Be careful about purposely helping the person you think is the worst candidate on the other side
I am very wary of any attempt to manipulate the Democratic primaries by Republicans crossing over and voting for the person they think is the weakest candidate. This is possible to do in many states with open primaries, including the one coming up in New Hampshire this Tuesday.
I say let the Democrats handle their own choices. It’s hubris to think you know who would be the most likely to lose, and it could backfire terribly. If you help the absolute worst candidate get nominated, and that person wins, I doubt you’d be pleased with yourself.
I seem to recall that the press built up Trump for a while during the 2016 primaries, hoping he’d be nominated, because they believed he’d get trounced. How’d that work out for them?
In 2008 I was happy Obama was beating Hillary because I thought there was no way he’d be elected President.
By 2016 I’d learned a thing or two, and made a decent profit from putting money down on Trump winning the election when he was trading at 22 cents on the dollar.
Never interfere when your opponent is punching him/her/it-self in the face.
I would have trouble picking out the worst from that crowd. Let them eat themselves.
The thing I always try to balance is who does my candidate have the best chance to beat and who would I most prefer if my candidate is going to lose. But with the left getting more and more frightening it’s like playing Russian roulette. Sanders would seem the one to have the best chance to be defeated but good lord what if something happens and he wins.
As for who I would prefer if Trump were to lose I guess Bloomberg only because I think (think?) he may be the one that wouldn’t totally destroy the economy.
What a horrible crew.
As a registered Dem, I get to vote in my state’s closed democratic primary. Lucky me. I’m choosing whoever is the least Socialist because I do not like that ideology.
It’s become unPC to speak negatively about Socialism at cocktail parties, and that’s just ridiculous already.
Falls under interrupting your enemy when he’s making a mistake. Eschew.
I’m conservative but registered Ind not Repub. I’m allowed to vote in the Dem primary.
Sure, I’m a drop in the ocean but I’ll probably vote for Bernie. By March the Bernie vs DemParty tension should be peaking.
I would like to see a Bernie versus Trump election. It would bring the real issues out into the open. Biden or Klobuchar or even Bloomberg would tack right after being nominated and follow Carville’s strategy of cloaking their real intentions. I’m sick of that sort of campaign. Bernie will openly propose more taxes, more regulation, more government programs, and less freedom. I want voters to see what the left is planning and make their choices.
Here are Alinsky’s eight steps to socialism:
“1) Healthcare — Control the people’s health and you control the people;
2) Poverty — Increase the poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you give them what they need to live;
3) Debt — Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you can increase taxes, which in turn will generate even more poverty;
4) Gun Control — Remove the ability of people to defend themselves from the Government. That way you can create a police state.
5) Welfare — Take control of every aspect of a person’s life (Food, Housing, Jobs and Income).
6) Education — Take control of what people read and listen to — take control of what children study in school.
7) Religion — Remove the belief in God from Government and schools.
8) Class Warfare — Divide the people into wealthy and poor. This will cause discontent and make it easier to increase taxes across the board without loosing the support of the poor by making everyone think you will only tax the rich!”
This is the Democrat blueprint. Bernie will use it openly. The Democrat establishment, ala James Carville, will try to conceal their intentions.
J.J.
Thank you for that very concise format. I’ve seen the “Rules for Radicals” but not as simply presented.
Lots of people on the right voted for Corbyn in the UK, after the Labour Party historically lowered the bar to let them. And it did them no harm at all.
True, Johnson is no conservative, but he’s still better than the Labour options.
Chester Draws is right. Sometimes picking an opponent backfires and other times it works out just fine
JimNorCal:
Of course. But the trouble is that one cannot know whether it will succeed or backfire, and it has an excellent chance of the latter in this case, considering the prevalence of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Neo, I take your point. But what about the other side of the case?
Suppose I sincerely believe that both Sanders and Warren would be disastrous choices for the country. Does that not mean I should take every practical step I can to stop them? And would that not include voting for some other candidate in the other party’s primary?
“I doubt you’d be pleased with yourself.”
That, Neo, is a very mild statement!
In my state, because I have not registered with any party, I could go in on primary day, declare my party affiliation, and vote in that party’s primary. So, I could vote for the other guy most likely to lose.
But, I have only entertained the idea and would never actually do it.
The reason being, heaven forbid, what if that most likely to lose guy actually won and *I* voted for him! I’d have only myself to blame; and I’ve had too many voter’s remorse with candidates that I actually wanted to win. I don’t need voter’s remorse with the guy I wanted to lose in office!
W Krebs:
That’s a different strategy. But it could also backfire, if that person ends up winning and the worse candidates would have lost.
My own personal philosophy is to stay out of the Democratic primary, unless I happen to want the Democrat to win in the general. Which I don’t.
neo: So where do you stand on Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos” in 2008? Let Rush tell it:
Do you remember Operation Chaos? What year was Operation Chaos? (interruption) You don’t remember Operation Chaos? Operation Chaos was 2008. John McCain won the Republican primaries early. By the early spring of 2008, there was no more drama left in the Republican race.
But the Democrat race? Eh, Hillary Clinton was still hanging in. She was looking tough, still hanging in. It was down to the wire between her and Barack Hussein O, and Hillary was ticked off because she had been promised the nomination.
But then the young, energetic, vibrant African-American — uh, black guy — came along, and they just… She’s the most cheated-on woman in America, and they cast her aside again.
Well, I didn’t want that to happen. I thought that we needed the drama to continue. So we began Operation Chaos. Operation Chaos was designed to get Republican voters who didn’t care… I mean, McCain was the nominee. It didn’t matter. It was to get Republican voters to reregister so they could vote in Democrat primaries and vote for Hillary in whatever states were left.
–https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/01/20/liberals-still-paranoid-about-operation-chaos/
Not exactly voting for the worst candidate, but interesting with respect to this discussion.
I was still registered Dem in 2008 and made sure to vote for Hillary because Obama looked like a whole ‘nother level of threat.
And I was right.
huxley:
What I think is that it didn’t make a difference in 2008.
And that it’s inherently risky for the reasons I already stated. Sometimes it works out as planned, sometimes not, but you can’t control it and it’s inherently risky.
What I think is that it didn’t make a difference in 2008….but you can’t control it and it’s inherently risky.
neo: You don’t know that. Maybe Hillary might have had a resurgence.
No one controls anything and everything is risky.
Here’s a fave quote from the back of my mind and an obvious influence:
Nobody knows anything…… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.
–William Goldman, “Adventures in the Screen Trade”
I sure bit the big one in my estimate of Trump’s chances in 2016.
huxley:
My point is that although of course she might have had a resurgence, she didn’t actually win the nomination. So in fact it actually didn’t matter.
And of course no one knew in advance what would happen as a result of Operation Chaos. You could just a easily have said, if she had had a resurgence, and won the presidency, that if Obama had been nominated he would have lost. Obviously he didn’t lose, but you can’t know that going into it. So Operation Chaos could just as easily, if successful, caused a Hillary nomination and a Hillary win instead of an Obama loss.
Found linked at Mark Hemingway’s twitter, a thread (of Democrats) led by one of their clan named Patrick S. Tomlinson (@stealthygeek) who is recommending against support for Sanders, based on Sanders’ deep negatives “unvetted nationally” says Tomlinson, and concommitantly fatal to any possibility Sanders can win a national election.
But the thread is interesting to me for other reasons aside from its primary thrust contra-Bernie, rejoined by pro-Bernie.
It’s a beauty of a type of breezy-serious conversation: committed believers doing what they do to “persuade” themselves to righteous choice in a nominee. Semi-spontaneous, it contains a number of marvels, from shear phantasy to whirling dogma never to be queried. Too, it’s long, multifold, offering many voices from the leftists’ politics.
How is the world? They’ll tell you. In colloquial brief: it’s a trip.
Give it a read (link repeated here), I think it will be worth your time.
Read way down. Way way down. Just keep going.
Via ZeroHedge, this rant proposes an intriguing analogy.
http://thegreatrecession.info/blog/as-goes-the-iowa-caucus-so-goes-any-government-led-by-democrats/
I agree with Neo- I don’t like the idea of voting in Dem primary. Only exception would be per W Krebs above- voting to thwart a particularly awful candidate on Dem side.
Crossing over seems devious and unnecessary. If our party is better, we *should* be able to select a better candidate who can win, right?
This headline is eerily familiar.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/democratic-establishment-trump-bernie-sanders-election