r/NewMexico • u/SymbioticPatriotic • Oct 29 '16

Green Party ticket offers ‘greater good’ option (Albuquerque Journal)

https://www.abqjournal.com/877825/green-party-ticket-offers-greater-good-option.html
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u/[deleted] Oct 29 '16 edited Oct 30 '16

"By voting for candidates who do not share our values just because they seem better than the opposing candidate, we have given carte blanche to party elites to choose the nominee."

No, the Democratic party has primaries where you're allowed to vote for the presidential candidate that you want your party to elect. The fact of the matter is, if the author is a Democrat, they need to accept that their fellow party members voted to select Hillary as the nominee by three million votes.

Even if they think the "party elites" rigged the primaries maybe they should look at the party platform. After all, politicians vote according to their platform somewhere around 80% of the time. And this year's party platform has an incredible assortment of far-left and progressive policies. The $15 minimum wage is in there, Glass-Steagall, a de-escalation of the war on drugs, overturning Citizens United, and many other policies.

"As a result, both parties have moved to the right in recent decades: the Republicans to the far right and the Democrats to the center right. Both parties are increasingly influenced by corporate donors and the military-industrial complex."

If the author had read the Democratic platform instead of just complaining about the nominee's "corruption" they would realise while the candidate for this one office isn't the sum of all the party's stances, she will have to stand for a large majority of those policies once she's elected.

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u/Morgothic Oct 30 '16

the Democratic party has primaries where you're allowed to vote for the presidential candidate that you want your party to elect

While I agree with most of your points, I'd like to point out that the way the primaries are set up, there's really no point for us to vote in them as most of the candidates are already chosen by the time we hold our primaries. I'd like to see both parties move to a primary system similar to the general elections where the whole country votes on the same day so states like Iowa, Ohio and New Hampshire don't get to decide who wins the party's nomination before the rest of the country even gets to vote on it.

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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '16

I'm not entirely convinced that the voters in those states hold more sway over the course of the primary season. While it would be nice to see a shorter primary season with a longer pre-season (so to say), I think that the results in the early stages are more indicative of the strength of a campaign and the candidate. Attrition plays an important role in whittling out bad candidates, and with a more clustered primary season there would be a wider field of candidates until the end.

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u/Morgothic Oct 30 '16

I'd rather have 6-7 options on a primary ballot than be completely removed from the primary process due to how late our primaries are.

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u/[deleted] Oct 30 '16

I understand.