The only liberal I will even consider is Bernie Sanders

The title says it all. Of the current crop of potential lefty candidates, only Bernie Sanders is in the running for my vote. And since I highly doubt the wealthy and powerful will allow him to make it to even the general election, I probably won't be voting for a Democrat at all. Might vote Gary Johnson if he runs again, or I might just sit on my thumb and rotate since both would accomplish roughly the same thing.

I recently read that Bernie Sanders pledged to run a clean campaign. Yeah yeah yeah we've all heard that before but if anybody can say it and mean it, it's probably Bernie Sanders. I told myself that if he can manage to do it, he'll have earned my vote on that principle alone simply because it would show me beyond any of my doubts that he is of solid character.

 

Normally I'd just pass something like this by. But how are Bernie Sanders and Gary Johnson your top two? They're largely at opposite ends of various spectrums.

All that comes to mind is the weed.

 

Because both are not generic Republicans and Democrats. I voted for Gary Johnson in 2012 because he was a side candidate and he didn't have Ron Paul's insanity. In 2016 if there is no Sanders, I'll vote for him for the same reason, if he's running.

And believe it or not, I couldn't possibly care less if weed gets legalized or not. I'm not even sure outright legalization is the best approach. The war on drugs may not stem the flow of those drugs, but legalizing them and then pretending drug addiction is a "mental health issue" sounds completely stupid to me. I don't really know of any "mental health issues" where you get to choose whether or not you have them like a drug addict does when they choose to start and continue taking drugs. I'm sure Schizophrenics would have loved to have that choice.

I just know I won't be voting for a Republican because I'm not one to shoot myself in the face on purpose, and I won't be voting for any of the currently popular Democratic candidates for basically the same reasons.

 

Though I do like Bernie, I simply cannot vote for a Democrat in good conscience. Similarly I cannot give my vote to the isanity displayed by todays GOP....I'm gonna sit this one out and hope for a reincarnated Reagan

 

Since Clinton and Biden are not liberals, Bernie is the ONLY one in the game.

 

I thought Bernie was a socialist ? A nationalist socialist.

 

I'm not particularly concerned with what folks want to call him as I'm more concerned with the substance of what he says and does.

 

I too can only consider Bernie if I were to vote Democrat. I cannot trust Hillary at all to do what is right (as opposed to what is politically expedient). I considered voting for John Huntsman too, last election cycle. (I did not vote for President Obama.)

I'd really, really love to get unlimited money out of politics. Have a nationally-funded set amount for each campaign and a limited campaign season so that we're not listening to this stuff for 3 out of every 4 years.

 

For me Sanders, and Gary Johnson as they aren't the typical democrat or republican. As, I can not trust Hillary nor don't like Mark 'O'Maley for his caving to POLTICAL CORRECTNESS with the all lives matter.

 

I was for Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich when McCain ran against Obama. The phony left vs right paradigm is BS. Both democrats and republicans are almost all phonies who work for the same elite group of banksters.

 

Vote for somebody. If you don't, you're voting FOR everyone, not against anybody, and you don't sound like you're just so peachy keen on what we have now that you just want everything to stay the same as is, forever. Voting for one of the really off candidates is a vote against all the others, which still has to be counted. Not voting at all removes your vote from the main total, which is one less vote that the winner needs

 

Did you think the same way back in 2008 ?

 

So you figured that out too? It is so obvious that only the ideologically blind cannot see it. Clinton deserted and stopped the democratic party from representing the people they represented since FDR, working people and the middle class. Ike represented these people too.

So now we have one snake with two heads, both owned by banks and corporations, the big money people. Only sanders is not in this club. Sanders is nothing more than an old Progressive, of the FDR, Truman, Ike, and JFK kinda men. But many people that call themselves progressive never learned what it is. We are relearning it as the support for sanders grows. He is a second FDR, no doubt in my mind about that. Which means the corporations and banksters hate him and will resort to whatever it takes to defeat him. But he can pull it off, and that relies upon the common sense of the people, and frankly, we may not have enough of it anymore.

 

Same for me. Except I'd probably end up voting for Johnson. Simply because I can't stand the fact that Sanders isn't running as an independent. If he says he's a Socialist, be like Debs was. Go for the one party that has nothing to lose.

 

In 2008 I would have voted for a piece of crap that got left in a toilet in an abandoned house before I voted for a Republican ticket that included Sarah Palin, but luckily Obama was a better candidate than that. Everyone hates the guy it seems, and I think his overall performance has been mediocre but I am thankful he was able to keep Romney/Ryan and Sarah Palin out of the White House. He was not my "messiah", I didn't buy into "Hope and change". To be honest, he's more or less been exactly as I expected, although I suppose I didn't quite see the right-wing hysteria reaching the levels that it did like the birther nonsense and this stupid talk about how divisive he is. Truth is, we were already divided after 8 long grueling years of Bush. And I have a hard time buying into that divisive rhetoric when the Republicans and many on the right were being just as divisive from their end of things.

Overall, I could have done without Obamacare, but I have no buyer's remorse with my vote for Obama in 2008. At the very least, I satisfied one of my goals which was to have a man in the White House that didn't sound like a burned out drunken pothead.

 

Almost exactly what I would have said...except for the Obama vote. I have to admit I did not vote at all for the first time since I was old enough. Sad thing is it looks as if I'm going to do it again this time.

 

The principle of dissatisfaction does seem to be running though the mindset of traditional Dem Party voters -- just as I predicted after Obama won re-election in 2012 -- because it does amount to a collective sense of buyer's remorse. Obama was touted by the Left-Allied media as the fellow who would be able to walk on top of roiled political waters and Kumbaya this nation and the world into a state of peace and harmony and then it turns out that he's merely a mutant hybrid and surrealistic version of G.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter in his foreign policy and like Jimmy Carter on crack cocaine in regards to his domestic policies. So he's leaving more than a bit of a bad taste in the mouth of Dem Party voters who were -- twice -- promised something different in the fellow that the bulk of the MSM once intimated was a Political Messiah. That leaves a mark and it's being seen in a general sense of dissatisfaction in what the Dem Party has got here and now for its Dem Party candidates.

Bernie Sanders is a non-charismatic Barack Obama in that he doesn't even pretend to be anything but a socialist . . . and he's that most despised of demographics on the Left . . . an old White man. As a matter of fact ALL of the Dem Party potential male candidates from Bernie to Joe Biden to John Kerry are despised Old White Men. Think that doesn't make a difference? It does, and that's because for the last six and a half years radical leftists and THEIR Left-Allied Mainstream Media have been blaming all the ills of this world on Old White Men. So, yes, on a subconscious basis if nothing else it's preying on the minds of Dem Party voters.

Then we have Hillary Clinton, the Left's blatant Queen of Corruption who's still the Dem most likely to be left standing at the end of the party's Primaries. Urk! Fanatical Obama supporters who HATED Hillary back in 2008 still hate her just as much today (even if for the sake of the party most of them won't openly admit it anymore) and for the most part since now her corruption is so very much in the open even those former supporters of the 2008 primaries are no longer all that enthusiastic about her today. But realistically she is the Dem most likely to win the primaries. Oh dear!

So what is a Dem Party voter to do? Just as this O.P suggests as a quite likely option, a huge number of Dem voters are just going to stay home and sit on their hands come election day or throw their vote away on some quixotic write in candidate; in which case one might as well be voting for Mickey Mouse. The result? Whatever candidate the GOP finally gets nominated WILL BE the next president of the United States of America, because after eight hideous years of radical leftist and nation-hating Barack Obama in charge of the Executive Branch every Right of Center voter capable of casting a ballot for president WILL be voting, period.

 

I think you put a little too much stock in the media's influence over the left and their portrayal of them. Everything you said here is true to a certain extent and I know there are lefties out there who do mimic the leftist views and attitudes prevalent in the political mass media bubble, but I've only spoken to a handful of real people in my life who actually fit that bill. I think, just like with the right, quite a few of the folks who are actually on the left or the right don't fit the generally accepted stereotypes of who those people are. I mean, if I were to believe the stereotypes of those on the right, I'd have to believe all of them were racist redneck Scrooge McDuck psuedo-slave drivers who hate science and progress. I live in a rural area of Pennsylvania, the parts of the state that rarely vote Democrat so I've definitely seen my share of bible carrying gun loving folks who aren't exactly jumping for joy that SSM is legal now, but even most of them don't fit the stereotype. And, even though they do fit the stereotype somewhat, some of them are still nice people.

It's best to treat the stereotypes presented by the media commentators as the ravings of lunatics.

I realize that I've pretty much just offered anecdotal evidence, but honestly I think that's the best any of us can do. None of us have gone out and investigated all the members of the political ideology we love to disagree with.

I would be so-so about a Hillary Clinton presidency, much the same way as I was about Obama. She wouldn't even be in my top 10 list of lefty folks I'd want in the White House were it my choice, but she's still a hell of a lot better to me than most of the potential Republican candidates. For example, my ideal candidate would be a moderate Bernie Sanders, because I tend to be more moderate myself. I like his principles and his integrity(which is not me saying he's perfect, just better than most politicians on average). In fact, I admire him for much of the same reason that folks liked Ron Paul. He's been consistent about his beliefs and doesn't try to hide them and has done so for a good chunk of his career. That in and of itself is refreshing. And unlike Ron Paul, Sanders realizes it's 2015, not 1815.

I'd accept a Clinton presidency, I just won't be voting for it, unless the Republicans nominate somebody truly terrible like Trump or Huckabee or Cruz or any of the other kooky folks on the right. I'd no sooner want those folks in the White House than I'd want someone like Pelosi or Reid.

I'm sick of voting to keep the worse candidate out. I'll do it when I feel it's necessary, but I've also decided I'm going to vote for the candidate I like the best as much as possible. And I absolutely refuse to feel even a slight sense of loyalty to a political party. If everybody did that, a lot of these buffoonish career politicians wouldn't be in office to begin with.

But I suppose for the right, this is just like 2008 was with folks on the left where people will be out in droves voting because they've just endured 8 years of a Democratic president.

 

I will vote as I have vote for decades.


I will vote for the best choice at that moment.



In my life time it has never been any republican.

there was a time in history I would have voted republican.



since the southern strategy happen before I was old enough to vote I have never voted republican.



thinking you should have a perfect choice every time is unrealistic

 

~ Rush Limbaugh

 

And everyone else who was alive in 2008 and now in 2015. Including Rush Limbaugh.

 

So call him a "socialist" like that's a bad word and don't listen to what he has to say or his plans or his ideas....just burble "socialist" because you heard it somewhere and ignore him....sheesh, great plan

 

Yeah, this. If the American Nazi Party was the only party that had legalizing weed as a platform, they would get the vast majority of the armchair activist vote out there in the Burbs. Self-indulgence trumps everything else on the planet for those types of 'progressives'.

 

Sanders is a naive middle class type from a tiny white state, and has no clue whatsoever about anything but quaint pseudo-intellectual sophistry. He would be a total disaster as a President; he's too weak to deal with the kind of psychotic vermin out there who wouldn't hesitate a second to wreak havoc on their own people and everybody around them with such a weak timid President who wouldn't lift a finger to step on them like the bugs they are. But hey, if you love seeing piles and piles of dead and butchered bodies, and you're bored with the routine fare dished up by your favorite 'victims' like the 'palestinians' have been offering, then Bernie's your man. He will definitely satisfy your 'hey it's not my problemo, Dude' mentality so beloved by both faux 'progressives' and libertoon cranks alike.

 

*If* Sanders was elected, he would be 75 going into office.

That's a little old. Wonder who he would pick as a running mate?