Okay if you guys don't know by now because I usually keep 8 ft between me and my PC life I'm a African American living in pa and I'm struggling to vote for trump. Originally I wanted Bernie because I found him most likely to stop tpp and end Nafta but I went trump and soon after that Gary Johnson. I know Hillary could win and that would be bad convince me to vote for trump instead.
Are the republicans the only choice?
- Thread starter Oolong
- Start date
- Status
A lot of people are struggling to vote for Trump, but for those members not solidly in "Red" states where all the Electoral College votes will go in winner take all contests to Trump and the solidly "Blue" states where they'll go to Clinton you have to decide whether to you "hold your nose" and vote based on the best of bad choices. The "battleground states" make the decision particularly important to vote AGAINST Clinton casting your ballot for the current pragmatic alternative, Trump.
While the Libertarian ticket is far safer on the 2A issues than the other two (No Fly/No Buy advocates), they can't practically defeat Clinton in any of the battleground states and that makes the decision to vote for them much more difficult where the 2A is your primary interest. For the states solidly Red or Blue it becomes a question of which platform you support.
PA being a battleground state that could literally decide the result of the election, voting against Clinton becomes highly important. Voting for a pragmatic alternative to Clinton to prevent Clinton winning the election becomes highly important.
Many voters think Trump can do a lot of harm as POTUS, as can Clinton, but keep in mind that that is moderated by the legislative branch. Our current president and the Antis tried everything in the book in attempts to ban entire classes of firearms, but the House and Senate blocked those efforts. The same can take place on a broad spectrum of issues. Trump will probably have even less support from the House and Senate since he's run an anti establishment campaign and personally attacked a large number of members of the Senate. They'll be unforgiving for this and limit what he might try to accomplish. Since we know the other party has no love for him, he won't get support from them further limiting his impact. Much the same might be said about Clinton, but the spectre of Clinton appointing 3 Supreme Court Justices should make every 2A advocate uneasy about the future of private firearms ownership. There's no way that empty seats on the SCOTUS bench will be tolerated after January and Clinton is clearly far too dangerous to allow to fill those seats with Antis. Any bluster that appointments could be blocked for 4 years is just ridiculous hyperbole.
Understand that the "down-ticket" vote in the Senate is very important as well since legislation that never makes it to the President for signature into law is how we've maintained our rights in this case. It is important to look at who is running in those races and make sure the Senate races go our way to keep whoever is in the Oval Office from having a decision to make.
So, Trump can be moderated more effectively than Clinton by the House and Senate and that may be the hold your nose rationale for voting for Trump in PA.
While the Libertarian ticket is far safer on the 2A issues than the other two (No Fly/No Buy advocates), they can't practically defeat Clinton in any of the battleground states and that makes the decision to vote for them much more difficult where the 2A is your primary interest. For the states solidly Red or Blue it becomes a question of which platform you support.
PA being a battleground state that could literally decide the result of the election, voting against Clinton becomes highly important. Voting for a pragmatic alternative to Clinton to prevent Clinton winning the election becomes highly important.
Many voters think Trump can do a lot of harm as POTUS, as can Clinton, but keep in mind that that is moderated by the legislative branch. Our current president and the Antis tried everything in the book in attempts to ban entire classes of firearms, but the House and Senate blocked those efforts. The same can take place on a broad spectrum of issues. Trump will probably have even less support from the House and Senate since he's run an anti establishment campaign and personally attacked a large number of members of the Senate. They'll be unforgiving for this and limit what he might try to accomplish. Since we know the other party has no love for him, he won't get support from them further limiting his impact. Much the same might be said about Clinton, but the spectre of Clinton appointing 3 Supreme Court Justices should make every 2A advocate uneasy about the future of private firearms ownership. There's no way that empty seats on the SCOTUS bench will be tolerated after January and Clinton is clearly far too dangerous to allow to fill those seats with Antis. Any bluster that appointments could be blocked for 4 years is just ridiculous hyperbole.
Understand that the "down-ticket" vote in the Senate is very important as well since legislation that never makes it to the President for signature into law is how we've maintained our rights in this case. It is important to look at who is running in those races and make sure the Senate races go our way to keep whoever is in the Oval Office from having a decision to make.
So, Trump can be moderated more effectively than Clinton by the House and Senate and that may be the hold your nose rationale for voting for Trump in PA.
Dog Soldier
member
If you are a gun owner and the NRA is backing Trump why the hard decision? 
From a Facebook post: I have two choices in this fiasco and see her as the lesser of two evils. That's a sad retort I understand…but Trump scares the sh*t out of me
My reply: Deciding for whom to vote is pretty easy once you set aside personality and consider policy. For instance -- and this is an off-the-cuff and un-edited partial list --
--> Vote for Hillary if you believe:
• Federalism is unnecessary as a check on excessive government
• Global governance is good, even if it means giving up control of individual lives
• Courts should make law instead of interpreting satisfactory deliberations of Congress
• The Constitution is as unnecessary as its amendments
• That a unitary chief executive is the supreme authority that can disregard Congress and the courts
• The Department of Justice gets to decide what laws to enforce
• Equality under the law is passé
• Success in school is up to the central government to decide
• Individual diversity is not as important as group identity
• Profit should go to favored business and voters should assume all risk
• Businesses are only an extension of government
• Free speech needs to be controlled speech
• Printing free money will have no consequences for our children
--> Vote for Trump if you believe:
• Professional politicians on both sides have undermined the institutions of government
• On should surrounds oneself with experts who then should be held accountable
• That three co-equal branches of government need to be respected for checks and balances to work
• In both private property and personal charity
• That individuals matter more than over-simplified and artificial identity politics
• In blind justice such that the rule of law applies equally to everyone
• In having everyone contribute as best they can to their own success
• That commerce at an individual level creates the greatest diversity and cooperation
• That decentralizing government to the lowest possible level reduces rent-seeking and graft
• That the commercial marketplace may not be perfect, but it tends to be self-cleansing
• That central government can’t possibly know enough or operate efficiently enough to manage an economy
• That other countries should shoulder some of the cost of defense and international co-operation
• That a strong defense means you are less likely to have to use it.
In the end, journalists failed readers by reporting entertainment instead of differentiating candidate policies. And too many individuals failed by being sucked in by venal politicians manipulating the press.
If you follow the money, corporate journalism is as naked as the emperor.
My reply: Deciding for whom to vote is pretty easy once you set aside personality and consider policy. For instance -- and this is an off-the-cuff and un-edited partial list --
--> Vote for Hillary if you believe:
• Federalism is unnecessary as a check on excessive government
• Global governance is good, even if it means giving up control of individual lives
• Courts should make law instead of interpreting satisfactory deliberations of Congress
• The Constitution is as unnecessary as its amendments
• That a unitary chief executive is the supreme authority that can disregard Congress and the courts
• The Department of Justice gets to decide what laws to enforce
• Equality under the law is passé
• Success in school is up to the central government to decide
• Individual diversity is not as important as group identity
• Profit should go to favored business and voters should assume all risk
• Businesses are only an extension of government
• Free speech needs to be controlled speech
• Printing free money will have no consequences for our children
--> Vote for Trump if you believe:
• Professional politicians on both sides have undermined the institutions of government
• On should surrounds oneself with experts who then should be held accountable
• That three co-equal branches of government need to be respected for checks and balances to work
• In both private property and personal charity
• That individuals matter more than over-simplified and artificial identity politics
• In blind justice such that the rule of law applies equally to everyone
• In having everyone contribute as best they can to their own success
• That commerce at an individual level creates the greatest diversity and cooperation
• That decentralizing government to the lowest possible level reduces rent-seeking and graft
• That the commercial marketplace may not be perfect, but it tends to be self-cleansing
• That central government can’t possibly know enough or operate efficiently enough to manage an economy
• That other countries should shoulder some of the cost of defense and international co-operation
• That a strong defense means you are less likely to have to use it.
In the end, journalists failed readers by reporting entertainment instead of differentiating candidate policies. And too many individuals failed by being sucked in by venal politicians manipulating the press.
If you follow the money, corporate journalism is as naked as the emperor.
Both major candidates were mute on Constitutional constraints on government power and have little regard for personal freedom. As tempting as it is to protest vote for Gary Johnson, from a 2A standpoint, (pragmatically) Trump is the only "choice". The lame stream media bias toward hitlery is frightening.
Worse, the bias of the media toward Hillary is REAL. Every day before publishing our newspaper we edit out of Associated Press articles the IEDs they plant by the roadside -- Improvised Editing Devices -- designed to poison readers’ views of Trump and obscure Hillary Clinton’s failings. Every day.
Instapundit Glenn Reynolds is correct that you can’t go far wrong if you consider the MSM to be Democrats with bylines.
climbnjump
Member
While I believe that the Libertarian "platform" is safer on the 2A, I'm not sure that is true for the two running this time around. Here is what the VP candidate had to say during one interview:
“The five-shot rifle, that’s a standard military rifle; the problem is if you attach a clip to it so it can fire more shells and if you remove the pin so that it becomes an automatic weapon, and those are independent criminal offenses,” Weld said. “That is when they become– essentially– a weapon of mass destruction. The problem with handguns probably is even worse than the problem of the AR15.”
In other interviews, he makes a differentiation between guns that have a hunting purpose and guns that don't and basically implies that the 2A only protects the "right to hunt".
I realize that it is mostly pointless to bring this up since Mr. Johnson and Mr. Weld have no chance of making it to the White House, still, it never hurts to know who believes what.
ETA:
Here is a video of Mr. Weld actually saying what I quoted above. It's actually pretty hard to believe that someone who has served as a governor of a state can actually be so ignorant.
Last edited:
Oolong, I'm concerned about who will end up on the supreme court if HRC wins. I expect her to nominate people who are anti rkba, and whose supreme court rulings will outlast any presidential administration. The Heller decision was a 5 to 4 split in favor of an individual's right to kba. Clinton has said that she believes the scotus got the Heller decision wrong. With a Clinton win, we would likely end up with a scotus that would interpret the 2A in a fundamentally different way, and an era of dramatic infringements on the RKBA.
Pistolay
Contributing Member
If you want a country with borders, as well as functioning 1st, 2nd and 14th amendments, it doesn't seem like there's much choice. And Trump may do bad things, but Clinton WILL do bad things. At least Trump will be held accountable. The media, the Democrats and many Republicans will see to that. Nobody will hold Clinton accountable. Oh, the Republicans will make a weak effort, but then the establishment media will paint them as the bad guys and they'll go run and hide like they always do.
Let's keep the discussion to gun-rights so this thread lives a bit longer than it would otherwise.
Here's what we know about Clinton:
It's Trump or not vote. We know Hillary is hostile to the second amendment. Trump says he's not, and I'd rather hope he doesn't change his mind than vote for anyone else on the ticket this year.
That sucks, but the second amendment is too important. I fear for the Republic either way, but defending the 2nd Amendment is the most important issue to me right now.
Here's what we know about Clinton:
- Clinton wants an assault weapon ban
- Clinton thinks an Australian-style mandatory buy-back is a good idea
- Clinton disagrees with Heller, and wants to appoint justices to reverse that decision
- Clinton has pledged to use executive orders to accomplish gun control if she can't get anything through congress
- He supported Obama's gun control efforts after Sandy Hook
- He's always been a New York City Liberal, at least from this rural Southerner's perspective
- His kids have CCWs, as does he
- He says he's changed his mind on an assault weapons ban, citing the data that showed it did nothing
- He told the NRA he'd repeal every executive order on guns
- He told the NRA which judges he'd like for the supreme court, and the NRA said they were Pro-Gun
- The NRA backs him
It's Trump or not vote. We know Hillary is hostile to the second amendment. Trump says he's not, and I'd rather hope he doesn't change his mind than vote for anyone else on the ticket this year.
That sucks, but the second amendment is too important. I fear for the Republic either way, but defending the 2nd Amendment is the most important issue to me right now.
Last edited:
Sistema1927
Member
IBTL.
I didn't think that we discussed politics here. That said, I voted today. Held my nose, and remembered the Supreme Court.
I didn't think that we discussed politics here. That said, I voted today. Held my nose, and remembered the Supreme Court.
RX-79G: Trump is not going to win.
Assumes facts not in evidence. Of course, everyone is entitled to an opinion. I just hope it is not based on mainstream polls because who paid for it matters, the participation assumptions matter, and the questions matter.
Assumes facts not in evidence. Of course, everyone is entitled to an opinion. I just hope it is not based on mainstream polls because who paid for it matters, the participation assumptions matter, and the questions matter.
Let's stay focused on the OP question and not wander off topic. I've "pruned" the thread to keep us on track.
I'm not sure why my first post was off topic, but I'll hopefully restate it better:
An election has only one winner. But how voters vote also serves as a referendum on party strategy and candidacy in future elections. If you don't believe Trump can win, or your vote in your state is not going to affect how your state's electoral college votes, you should consider what kind of signal your Trump or non-Trump vote sends.
Trumps popularity arose from frustration with both parties, and frustration within the GOP. That has already been thoroughly noted by the GOP, and should affect future elections. But now we're at the other end of an election where Republican pundits state that the Trump is pretty much the only candidate that could get HRC elected, maybe it is time to make a different referendum about the kind of candidate you wish was available.
There is the possibility that Trump could still be elected, and if you live in a battleground state, by all means vote expediently. But if live in a solid Red or Blue state, consider using your vote to communicate your future desires from both parties.
An election has only one winner. But how voters vote also serves as a referendum on party strategy and candidacy in future elections. If you don't believe Trump can win, or your vote in your state is not going to affect how your state's electoral college votes, you should consider what kind of signal your Trump or non-Trump vote sends.
Trumps popularity arose from frustration with both parties, and frustration within the GOP. That has already been thoroughly noted by the GOP, and should affect future elections. But now we're at the other end of an election where Republican pundits state that the Trump is pretty much the only candidate that could get HRC elected, maybe it is time to make a different referendum about the kind of candidate you wish was available.
There is the possibility that Trump could still be elected, and if you live in a battleground state, by all means vote expediently. But if live in a solid Red or Blue state, consider using your vote to communicate your future desires from both parties.
RX-79G, a vote is a blunt instrument. No nuance at all. But a vote matters not to send a message, but to help the better candidate win.
If you want to send a message, write a letter or send a donation to someone else. On Election Day, it is between Trump and Hillary.
Trump’s popularity rose because there are not two parties -- just Washington elite on both sides of the aisle waiting for their place at the trough. It is the Uniparty.
When Eisenhower said to beware of the military-industrial complex, it applies also to NGO/corporate/FreeStuff-government associations.
It is Panem from Hunger Games. At the end of Hunger Games, the heroine took out, not the leader, who was dying, but the opposition leader who was cut from the same stripe. Trump is not a career politician. The president need not be a career politician if the object is to rediscover what matters and drain the swamp.
Read the latest Trump Gettysburg transcript.
If you want to send a message, write a letter or send a donation to someone else. On Election Day, it is between Trump and Hillary.
Trump’s popularity rose because there are not two parties -- just Washington elite on both sides of the aisle waiting for their place at the trough. It is the Uniparty.
When Eisenhower said to beware of the military-industrial complex, it applies also to NGO/corporate/FreeStuff-government associations.
It is Panem from Hunger Games. At the end of Hunger Games, the heroine took out, not the leader, who was dying, but the opposition leader who was cut from the same stripe. Trump is not a career politician. The president need not be a career politician if the object is to rediscover what matters and drain the swamp.
Read the latest Trump Gettysburg transcript.
DeepSouth
Random Guy
I hate to be the one to tell everyone, but their is no progun presidential candidate running for president. At least theirs not on the ballot in most states.
We have openly anti gun candidates and indifferent ones, and when the indifferent get put under pressure they crack because they never cared to begin with.
We have openly anti gun candidates and indifferent ones, and when the indifferent get put under pressure they crack because they never cared to begin with.
GBExpat
Member
Oolong, I have been able to vote in Presidential elections since 1976, and voted in every one of them.
With only one exception (Reagan '84) I have cast my votes against one of the 2-party candidates (e.g., in '76 I cast my vote against Carter rather than for Ford).
This year I had to start early in psyching myself up to cast my vote "against Hilary", not because voting against Hilary represents a problem for me (it is a pleasure) but as time went by it became more apparent that the Republican nominee might_actually_be Donald Trump.
The way that I look at it, especially since Hilary has the lead, any vote for a 3rd party candidate is, in effect, a vote for Hilary. Heck, that is what got Terry McAuliffe (a Bloomberg Buddy) into the VA Governor's mansion during this last cycle ... folks voting for the Libertarian candidate who had zero chance of winning (and, in addition, was spending Bloomberg money). <sigh>
HTH! Good Luck with your decision!
sevenpointsixtwo
Member
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2016
- Messages
- 2
I live in California. We have some of the stupidest gun laws in the nation. I now say to whomever is a Democrat, no matter what state you live in, choose wisely in this election. Think about the STUPID laws in California and then think about if they were FEDERAL laws. Think about the last Cilnton ban and how that affected you. That is nothing compared to this time around. Try no ammo purchased online, no pistol grip semi-auto centerfire rifles, no mags over 10 rounds, no bullet button loopholes... And if you have an assault rifle, you will being asked to register it. If its registered you cannot sell it, you cannot pass it down to your family members. Not to mention there will be a bunch of gun sites and manufacturers who simply will not even ship to your state. Can I tell you how many times I thought wow, this is a cool deal. Then saw the NO CA icon next to the rifle? You probably ignored that icon. But what if it said NO PA or NO FL? Or:
Sure Trump is certainly no Ronald Reagan. And there is no guarantee that he will protect our rights. But Clinton is a effing nightmare for gun owners. That is CERTAIN. Trump is our best bet, whether you like it or not. The NRA endorsement is enough evidence. I want CA to be the exception, NOT the rule to moronic gun laws. I want there to be sanity in the union and a chance for us to reverse the crap in this stupid state. It will be a terrible state of affairs if the BS here becomes federal law, or worse. Please, please stop Clinton. She will be on a mission to pick up right where Obama left off.
Cheers.
Sure Trump is certainly no Ronald Reagan. And there is no guarantee that he will protect our rights. But Clinton is a effing nightmare for gun owners. That is CERTAIN. Trump is our best bet, whether you like it or not. The NRA endorsement is enough evidence. I want CA to be the exception, NOT the rule to moronic gun laws. I want there to be sanity in the union and a chance for us to reverse the crap in this stupid state. It will be a terrible state of affairs if the BS here becomes federal law, or worse. Please, please stop Clinton. She will be on a mission to pick up right where Obama left off.
Cheers.
As I already pointed out, in many places your vote does not matter because it will not effect your state's tally and subsequent electoral college action. I do believe the parties pay quite a bit of attention where the votes go, whether they win or lose. HRC changed her tune on several platform items because of Bernie Sanders, and Trump could certainly be viewed as a reaction to Mitt Romney. Does anyone remember Ross Perot?
I do not know how to put that in Hunger Games language for you.
sevenpointsixtwo
Member
- Joined
- Oct 22, 2016
- Messages
- 2
Yes and no. It's not that cut and dried.
States may or may not require their electors to vote with the popular majority, and they may or may not give all of their electors to the winner of the statewide popular vote. But, for the love of god, for the ones who do, and even the ones who don't lets get the vote out there. Sitting on your hands does absolutely zero.
States may or may not require their electors to vote with the popular majority, and they may or may not give all of their electors to the winner of the statewide popular vote. But, for the love of god, for the ones who do, and even the ones who don't lets get the vote out there. Sitting on your hands does absolutely zero.
Personally I completely disagree with both on the role of government and cannot in good conscience vote for either, I am absolutely an advocate of lesser evil voting but I do not see a lesser evil this time around. Whatever you do make sure you show up and support down ballot candidates, Clinton is likely to win at this point and putting second ammendment supporters in congress and state offices is the only way to block action on guns for the next four years.
- Status
Similar threads
- Locked
