Do American voters need more 2024 choices?

[Fantine]

Heard this discussion on polling yesterday.

When polled, most voters say Trump is "criminal," Biden is "old," and DeSantis is "fascist."

Do you, too, feel like we need better choices?

While I would choose the "old" candidate from those three, the other two terrify me.

Where are the knights (or ladies) riding in on a white charger to rescue us?

 

[trunks2k]

You're not going to get it. It's baked into the system. Democrats aren't going to try and pose a serious challenge a sitting president as that just hurts their chances of winning. And the primary system makes it ripe for a person like Trump or Desantis to win the primary. More reasonable candidates in the republican primary just dilutes the "reasonable" field, giving more momentum to the crazy.

So third party? Ha. A third party is just gonna take away votes from the person you are, at best, lukewarm on, and essentially making votes for the person you really don't like.

Now, if there was a different voting system other than first past the post, such as IRV, then we could solve many of those problems. People could vote third party without fear. In primaries, a field of candidates won't dilute votes, etc.

 

[Yttrium]

More choices won't help unless Biden and Trump step aside so the other choices can compete.

 

[wing2000]

Do you, too, feel like we need better choices?

Yes....at least on the Democratic side. IMO, Joe Biden should with drawl. In 2020, he campaigned on restoring normalcy to the White House and at one point, indicated he would be a 1 term POTUS. He should honor that.

Perhaps he will if Trump's legal troubles take him out of the race...

 

[Kale100]

Congress's current approval rating: 20%
Source: U.S. Congress public approval rating 2023 | Statista

That neither party acknowledges in the least that this is a problem is all the evidence of collective malice you need.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Do you, too, feel like we need better choices?

We usually do.

While I would choose the "old" candidate from those three, the other two terrify me.

And they should. They repeatedly express intent to rip apart the democratic system and to impose their will without regard for the "rule of law". Unfortunately their party has embraced them rather than pushing back on their anti-democratic behaviors.

Where are the knights (or ladies) riding in on a white charger to rescue us?

There are no white knights or saviors. We must save ourselves. The GOP has become captive to an extremist faction that is authoritarian, anti-democratic, and bigoted. The only way to get them back to being a normal conservative party is to defeat them and defeat them soundly. The larger the victory the faster the transition will occur. (And the sort of electoral reforms that @trunks2k mentioned will *not* come from this GOP.)

You have to participate in the Dem primaries (not the GOP). You can't fix the GOP by trying to pick "the good ones",* but you can help find the most acceptable Democrats. Then you need to advocate for the Dems you find most appealing to anyone who will listen.

A lot of people in the middle will still vote for GOP candidates because there is something about particular (or all) Dems they don't care for. There are always going to things about any party or candidate you don't like, but if you think Trump, DeSantis, and the core of the GOP are dangerous to democracy, you must vote against them by voting for their strongest rivals. The anti-Trump/anti-authoritarian coalition in this country is centered on the Democratic Party (for good or ill) and we just have to accept that and do what we can to ensure that that coalition comes out on top in the next couple years.

*I used to do this.

 

[Kale100]

The GOP has become captive to an extremist faction that is authoritarian, anti-democratic, and bigoted. The only way to get them back to being a normal conservative party is to defeat them and defeat them soundly. The larger the victory the faster the transition will occur. (And the sort of electoral reforms that @trunks2k mentioned will *not* come from this GOP.)

Replace GOP with Democratic party, and that's how the other side feels.
Clearly it is not the American people winning when they are pitted against each other like this.

 

[The IbanezerScrooge]

we need the ability to actually feel free to make different choices without feeling like we're wasting our vote. i.e. we need ranked choice voting or something similar. If people knew they could vote for their actual favorite third-party candidate as their first choice and then have their vote roll-over to their second, third, etc. choice they would be more apt to give those third party candidates their vote.

 

[GodLovesCats]

Heard this discussion on polling yesterday.

When polled, most voters say Trump is "criminal," Biden is "old," and DeSantis is "fascist."

Do you, too, feel like we need better choices?

While I would choose the "old" candidate from those three, the other two terrify me.

There obviously is no choice better than Joe Biden. He is running uncontested, like nearly every incumbent does. Also, if being old was an excuse for not supporting him, nobody would support Donald Trump either because he is 77 now.

All Republican politicians and political office losers are corrupt. The only reason Trump has so many opponents in next year's presidential race is January 6, 2021. Everyone who is running against Trump except Ron DeSantis (who still likes the terrorist) loved him until that horrible day, even while he was suing states hoping judges would overturn election results.

 

[Rev. Adam McKay PhD]

Heard this discussion on polling yesterday.

When polled, most voters say Trump is "criminal," Biden is "old," and DeSantis is "fascist."

Do you, too, feel like we need better choices?

While I would choose the "old" candidate from those three, the other two terrify me.

Where are the knights (or ladies) riding in on a white charger to rescue us?

I don't like their hair.

 

[Diamond72]

While I would choose the "old" candidate from those three, the other two terrify me.

Biden is not alone, you get Hillary and Obama along with him.

 

[Gene2memE]

Biden is not alone, you get Hillary and Obama along with him.

I know that you think that's a negative, and a section of the US political sphere tries to paint them as darker than vantablack, but it's really not.

Obama is probably the best US president of this century, and since then has been an excellent advocate for a whole raft of positive causes. Hillary was an excellent SoS and is a lifetime political operator with a gift for insight into difficult options.

Any president would be lucky to have their support.

 

[mark46]

Heard this discussion on polling yesterday.

When polled, most voters say Trump is "criminal," Biden is "old," and DeSantis is "fascist."

Do you, too, feel like we need better choices?

While I would choose the "old" candidate from those three, the other two terrify me.

Where are the knights (or ladies) riding in on a white charger to rescue us?

A sitting resident almost always is re-nominated, as should be the case.

The Republicans have lots of choices.

The majority of voters do not know what "fascist" means. Any poll that showed the most voters think that Disantis is fascist is a very poorly designed poll.

I suppose a candidate could have a VP who would be expected to take over if the president chose not to run. If Harris were a much, much, much better candidate, then Democrats might reasonably have this discussion. As it is, Biden is the only candidate that can beat Trump, and probably the only one that can beat some of the others. If this weren't the case, there should be a great push for Biden to step down and allow President Harris to run.

 

[Desk trauma]

Yes, we need more viable choices. We’re not going to get them.

 

[GodLovesCats]

Yes, we need more viable choices. We’re not going to get them.

Joe Biden has proven to us many times he is a viable choice. The problem has always been Republicans.

 

[Yttrium]

Joe Biden has proven to us many times he is a viable choice. The problem has always been Republicans.

Nope, nope. Biden is too old, too bland, and too vulnerable to foot-in-mouth disease. His favorability/unfavorability ratings have been running just about neck and neck with Trump lately.

 

[Gregory Thompson]

Keep in mind before Trump came along, voter apathy was pretty high. This trolling act of providing rotten candidates all around is just to keep people's attention.

 

[SavedByGrace3]

Heard this discussion on polling yesterday.

When polled, most voters say Trump is "criminal," Biden is "old," and DeSantis is "fascist."

Do you, too, feel like we need better choices?

While I would choose the "old" candidate from those three, the other two terrify me.

Where are the knights (or ladies) riding in on a white charger to rescue us?

Today's poll states Trump has a 54.7% favorable rating. Biden has a 39.8.
I would say the Dems need a better choice. Someone new for Trump to beat next November.

 

[mark46]

Today's poll states Trump has a 54.7% favorable rating. Biden has a 39.8.
I would say the Dems need a better choice. Someone new for Trump to beat next November.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/trump_favorableunfavorable-5493.html

 

[JSRG]

Also, because the U.S. Constitution explicitly prohibits the establishment of any religion, the Bible cannot be used as a reason to say abortion should be illegal.

The US Constitution prohibits establishment of a religion. It does not prohibit lawmakers to pass laws that are influenced by one's religious morality. However, even if we conclude that laws must be defensible completely on secular grounds, we run into the problem that one... can. The simple idea of "I don't think people should be allowed to kill innocent people, and I think the unborn are innocent people" seems a valid enough reason in and of itself, and requires no religious adherence. Now, certainly there are people who disagree with that reasoning (most likely taking issue with the idea that the unborn are people), but that reasoning requires no religious adherence whatsoever, unless someone wants to try to argue that without religious morality there is no basis for the idea that killing innocents is wrong.

Abortion opponents must have a secular reason to want that and there aren't any.

These atheists disagree:

Abortion - Secular Pro-Life

secularprolife.org