"I'd vote Libertarian if they could win an election." Uh, causality doesn't flow that way in this dimension.
— Tamara K. (@TamSlick) April 12, 2014
Not that I think any amount of voting for anybody is going to fix what is a basic math problem, but this is an argument that has always puzzled me. If everybody I knew who said "I won't vote for [$whoever_they_really_want_to_vote_for] because they won't win!" actually voted for them, we'd have a lot more Libertarian dogcatchers.
Libertarian Dogcatcher would give long Randian lectures to the stray dogs about them being looters though. @ru3 @GregoryLopez08
— Larry Correia (@monsterhunter45) April 11, 2014
10 comments:
Randian Lectures...
[Buhahahahaa]
My dogs would be sitting there like Nipper the RCA Dog, and his tilted head, panting on his every word (waiting for a cookie, of course).
Thank you both for a great laugh first thing this morning.
Rich in NC
HAHAHAHA!
gfa
I'm following the Heinlein example, and Voting for the Opponent of whomever I'm against. Seems to work out okay, until the Presidential Elections roll around. Then it's "Hold the Nose Time."
If the choice is between awful but electable, noticeably better but electable and great but no chance, I'll vote noticeably better. Usually the first two choices are awful, awful in a different direction or unelectable--in that case my vote is better used as a signal against awful even if it won't help elect someone decent.
Mr. Correia wins Internets for day. I've no need to browse further! :-)
So in general I do an effective value calculation - If I have politicians A, B and C running, and A would do exactly what I want, but only has a 0.00004 percent chance of winning, say, an asteroid hitting both opponents or something, and B is at 60 percent of what I want, with a 50 percent chance of winning and C is at 10 percent of what I want with 50 percent chance, I'm going to vote for C every time. Now, it's not a strict calculation, because if both B or C are sufficiently bad, or B is sufficiently leading C so that my vote doesn't 'matter' (or the other way around for that matter) I'll vote for A.
I know I fail the Libertarian purity test on that, but, barring crossing of certain lines I simply won't cross, I'd rather get part of what I want than none.
It would help if one could have more confidence that B wouldn't jettison 50 of the 60 percent one wants in return for the conditional approval of David Gregory or the Times editorial board.
It seems more likely that if all the libertarians voted that way, it would split the Republican vote and you'd end up with more Democrats.
The problem I see with Libertarian candidates is that if you read text of where they stand they sound pretty good. Their problems arise when they get in front of a camera and try to speak about where they stand on issues, they always give the impression that they can't function without a tin foil beanie. I have no doubt that the media is partially to blame by cherry picking the clips they present on the news, but still the candidate should be better prepared
" they always give the impression that they can't function without a tin foil beanie"
In my experience, they aren't much better in person. They always seem to either have a heavy dose of "batshit crazy" salted in there, or "I was an engineer for a few years, and I totally think my experience designing widgets and having poor social skills will make me an awesome state senator".
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