Democrats Crowdsourcing To Vote Palin In Primaries 1128
SharpieMarker writes "In what could be the most extreme and influential crowdsourcing project ever, Democrats are beginning to organize to purposely vote for Palin in the 2012 Republican primaries. Their theory is by having Palin as an opponent, Obama will have the best odds at winning reelection. Recent polls have shown that Obama comfortably leads Palin by 10-20 points, but Obama is statistically tied with Romney and barely ahead of Huckabee. They even have a state-by-state primary voting guide to help Democrats navigate various states' rules for voting Palin in Republican primaries."
Too late. (Score:5, Informative)
It's already been done successfully in South Carolina by the Republicans, and I suspect that this type of voting will just escalate. Hopefully this means that primaries will soon be replaced by a general free for all. Added bonus: it will reduce the value of being in the party structure when running for political positions.
Chistine O'Donnell and Delaware (Score:4, Informative)
Re:WCPGW (Score:0, Informative)
What could possibly go wrong?
Palin could win the election. Yes, no matter how big of a joke she is, the people organizing this just don't understand that Palin's world view and persona is supported vigorously by a large percentage of the USA. She might not represent you, me, or most people on Slashdot, but she does represent a not insignificant slice of the population. I know because I grew up in that part of America. She CAN win, especially if the economy doesn't get any better, and because as we all know Obama hasn't lived up to his promises during his campaign. The best way to defeat people like Palin isn't to do stupid shit like what the article is attempting, but to have conversations with people who support her and change their world view.
Re:As a voter who normally leans Democrat... (Score:5, Informative)
As it is, she's a drop-out governor and media pundit... no better than Obama - a community organizer.
Malicious cheap shot at Barry O. She dropped out of 5 different undergrad party schools, he graduated HLS with highest honors and as editor of the Harvard Law review. She still has her "own" books ghostwritten, he wrote a best-selling non-fiction book way before he was ever elected into any public office. She speaks as a "pundit" on issues she doesn't understand, he has had a 12-year-tenure as a lecturer on constitutional law at UChicago.
Re:What these Democrats don't realize... (Score:4, Informative)
It's really sad that the parent was modded down for the truth. Even if you voted for Obama you had to know in your heart that he had absolutely no executive experience. He was a community organizer, a state senator who often voted "present", and wasn't even in the US Senate for a full term before becoming the POTUS.
I'm not bashing Obama. I'm simply speaking (typing) the truth.
Re:Been there, done that (Score:5, Informative)
in 1933 the German Conservatives decided to support Hitler as chancellor to destroy the Nazi movement by confronting its ludicrous proposals with the cold reality of real life government.
What the hell are you talking about? The closest thing that I can think is that Centrists supported the Nazis and DNVP in voting for the Enabling Act, which essentially gave Hitler dictatorial powers. But even before that, Hitler controlled over 40% of the German Reichstag. If you're talking about the deal that made Hitler Chancellor, that wasn't Conservatives supporting him, that was industrialists and von Papen thinking that the Nazis were not as powerful as before, and that Hitler could be controlled.
All in all, Hitler's rise to power was based on a bit of luck, a huge popularity and some miscalculations by some key politicians about what Hitler would be like.
That aside, yes, this proposal is playing with fire. Too many things can happen. For one, it is entirely possible that Obama cannot or does not want to run for re-election. Then what?
Re:As a voter who normally leans Democrat... (Score:3, Informative)
Although he sounds stupid, "Dubya" had a measured IQ of 132. If you consider that stupid, then I tip my hat to your loft intelligence.
Re:Been there, done that (Score:5, Informative)
in 1933 the German Conservatives decided to support Hitler as chancellor to destroy the Nazi movement by confronting its ludicrous proposals with the cold reality of real life government.
To be honest, this story - although apparently often told in classrooms - is somewhat of a canard. The "Germany Conservatives" who supported Hitler and Von Papen in a coalition were the DNVP - a nationalistic, populist and anti-Semitic party with leaders only slightly less crazy than those of the Nazis. The actual conservatives (the fiscally and socially conservative bourgeois KVP, Zentrum and BVP parties) did negotiate with the Nazis but never reached a coalition agreement with them - exactly because the Nazi ideology was so fundamentally different from traditional Christian-conservative ideas of government...
The only person who might have this idea of marginalizing Hitler by putting him into the spotlight was Von Papen; and while Von Papen was nominally still a member of the Zentrum party when Hindenburg asked him to try and form a government, none of the members of Zentrum were willing to support his 1932 "cabinet of barons". He was pretty much discredited by the centre-right as the "Ephialtes of the Centre Party".
Re:This phrase is the one that's stuck with me ... (Score:4, Informative)
Eugene V. Debs [wikipedia.org] was a founder of the IWW and the Socialist presidential candidate 1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, and 1920 -- running that last campaign from the prison cell where ha had been placed for daring to make a speech opposing the World War I draft. He was one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, and it's no surprise you're not sure who he was: as his life story is an embarrassment to American capitalism and authoritarianism, it's unlikely he was more than a footnote in your high school history book.
Re:This phrase is the one that's stuck with me ... (Score:5, Informative)
President Wilson is an asshole for jailing people simply because they used their speech to oppose the war. He even went so far as to jail Alice Paul and the Suffragettes just because they asked for the right to vote. And to segregate the army into black-white where it had previously been integrated.
What a dick.
Re:Carter lead Reagan 2 years out too (Score:2, Informative)
> Democrats have had control of the Presidency, Senate, and House for 2 years now
No. Due to Republican fillibusters in the Senate, the Democrats needed 60 votes to break through. They only had that many for like two months, and only if you count a couple independents. (Franken's actual swearing in as a Senator got fought for-fucking-ever; he didn't actually get to start voting until the summer. Then Kennedy died a couple months later.)