WYSK: There funded by dark money PACS, but some good reporting has brought out these names: David Koch, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman, Mark Cuban, Harlan Crow, and Michael Bloomberg. Some of there members are most famous for stopping big bills. Joe Leiberman, for example, single handedly stopped the single payer portion of the ACA. Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsen Simena kept the John Lewis voting rights act from passing, and famously kept the senate from repealing the filibuster.
Edit: please note that I made at least one mistake here (as well as some kind of boneheaded comments later). FPTP, even in the US, does not require a 50% majority, just more votes than anyone else (a “plurality”). It can still benefit parties to get to 50%, since it makes their winning more likely, and so in the absence of any drawbacks, most successful parties will still aim for it, but it isn’t strictly necessary, as has been sometimes demonstrated in the UK. Thanks to squaresinger for linking a YouTube video that mentions this below. /Edit
I just want to share my thoughts on this. It started as a response to one comment, but I realized that there’s a lot more that can (and I think should) be said, so here goes.
First, for those who don’t know, FPTP stands for First Past The Post, meaning a system where everyone votes for a single candidate and whoever gets more than 50% (i.e. “past the post”) wins the entire election (the losers get nothing). For many Americans, this might be so familiar that one would wonder how it could be any different (in a small-d democratic system), but there are in fact many alternatives: ranked voting, proportional representation, Condorcet method, etc.
They all have strengths and weaknesses, but for FPTP, and other similar systems, there’s a result in political science called Duverger’s law that says FPTP-like rules tend to cause a two-party system, essentially because because even if you don’t team up with a larger party you may disagree with on many issues, to get a majority, others will, and then they’ll win and you’ll get nothing. And since getting significantly more than 50% consumes party resources that might better be used elsewhere, but gives no reward, 50% (plus a small “safety margin”) is what all the successful parties will eventually aim for, and thus you get two roughly equally-successful parties. Tiny swings in voting then lead to massive differences in outcomes, which threatens the stability and security of everyone (even America’s “enemies”).
So saying “just vote for third parties” (like I see some calling for here) is tone-deaf at best, or part of a cynical ploy to fracture the opponent’s party at worst. Even if a “third party” does win, the best that can be hoped for under FPTP is they just end up replacing one of the two parties, becoming one of the two parties in the “new” two-party system. And the two existing parties have likely spent far more time and effort researching ways to stop even that from happening than any of us ever will.
If we, as Americans, or others with a stake in what America decides to do, want to change this (and I personally do), then we need far more fundamental changes to how the system works. Just choosing a candidate we like (whether they have any chance of winning or not) won’t cut it. I don’t know what’s the best voting system to use, but I know I’d like to scrap the Electoral College, for a couple reasons:
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Even though one might argue that Congress and the Supreme Court are more essential to reform, it’s hard to deny that the President has a very large leadership role today.
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One might argue that relying on a convoluted/Byzantine method for choosing the President makes it harder to manipulate, and that’s probably true, but the two parties have shown that it being difficult is not a deterrent to them doing so: in fact, they likely both benefit from it by keeping smaller parties that can’t afford to do it out.
It reminds me of the fallacy in computer security of “security through obscurity”: if it’s possible to break into the system, and large numbers of people can benefit substantially from it, then someone eventually will, no matter how hard we make it to exploit. We need to change the system, not only so that it is prohibitively difficult for anyone to exploit the system, but also to get rid of a lot of the corruption that makes most people want to exploit it in the first place.
All of this is much easier said than done, I know, but we need to explain clearly to the public why “quick fixes” won’t work, before we can convince them of the need for more fundamental changes. We still need to work on figuring out the details of the best changes, but unless we can show people the reality of the deep structural problems that acually exist, why they exist, and how we know we’re right about what we’re saying, we’ll never convince most people to change anything.
You are totally right. The problem isn’t zqthat such a change from within the system can only happen from a position of immense power. So to actually fix these bugs you need to
- Have enough power to change the constitution
- Have gotten that power through the current system
- Be so dedicated to change the system that you are willing to risk all that power for the change, because any meaningful change means that the systems that brought you to power won’t work in that way anymore.
Now, to make matters more difficult, representative democraties usually spread that power over hundreds or thousands of people. So not only you need to fit the bill above, but also the top few hundred politicians in your country need to agree to potentially losing their power.
So what tends to happen is the opposite: Politicians amass power and make it harder and harder to replace them, until a war/civil war/revolution happens and the next crowd tries to make it better.
The US has had centuries to concentrate power, contrary to many European nations that were re-founded after wars in the last century.
So unless the US as we know it collapses, there won’t be significant change to the better for the political system.
One of the biggest problems with making this change is that in areas where one party is dominant, voters of that party are afraid of changing the system because they fear it’ll mean that they won’t dominate anymore.
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If someone refuses to admit their political affiliation in the US you can basically guarantee they’re right wing.
Ya know, it’s not always democrats versus republicans…
Until everyone stops voting for this bullshit two-party system, it’s just going to keep being dems and repubs pointing fingers at each other.
(This- is in no way me providing any endorsement, or affection for whatever candidate is in question. I know nothing about the person).
In the current fptp system it has to be. Until ranked choice for president and proportional representation for the house then usually the left will shatter. The republic strongest point is they all vote under one big group even if they disagree internally. All splitting the vote will do is empower that “team”
Until ranked choice for president
That wouldn’t change anything. RCV still produces a polarized two-party system.
They didn’t say Republicans, they said right wing. The Democrats are also a right wing party, just center-right.
Here in the US(topic of this post), democratic party is considered left, republican is considered right.
and yet the Democrats are still a right wing party.
Just because we let Republicans pull the Overton Window so far to the right it’s damn near broken doesn’t change the fact that Dems are still right wing.
Right and left wing are always relative, not absolute. The Democrats might be right wing if transplanted with no changes to another country, but that doesn’t matter. They are left win in comparison to the only other party that matters, so they are left wing.
It’s always relative.
That’s…not how that works at all. They’re to the left of Republicans but that’s akin to saying that Mt Everest’s distance from sea level ain’t shit compared to the moon.
That’s exactly how it works.
Left and Right are always relative positions, not absolute one. And they are relative not only to each other, but to the polics of the country as a whole.
Mount Everest’s high IS absolute, so it’s not a valid comparison.
Left and Right are, like what they are named for, merely directions. They mean nothing without a point to compare them too.
Right is typical the traditional position, orginally with the king, and left is the reform/change position.
Which is definitely true of right and left in the US.
And it’s silly, since the Democrats barely support any policies that could be called left-wing.
We do a lot of weird word play in the US. Liberal, for example, has come to mean something akin to left wing. In the rest of the world liberal would idealogically be a much closer fit with something like a center right party. Or it would have elements of both (personal freedoms combined with limited government).
This isn’t going to happen until the majority of the country implements ranked choice voting, so that third party voting isn’t just throwing your vote away. As long as we are in the current system, third party voting is pointless.
Focus your efforts on getting ranked choice adopted. It is the key that will actually unlock the ability to vote for third parties.
Ranked Choice Voting doesn’t make third parties viable, either. It uses the same counting method as our current system (tally up people’s first-choice preferences) and therefore suffers from all the same problems, like vote-splitting, spoiler effect, and center-squeeze effect. You can’t fix the problems of FPTP by adding more rounds of FPTP. You need to allow voters to express opinions about all of the candidates and then actually count all of those opinions.
If you want third parties to be viable, you want real reforms like STAR Voting, Condorcet RCV, or Approval Voting.
Now three guesses which party is trying to make RCV illegal & already have in Florida.
throwing your vote away
Until everyone stops thinking that way- the same cycle will repeat every 4 years.
Democrats and republicans blaming the person who came into office before them, for all of the countries problems, followed by a lot of election promises they will never keep.
No, pp gave ipoh a viable path forward on 3rd party options.
Going “my way or the highway” instead of voting for people who can win is what gets you locked in fptp.
If voting records reflect spey for people who agree with and support ranked choice you’ll see more politicians who support it.
It’s pretty much an objective fact that voting third-party (especially in a swing state), is indeed “throwing your vote away”. It has been well studied and well documented.
Good luck electing anyone not in the two party system. I think there’s 1 or 2 independent senators and no independent representatives. You need to change the rules of the game, cause like it or not were all playing the game. And not voting or voting 3rd party when they’re polling at 1% is just giving an extra vote to someone who disagrees with you.
Good luck electing anyone not in the two party system.
There isn’t that much luck needed. Just people to realize they don’t have to vote between a douche or the turd (south park reference). And, when people do so- turns out, it is possible to elect something other than a douche or a turd.
It is possible, but a major US election requires a massive burst of popularity to avoid splitting the vote of the majority candidate having “less shitty than the other guy” policy positions. Failure to breach that threshold hands the victory to the majority candidate with the shittiest position on policies.
The simple test is this: has your third-party candidate achieved a realistically high margin of popular opinion behind them? I’m not saying be a slave to polling, but it isn’t rocket science either. You will know if a third-party candidate has momentum behind them. They have charisma that sucks people in. They are somehow getting attention regularly driven to them despite the majority candidates pumping much more money into the news media.
If the third-party candidate doesn’t have something bordering on a revolutionary ideological movement backing them, they aren’t going to make that cut in a nationwide race.
Edit: I’m not saying give up. Donate to causes you honestly believe in. Volunteer. Do what you can to make a difference. Support local government efforts to implement ranked choice voting in your state, which can and will break this system. (look at Alaska) But when it comes to casting that final vote, be realistic, even if it means voting against all the hard work you just put in. Sunk cost fallacy at the expense of giving away victory doesn’t help anyone.
I’m not a democrat, I’m a leftist.
Stop trying to play the victim. I didn’t say a single thing about you, nor your political affiliation.
It’s not actually two parties though. Both of them have multiple factions vying for power inside their party. Progressives versus Third Way. MAGA versus Finance.
The entire idea of two parties is an info op.
I remember reading an article that did a deep dive into them once, and I was absolutely astounded by just how much they embodied the “enlightened centrist”. I didn’t think there were an appreciable number of people who were actually like that.
They continue the trend really of there being no good third party in the US - largely because FPTP makes two large parties preferable.
When you really look at their ideology, “enlightened centrists” are right-wingers who think they’re smarter than the usual bigots that group has. This can be seen by the fact that they pretty much always will complain about hate speech being called out, but will not call out the hate speech itself.
Yeah pretty much. It’s always such a big tell.
Lol
When I see a name like No Labels, it tells me they don’t want to be upfront about what their real platform is. So they should more straightforwardly be called Hidden Agenda.
I just want to live my life without being harassed tbh. I vote D, but they are largely all corporate shills at the presidential level. I don’t know what else to say. The money involved in politics sort of makes the whole thing a farce imo.
Biden is doing a good job given the circumstances. If you don’t want the total destruction of the United States, there is really only one choice for president… Joe Biden. All other roads lead to the Dark Lord Trumples, the Silly Piggy.
Biden. Voting Reform.
The dems are never going to pass voting reform for the same reason the UK labour party (a considerably further left party than the dems) has never passed it despite pretending they would consider it for multiple decades now. They benefit from FPTP. All they would be doing is diluting their power and handing over a huge portion of the political landscape to socialists who would immediately become relevant, they would then be forced to actually come to agreements with those socialists as opposed to just completely and totally ignoring them as they do currently.
Oh looky here,
https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/19/politics/senate-voting-legislation-filibuster/index.html
Manchin and Sinema blocking exactly what your talking about
And you think that the dems wouldn’t magically find someone else to do a spoiler vote on issues they don’t really want to pass? Lmao why are americans this hilariously naive? These people do not represent the average working class person, they represent millionaires and billionaires, they represent the very corporate owners that the fediverse exists to escape from. When you finally realise this you will begin to start seeing through the bullshit. Half of this stuff can be done via Executive powers. They don’t do it because they do not want to.
Unfortunately, we’re all so polarized left/right, red/blue, that everyone’s become blind to this. The big wigs started a culture/political war to keep us away from the class war. And they’ve won unfortunately. Part of the reason I can’t get I to politics with anyone, because while they all scream left or right, I’m out here on my soap box screaming tear the whole government down and start over. The “progressive” parties will only push as hard as they can without losing any of their/their corporate overlords excess income.
The liberals will never recognise the trend of history that they’ve created, or take blame. They will blame the people instead, choosing to blame ontological factors over a materialist understanding of history.
What reform, exactly?
Lots of people say and think that Biden is too old and demented but his has been the best Democratic presidency in 50 years.
Care to say why he’s the best in 50 years ? I for one think Obama is hard to beat.
Don’t confuse president with presidency. Obama did a poor job of negotiation and was unable to achieve any give and take with republicans. Biden just prevented a government shutdown and has passed far more progressive legislation and has made much more decisive decisions. Biden’s DOD knew Putin was going to attack Ukraine for months and prepared for it.
Biden’s DOD knew Putin was going to attack Ukraine for months and prepared for it.
As if that matters to a wage earner.
Under both Obama and Biden, the following statements are true for at least 40,000,000 Americans (probably a whole lot more now): You need multiple jobs to live. You can’t afford health care. You can’t afford to educate yourself or your kids. The majority of the taxes you pay go overseas to fight between eight and ten wars, some of which aren’t ours. Israel gets more in aid from your tax dollars than you do. You are never more than one paycheck away from being ruined and homeless.
We’re likely going to be an outright fascist state within the next ten years because Democrats, when we gave them power, used it to make the rich wealthier. It’s that simple.
Loool. Is this a joke?
Republican policies have destroyed the middle class since Reagan. You just said “you can’t afford to educate yourself or your kids” yet fail to acknowledge Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.
You are complaining about problems ENTIRELY CAUSED BY REPUBLICANS yet are blaming Democrats. You call when the shuttle lands crazy man.
Why does no one making this kind of dumbass comment ever acknowledge the very obvious role that Republican obstruction has played in stopping any Democratic attempt to fix this shit in the past 40 years?
Stop gerrymandering, implement approval voting (easier for most people to understand than ranked choice), watch good legislation actually get passed.
Is this comment satirical?
Ranked choice voting, fix gerrymandering and voter suppression, end disenfranchisement of felons. Such things. I would love to hear any ideas if you or lemmy had some.
tbh I think if Biden gets reelected, america will inevitably collapse as a nation. we’re already close to the tipping point and biden has done nothing but accelerate that collapse.
And Donald trump will be better? He did more harm in his 4years than biden has in his
If trump gets elected, america will also inevitably collapse. neither are equipped to handle the upcoming issues.
Biden has been as milquetoast as possible. The fact that the right is becoming more and more unhinged only shows how off the rails they are.
I think biden is actually an extremist in social policy, and an emboldend corporate shill in economic policy. So while he might be “milquetoast” in terms of democrat vs republican, he’s far from what regular people want/need.
Ironically, most establishment republicans are also this way. They’re happy to push insane social policy stuff, while bootlicking the corporations.
I honestly think that the GOP will probably split or collapse due to the establishment GOP’s resistance to their populist voterbase. Democrats call it ‘unhinged’ but when informal polls show literally hitler as preferable by both left and right to biden/trump, I would say that both dnc/gop are the unhinged ones, not the people sick of the two parties.
“milquetoast” is the literal polar opposite of what we need right now.
I would like to see those polls.
See here. Obviously informal, obviously people expressing “as a joke” or just trolling. These polls bias towards right wing followers. But still revealing nonetheless. In my circles I’m seeing both far left and far right move towards populist “centrist” rhetoric and labeling. Andrew Yang’s Forward Party being emblematic of that (who I just found out support No Labels).
We also saw things like Jimmy Dore go onto Tucker Carlson’s show, both Dore and Carlson expressing discontent with the Biden/Trump matchup, and both being pushed out from more establishment MSM/DNC/GOP stuff.
To me it looks pretty clear that many people are eager for drastic change, in a way that would clearly benefit and help the average person; with severe opposition to the establishment talking points and organizations. We also recently saw this with the covid stuff, both far left and far right joining to express skepticism over the mainstream establishment narrative.
People are very clearly upset with the way DC politics are going. Biden is historically unpopular with everyone except his core base and progressives. Trump is pretty universally disliked except among the right (who are growing discontent with him).
When I say a Biden election will lead to the collapse of America I say this mainly because I see the way things will go in the next few years if Biden gets reelected. The automation crisis will worsen, wealth inequality will worsen, progressive extremism will worsen, geopolitical conflict will worsen, the border crisis will worsen. And when push comes to shove it’s obvious to most people that biden will side with the larger wef/un agendas.
America is starting to reach around 250 years, which is historically shown to be the point of collapse for empires. The establishment organizations are planning for a big 2030 political event, and I’m sure already have an entire plan for 2028 election. I imagine growing discontent with a biden or trump second term will roll in nicely to people flocking to the candidate picked for 2028 who will almost certainly be addressing automation crisis and geopolitics.
Most people are aware biden and trump are awful, and do not like them. Most people already do not vote. and those who do vote feel “stuck” with biden/trump. Many are saying things like “I don’t like biden, but I vote for him because I don’t like Trump” and vice versa.
Strong action is needed, but not the kind that Biden is doing.
Joe Biden should be in an old folks home. He can barely stand up let alone lead a nation. No fan of the other guy either, but let’s face it. Both of them are only puppets on a string.
Biden has accomplished alot of big things actually, they just aren’t culture war issues so Republicans have never heard of any of them.
nonetheless, Biden still sounds far, far more coherent than Trump ever did when President
go back to the fox news grandpa
They’re both far from the best the USA has to offer, but it’s better to understand and attack the structural barriers to viable 3rd parties here than to get pissed off at the state of disenfranchisement of the average voter and elect a ’ wild card’ out of spite
undefined> attack the structural barriers to viable 3rd parties
Which starts by voting third party and ignoring people who parrot nonsense like “a vote for X is a vote for Y”.
Nope, terrible idea. You’ve walked into their trap card: First past the post voting. It takes advantage if your impatience and lack of understanding of the system to lure you into throwing your vote away.
I’d say it starts with bringing ranked or approval voting to your state, supporting voter initiatives in your state that erode the 2 party systems power.
You need to understand
- how party primaries function to prevent real candidates from getting in
- how the 2 parties have sequestered funding and resources that the other parties don’t have access to
- how the 2 parties have changed the US government to entrench their power
“a historic bipartisan infrastructure bill, generational investments in clean energy and semiconductor manufacturing, the first gun safety law in almost 30 years, a bill codifying same-sex marriage, a bill aiding veterans who suffered health effects from burn pits and an electoral reform to prevent a repeat of Trump’s attempt to use Congress to undermine the election.”
I think he’s doing a fine job.
Yeah but what about drag queens and fighting about childrens movies? Clearly those issues are far more important than infrastructure, strengthening the economy and taking care of veterans
How many kids are still imprisoned in the concentration camps on the border?
In today’s news, people can think about more than one thing at a time. Border policy doesn’t negate the fact that the Climate Bill and the Infrastructure Bill were objectively good, historic pieces of legislation.
I don’t think that answers my question? How many children are still locked up in concentration camps on the border? What is the number? Do you even know or are you just completely checked out from the issue because you are morally reprehensible? Let me illuminate it for you, 1 in 3 of all migrants held in america’s concentration camps is a child.
The fact the US has concentration camps on the border and that liberals have just conveniently forgotten about it and gone back to brunch as soon as Biden became president is the problem here. You make claims before an election about issues and then do nothing about them when you have every power to do so. Then you wonder why nobody is enthused to vote for a gaggle of liars.
Pretending that the US is doing literally anything about climate is also a joke. The bill is worthless because it does not change the fact that fossil industries have a higher rate of profit than renewables and until this is resolved every single action on climate is completely performative that only brings us closer and closer to the inevitable disaster that capitalism has caused. What you are doing is greenwashing concentration camps.
Hey, here’s the funny thing about the internet: No one is obligated to engage in questions posed in bad faith.
Here’s what the climate bill contains for anyone actually interested:
https://youtu.be/qw5zzrOpo2sIt wasn’t asked in bad faith. If you knew the answer beforehand I would have happily conceded you do in fact care about having concentration camps. Not knowing is absolutely a sign of being checked out, which is half the issue here, none of you actually do anything except vote. You see politics as something you do once every few years and as a spectator sport the rest of the time. You have no concept of electoral vs non-electoral politics, you literally do not take part politically except as entertainment consumption outside of voting. You all have this embarrassing mindset:
Forgot to mention, they have no Platform.
Also their candidate RFK, is a lying moron who’s been called out many times over the years by his supposed “sources”.
RFK is completely unfit for office, but I don’t think he’s involved.
RFK is a registered as and running as a democrat, and afaik has no affiliation with “no labels”.
No Labels as a name isn’t even going to appeal to left-leaning folks, it sounds nonsensical and oversimplified. Things need labels, a Nazi is a Nazi. Useful label, even if the Jewish-hating, strong ethno-state sorts don’t like it.
It’ll appeal to moderates, but that’ll pull from both sides.
Unless they run an environmentalist or something? Like a Green Party type spoiler? Would have to be an idiot not to run under their own banner though, raising awareness is their whole thing.
Yeah, I gives me similar vibes as “I don’t see color.”
But even if we remove bigotry and politics and all of that… labels aren’t necesarily bad. Like I am a creature who identifies as one of two main types of sexes that is sexually and emotionally attracted to creatures who identify as the same.
Which is a weird way of saying I’m a man who is sexually and romantically attracted to men, but those are labels, so I couldn’t say man, human, etc.
Of course I could also just say I’m gay. While yes, everyone is a little different, it has worked so far for me. People tend to get it.
Labels are not bad. It’s an idea only used by edgy teenagers and liberals who want to be good for the praise more so than for simply being good.
Yeah, I certainly didn’t think “progressive” when I read the name. It sounds like they’re afraid to say what they are, which is a common far-right strategy.
I’ve been saying it since 2000 and I’ll keep on saying it: the time to push for third parties is every year except election year. We need election reform first. The current system simply does not allow for a meaningful election between more than two parties. It cannot represent the will of the people. It needs to change.
ultimately I will be voting for the best candidate, regardless of party. My litmus is ubi. no ubi, no vote. if the “spoiler candidate” is the only one supporting and pushing ubi, then I will vote for them. If you don’t like that, then endorse ubi and I might vote for you instead.
Issue is that once they realize UBI is what needed to the votes, they will promise it and not delivery like with everything else since FDR.
Political process is a waste of time. Vote with your money and feet. It has more impact.
We need ability to give no confidence vote, I guess voting third party would work like that
Aw man, I kinda liked Mark Cuban.
No good multimillionaires.
*billionaires.
There are millionaires just from buying a house for $150k in the right city in the 90s. Doesn’t make them evil.
If I was the the maga or republicans right now I would fund as many leftist third parties as possible as the best way to secure a trump victory
See also: Forward party, both parties have lots of catchy slogans about working together or moving forward. Yet no platform.
And they will.
The problem is they don’t have to lie about how bad Democrats have been for the people. (Not that Republicans would be any better, mind you.)
Most Americans have seen their cost of living jump 30%-50% under Joe Biden, and Biden’s response is to send $100 billion overseas to fight another country’s war, not to give a dime of aid to people here who actually need it.
Are you seriously claiming that Ukrainians do not need help? Try losing your kid to a bomb on a pizza restaurant. Wonder how the real estate market in Mariupol is.
So does Yemen, but you know what has the US been doing? Helping Saudi Arabia starve and decimate the country for the last eight years.
And your fellow Americans are being neglected in order to fund all of this. I’m not sure why it’s such a radical notion that maybe, just maybe that hundred billion should be used to benefit our own people instead of funding yet another war.
Dont forget funding Israel to do the same thing to Palestine that they say the Russians are doing to Ukraine.
They don’t speak of such things when a Democrat is in charge.
There’s a remarkable level of racism in the level of concern for Ukraine vs. somewhere with less white and European people like Yemen.
The war in Ukraine is definitely easier to market, and I think that’s why.
Great post. I feel for the people of Ukraine, the Russian aggression is not acceptable, but it is their war not our war {though we are doing as much as possible to make it out war).
There’s just a part of me that gets really frustrated with how generally ignorant our people are of US warmongering worldwide, and they see the nightly news broadcasts about Ukraine and they’ve bought into the narrative.
Reminds me of when Bush I pushed the lie about babies being killed in Iraqi hospitals in order to get more public support for his war, and the endless funding that came with it.
Ew, Crispy Enema’s in on this? That’s all the information I need to shun this scheme. We HAAAAATE Crispy Enema here in Arizona. Plus she’s a terrible dresser. She came into Congress one day to vote down an important bill while wearing this overblown yellow dress with huge shoulder pads. I was like, “You’re a senator, not Jor-El from the planet Krypton.”
I mean, if you’re a wage earner in this country, all the candidates are spoilers.
Thats not what spoiler means
