Larry Sharpe. Libertarian candidate for Governor of NY
- Thread starter Chris0nllyn
- Start date
He's a strong Libertarian candidate as far as Libertarians go, but to have any lasting impact (he won't win) he'll have to get at least 50,000 votes to ensure the LP has ballot access moving forward. I don't think Gary Johnson got anywhere near that in NY last presidential election, so I don't see it happening, rather unfortunately.
Why are people scared of freedom?
Why are people scared of freedom?
SamSpade
Well-Known Member
It's like wondering why everyone doesn't watch (this wonderful show)
1. Don't have a DVR
2. It's on opposite (favorite show or popular show)
3. Saw it once, shrug
4. Don't want to pay for that channel -
and so on. Maybe "Stranger Things" or "Game of Thrones" is awesome, but there's lots of reasons people don't watch it.
And there's still that - "they can't win" thing. People don't want to "waste their vote" on a candidate who won't win.
In DC, unless you're the Democrat - you don't stand a chance. In San Francisco, you could run a transgendered black woman(?) but if they're not a Democrat, they're not winning.
Like Ross Perot - you've got to convince people you CAN win before they'll risk their vote to help you win.
I get it - I do.
People don't want to vote for the candidate that best matches their ethos and philosophy, they want to vote for the candidate they think will win. Most don't hold political philosophies because they think they are justified, they hold them because they don't want to be left out and part of the "minority". It's like folks are scared of their own thoughts and ideas because they might not line up with the majority. They want to be in the coffee clatch with the most popular clucking hens.
SamSpade
Well-Known Member
It's not JUST that they want to vote for a winner. They often have a reason for NOT voting for the other guy. I wouldn't say my vote for Trump last election was so much FOR him as it was my only effort to vote against Hillary, whom I have despised pretty much since Hillarycare and Whitewater. In that case, you "waste" a vote if the person you vote for has no chance of winning but the person you DON'T like - does.
In the last election, if you didn't want Hillary as President, your very best chance was to vote for Trump. He had the only reasonable chance to win, and if you listen to the whiny supporters, they will still claim "she got the most votes" as though that is how it works.
(Somehow, this is "proof" that Americans wanted her - I submit that when you look at tallies in California and New York - it more amply shows that those two states wanted her far more badly than anyone else did.)
IF - for whatever reason - you don't care about either candidate at the top, then you're free to vote however you please. I've done that once or twice. I voted for Perot - but there WAS a time during the campaign when he really DID have a shot at winning and I do believe he proved to be a spoiler for Bush, despite all the analyses done afterward. I wrote in Nixon in '80, because I thought Carter was a loser and I thought Reagan was a blow-hard idiot (I was also still a college student and still in my more liberal days. I knew Nixon couldn't win, but I didn't care at that point who DID.