Sorry for long-ass post and hope I don't get flamed (if I do, I'll do my best to ignore it so as not to derail this thread given lewd is for lewd, not political battles), but just thought I'd share how shitty I think the candidate selections are this election period in general terms (read TL;DR if need be)..
TL;DR: My result for this quiz thing has been Bernie, but I'm more of a BERNIE AND WILL BUST ANYWAY guy than a BERNIE OR BUST guy. Basically I'm all BUST. All or most candidates this election period are framing things in misleading terms that will affect the quality of the policies they implement, and make the effect of their presidential office be very suboptimal for American workers, either in relative or absolute terms. In addition, political polarization will probably increase regardless of whose president. Especially since people are so desperate that either party's constituents are in denial of character traits that render their choice candidates unreliable or difficult to keep accountable. So no hopes anywhere in this election--its all just theatre giving an appearance of choice without having resolves the dilemmas of our times; might as well abstain from voting.
Longer version: Taken this several times before for this particular election period. Ended up with Bernie Sanders every time--I wasn't and still am not a full on Bernie enthusiast though, because I figured he would fail on the majority of his promises, especially when the chances of an effective form of grassroots activism arising again is very low without focusing on restructuring the distribution of work by adapting to improvements in productivity and getting rid of the precariat. Bernie doesn't seem to be focused on that, except when he talks about co-ops which is only tangentially related. And his strategy for increasing the amount of co-ops is not going to be particularly good (I suspect he'll use more government than would actually need to be used). Further, most of his policies won't be that groundbreaking either and just increase governmental bloat, making it more difficult to actually provide services where it might be needed--although that's inevitable since the increasing size of the State is a crutch for maintained long-term growth. Bernie is just a potential postponement or amelioration of crises at hist best, or a mediocre policymaker/policy-evaluator that reinforces or maintains continuing econ trends at his worst.
As for Trump and Hillary--just like most other candidates (including Bernie), economically they're focusing on the loss of manufacturing and industrial jobs as a way to frame their policy decisions, which ignores that you can't turn back the clock on technological improvements that have comparatively highly impacted the first world labor market, especially when it would require sacrificing efficiency; in fact, turning back the clock will affect domestic capital and relative national wealth even if it'll benefit worker's relative wage (but not their absolute purchasing power). What we need is a solution that takes both absolute wealth and relative earnings into account. In addition, many of the candidates seem to want to deal with outsourcing while trying to restrict or regulate migration of cheap labor to the U.S. (this includes Bernie), when both high immigration and increased outsourcing are related to an international race to the bottom by international companies when it comes to the price of labor. That's why you can't do both. Trump and Hillary each individually have a bunch of other issues I have with them, but I'm not going to go any deeper on that because I'll probably just incite a flame war in here from both sides or something. Regardless of who gets voted in, though, it won't stop political polarization and certain disturbing precedents that have already been set during this election period regardless of what candidate you support.
At the end of the day, since our choices are now Trump v. Hillary, they are not worth voting for, imo. To me its p. much guaranteed the next presidency will be shitty at this point, full of both indignations and disappointment. Nothing that will "shock" the system back into some phenomenal rebound; at most just a lackluster apparent improvement in a few indexes that don't necessarily indicate how the lives of individual Americans are, and maybe a few disasters/blunders in social or foreign policy.
