Reply #10: I understand your point about principle vs. party. What I am trying to add to that point, though,

[No Elephants]

is that our system simply does not allow us to vote for issues.

You are saying that we vote for the issues when we vote for a candidate. I don't think we do or can.

I've already posted upthread a bit about the fact that our choices get pre-limited by the Republican and Democratic establishments, respectively could post a lot more about that, but I won't do that.

Let's forget the way that candidates are excluded and so on. Let's take it from the nominess stage.

First, I do stop to think which issues I am voting for, especially at the primary stage.


I sincerely thought that a vote for obama was a vote for a strong public option and no mandate; a rapid to the war in Afghanistan and tax increases for the rich pretty soon after he took office. 0 for 3

(Let's not discuss why he did not deliver. That's been done thousands of times. Point for this post is that I CANNOT vote for issues, only for candidates, who may or may not deliver on the issues.)

And the problem does not lie only at the Presidential level. I cannot think of a single Senator whose views I support more than Senator Sanders. Yet, our system ham strings him.

His choice was to vote for the health insurance bill that emerged from the WH and the Senatee Finance Committee and the insurance industry, or to vote against it.

Despite his advocacy of Medicare for all, all he could do was, like Kucinich, decide if the bill that Baucus delivered to the Senate was better than no bill at all.

And, whenever there are not 60 votes for cloture, he cannot even vote on anything at all. He can only, as he once did , do his own actually filibustering.

So, if I were a Vermonter and I had voted for Sanders because of his advocacy of Medicare for all, I STILL would not be voting for issues like Medicare for all, raising taxes on the rich, etc. I would be voting
only for Senator Sanders.