I’m not questioning their right to vote third party. I’m calling them stupid. I have that right as the citizen of a democracy.
Because, yes, as a matter of simple math, they share the blame. Every person who said “my vote must be eeeearrrned!” and cast a vote that, given the simple game-theory math of a two-party competitive election with a single winner, represented one half of a vote for Trump bear part of the responsibility. The fact that they believed that their feelings nullified the mathematically ineluctable consequences of their vote doesn’t make it okay. It makes it stupid. And they can either persist in being stupid or they can stop being stupid. But I have the right to point out the mathematical illiteracy that is the source of their stupidity as, indeed, it is of most forms of willful stupidity.
But that’s tangential to the point I was making. The point I was making is that on November 6, we had two, and only two statistically meaningful possible outcomes. And which of those outcomes occurred determined the universe of possible outcomes on a whole range of issues, including Puerto Rico’s debt crisis. And of the outcomes on Puerto Rico’s debt that are possible given Trump’s victory, such as it was, this is the one that’s least terrible.
Because that’s where we are. We are at the point of hoping for the least terrible of the outcomes to all problems that are possible given Trump’s win. It is not necessarily pointless to continue to talk about what consequences lenders ought to be forced to take given the risk they assumed or “privatized profit and socialized risk” and “welfare for the rich.” But the reality is that every last person who chose not to vote for Hillary made their choice on those questions and now we are left with the range of corrupt, stupid, kleptocratic solutions that are possible given their decision.
Calling other voters “stupid” because they voted for someone other than Clinton or Trump in a race that Clinton was projected to win handily but lost miserably serves no discernible purpose.
There were many factors that influenced the race. You make assumptions about third party voters that you have no proof or evidence for making, such as all Stein voters were voting in protest against Hillary or that she was their second choice.
Think about this: If Jill Stein and Gary Johnson had not been in the race, and all Stein voters voted for Hillary and all Johnson voters voted for Trump, Clinton’s vote percentage margins would have been even worse.
Clinton did not win a majority of the popular vote. She won a plurality of the popular vote and more votes than Trump, but the majority of voters voted for other candidates.
Blaming Green Party or Libertarian Party voters for Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump is absurd. The blame belongs to those who voted for Trump or did not vote. End of story.
There is no meaningful difference between voting third party and not voting. In a two-party competitive race, not voting and a vote for a third party is the same as one half of a vote for whichever of the two candidates with a chance you would least like to win. Or at least, ought to least want to win given your ideological preferences unless you have your head buried so far up your ass you can check the health of your appendix.
All of the other stuff, “many factors” blah de blah de blah is just the same shit spouted by the unrepentant Naderites, the same self-hypnosis that all the people who didn’t want Trump to win but couldn’t bring themselves to do the only, literally only, thing they could do to keep that from happening use to evade their own responsibility for the consequences.
I’m betting that the GOP would be glad to “wipe out” the debt in return for a large equity interest in the government of the island, say a first call on tax revenues and a majority of seats on all the michigan-style governing boards that will likely be set up.
Yes, there is a huge difference. Voting is the only way we can ultimately get counted. If voting third party is a way that people want to be counted, then there is nothing wrong with that. Not voting means not counting at all.
In a democracy, people vote for the candidate that they want to support. That is how it should be. You may not like the fact that people want to vote for the candidate of their choice, instead of the candidate you want them to vote for, but that is the way it is. You have your reasons for voting the way you do, and other people have their reasons. It doesn’t make them or you “stupid.”
Personally, I would be happy to have run-off elections between the top 2 vote-getters whenever the highest vote-getter does not get a majority of votes in the first round.
