In a few short months, primary voters will begin selecting the Republican presidential nominee. The two debates thus far have been underwhelming. A third is approaching on Nov. 8, but it, too, promises to be the kind of unhelpful event that lacks the virtue of at least being entertaining. Yet I’ll be watching — tuned in and deciding which candidate to support. I’m not a Republican, but I’ll play one on Super Tuesday, March 5.
God damn this is stupid. I was raised Republican and will never be stupid enough to ever vote for one again. Your state is never safe from their absolutism. I live in Oregon and we almost lost all of our rights during our last election for governor. Yet some fucking idiots here are still complaining about how we handled COVID vs how a Republican literal Nazi would be a better governor. It’s absolutely insane how stupid people can be.
This is the primary, not the actual election. Independents get to choose which primary to vote in.
It doesn’t matter. Engagement with opposition stifles your own party. I was registered independent for a long time until I stopped being Republican.
Own party? What party do Independents belong to? None. They don’t owe a party any allegiance and don’t expect any in return.
You are picking a side by voting in the Republican primary. You are Republican because you picked one of their candidates. And like a stated elsewhere they will vote that person into office because they don’t give a shit about who the person is. If they are the chosen Republican candidate they will be in office, you are choosing to make their choice more extreme.
Your picking a side to disrupt and add weight to an unlikable candidate who will lose badly in the general election.
Republicans did this with Bernie Sanders hoping he would win not Hillary Clinton in 2016. It works better in local and state elections where you can organize the effort.
No you’re not.
What he’s talking about is helping skew the primary results.
Not that it matters for us in Oregon since the candidates will be decided LONG before we get to vote in the primary. :(
No I fully understand. Republicans will vote for whoever is chosen in the primary, so this person is choosing to further radicalize the Republican party.
Oregon primaries do suck a bit. Still, the Republican governor candidate would have taken so many basic rights we have in Oregon away. Yet people still are thinking they couldn’t be that bad when Dems mess up a few things. Sometimes I feel like dirt is smarter than most oregonians out in the country where I live.
He isn’t though, he doesn’t specifically say who he’s voting for, and unless he votes Trump, he’s not really contributing to radicalization. But I don’t see why an independent would switch parties to vote Trump in a primary.
Right now, in Virginia, Trump is polling at 47% with DeSantis a distant second at 13%.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-primary-r/2024/virginia/
If this guy wants Trump, all he has to do is do nothing. Trump wins the primary. If he’s interested in stopping Trump, switching parties to vote in the primary is the way to go.
If that very specific situation were hypothetically were true then maybe I guess? But voting for the extreme candidate expecting them to be less ellectible is just wrong. If the Republican party had to pick desantis because Trump died or something similar, the vote count wouldn’t change much. Republican voters all fall in line behind who is picked by the party. All I’m pissed about is the belief that a radical candidate will spoil an election and thinking that voting for a candidate in a primary is somehow not supporting them. It’s hand wavy and normalizes crazy political beliefs.
In the primary, there really aren’t any good candidates because they’re all trying to be Trump. :(
If I thought voting for a non-crazy Republican would help, I’d flip parties too to vote in the primary, but like I say, Oregon is too late to make a difference.
Tell me you didn’t even read the whole headline, with out telling you didn’t read it.
As an independent myself in Colorado we get to pick which primary to vote in. Typically the Democratic Primary doesn’t have any impact, usually its individuals running unopposed. So I vote in the GOP primary and pick candidates that are most likely to lose to the Democrat. The GOP here might be the worst run in the nation. No funding, run by climate deniers, xovid deniers, conspiracy theorists, and morally corrupt individuals. Essentially Boebert types. The rural communities that vote in Republicans are the poorest parts of the state and refuse to change. Their representatives do absolutely nothing but collect a paycheck.
This would be a solid strategy if Boebert actually lost the election.
Yep. Republicans always see the big R and vote for it. They don’t give a shit about political beliefs. Believing they might not vote for R on the ballot is childish.
Democrats outnumber Republicans 4 to 1 in Colorado. Independents still make up 70% of voters. That means using this strategy typically puts a moderate on the ballot who draws in the most voters.
Obviously this screws over ultra left wing types but they don’t get independents voting for them either.
Same here, though my rule usually is ‘vote for the least crazy Republican in the hopes of having least crazy vs. sane’ when I’m voting for a Republican in a Primary. However, this doesn’t hold if there’s an actual race on the Democratic side. I will vote in the Blue Primary if there’s a competitive race there.
We haven’t had a race for the Democrats in ten years on the primary ballot.
That’s sort of interesting. Then your only job is to create the vote on the primary ballot. Voting in your opposition party’s primary election only reinforces their entrenched position. Stop doing it, again especially because you are helping the far right.
If the Democrats are united and running unopposed then what? Circle the automatic winner? Or you can influence who the challenger is, hopefully picking some idiot that allows the unopposed Democrat to steam roll them.
Republican voters don’t care who is on the ballot, Democrats do. Republicans will vote a pro pedophile candidate into office. So voting in their primary is useless, again especially by voting for the extremist candidate. You are directly voting that extremist into office when you cast your primary vote.
You are what we used to joke about a lot. People who think they can trick the right. We always knew better by always voting regardless of the candidate.
Republicans and Democrats don’t decide elections, independent voters decide elections. Republicans make up 25%, Democrats make up 25%, Independents make up 49% of voters. 1% are third party like Libertarian.
Removed by mod
Why do you hate strategic voting by independents? Do you think they shouldn’t be allowed to vote? Independent voters are doing exactly what George Washington intended.
“However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” SEPTEMBER 17, 1796
Removed by mod
Uncivil comments will be deleted.
I know I’m being a dick to you but I’m curious. Is this a DM? I’m obviously new to lemmy and I’m using boost only so I can’t tell if it is.
I’m honestly sorry for being so rude but you can’t assume Republican voters care about anything but the R next to a candidates name. It’s a childish assumption that yields extremely dangerous results. And the “I answer to no party” rethoric is dumb too. If your ideals line up with one of the two valid party’s you support that party.
I was just letting you know. Arguing is fine but community rules discourage uncivil behavior towards any community member. Insults, expletives towards members always results in a post being removed. It’s the most common reason for a comment getting removed actually.
Ok, noted.
I am being uncivil but only to show you who you are voting for. Doesn’t matter if it’s only a primary you are supporting those who openly hate you.
You might not like it, but Democrats used it to turn Georgia and Arizona blue. The conditions have to be right but left leaning Independents can absolutely torpedo GOP odds, but you have to weigh the numbers in your favor.
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/06/gop-primaries-chaos-democrats-243487
Yes it can, thanks for the example. The reality is it barely ever works and can (and does) backfire much worse by pushing the party further right. Which is why I believe it’s a horrible idea to ever try. Makes my inner Republican come out its box I tucked it into.
The problem is the great evil that’s waiting by even giving support in primaries for a party that wouldn’t blink at putting people in camps. I’ve heard multiple conversations from people who think they are moderate Republicans discussing putting homeless people into camps or just outright killing them all. It’s getting scarier than just supporting the bad candidates to maybe spoil the vote. These are people I barely know openly discussing killing a large group of people. Working in manufacturing exposed me to tons of yokels all over the country.
The one circumstance when voting for a Republican is tenable: when all the candidates are Republicans.
The problem is, by this logic you would have helped trump win the election in 2016
In addition, this is actually helping to move the Overton window to the right - the very opposite of what we should be trying to achieve
Yep, this is basically propaganda.
In Colorado? No, 2016 we voted for Bernie in the Primary in Colorado. Keep in mind Colorado is deep blue, no Republican stands a chance outside of the wasteland area.
Can’t you participate and vote for a bland candidate as a democrat? You know, to undermine the opposing party. I have no idea if that’s the case btw – it’s a genuine question
It’s not that you can’t. It’s just that OP is proceeding on an unfounded assumption - that just by voting for what he considers the ‘worst’ Rep candidate, they’re guaranteed to lose. As we’ve seen with Trump, that’s not the case.
Trump lost in Colorado and this strategy has destroyed the GOP in the state. Colorado used to be a red state before independents figured out how to game the system.
Colorado was red until red came out and put the nazi flags back on in public display.
Colorado was red until TABOR arrived and everything went to shit because taxes couldn’t be used to build up the infrastructure.
Engagement with a bad party is the same as supporting them. Republicans deserve nothing besides being ignored. Being loud about avoiding them is better than participating in their bullshit. …see any bad uprising of fascists for an example of what not to do in opposition
You’re describing how Republicans win, by ignoring them. You get a neo nazi or some religious wacko on the GOP ticket and the Democrat wins in a landslide. Right leaning Independents vote for the crazy Progressives for the same reason. It’s why moderates win elections.
It’s not ignoring them. Participating normalizes behavior. So they can point at numbers to justify being shitty.
Be loud but don’t vote for them. Being loud is harder than quietly voting in support of a candidate you think is less bad.
That’s not how it works. They track Republican voters and ignore Independents. The GOP want to block Independents from voting in primaries but have stopped even having primaries and are putting up whomever they want now. Zero Voter insite.
It’s how it works, engagement with nazis, literally everything they have.
Wut? Didn’t call them Nazis.
Participating with Republicans is directly voting that candidate into office. They almost never fail to vote their candidates into office therefore voting for the insane candidate in hopes they will win the primary is voting an insane person into office. Now that I wrote it out I guess you could call it voting for Nazis, Germans thought Hitler was insane and stupid when electing him.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The current field of Republican candidates offers a master class in making a comically complex decision tragically complicated.
Those who do vote in general elections often stick to partisan lines that track through a tangle of cultural, ideological and social markers.
Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie is reprising his role as decimator, a title earned with his one-liner daggers that hurried the demise of Florida senator Marco Rubio in 2016.
Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley’s talent seems to be catching the prevailing political wind, whatever direction it blows.
Her fellow Palmetto State politician, Sen. Tim Scott, is also a curious read, alternating between a compassionate conservative who thinks about inequality and a partisan foot soldier who hopes to prove his bona fides by trash-talking Democrats and progressives.
One idea is to assess candidates’ constitutional character, which Harvard political scientist Dennis Thompson describes as “the disposition to act” in pro-democracy ways by modeling “such qualities as sensitivity to basic rights, respect for due process in the broad sense, willingness to accept responsibility, tolerance of opposition, and most importantly a commitment to candor.”
The original article contains 891 words, the summary contains 183 words. Saved 79%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
So is this attempted ballot wrecking.
It’s democracy working as intended. Politics is dirty, losers stay clean.
I had a teacher who was jewish in nazi germany. Her family denied being jewish and hid all evidence that they were jewish and lived. I didn’t consider them cowards, i considered them smart (i know not all jewish people could get away with that. Not implying they were dumb.) I never thought i’d grow up and use that same strategy. I’m a liberal, but i’m registered as a republican cause i’m not worried about the democrats killing me and my family cause of the way i’m registered.
Totally disagree. Sitting down and hiding is what Republicans want, having been one. Be loud and teach them to sit back down. They are basically children and should be taught to STFU.
