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Comment by s17n | Hacker News Reader

If he actually does it I'll seriously considering voting for him. He won't, though.

Probably why he's considering - or talking about - it now.

Was thinking the same thing, sounds like he's looking to win some votes back.

He won't be winning many votes back, as those who like Snowden likely didn't vote for him, but he might be considering winning some votes "forward", as it's not likely Republicans would vote for Biden just to spite Trump for pardoning Snowden - who is increasingly irrelevant anyway, he did what he did and by now nobody cares about his personal destiny too much and it's not likely there's a chance to punish him anyway. But if he could win some independents who are on the fence - that would be nice.

This is a good thing, right? Polititians try to do the right things to win votes. This is how democracy works.

It is the right thing when they have consistent ideas they do - or will implement.

It is the wrong thing when they publicly consider a bunch of things they won't do, or do tiny but loud actions without consistency, that are not aligned with their political agenda but just wish to win votes.

Disclaimer: I'm not American, but that's a pattern we unfortunately see a lot these days

If someone does the right thing for the wrong reasons, what's the problem? It's certainly better than them not doing the right thing at all.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/353571-a-foolish-consistenc...

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/738162-i-do-not-believe-tha...

“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.” -Milton Friedman

  ^^^^

Similarly, the reasons the wrong people do the right things are not too important, as long as they're doing the right things.

Trump is an expert at A/B testing public opinion, and this is a clear A/B test. "Considering" means he's gauging support and will use that data to make a decision. He's done this forever, and it's the reason he prefers in-person events for real-time A/B testing of ideas.

It's not a novel concept either, Biden and others regularly use this technique.

This single issue is not worth overlooking the rest of Trump and the GOP.

Any single issue, or even combination of several is why I have never, and never will vote.

Are you saying that you need to be in 100% agreement with a candidate in order to vote for them, and that'll never happen?

Please don't vote, with that attitude I'm not sure can ever pick a good candidate.

It is interesting, your comment is completely insane to me. Doesn't that seem strange to you too?

“Insanity is relative. It depends on who has who locked in what cage.” ― Ray Bradbury

It's also always interesting to watch one's comment score quickly bounce up and down by several points multiple times over just 30 minutes. Apparently this comment is controversial, heh.

It's insane to vote for someone who does things you support?

To someone with full blown TDS, sure, a Snowden pardon probably won't sway your opinion at all. But think of someone who leans libertarian and maybe doesn't love Trump but also doesn't hate him, and remembers how the Obama admin forced Snowden to flee and revoked his passport, forcing him to stay in Russia. Seeing a pardon from Trump could move them into being a mild supporter.

A lot of people have one or two big issues that their political allegiance revolves around. It can be abortion rights, gun rights, taxes, the national debt, anything. If someone's core issue is fighting the surveillance state, a Snowden pardon would be a massive change in the landscape.

I wonder though, since Trump signed the extension to warrentless wiretapping, would your vote send a message that a pardon for Snowden is sufficient without institutional change? Trump seemed to only care that section 702 allowed Carter Page to be wiretapped when the other side of the conversation was out of the country.

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