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Current time: March 28, 2024, 5:09 am

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Bill Maher Spells It Out
#51
RE: Bill Maher Spells It Out
And the same thing can be said for third-party candidates. Not today, not tomorrow ... and not ever if people throw up their hands and continue voting the status quo.

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#52
RE: Bill Maher Spells It Out
The place to start is credible third party candidates.  You don't have that this time.
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#53
RE: Bill Maher Spells It Out
(October 28, 2016 at 4:57 pm)Minimalist Wrote: The place to start is credible third party candidates.  You don't have that this time.

Right. It really seemed to me like this could have been the break-out year for the Libertarians -- not to win, of course, but to raise their profile dramatically and finally enter the game in a serious way. The Republicans were practically begging to get blind-sided on some of their own most cherished talking points (reduced taxes, small government) once they nominated Trump. And while libertarian views on taxes and the social safety net will never get much play on the left, such as it is in the U.S., their hands-off approach to many social issues seems ideal for appealing to a broad swath of voters, including young voters. And their views on foreign policy, which seem dangerously simple-minded to me, will always appeal to a certain group who are understandably tired of our seemingly endless involvement in so many conflicts.

Johnson turned out to be a flake and did his party no favors. Then again, many Libertarians are flakes. I seem to recall that there was an intra-party spat at the time of his nomination because he wasn't flaky enough! The 'intellectual' wing of the party (the Ayn Rand/Milton Friedman fans) are vastly outnumbered. [Edited to mention]: I realize that not all Libertarians are ideologues or conspiracy nuts, that there are many who identify as small-L libertarians. These strike me as disappointed moderate Republicans at heart who will not kowtow to the conservatives on questions of privacy and non-violent 'crimes' like pot.

I think the Green Party will never amount to more than a splinter party of ideological purists in the U.S. Hell, anyone left of Reagan these days is branded as a radical leftist. Sanders was as far left as our political divide will allow, and a Sanders presidency was doomed to fail in the unlikely event he managed to get elected.

For the Greens to ever succeed here an enormous sea change would have to take place. The country's steady rightward shift and the degree to which the GOP has poisoned our discourse with charges of socialism or communism any time someone dares suggest a reform that even Nixon could have got behind back in the day suggests that there will not be a viable left-wing party in my lifetime. It seems to me that the only way the Green Party becomes a player is if things get so bad that voters turn to them as a sort of Hail Mary gambit. However, by then it will be too little too late.

And the Greens have more than their fair share of nuts, too.
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