Politics Turning GA, NC, NV, and/or PA into victory (Biden vs Trump, 2020 election!)

Not sure... Bernie had a lot of support and his "base" didn't seem to show up to vote of course the primaries are different, but it's hard to tell, and there's still so much going to happen in the next few months.

 

Don't confuse a vocal minority as a lot of voters. He go slaughtered on Super Tuesday and that was well before the coronavirus shut down.

 

I figure if you want small government then start looking at and treating government differently....go to your local city council meetings...meet your fire dept staff and your local sheriff and law enforcement officers..know your kid's teachers and medical professionals..I've taken steps in this direction over the years and found local politics to be so much more impactful than the shit show in DC...small government is something that takes practice and all the banter in the world will never change the tune in big money politics...Bernie Sanders is proof of that at least here in the states...there has never been an even playing field in the world of American partisan politics...

 

I would love a third party. Maybe call it the "moderate party of America" or something. Where voters that like conservative and liberal policies. I would probably join that party in a heartbeat.

 

The problem is that "independent" voters come in lots of varieties. They aren't all or even mostly "moderate." Many are extreme left-wing or extreme right-wing people who think the Democrats or Republicans betrayed them by not going far enough. Or they're libertarians who don't have the same mix of conservative/liberal policies as you or a theoretical "moderate party." Or they're focused entirely on environmentalism. Etc, etc. That's why third parties can't succeed in our system--elections are largely all or nothing, so alternate viewpoints that are split into 2% here, 5% there, 1% there won't have any voice.

 

I think it mostly proved that young voters still don't vote. Which was much of his base.

 

Isn't that the same with "Republicans and Democrats" though? Their values are all over the place, theirs a huge spectrum in ideologies amongst them as well. They've just become an umbrella where they try to get as many who might be sort of in a similar vein on at least a couple issues to join them. I think a third party would actually help this problem and divide in the two parties too because there would be more options. A lot of people feel like well in order to have a voice I have to join one of those two groups even if I don't agree with them on many things I just pick a couple of things important to me and go from there.

 

That could be, but then it has nothing to do with typical turnouts then as like you said, they seldom get out in big numbers for any election. It shouldn't affect Biden that much as he has a stronghold on the older generations.

 

My overall point was just that I don't know what any of the polls right now and all of that really means in terms of November. Guess we'll find out, in November.

 

Polls are always evolving so what one says today can be much different in a month. Pretty much that way in polls, mock drafts etc. They are only educated guesses of the opinions today. Expecting anything more from a poll would be foolish imo.

 

That works against a third party though. The fact that the two "big parties" already encompass such a wide spectrum means that the people who are left out are very, very different. You're not uniting people who are "too conservative for Republicans," people who are "too liberal for Democrats" and centrists. They'd all find each other repugnant, politically.

 

True, but there are many “moderate” voters on both sides that have similar views. They could peel voters from both the democrats and republican sides imo.

 

The problem with that is one of social momentum. The Republicans and Democrats are already huge and established. A party starting out will be tiny and have no hope of winning, so the people who might be peel-able will see it as "wasting their vote." Which means the party really won't grow and ever reach that critical mass. It's like that old saw "Need experience to get a job, need a job to get experience." You need to attract voters to win, you need to win to attract voters.

I mean, we've seen this. Theoretically, the libertarians should be able to peel from both parties--on the classic, overly-simplified axis of conservative vs. liberal, libertarian policies are conservative for some things (financial, largely) and liberal on others (social). But the Libertarian Party has really not been able to grow at all. Sometimes they do a little better or a little worse, but there's no upward trend.

 

Yes, 100% agree it’s near impossible to have a true third party. Takes a lot of money and influential people to establish.

 

Unfortunately, I think you're right. So then the question becomes, how do we get our two political parties to do a better job at bringing forth quality candidates? No matter whether you lean conservative or liberal, a ballot with Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden is a fail. The Republican establishment would no doubt love to dump the Trump because of his massive obnoxious personality traits, but they're stuck with him. The Democrats should be able to run virtually anyone and beat Trump comfortably, but they end up with a guy going on 78 years old who often has trouble stringing together two sentences without fumbling his words and who has an active complaint against him for sexual assault. This on the heels of running Hillary Clinton? We may be locked into a two party system, but there has to be a better way to pick our candidates.

 

I dont agree. I think it means there are a lot of people who dont find each other politically repugnant, they would gladly find a place where they dont have to hate the “other side”. There are a lot of people in those parties who would leave if other options existed. I feel like Bernie has basically shown theres room for a democratic socialist party, its comprised of democrats but also many of his voters wont for a democrat. A democratic socialist party could suck up (lol), many from the democrats, but it would drag the democratic party somewhat to the right to garner attention, there’d be many independents who could in theory find a home now in the new democratic or democratic socialist parties, while the democratic party could potentially suck out some republicans who are more moderate that dont want to go towards the further right stuff. I think we see every year that voter turn out is bad because so many even those registered “d” or “r” are alienated by those groups.

 

You’d think that would be true, but you can only vote for candidates who are on the ballot.