Hey Democrats! You're doing it all wrong!

As the Democratic Party starts spooling up for the 2020 presidential election, one thing is becoming frighteningly clear: they're doing it all wrong.

Come on, Democrats, 2020 should be an easy win for you. It should be like taking candy from a baby — a fat, overgrown, orange-haired baby. It's yours to lose. And from the look of things today, you're going to lose it.

Why? For four main reasons.

1. Too many unqualified candidates. 

This is not secret code for "women." Voters in America will vote for a woman, if it's the right woman. We're looking for someone with demonstrated qualities of wisdom, integrity, leadership, political savvy, and so on, and we don't care if they're male or female. Personally, I'd love to see a presidential election that boiled down to Madeleine Albright vs. Condoleeza Rice. Either way, the American people would be the winners. (... as opposed to Clinton vs. Trump in 2016, when, either way, the American people were the losers.)

No, the candidates who have presented themselves so far are like the hundreds of job applicants that employers see, who have some of the qualifications for the job, but not enough of the critical qualifications and are, therefore, unhireable. I couldn't in good conscience vote for any most of the Democrats who have stepped forward so far. Come on, Democrats. You can give me somebody better than this.

But not Clinton again. Please. That will definitely make me go third-party.

2. Whackadoodle ideas.

You need a more moderate, centrist appeal if you want to take the White House. All of your traditionally Democratic ideas may be good ideas, but they won't get you elected. Some of them, you've been singing about for decades, and they still haven't gotten you elected. Set them aside for now and start concentrating on ideas that appeal to all Americans, not just your base.

3. Why? Because Independents. 

Do the math, you idiots. You're pandering to your party's base and ignoring the independents, who make up one-third of the voters in this country. In 2016, Clinton got (almost) all of the Democrats, Trump got (almost) all of the Republicans, and they split the independent voters right down the middle. If you want to win decisively in 2020, you're going to need significantly more than half of the independent votes.

If you want the independents to vote for you, you'd better give them a really compelling reason to do so.

4. No unity or cohesion in the party.

I'm going to say something good about Hillary Clinton. I really don't want to do it. I don't have any more respect for Clinton than I do for Trump, and I don't want to ignore what Bernie Sanders achieved in 2016. But it's true that one of the things that made Clinton so successful in 2016 (she did win the popular vote, you know) was that the party was unified behind her.

The candidate pool in the Democratic Party is splintered and weak. There's not a strong front-runner today, someone with the power to unify the party. Maybe it's too early for that, but I don't even see anyone who looks promising. Yet.

If the Democrats want to win in 2020, they need to unite behind a strong candidate, or at least behind a strong platform. Right now, there's no unity, at least none that can be perceived from the outside.

Conclusion

Democrats, the 2020 election is yours to lose. You're being handed the presidency on a silver platter. You would have to screw up really, really badly in order to lose against Donald Trump. If he isn't thrown out before November 2020, then the American people will be so sick of him that they will be ready to vote him out — but you have to give us a worthwhile alternative. So far, we haven't seen anybody like that.

One final thought

If it comes down to Trump vs. one of the Democrats who have already declared, right now there's a fifty-fifty chance that I'll vote third party. The losing side will blame me for torpedoing their candidate's chances, but you know what? It will be your fault, not mine. Once again, as in 2016, you will have given me someone I couldn't vote for.

UPDATE, FEB 11, 2019:
It looks like moderate voices in the Democratic Party are starting to make themselves heard. This will solve some of the above problems. It's still the Democrat's election to lose.  

Election 2020: Advice for Third-Party Candidates

Traditionally, presidential elections in the United States have been binary contests: a choice between two major political parties. The names of the parties have changed over the years, but there have always been two major political parties.

The two-party system definitely has its strengths. Other nations, attempting to duplicate the 242-year success of the American political system, have failed because their political power has been divided among many political parties, leading to fragile alliances and coalitions that eventually fail, so their governments lurch from constitutional crisis to crisis, becoming easy victims of corruption and totalitarianism.

However, the two-party system has failed the American people at times. In 1992, candidates George Bush and Bill Clinton were not adequately addressing the concerns of the people, and so H. Ross Perot stepped in as an independent candidate. In June of 1992, he was leading in the polls. He finished the race with almost 19 percent of the popular vote and no electoral votes. In my opinion, part of why he lost the race is because his message became too strident. He started sounding whiny and alarmist.

In part, he had to sound this way to make himself heard, and that's one of the biggest obstacles that third-party candidates face: the two major parties get the lion's share of the attention.

The Third-Party Tautology

Why don't people vote for a third-party candidate? Because third-party candidates never win.
And why don't third-party candidates win? Because nobody will vote for them.

A third-party candidate will have to break this tautology in order to win. He or she will have to convince the voters that he or she has a real chance of winning, so that they will take a chance and vote for him or her.

What does a third-party candidate have to do to win?

In order to have a chance at winning an election, a third-party candidate needs to do all of these things:

1. Start early.
2. Raise a lot of money. Money fuels campaigns, and converts into votes. Unfortunate, but true.
3. Appeal to a wide range of voters, not a narrow "base".
3. Offer a well-rounded platform, one that avoids extremes or whininess, but addresses and corrects the deficiencies in the Democratic and Republican platforms.
4. Don't focus on a single issue or philosophical point. The USA is a complex nation, with complex needs and complex priorities. A candidate needs to address that complexity head-on.

Looking ahead to 2020

Every day with President Donald Trump is a new disaster. We try to distract ourselves with hurricanes, earthquakes, mass shootings, and a trust-fund baby juggling nuclear missiles, but Trump is like the guy at the party who manages to insert himself into every conversation in the room — and ruin it.

If the USA were a publicly traded company and he were the CEO, the shareholders would have kicked him out by now. Too bad it's not that easy to get rid of the Chief Executive of the United States.

It's clear now that electing him was a disaster. Don't worry, if Clinton had gotten elected, we would be saying the same things about her. The 2016 election was a lose-lose proposition.

What can we do to make sure the 2020 presidential campaign doesn't go the same way?

Well, this article on NBC News got me thinking about 2020. The second-to-last paragraph says:

Late last month, [retiring Tennessee Senator Bob] Corker announced that he would not see[k] re-election, fueling speculation that he might challenge the president in a GOP primary. 

Unencumbered by the need to watch his mouth and make sure he gets re-elected to the Senate, Corker has been speaking his mind. Speaking truth to power. Calling out, repeatedly, that the emperor has no clothes. Using his bully pulpit to stand up to Trump and Co.

I don't know, he's starting to sound downright presidential. He would be a better president than Trump.

DETOUR:

After Vice President Pence's little rehearsed stunt at the Colts-49ers game yesterday, I'm starting to believe Corker would be a better president than Pence, too.

If you want to read about Pence's stunt, Google "Pence walks out". Every link I found was biased one way or the other. Read multiple sources to get a balanced view. But it was rehearsed. It was a stunt — a rather expensive stunt.. And if his airfare and hotel were paid for by the U.S. taxpayers, then shame on him. I used to respect Mike Pence.

About Pence's stunt, the great Tom Peters tweeted:

Wonder if POTUS gave VPOTUS a "good puppy" dog buscuit after yesterday's scripted showboating episode?

BACK ON THE MAIN ROAD:

If Bob Corker is serious about running for president in 2020, then he needs to start now building a few things:

• A team - an organization.
• A "base". Trump and Clinton have made this a dirty word, but it's still necessary.
• A platform - a statement of what he believes in, what he's running for.
• Knowledge.
• More name recognition.
• Credibility.
• Likeability.
• Even more visibility.
• Popularity. It shouldn't matter, but every election in the past 100 years (longer?) has proven that it matters bigly.

HERE'S ANOTHER IDEA:

This year, the Mormons have proven to be faster and more effective than the federal government when it comes to disaster relief. Witness the responses to hurricane Harvey in Texas, Irma in Florida, and Irma and Maria in Puerto Rico (and the U.S. Virgin Islands), and the earthquakes in Central America. LDS Welfare Services started shipping supplies, in their own trucks, even before the hurricanes hit. Local and global LDS leadership was on the ground even before the rain stopped falling. Thousands of LDS volunteers were organized and working hard, in force, before the feds ever showed up. Maybe it's time we put a Mormon in the White House?

I don't know if Mitt Romney wants to give it another try, but I think it's pretty clear that he would have been a much better president than the current occupant. If not Mitt Romney, then how about Jon Huntsman Jr., the statesman, businessman, and diplomat?

But don't vote for Huntsman — or against him — just because he's a Mormon. Vote for him because he's a good man.

ON THE OTHER HAND:

I wouldn't mind if the 2020 election turned into a race between two great women — for example, Condoleeza Rice and Madeline Albright. Come on, people, this is the 21st Century. There must be some viable options besides white, allegedly Christian, males.

And there are definitely viable options besides Democrats and Republicans. If enough people opened their eyes and had the courage to vote third party, we would break the duopoly these parties have on the presidency, a duopoly which has proven to be unconstructive, easily corruptible, self-serving, and unfortunately, self-perpetuating.

I don't care if the next ideal candidate is Democratic, Republican, or Pirate Party, as long as it's a person of maturity, integrity, wisdom and vision. All of the above. In no particular order.

What this country needs

What this country needs are more radical moderates. Alt-independents. Conservative liberals. Liberal conservatives. People who think with their whole brains, and love with their whole hearts.

And you can quote me on that.

Four Years is a Long Time

Four years is a long, long time. Whatever the American public does to survive these four years, we need to make sure that this never happens again.

The Republican party needs to start now to seek out men of integrity and wisdom, something that was sorely lacking in 2015 and 2016. They need to be prepared to replace Donald Trump in 2020 - or before then, if impeachment or resignation is a possibility.

On the Democratic side: if that party ever wants to be in power again, they need to find someone with the integrity of Jimmy Carter and the savvy of Ronald Reagan. It looked like Hillary Clinton had this one in the bag. She should have won by a landslide, instead of being edged out by a mysoginistic, bombastic, lying windbag like Donald Trump, but the people rejected her. What message should the Democrats take from this? It is as follows:

The American people have said in this election is they don't want someone in the White House as corrupt and nasty and greedy as Hillary Clinton.

On the third-party side: Americans need to look deeply inward, and ask themselves if it was worth it, compromising their morals to vote for "the lesser of two evils" this year. I still maintain that it wasn't worth it, not even from the beginning. I'm realistic enough to know that we will never have a perfect, flawless candidate to vote for. But these two were so badly flawed that neither of them was qualified for the job.

Something that needs to be said: I don't think that this election was a rejection of the idea of a woman as President. I think it was a rejection of the person, Hillary Clinton.

As evidence of this, I point out that nobody, not even Donald Trump, intimated that she should not be elected simply because she was a woman. Maybe our society has made some progress after all.

One final word: if you have spoken out against Donald Trump in the last 18 months, and if you have not changed your tune yet, you would do well to find someplace to hide. Your name is probably on his enemies list (here's a link to another one), and either his secret police or his storm troopers will be coming for you.

PLEASE VOTE THIS YEAR - Even if You Don't Like The Choices

Just end it already. (This image carelessly copied from imgur.com)

In a previous post, I did some math and I'm sure it flew over everybody's head. Here's a restatement of the math. Please bear with me - especially those of you who are so fed up that you don't even want to vote for president this year.

This year, more than ever, we need you to cast your ballot on November 8, and not for the Democratic candidate, nor for the Republican candidate.

In that previous post, I mentioned that Donald Trump got nominated because less than 7 percent of all registered Republicans voted for him. About 7.8 percent voted for all of the rest of the candidates, combined. That means that 85 percent of registered Republicans didn't vote at all. If you stop and think about it for a bit, those 85 percent are the real reason that Donald Trump won the nomination. They didn't vote for anybody, and their apathy let a [insert really nasty adjectives, invectives and epithets here] minority of Republicans give him the nomination.

I also mentioned that similar percentages voted for Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders - and I also noted that the Democratic National Committee had the fix in for Clinton all along. There was no way they were going to let Sanders win the nomination. This has been revealed in leaked emails, which leaks resulted in the resignation of four top DNC executives shortly after the Democratic National Convention. But nobody apologized, nobody went to jail, and nobody offered to undo the damage that had been done. So in Clinton's case, it was a comparable minority of Democrats, plus a conspiracy among the party leadership (one in which Clinton was undoubtedly involved, or at least aware of), that elevated her to the candidacy.

Now, here's the thing. As this presidential race comes down to the wire, it has turned into a contest of not-Trump vs. not-Clinton. "Which one do you not want to win?" says the prevailing wisdom, "Then vote for the other one." THAT'S THE WRONG THING TO DO.

The choices are so unpleasant that many voters are going to stay home and not vote - again. THAT'S THE WRONG THING TO DO. Just as the 85% who didn't vote are responsible for Trump and Clinton getting this far, likewise the ones who do not vote, who do not exercise their Constitutional right and obligation, will be the ones responsible for the wrong person getting into the Oval Office. The majority cannot afford to be silent this time.

So who do you vote for? You vote not-Clinton and not-Trump. You vote for a third-party candidate - any third-party candidate. Let's be realistic: no third-party candidate is going to win the election. But all we want to do is deny both Clinton and Trump the majority of votes. We want to deny both of them the majority of all registered voters who voted in this election.

It would be really cool if the only majority on Election Day was "none of the above."

So on Election Day, go down to the polling place. If you cannot in good conscience vote for either Trump or Clinton, DO NOT leave your ballot empty. Let the silent majority become the Very Vocal Majority, which rejects both candidates. Stand up and make sure your rejection is counted. Vote for somebody else.

One Two final thoughts:
When the votes are counted, I expect that Clinton will win. Her one term as president will be full of greed and corruption, and she and her family will pillage the White House (again) on their way out the door in 2021. But I think (and I hope) that most Americans realize before it's too late what a disaster it would be to let someone like Donald Trump loose in the White House.

And after the election, when your friends point their fingers at you and say, "Your vote is the reason XYZ won!" you can tell them, "I didn't vote for XYZ! But I did vote. I did my civic duty, I joined my voice with thousands of others, and my conscience is clear. XYZ won because of everyone who didn't vote."

Don't be the reason that either one of them wins. Vote for someone else.

#votethirdparty #noneoftheabove

Seriously, America? Is this the best you have to offer?

Seriously, America? Is that the best you have to offer?

We're stuck with Donald Trump because less than 7 percent of registered Republicans voted for him in the primaries, but that was more than voted for any other Republican candidate.

We're stuck with Hillary Clinton because (1) a comparable percentage of Democrats voted for her, and (2) the DNC rigged things in her favor, as news reports and public resignations have made clear. Thanks to all the crooked backroom dealing, poor Bernie Sanders never had a chance.

There is no place for an honest politician in American politics.

If all of the registered independents go off and vote #noneoftheabove #votethirdparty, then the losing side will point a finger at the independents and say "You cost us the election. By voting third party, you took away the majority from our candidate." And the independents will point a finger right back at them, and say, "No, YOU cost yourselves the election - by YOUR lousy choice of a candidate. YOU picked someone I could not vote for."

And the winning side will look past all of those independents - right over their heads - and say to the losing side, "Thanks for picking such a LOSER! You GUARANTEED that we would win the election!"

You may tell me that my ravings are insane and illogical. I will counter that this entire presidential election has been insane and illogical.

I want one of these signs.

Seriously, America? Is this the best you have to offer?

Seriously, America? Is that the best you have to offer?

We're stuck with Donald Trump because less than 7 percent of registered Republicans voted for him in the primaries, but that was more than voted for any other Republican candidate. We're stuck with Hillary Clinton because (1) a comparable percentage of Democrats voted for her, and (2) the DNC rigged things in her favor, as news reports and public resignations have made clear.

If all of the registered independents go off and vote #noneoftheabove #votethirdparty, then the losing side will point a finger at the independents and say "You cost us the election. By voting third party, you took away the majority from our candidate." And the independents will point a finger right back at them, and say, "No, YOU cost yourselves the election - by YOUR lousy choice of a candidate. YOU picked someone I could not vote for."

And the winning side will look right over the heads of those independents, and say to the losing side, "Thanks for picking such a LOSER! You GUARANTEED that we would win the election!"

You may tell me that my ravings are insane and illogical. I will counter that this entire presidential election has been insane and illogical.

I want one of these signs.

Election 2016: Let's All Vote Third-Party This Year

With a respectful nod in Mr. Sanders' direction, it looks like, when November 2, 2016 comes around, we will be faced with a choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Not necessarily.

I have some alternative proposals for you to consider. The first one is too easy, it's the one that most people will do, and it may backfire. Don't do it - think a little harder. The last proposal is the greatest idea ever. But to work, requires an open mind, a bit of daring, and a lot of cooperation - like millions of people combining to do it.

The cool thing about voting in the United States of America, exit polls notwithstanding, is that it's a secret ballot. You don't have to tell anybody how you voted. Remember that.

1. Vote not-Clinton or not-Trump. Choose the one you hate the least, the proverbial Lesser of Two Really Bad Evils.

(Maybe you are one of the rare Americans who really does support Clinton or Trump. Good for you. Vote your convictions.)

2. Vote for Dictator, not for President. Decide which one you would be most willing to live under as a dictator, because that may happen. Vote for the dictator of your choice.

3. Vote for the Vice-President. Look carefully at the candidates for vice-president. Vote for the vice-president who will make the best president, on the assumption that the elected president is likely to get impeached or otherwise removed from office before his or her term is up.

4. THIS IS MY FAVORITE: Vote for somebody else - anybody else. We tend to forget that the Democrats and the Republicans are NOT the only political parties in the nation, and are definitely NOT the only parties with candidates for president. And while the conventional wisdom has always been that (1) third-party candidates cannot win a presidential election  and that (2) a strong third-party candidate unnecessarily muddies the waters, this year they may be very useful. Stay with me here. Read on.

WARNING: There is some math in the second paragraph following this one.

It is common in modern politics for the winning candidate to claim a "clear mandate from the people." The word "mandate" implies that, through the popular vote, the people overwhelmingly chose this candidate to rule. The mandate is claimed even when margin of victory is laughably slim. This year, let's deny the winner any mandate.

It's inevitable that one of the two major candidates will win the election. But if enough people vote for a minor-party candidate, then the winner will be denied a majority of the popular vote. If the winner gets less than one-third (33%) of all the votes cast, and the loser gets even less than that, then more than one-third of the votes (more than the winner got!) will go for the bloc of third-party candidates. We will have demonstrated to both major candidates, and both major parties, that we don't like them and that We The People are supremely dissatisfied with the way this election turned out. We will show them that they do not have a mandate to rule, and that we prefer anybody else to them.

So vote Libertarian. Or Green. Or United States Pirate Party (arrr!).

Or vote for comedian Ron White - yes, he's a registered presidential candidate this year. It doesn't matter who you vote for. Your candidate will not win, but your vote will be counted, and if enough of us do this, we will deny the major parties their so-called mandate, and somebody important will finally Get It. We will send a message to Washington D.C. that they won't dare to ignore.

---

Picture credits:
 "Giant Meteor 2016" appeared on the Nihilist Memes FB page as a reader submission. 
"Alien Invasion 2016" was created by Randy Cassingham at This Is True, the Internet's oldest and most successful news-and-commentary newsletter. It appeared on True's FB page.
"None of the Above 2016" and the pie chart are my own creations. © 2016 Ray Depew. Go ahead and spread them around, free of charge. Just remember where you got 'em.

Everything else I found on Google. 
And the United States Pirate Party is a real thing. Arrr, matey.