A serious question, leave your rhetoric at the door, please.

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Did you get to vote for whom you wanted today?

Not 'did you get to vote' or 'did you get to put the mark on the ballot where you decided to and no one tossed it in the trash'...

Did YOU get to vote for WHOM YOU WANTED?

Not 'for whom you wanted from the two choices handed to you'.



Or did you, like I, come home feeling like you needed to take a shower because your vote really *didn't* count, since your opinion wasn't allowed to be voiced when it matters? (The primaries are only an artificial construct of our two-party system, and serve only to limit voter choice.)

Did you get to vote for WHOM YOU WANTED... or did you have to settle for lesser of two evils?

I don't care who you actually voted for, that's your business and no one else's. A simple yes or no will suffice.

Comments

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Actually, I think my selection criteria was more a reflection of how severely I dislike Bush. I've never taken that view on any past campaign, and frankly if there had been 20 people running on the final ballot, I still would have picked the one with the best chance of ousting Bush.

I don't believe the single issue difference is a straw man, but regardless, you brought it up as a tool to disagree with ymasen. Gay marriage is an important issue no doubt, but it is still only one issue. Frankly, Kerry's view of "I'm personally against gay marriage but think the federal government should stay out of it" is a good one IMHO. I think it would be almost as bad an idea for the feds to force gay marriage on the country as to forbid it. It takes time for society's views to change, forcing the issue can cause a major backlash in the opposite direction. State amendments have made it clear the country as a whole is not ready for this change.

My optimal choice on that topic? Change all existing legislation surrounding marriage to be about civil unions instead. Take the controversial word "marriage" out of the equation all together.

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On that last point we agree completely. Marriage is a religious event, civil unions are a legally binding contract surrounding inheritance (kill the death tax!), care of offspring, etc. Gawd doesn't enter into it.

Actually, I brought up the gay marriage to illustrate that our choices are even more limited and less rich than they appear to be. We are so trained to accept and settle for a lesser of two evils, that it doesn't even occur to most folks to think outside of that mental cage. It was not intended to be an example of 'any single issue difference is a settling'.

And to work backwards through your post, again, thinking from the outset how to vote strategically is an artificial construct of our voting system. Stop and consider how you may have approached it, if you had the choice of many candidates today? It's an interesting gedankenexperiment.