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  1. And I got sucked in again...
  2. The best thing to come out of the debate?

  4. I say vote Ken Bone for President. He's gonna save us all.

  8. Originally posted by deanallison:if people got behind a 3rd party from the start then they'd maybe have a chance of winning instead of going for the media's choice.


    This is exactly why I have a problem with people voting 3rd party. None of the 3rd party candidates were ever serious about running for President from the start. People can and should criticize Trump for all his comments and views, but if there is anything that man deserves credit for, he deserves credit for putting his money where his mouth is by actually going through the process to get to this point. He didn't wait until after the national conventions to suddenly show up and try to force his name on the ballot. His entrance into the Presidential race is actually interesting because it would probably be the first time somebody with no previous experience in politics was able to enter a mainstream party and emerge as their candidate. Ironically, I think future candidates who want to market themselves as "political outsiders" should follow Trump's playbook in terms of how to break your way into a major party.

    If people want 3rd party candidates to succeed, indeed they should back them up from the very start. This also means the candidates themselves should make an effort to put forth a serious bid for the Presidency, which often means garnering support months, even years in advance. Right now I equate voting 3rd party as a seasonal fad, like ordering a pumpkin spice latte.
  9. Originally posted by ahn1991:[..]


    This is exactly why I have a problem with people voting 3rd party. None of the 3rd party candidates were ever serious about running for President from the start. People can and should criticize Trump for all his comments and views, but if there is anything that man deserves credit for, he deserves credit for putting his money where his mouth is by actually going through the process to get to this point. He didn't wait until after the national conventions to suddenly show up and try to force his name on the ballot. His entrance into the Presidential race is actually interesting because it would probably be the first time somebody with no previous experience in politics was able to enter a mainstream party and emerge as their candidate. Ironically, I think future candidates who want to market themselves as "political outsiders" should follow Trump's playbook in terms of how to break your way into a major party.

    If people want 3rd party candidates to succeed, indeed they should back them up from the very start. This also means the candidates themselves should make an effort to put forth a serious bid for the Presidency, which often means garnering support months, even years in advance. Right now I equate voting 3rd party as a seasonal fad, like ordering a pumpkin spice latte.
    Also, where are all these 3rd parties in local/state elections? A party is supposed to have a platform and a solid base of representatives in every state. What would a 3rd party president do if he/she is alone in Congress?
    To me, a political party that only appears every 4 years for the presidential election is just opportunism.
  10. I'm all for breaking the two-party system in the US (in Mexico we have up to 8 political parties, with our own issues), but the alternate candidates for this particular election are not a good option IMO. I already expressed my issues with Johnson. Jill is even worse. A doctor that panders to the crazy anti-vaxxers and any other pseudo-science movement and has no real policy whatsoever.
  11. To my understanding, the Green Party is the closest thing we have to a 3rd party building a presence in local government. I actually align closest to the Green Party in terms of their environmental ideals, but unfortunately their being anti-vax, anti-nuclear, and in some cases anti-science (which is really puzzling since their environmental science understanding is solid) amounts to a deal-breaker to me.

    Also, as developed as the Green Party is, they still suffer from major faults. Because their party platform is ideals driven, they often lack specific solutions in the forms of policy and what policy they do provide is either impractical, impossible, or indefensible from a funding perspective. Also, putting a Green Party candidate in the White House means flushing foreign policy down the toilet.

    Now this is the BEST 3rd Party scenario we've got. When people start saying the two-party system is broken, I have to disagree with them. We have a multi-party system working exactly as intended. It just so happens we only have two functional parties that participate in politics.
  12. Originally posted by ahn1991: [...] When people start saying the two-party system is broken, I have to disagree with them. We have a multi-party system working exactly as intended. It just so happens we only have two functional parties that participate in politics.
    But still, the art of compromise - as in two parties meeting each other somewhere in the middle - seems an art lost in the USA.
    As I recall, the Republicans virtually blocked every plan proposed by the Democrats just because it was proposed by Democrats/Obama.
    To me that seems to be some sort of structural problem... Not sure if that disappears when Obama leaves the White House...