trump had a real advantage, as his tactic needed to be to moderate - which is what he would have been expected to do anyways. all he needed to do was pick a kasich-type moderate and he'd instantly rebuild the base. clinton, on the other hand, had to find some way to balance the centre with the left.
by picking pence, he is grabbing the ball and running out of bounds. he just gave up the entire centre. that was his advantage. moderate republicans are going to flock to clinton, now.
i don't think those numbers mean anything. i suspect that they reflect ignorance more than anything else. kneejerking. or, maybe clinton's team was right all along - that a substantial amount of bernie's supporters were just frustrated men.
i'm leaning more towards kneejerking, right now.
i think it will ease up.
but, i mean, keep in mind that you're talking about small percentages, too. 2%. 3%. would i find it surprising that 2-3% of sanders supporters were just flat out, open misogynists? not really.
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if you vote for johnson as a protest vote, it sends the message that you want more tea party policies. so, why not just write in charles koch? or ted cruz?
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AS Deckard
There is no 'Libertarian left.' Libertarians fall on the right of the American spectrum, as we're generally more focused on the economy than social issues.
Daisy Chains
Actually, the Libertarian Party represents mostly right-wing Libertarians... Left-Libertarians, Green Libertarians, Anarchist Capitalists/Voluntaryists etc are going to vote for Jill Stein.
jessica
no libertarian left, huh. lol. bakunin? proudhon? kropotkin? malatesta? dawkins? chomsky?
thomas paine?
godwin? wollstonecraft?
(deleted)
see, i think tyt are right-wing assholes pretending to be liberals :P
the language used in american political discourse is not just confused, it's actually deeply orwellian. you can barely make sense of it. it's not some accident.
the term libertarian comes out of the french revolution and means something like anarcho-communist. libertarians completely reject the concept of market theory, and for good reason - markets are the absolute anti-thesis of any coherent concept of freedom.
the way americans use the term "libertarian" maps politically to the concept of "classical liberalism" virtually everywhere else in the english-speaking world.
the democrats and republicans are both conservative parties. they're just different variants on it.
i think the only real liberal party left standing in the anglosphere is the liberal party of canada.
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(deleted)
"Anyone who embraces libertarian economic policies isn't liberal."
a statement like this needs to be translated for non-americans. what the poster meant to type was:
"Anyone who embraces liberal economic policies isn't a socialist."
which is true enough. but, again: the language is not confused by accident.
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millionfish animation
What are Johnson's policies?
Just a Channel
Libertarian basics: "can we solve this problem with more freedoms? If so, we go that route". Look up Penn from Penn & Teller on YouTube describing him being a Libertarian. He covers it very well.
jessica
all you need to survive is a gun and a bunker full of canned food. get off my lawn!
it's clown-car stuff; you can't take even really take him seriously.
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Peter Perfect
Johnson is a loon! He wants to abolish social security, medicare, medicaid and all entitlements.
jessica
or we could cut military spending, instead?
RocketmanRockyMatrix
No entitlement mentality.
jessica
yeah. and, that is very frustrating after sanders' campaign, which really reduced to an articulation of the universal declaration of universal rights. we were making progress. and then this.
i am entitled to human rights, and fuck you if you disagree.
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Chris Teal
i support johnson because of his social issues...i care not of economics.
jessica
i think it's really hard to make that argument regarding johnson and specifically in the context of it being an american election, because his economic policies have such dramatic negative social consequences. it's not something trivial like a debate over deficit spending. it's either disingenuous or poorly thought through.
i mean, i cringed pretty hard when hillary supporters started accusing sanders of privilege. but, it kind of rings accurate when applied to johnson. you can only make that argument if you're pretty wealthy to start off.
Trent Richards
I get the feeling that issues that you call social aren't social at all. Government services are a fiscal matter, not a social one. Social matters are things like Gay Rights, Affirmative Action, and The War on Drugs. Fiscal matters are things like Taxation, Government Spending and Trade Regulation. Government services all fall under the government spending section. It would be a rare thing for someone to oppose universal health care for instance if money wasn't involved. The fiscal aspect of these services are all that ever gets debated. That is why these are called fiscal matters.
jessica
the term "socio-economic" has meaning for a reason. the point i'm making is that you can't coherently argue that you support his social positions, but oppose his fiscal opinions - unless you haven't thought through the social implications of his fiscal policy.
i may have been overheard some time last fall arguing that i didn't care about fiscal issues, but that was in the context of an election where the canadian social system was not in any serious jeopardy and the issue was really nothing more important than deficit spending. what i meant was that i don't care if the government runs a deficit or not.
that's very different than voting for legalized marijuana and shrugging off the abolition of corporate taxation. you'd have to have smoked yourself stupid...
RocketmanRockyMatrix
Libertarians are for human rights.
jessica
libertarians tend to uphold orwellian concepts of human rights, as brought to you by anti-humanist liberals like rawls. the "free market", when applied to labour particularly, is completely inconsistent with any concept of human rights. you can't tell somebody to work or starve, then tell them they have rights. rather, what you do instead is come up with these ridiculous mental gymnastics that give people the right to starve.
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Pallas AnitaSarkeesian
Feel the Johnson and end the FED. Gary Johnson 2016!
jessica
i don't think that ending the fed would be such a good idea, actually. you'd have big bankers manipulating currency rates at a whim. the markets would crash. you wouldn't know how much bread costs on a daily basis.
i'm all for a revolution, but i don't think you guys need to make the same mistakes made during perestroika.
Sonyaliloquy
'Feel the Johnson'? Might wanna try for a different slogan.
jessica
i think it's great: vote gary johnson to get fucked over.
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Joeybrah
His economics are pretty simple, lower taxes. I think everyone can relate...
ApesAmongUs
Relate that it's stupid? Yea, I've seen a lot of stupid in my life.
jessica
well, once they implement self-regulation over academic accreditation, it should at least lower tuition. is mom smart enough to start a university? let the market decide!
home-schooling for the win!
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Nakas Dougen
The libertarian ideas are the exact opposite of democratic socialism, it's beyond me why he has appeal with the Bernie crowd and the tyt audience
Wmarshal
Think he means his ideas on war, the handling of the middle east in general, and over all freedoms.I disagree with him on alot of things, but his thoughts on war is what won me.
Kevin Lai
he doesn't. if the a 3rd party candidate who leans republicans can take away some of would-be trump supporters, that opens the door for a 3rd party candidate for democratic-leaning 3rd party candidate (ie, jill stein)
Natalie Brown
The exact opposite of democratic socialism is fascism. Libertarian ideas intersect with liberal ideas on a social level. I'm a Liberal with Libertarian tendencies so the jump from Bernie to Gary seems quite natural to me...
Nakas Dougen
I believe from philosophical grounds that the most important thing for a human to be truly free is to secure their material conditions first.
It is not freedom neither liberty when a mother has to choose which of their 3 children they can afford to go to college.
It is not freedom or liberty when you have to 'choose' between health and disease based on your income.
It is not liberty when you can go bankrupt for getting cancer, you could not possibly know that.
Sure the world is a non Euclidean space but at the heart of everything lies class struggle, the struggle of the dispossessed be it traditional proletariat, underprivileged race or gender. The free market does not fix any of that and this is why all other western countries embraced free healthcare and a lot of them free higher education.
Libertarians would reverse labour law and make life much much harder for the average worker because he/she would lose much of what they gained through centuries of protest and fight.
I assume you are not working class, you do not work minimum wage. I know America confuses classic liberalism (based on the idea of protection of private property from state, kings etc and tolerance ) with traditional leftistsm (Stems from dialectical materialism and class struggle).
Philosophically speaking Social Democracies were created as a compensation between the capitalists (including conservatives and 'libertanians' or neoliberals) and Marxist socialism.
On almost every issue social democracy and libertanians fundamentally disagree. Non interventionism and protection of personal liberty are not necessarily features of social democracy, they just happen to coincide in American context.
Natalie Brown
Well we are in the American context, aren't we? We are also talking about people in a political race. Not philosophies and ideologies. While, yes, these 2 factors play in important role in who people decide to vote for for some people, for the majority this is not the case. Gary Johnson supports the ending of the war on drugs and allowing for recreational marijuana use, right for women to choose whether or not to have an abortion, protection of the environment, maintain the freedom of the internet, immigration reform (not just building a wall), and cutting military spending. In the modern American context these are all liberal ideas. All of these ideas i have heard get support from Bernie supporters. The jump is not as absurd as you make it seem.
jessica
i'm in agreement with you. but, i just want to point out that you're assuming certain things that right-libertarians would contest. so, you're right to point out that they would abolish minimum wage laws. but, they have this convoluted argument that, at the end, allows them to conclude that abolishing the minimum wage law will increase wages. remember the laffer curve? these are people that will stand up and look you in the eye and argue that decreasing corporate taxes will increase tax revenue. they'll come prepared with charts, too.
on the one hand, they're obviously wrong and not particularly hard to disprove. on the other hand, their voters and supporters and donors and social media advocates actually believe this stuff.
you need jobs before you can have unions to smash.
i'm not in favour of union-busting. but, america is post-industrial, and this language is anachronistic. unions are no longer a meaningful political force in the united states, because the percentage of the workforce that is unionized is insignificant.
a ubi is in fact a better answer, moving forward. we're moving into a reality where goods are made by robots, and there are very few jobs available servicing them. it's communism. ironically.
it's just that his dismantling of the financial system is going to make his ubi proposals impossible to implement. you need very strong controls on inflation for that to work. it's often promoted as a free market policy, but it can't work in an actual market. the rentiers would just steal everything.
(deleted)
jessica
again: you're talking about such a small percentage (2-3%), that there is no reason to build a theory. #berniebrosforgaryjohnson is good enough.
Chris Teal
because they are only thinking of economics...Johnson get my vote on social issues...seperation of church and state...check...end drug war...check..forgien policy...check i dont care about economics...there are rich and poor..always have..always will be
jessica
again: you can't separate these things, unless you're operating from a position of privilege.
consider abortion, for example. he wants to leave it to the states, and he wants to cut federal funding. so, you're going to end up with a decrease in access to social services as a consequence of his economic policies. you could say the same thing about his health care policies.
if you're wealthy anyways, you're not going to care. but, the vast majority of people will be far better off under hillary than johnson. and, trust me, i'm no fan of hillary - i think she should be convicted of war crimes and publicly executed. the libertarian economic/social policies are just that bad. it's barbarism.
if the choice is between corruption and barbarism, i'll pick corruption.
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shazil888
Can't see Sanders supporters bleeding over to a Libertarian candidate. They either don't know the difference between a Progressive and a Libertarian, or they are easily swayed.
EarthianLifeForm
Because they still agree with Libertarians on 65% to 80% of the Libertarian platform and like Bernie Sanders, Libertarians are genuine, sincere, and not corrupt. Just like how Sanders is genuine, sincere, and not corrupt.
shazil888
Libertarians are Libertarians first and foremost because of their stance on limited government. That completely contradicts every major task that Sanders is trying to accomplish. Minimum Wage, Education, Healthcare, Regulation, Income Inequality.
I only see agreement on social issues, foreign policy (and that too is debatable), and drugs. In reality, that boils down to more like 15% to 30% agreement.
jessica
there is going to be some percentage of sanders supporters that are driven by conscious or unconscious misogyny, and will not support stein for the same reason they won't support clinton. an obscure minority, but it will exist. the numbers i've seen suggest that the bleed is roughly consistent with a reasonable estimate of the size of that group.
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Twostones00
Gary Johnson won't protect the environment. Jill will. Jill has more attention than people think. Jill is a progressive much like Bernie.
TheJuranomo
We the people should protect the environment
jessica
this is another one of those twisted points, as libertarians will argue that the way to benefit the environment is not through regulation but through the enforcement of property rights. they forget to mention that this is also a license to pollute. but, hey. why should the gummamint tell me what to do on my property? it's almost like they have allodial title or something. the gummamint shouldn't have control over my fiefdom! isn't that why it's a fiefdom? wait? what?
see, if you cut the river up into pieces and sell it off then people will protect their parts of the river. because you always step into the same river, every time. it's your property, after all.
it's the same thing with the air. if you own the air over your property, then you have the right to keep the pollution out of it. because pascal's law is modifiable by an act of parliament.
we can always fine the particles, if they refuse to self-regulate.
Joe person
Yes he will, he's a huge supporter of the EPA
jessica
see, over here on the actual left, we consider the epa to be the perfect example of a captured agency. saying you support the epa as "good government" is equivalent to arguing that you're in favour of corporations buying off agencies in order to eliminate oversight - which is exactly how the epa actually operates.
so, it's kind of a trick. i know that the right hates the epa for land expropriation reasons, and that's "whatever". but, to cite the epa as an example of good functioning government is to argue in favour of open corruption and big money in politics, not to argue in favour of environmental oversight.
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Zone gaming
For all those liberals who love Bernie, Gary Johnson is in favor of UBI something that even Bernie didn't really talk about. The fair tax is something that can easily be UBI.
jessica
but, his policies are starkly inflationary. how's $50/year sound?