[clue-talk] McCain suggests raiding Colorado's water

[David Rudder]

I wonder how attractive all these 3rd party candidates would be, if the 
other two parties started taking them seriously.  They all have the 
advantage that the other 2 parties don't go negative on them.  Negative 
ads work, that's why campaigns keep using them.  I wonder if Ron Paul 
would be as effective as he is if Karl Rove turned his attention Paul's 
way.  "Lunatic", "unfit for command", "communist", "unstable", etc.  
"Ron Paul will raise your taxes!!!"  Granted, none of that is true, but 
you know the major parties would say it, and you know people would 
believe it.

Hillary Clinton actually made the argument that she should win the 
Democratic primary because she's better at dealing with the Republican 
attacks.  Like no one remembers her getting taken to the cleaners in the 
90s.   And, like common-sense and competence are not reasons to vote for 
a president, political dexterity is.  But, it's true to an extent.  No 
one can win the presidency without dealing with negative attacks any 
longer....why do we think 3rd parties can?

-Dave

dennisjperkins at comcast.net wrote:
>  -------------- Original message ----------------------
> From: Nate Duehr <nate at natetech.com>
>   
>> David L. Willson wrote:
>>     
>>> I refuse to answer a top-post that follows a bottom-post, or vice-versa, but 
>>>       
>> if I didn't
>>     
>>> refuse, I'd agree with Angelo and Richard.  A third candidate is a third 
>>>       
>> candidate. 
>>     
>>> Saying that a third candidate is a spoiler... Well, isn't that a little like 
>>>       
>> saying that
>>     
>>> Linux is a spoiler? 
>>>       
>> I'm not so sure.  There's been a lot of real mathematics to show that 
>> the current voting system DOES have spoilers.
>>
>> Various voting methods that WEIGHT the candidates have been proposed 
>> (and used successfully for voting for other things, but not people in 
>> U.S. political elections) that take into account the individual voter's 
>> preferences in an ORDER -- so that if they want to vote for a 3rd party 
>> candidate, but that candidate doesn't have enough votes to win, your 
>> votes still "count" in some way for the winning candidate.
>>
>> Plus add in that really it's the Electoral College that's voting and not 
>> the popular vote (right or wrong, I'm not getting into that debate) that 
>> decides who the President is... there's some math to be done there too, 
>> obviously.  In fact, the two major parties definitely know this and 
>> campaign accordingly.
>>
>> The more population moves away from the coasts and inland, the more 
>> difficult it becomes to mess with elections via the Electoral College, 
>> in my view.  But, IANAM.*
>>
>> I think there's PLENTY of reasons to believe the common-sense knowledge 
>> that voting for a third-party candidate can screw the person you might 
>> OTHERWISE want in office, out of the job.
>>
>> Plus, "common-sense" is often very very right.
>>
>> I have met very few people who can tell me that voting for a third-party 
>> candidate feels right when they do a "gut-check" on whether or not it 
>> will mess with the real winners.
>>
>> And I don't think the country is (yet?) at a stage where a landslide for 
>> a 3rd party will happen.  (Someday, maybe?  Not this election season, 
>> though.  Common sense also tells me that both McCain and Obama have 
>> *enough* support that no landslide toward a 3d party is going to happen.)
>>
>> So with all of the above... logically, voting for a 3rd party is almost 
>> a guarantee to mess with the numbers for the only two possible winners 
>> in a modern Presidential election.
>>
>> (As far as local elections go, there are and have been 3rd party 
>> candidates that CAN and HAVE won elections... but it's not happening for 
>> President this go-around, and probably won't in my lifetime unless 
>> conditions for the average person get so bad they vote for a 3rd party 
>> out of total frustration.)
>>
>> Nate
>>
>> *I am not a Mathematician.
>> _______________________________________________
>>     
>
> Weren't the Republicans originally spoilers?  This country had the Democratic and Whig parties.
> _______________________________________________
> clue-talk mailing list
> clue-talk at cluedenver.org
> http://www.cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue-talk
>