by Gypsiyee » Tue Jun 10, 2008 11:22 am
nono Tikk, I totally agree with you that people vote against people for x or y reason - voting for McCain as a vote against Obama is something she aimed for, though. As I mentioned, you can vote against someone by voting independent.. you don't have to give your vote to someone who believes the complete opposite of you to vote against someone.
Lots of people voted against people in the past 2 elections and it's the only way W won, I agree that it happens a LOT. What I'm referring to is the people who are screaming from the rooftops that they're voting for McCain because their candidate didn't win when it would be just as successful to vote against him by voting independent. They're voting McCain because of the 'if I'm not the democratic nominee, there won't be a democratic president' light that Hillary brought to her campaign.
This election is unique in that with the Bush administration's blunders, it would've been the democrats race to lose, basically - and if it weren't for Hillary, I think it would've been fairly smooth sailing.. there wouldn't be any voting 'against' someone amongst the party if she hadn't run the way she did. I mean there might be some, but thanks to her it's on a huge scale. Sure, you'll have people voting against him because he's x, y, or z.. but now you have people voting against him within his own party not because of his politics, his color, or his personality, but because Hillary didn't win and now it's time to throw a tantrum. You don't see Edwards supporters screaming about it, and though he wasn't in the final months of the race, there is no denying that he has quite a support base.
The biggest difference in casting a vote against someone here is that there are a lot of Clinton supporters right now that are intentionally sabotaging the party's chances because of things like her calling him muslim etc - primary contest campaigns should be run much differently than election campaigns, I believe, because in the end they both had similar goals and now you have this mess with her endorsement being quite a joke. It's more about Hillary than what's best for this country, and that's the biggest flaw she had in her campaign.
"I think you may be confusing government running amok with government doing stuff you don't like. See, you're in the
minority now. It's
supposed to taste like a shit taco." - Jon Stewart