People Who Don't Vote Are The Problem

[alan1]

I've always said that other than the vote, the rich completely own our country and government. The only thing we have is our vote. But only 40% of the voting population voted on Tuesday. You can bet that every rich person in America voted on Tuesday. You can bet that all the Republicans that voted in 2012 and 2008 showed up to vote in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. Clearly. Look at how Republicans win every midterm with low turnout but lose the general elections. You can even count 2000 and 2004 because those years were close enough for Bush to steal. But that's another conversation. Point is, basically the richest Americans are all voting every 2 years and the masses only vote every 4 years in the general elections. The blacks. The under 30's. You only have yourselves to blame. I'm done caring about you if you don't even care enough to show up and vote every 2 years. You don't think it makes a difference? It makes all the difference in the world. Stupid fucking Americans.

I think you are looking at this the wrong way.
People that vote every election cycle are the people that care about what is happening in this country and the direction it is moving. It has nothing to do with their wealth. They vote because they care.
People that only vote during a presidential election cycles are the lazy, dumb and/or uninformed. It has nothing to do with their wealth. They vote randomly because they think the president writes law and they are wrong.
Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all ended their 8 year presidencies with an opposing party congress. Barack Obama is in the same situation. Again, it has nothing to do with people's wealth.
I would surmise that most people (paying attention and voting mid-term) are actually in favor of an opposed congress in order to stop a president from progressing an agenda that is either too far left or too far right.

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

People who don't vote are not a problem. Freedom also means the freedom to opt out.

Yea, but I wish kids weren't so cynical so young anymore. I was browbeating the cashier (a twenty year-old college student) up at Ralph's Supermarket a couple of weeks ago, because she told me that although she appreciated the fact that freedom doesn't come free, and that a lot of people die for concepts like ballot boxes, she was convinced nevertheless after her last two civics and political science courses, that voting was a giant waste of time.

Like 2/3 of the rest of society her age, she felt conned by Obama, and she felt her vote didn't mean anything anyway, because big money ruled both parties, not little people like her. I kind of stuttered and left. What could I say to that? The kid was mostly right. She should still vote though. A few dozen ballots can make a big difference in issues you care about...if you care enough to devote the energy to voting over them.

For people coming into political awareness it's like walking into a fog bank. You can see what's immediately in front of you, and for most people that's as far as they get, but for others they start going deeper and clearing some fog away and they see more. That girl is seeing something but not yet the whole picture, she doesn't understand that the society she knows, like being a fish in water, is structurally reinforcing the problems that harm her. A politician can't fix the problem while keeping the structure of society intact.

Exactly. Karl Jung called this process "a sick contract," and he attributed much of the mental illness affecting modern society to structural reinforcement by that society of things people know are bad, and that they know are especially bad for their own mental health, but they buy into all this crazy shit nevertheless for the sake of going along to get along.

 

[the_human_being]

I've always said that other than the vote, the rich completely own our country and government. The only thing we have is our vote. But only 40% of the voting population voted on Tuesday. You can bet that every rich person in America voted on Tuesday. You can bet that all the Republicans that voted in 2012 and 2008 showed up to vote in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. Clearly. Look at how Republicans win every midterm with low turnout but lose the general elections. You can even count 2000 and 2004 because those years were close enough for Bush to steal. But that's another conversation. Point is, basically the richest Americans are all voting every 2 years and the masses only vote every 4 years in the general elections. The blacks. The under 30's. You only have yourselves to blame. I'm done caring about you if you don't even care enough to show up and vote every 2 years. You don't think it makes a difference? It makes all the difference in the world. Stupid fucking Americans.

I don't have a Hell of a lot, but, I am about to disinherit my beloved youngest son if he misses one more election claiming "it doesn't make any difference".

At least we didn't have to worry that Eric Holder's Blacks to ignorant to obtain a photo voter ID stopped any of the ignorant Blacks from voting twice this time. They didn't even bother to vote once. LOL!! No free Obamaphones or other goodies were handed out.

 

[the_human_being]

One hardly blame people for not wanting to vote considering parties are absolute jokes. Their apathy is understandable when all you do is chase the devil out with Beelzebub.

It is not understandable.

I can tell this is probably coming from a rich person who likes it that the masses don't vote. That's their narrative. "Oh why bother voting, their all the same" Meanwhile they're voting every 2 years because they know it matters.

How else can I tell you are rich? Who starts a sentence with "One hardly blame people...." You sound like Thurston Howell 3rd. Lovie, one knows not to mix the chardonee with the grey popoun and cavier.

Lets see the next midterm if the Republicans just sit it out because "it doesn't matter who wins". Bullshit! They know better.

How much whiney ass butt hurt do you have? You lost, you party failed to motivate, its not the problem of the rich, its the Democrats issue. Playing the war on everybody, grew thin, it's Bush's fault is laughable, nobody wanted Obama around their campaigns, hell, Biden and the Clintons lost everywhere they went. The candidates message was, I'm not Obama. It didn't work.

Your cryfest is just you being a poor loser.

Maybe Democrats need to run more MTV ads begging people to vote.

LOL. Fuck you! But

The OP is kinda right. The people who didn't show up to vote are the problem.

That's because when they do show up to vote they demonstrate a complete lack of political understanding. They're voting for who's popular, not who's policies will be productive. It's because the NO information voters stayed home 2 days ago that the democrooks were so thouroughly trounced. There was no cult of personality, no rock stars.

They even trotted out that whore Abortion Barbie as if she was in anyway qualified or even had some charisma about her. She couldn't even get the percentage Tony Sanchez got Vs. Rick Perry in 2002.

The best thing that can happen from now on is for the NO information voter to stay home and let the adults pick who's managing the country so that we don't get another psuedo-intellectual rockstar golfer in the WH.

Even the GOP admits with such low voter turnout they do not have any kind of mandate from the people. All that happened on Tuesday was the Democratic incumbents were voted out because the masses didn't show up and the GOP base was fired up and did show up.

The highest turnout is during presidential years, but that turn out is only about %60 compared to %40 in mid terms. That has been a fairly consistent trend.

Since my point is that the %20 who only show up half the time aren't as engaged in the process and clearly aren't paying as much attention. They're the problem because when they do show up, we end up with shitbags like ovomit.

I mentioned nothing about "a mandate", but obviously if the motivated voter is rejecting democrooks at this percentage, the problem isn't the republicrats.

And by the way dummy. The only way the GOP wins elections is by fooling dumb poor and middle class "independents" into voting with them by using bullshit social issues like god gays and guns as wedge issues.

Literally all over America we have stupid poor Christians voting GOP because of abortion and gays.

Strange to me that I didn't hear a word about guns or gays in any of the debates I heard. I did hear a couple of Democrats play the tired old race card and war against women card. They didn't work this time. People already heard them over and over in past elections.

Terry Lynn Land's right wing anti women policies cost her in Michigan. She must feel like a total loser. Every Republican except her won everywhere in the country. That's how bad a choice she was.

Republicans didn't have to play the gay or gun cards. They always win these midterms because only rich people vote in midterms. Midterms are the CONS secret weapon.

You think the Blacks have been ignored by the Republicans in the past elections? You ain't seen nothing yet. It's payback time. Blaccks vote Democrat so let the Democrats take care of the Blacks. The Republicans don't need them.

 

[ninja007]

OP- you are wrong as usual. The problem is the idiot low info leftist voters vote.

 

[Tom Sweetnam]

Unless they hire Mexican electricians for $1.00 an hour

Ha! How out of touch can you get? It's not safe hiring non-state licensed electricians, granted, in fact it's illegal, but the Mexicans who come up around my neck of the woods are commercial electricians from the cities who know their stuff, who still command $160-$200 a day plus parts. $1 an hour? I'm laughing as I type this.

 

[DigitalDrifter]

The butthurt runs deep with this OP.

 

[the_human_being]

I've always said that other than the vote, the rich completely own our country and government. The only thing we have is our vote. But only 40% of the voting population voted on Tuesday. You can bet that every rich person in America voted on Tuesday. You can bet that all the Republicans that voted in 2012 and 2008 showed up to vote in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. Clearly. Look at how Republicans win every midterm with low turnout but lose the general elections. You can even count 2000 and 2004 because those years were close enough for Bush to steal. But that's another conversation. Point is, basically the richest Americans are all voting every 2 years and the masses only vote every 4 years in the general elections. The blacks. The under 30's. You only have yourselves to blame. I'm done caring about you if you don't even care enough to show up and vote every 2 years. You don't think it makes a difference? It makes all the difference in the world. Stupid fucking Americans.

I think you are looking at this the wrong way.
People that vote every election cycle are the people that care about what is happening in this country and the direction it is moving. It has nothing to do with their wealth. They vote because they care.
People that only vote during a presidential election cycles are the lazy, dumb and/or uninformed. It has nothing to do with their wealth. They vote randomly because they think the president writes law and they are wrong.
Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all ended their 8 year presidencies with an opposing party congress. Barack Obama is in the same situation. Again, it has nothing to do with people's wealth.
I would surmise that most people (paying attention and voting mid-term) are actually in favor of an opposed congress in order to stop a president from progressing an agenda that is either too far left or too far right.

The OP thinks anyone making over $1.00 per hour is rich. He's even found some Mexican electricians he thinks he can pay $1.00 an hour. Fry cooks at Church's Fried Chicken are so totally out of touch.

 

[Rikurzhen]

People who don't vote are not a problem. Freedom also means the freedom to opt out.

Yea, but I wish kids weren't so cynical so young anymore. I was browbeating the cashier (a twenty year-old college student) up at Ralph's Supermarket a couple of weeks ago, because she told me that although she appreciated the fact that freedom doesn't come free, and that a lot of people die for concepts like ballot boxes, she was convinced nevertheless after her last two civics and political science courses, that voting was a giant waste of time.

Like 2/3 of the rest of society her age, she felt conned by Obama, and she felt her vote didn't mean anything anyway, because big money ruled both parties, not little people like her. I kind of stuttered and left. What could I say to that? The kid was mostly right. She should still vote though. A few dozen ballots can make a big difference in issues you care about...if you care enough to devote the energy to voting over them.

For people coming into political awareness it's like walking into a fog bank. You can see what's immediately in front of you, and for most people that's as far as they get, but for others they start going deeper and clearing some fog away and they see more. That girl is seeing something but not yet the whole picture, she doesn't understand that the society she knows, like being a fish in water, is structurally reinforcing the problems that harm her. A politician can't fix the problem while keeping the structure of society intact.

Exactly. Karl Jung called this process "a sick contract," and he attributed much of the mental illness affecting modern society to structural reinforcement by that society of things people know are bad, and that they know are especially bad for their own mental health, but they buy into all this crazy shit nevertheless for the sake of going along to get along.

Yup. A related phenomena is preference falsification in which you have a private truth which must remain hidden while you profess a public lie because the profession of the public lie is expected of you. Sometimes though we see a preference cascade begin in which everyone very quickly comes to understand that their private truth is really a universal truth and the all those people who were uttering the public lie were actually lying. When the private truth becomes the public truth, then society can undergo a revolution very quickly. Soviet communism crumbles in months despite all the societal infrastructure keeping the Party at the center of everything.

 

[Borillar]

Unless they hire Mexican electricians for $1.00 an hour

Ha! How out of touch can you get? It's not safe hiring non-state licensed electricians, granted, in fact it's illegal, but the Mexicans who come up around my neck of the woods are commercial electricians from the cities who know their stuff, who still command $160-$200 a day plus parts. $1 an hour? I'm laughing as I type this.

I was speaking tongue in cheek. My point is that employers will hire the cheapest labor they can get away with in order to maximize profit. For example, I work in high tech. The company hasn't hired many experienced American engineers in years. Instead they love to hire college kids with no experience, H1-B engineers from India or China, or just outsource to third world countries. These H1-B guys have doctorates but get paid peanuts. Pisses me off that the government enables this.

 

[asterism]

I've always said that other than the vote, the rich completely own our country and government. The only thing we have is our vote. But only 40% of the voting population voted on Tuesday. You can bet that every rich person in America voted on Tuesday. You can bet that all the Republicans that voted in 2012 and 2008 showed up to vote in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. Clearly. Look at how Republicans win every midterm with low turnout but lose the general elections. You can even count 2000 and 2004 because those years were close enough for Bush to steal. But that's another conversation. Point is, basically the richest Americans are all voting every 2 years and the masses only vote every 4 years in the general elections. The blacks. The under 30's. You only have yourselves to blame. I'm done caring about you if you don't even care enough to show up and vote every 2 years. You don't think it makes a difference? It makes all the difference in the world. Stupid fucking Americans.

Maybe you should start figuring out why your side is so hard to engage voters consistently. If your ideas are so great, why can't you get solid support?

Perhaps your ideas just aren't that popular and there's a cult of personality gimmick strategy. I've often criticized Republican leaders for being terrible at electioneering.

 

[dblack]

Is it really people who don't vote? Or is it just people who don't vote who would have voted the way you want? How do you know who all those 'non-voters' would have voted for?

 

[P@triot]

I've always said that other than the vote, the rich completely own our country and government. The only thing we have is our vote. But only 40% of the voting population voted on Tuesday. You can bet that every rich person in America voted on Tuesday. You can bet that all the Republicans that voted in 2012 and 2008 showed up to vote in the 2010 and 2014 midterms. Clearly. Look at how Republicans win every midterm with low turnout but lose the general elections. You can even count 2000 and 2004 because those years were close enough for Bush to steal. But that's another conversation. Point is, basically the richest Americans are all voting every 2 years and the masses only vote every 4 years in the general elections. The blacks. The under 30's. You only have yourselves to blame. I'm done caring about you if you don't even care enough to show up and vote every 2 years. You don't think it makes a difference? It makes all the difference in the world. Stupid fucking Americans.

Only 40% show up because they've watched Dumbocrats rig elections and engage in voter fraud for about 100 years now. What's the point of taking time out of your day to vote only to have a liberal-rigged machine switch your vote from Republican to Democrat?

 

[asterism]

Barrow and spend and eat the rich, you just described a democrat. or at least as long as obama has been president. How much did he barrow from China?

Tell us about the budget surpluses of the Bush years.

Then go and turn on any right wing hack media web site or propaganda 24 hour "news" channel and tell me they aren't all about whining and being afraid all the time.

There was not any clinton surplus try again.

There was a projected surplus. There would have been a surplus. Bush destroyed that projection. What did you expect would happen when he passed all those tax breaks to the rich, spent all that money on two wars and sent all those jobs overseas?

You do realize all those high paying manufacturing employees were paying a lot of income taxes. When you got rid of their jobs you starved the treasury of those taxes those employees would have otherwise paid.

Thank God Obama is the president.

There was no Clinton surplus YOU DO UNDERSTAND THIS?
As for thanking God about obama, the American voter spoke loud and clear how they feel about obama and the democrats last Tuesday

No, they spoke loud and clear in 2012. What they did this year was not show up to vote for either party. That should tell you how they feel about the GOP too, not just Obama and the Dems.

Yes, it says that fickle liberals don't like the GOP. But this year they didn't like the Democrats either.

Your faithful showed up and voted. So did ours. Unfortunately the independents didn't show up.

You cannot prove that, the results aren't posted yet.

There may not have been an actual surplus but there would have been if Bush didn't happen. And trust me, if Bush had that "surplus" you can be damn sure you'd be calling it a surplus.

 

[Big Black Dog]

Is that crying that I hear?

 

[Mr. H.]

Wife got home from work dead dog tired so I offered to drive her to the poll.
She declined. I told her "Rauner is going to win by one vote"!

 

[asterism]

Why do you think those votes would automatically go the GOP? The Libertarian Party is made up of disgruntled voters from both parties. If you want my vote then you have to earn it. The GOP and the Democrats have failed to do so. This what happens when they continually ignore our concerns, we take our votes elsewhere. If your candidate was good they would win regardless of a 3rd party candidate.

You live in a bubble. many races are won by a slim margin. I never once heard of Libertarians spoiling it for a Democrat so they must be closer to Republicans. The Green party screwed the pooch years ago and they learned a lesson, better to influence a winning party from within rather than standing out in the cold looking in.

I agree with many Libertarian principles but their leaders are typically whack jobs like Ron Paul. But at least he smartened up and went Republican knowing he had no chance at all 3rd party.

No actually most elections are not decided by very slim margins. Gross gerrymandering as made most districts far too safe for one party or the other. Only 40 House races were competitive this time around. That's absurd. Again, those votes do belong to the GOP. They have to be earned.

Gerrymandering only affects one of three elected entities and it was completely irrelevant in the GOP taking the Senate this year.

Nice try.

 

[asterism]

Isn't it kind of racist to assume that (lazy?) Black people are responsible for the republican victory in the mid-term elections?

The blacks that voted for Obama didn't show up. The under 30 crowd didn't show up either. Stupid fucks.

Plenty of blacks and under 30 voters showed up, just not the ones that usually vote for your side of the aisle.
Place the blame where it properly rests, on your side's strategy.

 

[mdk]

Why do you think those votes would automatically go the GOP? The Libertarian Party is made up of disgruntled voters from both parties. If you want my vote then you have to earn it. The GOP and the Democrats have failed to do so. This what happens when they continually ignore our concerns, we take our votes elsewhere. If your candidate was good they would win regardless of a 3rd party candidate.

You live in a bubble. many races are won by a slim margin. I never once heard of Libertarians spoiling it for a Democrat so they must be closer to Republicans. The Green party screwed the pooch years ago and they learned a lesson, better to influence a winning party from within rather than standing out in the cold looking in.

I agree with many Libertarian principles but their leaders are typically whack jobs like Ron Paul. But at least he smartened up and went Republican knowing he had no chance at all 3rd party.

No actually most elections are not decided by very slim margins. Gross gerrymandering as made most districts far too safe for one party or the other. Only 40 House races were competitive this time around. That's absurd. Again, those votes do belong to the GOP. They have to be earned.

Gerrymandering only affects one of three elected entities and it was completely irrelevant in the GOP taking the Senate this year.

Nice try.

No kidding. I never claimed it had any effect on the Senate. To think gerrymandering has not made many seats in the House safe for one party or other is woefully ignorant. The GOP won the Senate because they ran better candidates then the Democrats.

 

[asterism]

Unless they hire Mexican electricians for $1.00 an hour

Ha! How out of touch can you get? It's not safe hiring non-state licensed electricians, granted, in fact it's illegal, but the Mexicans who come up around my neck of the woods are commercial electricians from the cities who know their stuff, who still command $160-$200 a day plus parts. $1 an hour? I'm laughing as I type this.

I was speaking tongue in cheek. My point is that employers will hire the cheapest labor they can get away with in order to maximize profit. For example, I work in high tech. The company hasn't hired many experienced American engineers in years. Instead they love to hire college kids with no experience, H1-B engineers from India or China, or just outsource to third world countries. These H1-B guys have doctorates but get paid peanuts. Pisses me off that the government enables this.

If that's happening maybe you should shift your career some instead of looking for protection. If they can do your job and will accept a lower wage, it's theirs. After all, that's how you got hired - the company thought you were more economical than someone else.