Bad at FB posts, need your opinion

This is mainly directed at Sweep and Turd, but anybody welcome to chime in.

I want to post something on FB about “why a vote for Gary Johnson is not a wasted vote, because it will force the two major parties to end their 150-year long gang war and re-think their ideas on how to govern, and will also help to end special-interest, pork, and corruption”.

Problem is, I don’t write no good. And since I want it to be original, I need your help. (Truth be told, I borrow a lot from Sweep when I preach the Gospel of Gary.)

sweeps your man. if he can’t do it, no one can.

Ill throw in a very good suggestion. No one on FB cares about your opinion, nothing against you greenie but no ones opinion has ever been swayed by a FB post. As TF said, no one can do it.

I’ll pretend to be the skeptical FB user, i.e. “that guy” who replies to essays like this.

“why a vote for Gary Johnson is not a wasted vote, because it will force the two major parties to end their 150-year long gang war and re-think their ideas on how to govern, and will also help to end special-interest, pork, and corruption”.

  1. My single vote won’t matter, because it will change his odds of winning from zero to zero. Isn’t this still a waste of time?

  2. If your intention is just to be disruptive, why Gary Johnson? Shouldn’t you just vote for Trump?

  3. How would this end corruption, special interests, or wasteful spending? What are Johnson’s proposals to address these issues?

  4. Even if Johnson were to win, how would he convince Congress to change and support him? Wouldn’t they just block everything and cause another 4 years of gridlock?

Image result for result of facebook political arguments meme

And uh, what is Facebook?

Few people reverse their opinions on FB (or AF), but arguments can still make people change their view, some things thought strongly become less strongly held, or other things that weren’t an issue become more of one.

YMMV.

But the same can be said for ANY kind of political discussion. Look at how STL is still brainwashed by Ron Paul, despite our best efforts here. That does not mean issues should not be discussed. Of course, on social media, you are putting your opinion in public and will experience some reputational risk.

Now that I think about it, this is a good point. Everybody out here is so Republican, it might be a good idea to keep my mouth shut. (To be fair–they’re Republican for a good reason. Republicans are friendly to the oil & gas industry, and that is the only industry out here.)

solid point ohai, but it should be noted the average iq on here is probably higher than on FB. FB is really a cesspool, would drop off if I lived near my home and saw my friends/family often. I dont go on very much anymore anyway as its basically just turned to pictures of peoples babies

Gary’s ship has sailed for me, so can’t help you. I’ll be voting for myself on election day.

Please understand that under a winner take all system a multi-party system will never work. If votes were allocated by percentage won then a multi-party or three-party system will work. I can’t understand why people don’t understand the basics of their political system.

States are actually free to allocate their electoral votes as they so choose, and both Maine and Nebraska allocate their votes. In the “winner-take-all” states, the electoral votes go to the candidate who receives the plurality of votes in the state, not the majority. So, if Bernie Sanders runs as an independent in 2020, he could easily win a plurality in VT in a 3 way race with President Clinton and the republican nominee. He could conceivably win a plurality in several other states as well, preventing anyone from getting to 270 electoral votes. In such a case, the House of Representatives elects the President from the 3 Presidential candidates who received the most Electoral votes. Each state delegation has one vote. The Senate would elect the Vice President from the 2 Vice Presidential candidates with the most Electoral votes. Each Senator would cast one vote for Vice President. If the House of Representatives fails to elect a President by Inauguration Day, the Vice-President Elect serves as acting President until the deadlock is resolved in the House.

While I don’t especially like the idea of the House choosing the POTUS, it sure would send a message to the two major parties that they better up the level of their candidates. So, I don’t see how a multi-party system wouldn’t work. In the scenario I described, Bernie’s states would eventually go to President Clinton, but likely with significant concessions from team Clinton, resulting in policies that more closely match those desired by the electorate. I personally wouldn’t like those specific policies, but at least they would be the result of hearing more voices.

The other thing I hate about that argument is that yes, we do have a first past the post system, and that will almost always end up as a two party system. But nothing says we have to accept these two parties. If enough people throw away their votes, it’s not really being “thrown away” any more. If everyone who was voting against someone chose instead to vote for someone, nobody would get more than about 10% of the vote. It would be a glorious clusterfuck and I’d welcome it.

As for me, I’m voting for Gary Johnson because he doesn’t care about Al Leppo, who may or may not be a foreign leader that he respects.

No, MailSnoop is right, he’s comparing it to the British style Westminster system. Even if states allocated votes by popular vote, it would still be a winner take all system because whoever loses, regardless of margin, has no role the political discourse. This is not the case in a Parliamentary system.

The fact that POTUS is directly elected has some benefits, but the harm is that it incentivizes a two party system because of the winner take all nature of the system.

Right. So our options are either A) amend the constitution or B) change the parties. Which one has even the slightest chance of happening?

^Neither is all that likely.

Political parties are preaching these views because that gets them the most votes. Political markets are at least semi-efficient.

GM- Its easy. You want to be principled in your decisions. Voting for a lesser of two evils is not.

Also this may mean something to you that the average AF dweeb doesn’t get- GJ is leading among active military, (http://www.militarytimes.com/articles/military-times-survey-july-donald-trump-hillary-clinton).I wonder why?

I don’t know, but I have a feeling you’re going to tell us.