Hellobee Boards

Many things are infuriating to me but I think the most was "well there's no difference between the candidates". AND HERE IS THE DIFFERENCE, that will resonate for decades+.

Hopefully a vote can be delayed until after the midterms (how about citing whatever rules they used to keep Garland from being confirmed.)

I pretty much yelled obscenities when I saw the news today of Justice Kennedy retiring.

Which is funny and ironic because I'm an evangelical who doesn't usually swear at all.... but also, I am a true blue Democrat.

@MrsSCB: I'm equally angry. This whole thing is just a disaster.

That said I'm a third party voter. If everyone would get over this outlook that third party can't win and actually vote for candidates that aren't awful then we could vote someone into office who isn't atrocious. Third parties have won in the past, the status quo has just held for far too long

@MrsSCB: third party did not break this election. All the people who didn't show up did. Hopefully all this will change the thinking going forward

Third party votes surged in this election over the previous — it’s not possible to say definitively that was not a factor. In several crucial states, Jill Stein’s votes were greater than Trump’s margin of victory, for example. But I certainly have plenty of blame for people who didn’t show up.

@MrsSCB: @MamaBear87: Personally, I think most people have lived under the assumption you can’t break America and it doesn’t matter really who is put in power because we will continue to function the same. This election with Trump/ Pence and Bernie shows how the extreme parts of the parties can influence and cause damage (based on actual results HA! Not funny at all though). IMHO This was not the election to make a statement or sit out though. In a way Trump voters made a statement to the establishment GOP and Republicans who *just* couldn’t vote for Hillary made a statement too. We’re all left picking up the pieces. You can’t tell me that 50-60 years of a more equal, inclusive society where real relationships between people of different faiths, colors, orientations, language hasn’t changed some indifferent minds to firmly believing our society is better now. I just don’t understand how there aren’t more Republican elected officials pushing back and blocking some of these moves. We are literally committing human rights atrocities on our soil.

@Mrs. Lemon-Lime: I totally agree this was not the time to make a statement. I think a good portion of people voted with the actual hope that things would break down and we’d basically need to rebuild the system in a better way (maybe one that doesn’t heavily favor a two party system). A contributing factor, though, is a lot of the people wanting to basically “experiment” with our political system won’t really be as affected by these atrocious policies. I’m thinking about the number of young, white men who ended up going from Bernie to voting for trump. Which makes NO sense, other than if they couldn’t get their way (Bernie) they just wanted to break the whole thing. Cool.

Also agree that it’s shocking GOPers aren’t doing more to stop this shit. But I think they just don’t want to lose their seats. We need short term limits for Congress, let’s cycle out the old, get some new thoughts in there, and if people know their time is limited, maybe they’ll actually get shit done...

When I saw that news my stomach sank too. I can't believe I live in a world where this is happening. It feels like a nightmare.

I'm devastated. But a friend of mine thinks the backlash from this will be so severe, it will end up destroying the GOP completely. It won't be immediate, but the GOP is trying to stop progress, which won't be stopped. Eventually moderate Democrats will be viewed as the "conservative" ones.

@codeitall: Theoretically I'm am all for shaking up the system, and I absolutely support the idea of having more than two viable parties. In reality, I think we had a moral obligation to stop Trump from becoming president. Look at what he's done. His decisions will set our country back and destroy innocent lives. Our fundamental disagreement, it seems, is whether it was worth getting to this point in order to "reform the parties." The things Trump is doing are inhumane, reprehensible, and affect people's lives in very real and serious ways. And there was no doubt it was going to go down like this -- he basically ran a campaign that depended on overt racism and misogyny. I don't think this was an acceptable way to throw a wrench in the system, and that's pretty much all there is to it for me.

It’s being reported Trump & team pursued Justice Kennedy’s retirement and Justice Kennedy wanted to retire under Trump to “preserve his legacy.”