to be more rich get richer shit. This new variety is deadset on torturing people instead of just making them poor.

    • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      Not even best. Many people vote purely against the thing they don’t want, rather than voting for the thing they do want.

  • holo_nexus@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    There has not been a time for ripe in modern times for a strong 3rd party candidate. To bad the whole system is rigged against it.

    • CoWizard@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      3rd party, on a national scale, is guaranteed to fail in fptp. The only one who wins in fptp is the least hated (of 2) candidate. 3rd party votes just suck votes that could be voted against that most hated candidate

        • CoderKat@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          No, it’s definitely a FPTP failure. If you have progressive third party candidate who mostly attracts voters who would otherwise have voted Democrat, it splits the vote. Even if the majority of people voted for either the third party or the Democrat candidate (let’s say 30% each), the Republican candidate would get win even with 60% of people not wanting them.

          I suspect you’re thinking of people being afraid to vote third party and thus dooming the third party to lose, but the fallacy of that is assuming that everyone would genuinely vote for the third party over other candidates, which isn’t the case. Articles like the one we’re commenting on are only pointing out the most common belief.

        • DH Clapp@beehaw.org
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          2 years ago

          First past the post voting systems prevent viable third parties because of human psychology. Why are we pretending to argue about how we phrase this?

      • Maeve@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        If everyone do preferred a third party candidate actually voted third party, that would change. That’s just another establishment talking point.

    • FlowVoid@kbin.social
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      2 years ago

      It’s a pretty typical size for political polls.

      A sample size of 1000 means that the results are very likely within 3% of the entire population.

      If you instead survey 10,000 people, your results will very likely be within 1% of the entire population.

      It’s diminishing returns. For most pollsters, an extra 2% accuracy is not worth ten times the effort.

      It’s similar to coin flip math. Getting 6+ heads on 10 flips is not hard. Getting 60+ heads on 100 flips is way harder. Getting 600+ heads on 1000 flips? No way. In fact, even getting 530+ heads on 1000 flips is very unlikely

      • tallwookie@lemmy.world
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        2 years ago

        i guess I dont understand statistics then - how is a survey of 10000 people accurate within 1% of the entire population? sure, there are a lot of towns that size or smaller, but it isnt like they’re traveling there to do the survey (as it’d skew the result).

        • FlowVoid@kbin.social
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          2 years ago

          They don’t survey 10000 people in one town. They try to get a randomly chosen sample of 10000 people, or even 1000 people, across the entire United States.

          If the entire United States is 50% men and 50% women, then a randomly chosen sample of 10000 will likely contain no more than 5100 men and no more than 5100 women. A sample of 1000 will likely contain no more than 530 men and no more than 530 women.

          Now replace “men” and “women” with “Democrat” and “Republican”, or any other demographic. That’s how you end up with a group of people that reasonably represents the entire United States.

  • Sterile_Technique@kbin.social
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    2 years ago

    At this point, I’d be in favor of just asking 9 first-graders what their favorite single digit number is, and granting the position of POTUS to whoever’s social security number matches the one they generated.

    But, given our current options I’d take a clueless old man over a lucid fascist in a fuckin’ heart beat. How is this really being presented as a dilemma? Would you rather have your house a bit too chili, or burn the whole thing down? Sure I don’t like either option, but deciding which one’s better kinda plays out like those cheesy banking commercials.

    • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca
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      2 years ago

      I’m actually unironically in favour of some sort of Sortition for political positions, or at the very least a proportion of them. Random people would take it more seriously and listen to experts to do the maybe less popular but correct things when not seeking power or re-election.

      • Sterile_Technique@kbin.social
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        2 years ago

        Same, with the obvious caveat that some vetting would be necessary so we don’t just hand the keys of the country to some Nazi (not that we aren’t electing those anyway, but still…)

    • thesalamander@lemmy.world
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      2 years ago

      Can you imagine the push it’ll take to implement when probably half the country is too uneducated to understand how it works?