At one point I had a chance to speak with the candidate by phone, and I spoke about my concerns about the divisive rhetoric.
The candidate said it was only something they had to do to "fire up my base" and that they would not govern in the way they had campaigned.
Hearing that sent a chill down my spine and I voted against this person.
When you have a two-party system, you get binary outcomes - ie. divisiveness.
It doesn't even make sense to expect something else.
The two-party system problem seems to be a consequence of "first-past-the-post" voting.
For example, some posters in reddit's /r/conservative were very insistent in attacking libertarian voters, pinning on them the responsibility of Trump's election loss. Their rationale was that they felt libertarian voters threw their vote away by voting on a candidate who had no chances of winning, thus robbing their candidate of support that they felt he would otherwise have if no libertarian candidate ran for president.
Consequently, they argued that the only rational approach to the elections would be if all like-minded voters concentrated their vote on not-so-good-but-popular somewhat like-minded candidate so that they could have at least a chance of electing someone who, even though might not be the best candidate in the voter's opinion, was closer to support some of their views.
Without primaries, Barack Obama would have never been President but Donald Trump wouldn't have been either.
> The candidate said it was only something they had to do to "fire up my base" and that they would not govern in the way they had campaigned.
Now I'm currently, what sort of power do you hold that would cause a politician to speak to you in private and not try and pass the same indirection and lies they would most constituents?
I got an sms message from her campaign asking if they could count on my vote.
I replied “stop” to all political SMS except this one.
The worker and I shared a few exchanges about specific rhetoric their candidate had used. I let them know I had voted for the candidate during the primary but would not in the general.
The person offered me a 10 minute call with the candidate, and I took it.
I do not know why the candidate would say this.
Possibly they calculated I was unlikely to repeat this, or if I did it would not break through to affect votes (it was very late in the game).
Oregon is a two party consent call recording state, perhaps they calculated I was not recording or would not share it if I was.
My conclusion is that like Donald Trump, this person is a narcissist. It goes with the rhetoric and even double speak.
But I am very curious about their campaign manager. I have considered asking them for a phone call to discuss the candidates campaign, and to try and sort out what the manager had done versus what came from the candidate.
OR Rev Stat § 165.540 (definition & penalty), § 133.739 (civil damages)
source: https://www.justia.com/50-state-surveys/recording-phone-call...
I was trying to separate the individuals from my anecdote on the upstream point. Also, not draw in daemons for these keywords.
There will be winners who can navigate the hyperpartisan environment (or even thrive in the environment) and losers who cannot or who do not have enough of a grasp of the situation to make the correct decision. An outside observer can determine how fast two bodies are moving away from each other but, from the perspective of the moving body, it can be a lot less clear who is moving and what the relative speeds are.
He's advocating for a comfy middle ground cuz he's won the war and now wants peace and quiet
>In February 2016, Koch penned an opinion piece in The Washington Post, where he said he agreed with presidential candidate Bernie Sanders about the unfairness of corporate welfare and mass incarceration in the United States.[71]
>In June 2019, the Charles Koch Foundation announced the foundation of anti-war think tank Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, cosponsored by George Soros' Open Society Foundation.[72] He is a board member at the Mercatus Center, a market-oriented research think tank at George Mason University.[73]
But.
If you look at where he's been putting his money into supporting candidates, they are overwhelmingly Republicans that align with the former to the exclusion of nearly everything else.
It would have been very VERY easy for Koch to have got bipartisan support for serious criminal justice reform if he had wanted to, but that would have used up political capital (Republicans generally prefer to be the 'tough on crime' candidate) he otherwise used to support his economic interests instead.
That's the main problem I have with libertarians: They lend their wholehearted and deep pocketed support to Republicans on business issues and opposing 'big government', but fail to call them out on social issues (you know, the whole 'equality before the law' thing), and practically never lend equivalent support to Democrats where they would be aligned, just lip-service. It's hypocritical.
Having to date focused largely on feathering his nest, he now wants to put a bit of 'compassionate conservatism' shine on his image and legacy. I'm not inclined to let him gloss over the awful things he's accomplished.
Curtailing domestic warrantless surveillance is another issue that many liberal candidates support.
Libertarians generally dislike military spending as much as they dislike social security, so progressive candidates that would shrink the DOD ought to be a good fit.
Any particular D candidate that I could suggest will also have positions that Libertarians don't agree with, which is part of my point. Disagreeing with conservative stances on non-fiscal/regulatory issues doesn't stop them from supporting those candidates, but the converse practically always stops them from supporting Ds.
It's almost as if they don't actually care about individual freedom and liberty at all, but just about their freedom to make a buck without anyone getting in the way of them exploiting workers, polluting the environment, etc.
Huh. Imagine that.
If they’re with Republicans on reducing regulation, and with Republicans on social issues, they’re just called Republicans.
I note, however, that the Smithsonian put their climate change exhibit immediately outside of their human origins exhibit with his name. I've always wondered if that was some kind of dig.