the most important election of your lifetime: 2012 american general election thread

Yep, PERFECT is the ONLY standard by which Bam falls short!

I agree that Obama has some shortcomings, some of them he brought, and some because of his fear of the Fox-gargling psychotics of the right and how they may try to undermine him but he is getting us out of Afghanistan. I still support the aid to the Libyan rebels. You cannot know the outcome of a national rebellion but, c'mon, it didn't cost us that much to help them out and I do remember that w/o the help of France, Holland and Spain we wouldn't have won our independence. With what Romney has said and what he owes the baying wolves on the neo-con right, God alone knows what fuckery his administration might get up to.

i just don't want a businessman in the white house

Obama is a business, man

he is getting us out of Afghanistan

oh c'mon -- after sending more troops?!

based on that sliver then Nixon got us out of Vietnam.

he always said he was going to concentrate on Afghanistan. Not that I'm making apologies for all of the other awful things Obama has signed off on.

Nixon DID get us out of Vietnam!

re: Afghanistan it seems abundantly clear to me that Obama can't wait to pull all our troops out and wash his hands of the mess. I fully expect troop withdrawal schedules to go forward as planned.

Bin Laden's dead, Al Qaeda's in disarray, nothing to be gained from prolonged hostilities in Afghanistan

I don't care what he can't wait to do. CUZ HE'S BEEN WAITIN'

Nixon DID get us out of Vietnam!

― Jilly Boel and the Eltones (Shakey Mo Collier),

The burglar killed your dog and raped your sister. Thank goodness he's outta the house!

well you know me, I'm not praising Nixon or anything but them's the facts

I fully expect troop withdrawal schedules to go forward as planned.

Especially since the Afghan govmt wants us to keep to them. A precipitous pull-out would have been politically harrowing domestically, destabilizing for Afghanistan and pretty difficult wrt NATO.

In a speech in which he stressed the need for education and opportunity, he contrasted his own life story with that of his likely GOP rival. “I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Michelle wasn’t. Somebody gave us a chance. Just like these folks up here are looking for a chance.” Obama said.

Playing the spoon card! (Don't worry--that was supposed to sound stupid.) I imagine Obama will be very good at needling Romney. How Romney handles it--whether he brushes it aside or continually gets sidetracked by every little barb--may have some bearing on the campaign.

is that you reminding yourself, Mordy?

― Exile in lolville (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, April 18, 2012 5:08 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

I was being sarcastic. Are you claiming that a State's electoral votes are assigned by individual districts as opposed to a state wide popular vote? At one point in history maybe, but surely that's not the case in Florida in 2012, right?

(I'm sure someone will helpfully correct me if I've been laboring under an electoral misunderstanding.)

I was returning the sarcasm, and, yes, you're right. However, the resilience of the blue vote in the counties in which I live relieves me of the pressure of voting for a Dem.

for prez, that is

why does the county that you are in matter more than the county anyone else is in, when it comes to a national election

Moral suasion.

Obama has governed to the right of my ideal, and there are some specific instances about which I am v upset, but most of the protests I've seen here recently are a bunch of bullshit.

Just curious, Obama haters, what modern president would you have voted for?

at least Dubya threw Ken Lay under a bus -- where are the Wall Street prosecutions?

^this is a dumb-ass comparison

Rombot would govern as closely to Obot as O has to Bushbot. Too close.

^who would you vote for? Barr? Aquaman?

would vote for aquaman

at least Dubya threw Ken Lay under a bus -- where are the Wall Street prosecutions?

^this is a dumb-ass comparison

how so? and why hasn't anyone involved in the financial meltdown been thrown in jail yet?!? where are the DOJ or SEC investigations -- that's right, THERE HAVEN'T BEEN ANY.

difficult to do when the markets control everything

I'm down with people being severely disappointed in Obama, but I think its largely an extension of late capitalism.

but hey, i hear that the prosecutions and other good things are coming as long as Barry gets reelected ... after the campaign checks from Goldman Sachs and the hedge-funders clear.

yeah capitalism sucks balls

and the Republicans have been (at best) repugnant and (at worst) batshit crazy for as long as i can remember ... that hasn't changed, and it won't change any time soon.

what has changed, though, is that Democratic voters have constantly lowered their expectations to the point where their standard-bearer is essentially little more than Bush-Cheney v. 2.0 -- and they're making excuses for it.

I'm sure W would've gotten around to repealing DADT eventually.

hedge-funders have gay kids.

and daughters who can get knocked up.

we need a primitive revolution

and thank the Congress for repealing DADT, not Obama.

yeah they overrode his veto

Obamacare is letting me stay on my parents' insurance; will vote w/ my craven self-interest in mind.

hedge funders brought gay marriage to New York state, strangely

they did

if Obama has made your life better in some way, then fine vote for him ... i never said to not vote in your self-interest.

the election must be heating up, we're having the "you people who think that for example authorizing the assassination of a U.S. citizen effectively eliminates any moral gap between you & the other side are 'asking for perfection' argument." cool!

look. the murder of al-Awlaki, and his 16-year-old son, by unmanned drones under the president's orders - this, like the continuation of torture policies, enters into such morally reprehensible territory that it's mystifying to me that people of good conscience can't, at the very least, say "yes - I get how on a moral basis you cannot give your vote to such a candidate." I get that for some, the response is, look, be all that as it may, you're going to get one candidate or the other, therefore choose the one who is likely to accomplish more good. this, too, is a moral argument, and a very fine one, but it doesn't answer, morally, the question of lending support to lawlessness and murder. That is not really a question for which the "you must vote for the candidate who you believe will do more good" people really have an answer, even though they are making, in my opinion, an argument that also comes from a moral place. this I think is usually the point at which people get accused of asking for ponies, but demanding a moral justification is not asking for ponies imo: it's a reasonable demand.

I'm resigned to voting for Democrats; I don't like it, but I'm actively involved in pro-choice politics now, and for the sake of my sanity I've become pretty much a one-issue voter. On the other issues I mourn and fret and pray that anyone who'd allow the torture of another human being will suffer every day of his life in his heart and never know peace. but I'll vote for the ones who might do a cause that's important to me more good during the immediate siege on reproductive rights, and I think narrowly speaking that's how one can get morally comfortable with voting in people who you know will actively do terrible things.

if i were a Frenchman 10 years ago, i would've voted for Jacques Chirac over the neofascist knuckledragger. that didn't make Jacques Chirac any less of a crooked bastard, merely that the alternative was unthinkable.

likewise, if i end up voting for Obama again the least his supporters or apologists (as if there's a difference at this point) could do is not insult my intelligence -- can it with the "change we can believe in" bullshit this time.

in fairness I haven't heard a whole lot of Obama apologizing of late. I think everybody's pretty bummed, but some people choose to keep their focus on some positive things, which do exist. I think that's a fair enough strategy individually. But I don't think "here are the positives, and they're very real!" (as in health care: a real thing, a real benefit of Obama's admin that people have attained because he was willing to stake his presidency on it) is an answer to questions of profound moral weight. health care is also a question of profound moral weight, and there's a discussion to be had there, but torture, detention without charge, state-sanctioned murder of its own citizens: enumerated goods do not counterbalance these in any way. they are a case apart.

I'm not sure the 'citizen' element of the assassination is a moral one.

I'm not sure anyone here would argue that Obama's great. I think people get frustrated at the notion of "it doesn't matter they're as bad as each other". Maybe I'm just utilitarian though.

you're going to get one candidate or the other, therefore choose the one who is likely to accomplish more good. this, too, is a moral argument, and a very fine one, but it doesn't answer, morally, the question of lending support to lawlessness and murder. That is not really a question for which the "you must vote for the candidate who you believe will do more good" people really have an answer

well 'the answer' is that not voting or voting for a third party is not any more or less of a morally neutral action than voting. you might not 'feel' like you are lending support to candidate a or candidate b, but as far as numbers go, not voting is the same thing as 'voting for the guy who would otherwise win' and you 'should realize' that that's the result of your isolated action

but really voting is mostly about the 'feeling' part, so whatever

iatee nobody said anything about a third party

well I included it cause the effects are the same math-wise not cause I have beef w/ third parties

really tho in a country w/ 300m people spending energy trying to convince anybody to vote any particular way in a national election is just as irrational as voting for a third party, probably more, so I dunno

I agree that Obama has some shortcomings, some of them he brought, and some because of his fear of the Fox-gargling psychotics of the right and how they may try to undermine him but he is getting us out of Afghanistan. I still support the aid to the Libyan rebels. You cannot know the outcome of a national rebellion but, c'mon, it didn't cost us that much to help them out and I do remember that w/o the help of France, Holland and Spain we wouldn't have won our independence.

didn't 'cost us that much' unless you believe -- like, yknow, candidate obama claimed to -- that presidents have no constitutional authority to attack other countries without congressional authorization.

i'll vote for obama for dreary lesser-of-two-evils reasons, but i won't delude myself about what kind of guy he is.

I'm not sure anyone here would argue that Obama's great. I think people get frustrated at the notion of "it doesn't matter they're as bad as each other". Maybe I'm just utilitarian though.

yeah, otm. it's hard to argue that someone with whom i merely disagree with on policy matters (romney) is as bad as someone who's ordered the murder of an american citizen without a trial. [/morbius]

like I genuinely don't care how you vote for pres aero, and if the election ends up being decided by north carolina, and by one vote in north carolina, I think the lols would be worth the loss this time around

btw I didn't even 'vote for obama' cause my ballot got screwed up.

the thing is the stay-home sympathizer in me feels like "yeah - whichever one wins is cool with me" is an ok position & is morally defensible in many cases. but actually iatee I'm with you, I think people who basically try to Sell The Candidate have the right idea - make one's inner decision but don't try to reason people into behavior, it's a nonstarter

I'm not sure the 'citizen' element of the assassination is a moral one.

it is, insofar as the citizen is guaranteed the same rights as any of us under the law. this is an immobile cornerstone of our law. your government will not just order your assassination, you have the right to be tried by a jury of your peers. unilaterally stripping a citizen of those rights is a profound outrage to democracy.