What is your "litmus test" issue?

For practically all of my life, I’ve voted for the candidate who is most interested in the environmental well-being of the planet.

The few exceptions are when the candidates are equal on that, or I believe one more, or sometimes other issues. I do care about many other issues (these days, being part of corporate corruption is a big one), but usually the environmental question also tends to indicate the people I like on other issues, as well.

Human rights and particularly Australia’s treatment of refugees and our Indigenous peoples. Sadly, both major parties here have very similar, inadequate and frankly, inhumane approaches to the refugee situation. And both have implemented or supported policies that abuse the human rights of our Indigenous peoples. Doesn’t leave a lot of choice!

Healthcare, surprise surprise. What can I say, I find it hard to support a candidate who wants to kill me.

If a person does not support full LGBT equality, I will not support them and will gleefully vote against them. I will also drive other people to their voting places to vote against anti-LGBT candidates. I will participate in marches and call anti-LGBT elected officials to voice my displeasure. I will call pro-LGBT elected officials to tell them how much I appreciate their help. In fact, I often do that now.

From this day forward I will be doing exactly what @Hawaii_Jake does. LGBT equality is my main focus.

The situation here doesn’t lend itself to so simplistic a declaration. I live in a place so blue that no one registered as Republican bothers to run for local office.

Decisions on political relations with other countries. There are still some unsolved issues in this area in my country.
The next is the candidate’s stand on dealing with corruption, another major issue here.

Convince me you can deal with those two and we have a deal.

I don’t think I have one litmus test. They all seem to be bundled.

My bundle/trifecta includes: civil rights, health care, and being pro-choice.

@Kardamom I’m going to pick on you mostly because you’re the last person to answer before I had a chance to get back to the question I posted. I’m not sure what “civil rights” and “health care” mean, but I’m going to assume that it’s LGBT/racial issues and single payer.

Let’s say that you have a candidate who is pro-choice, pro-single payer and pro-LGBT issue but, say, they’re also in favor of corporate tax cuts and a strong international military force with a big presence in the Islam world?

@Rarebear, I guess if the choice was between 2 candidates that supported my trifecta, but one of them also supported the 2 things you mentioned, and one that didn’t, I’d pick the one who didn’t, unless that (seemingly more ideal) candidate didn’t appear to be electable. In other words, If I had to choose my second choice candidate (in a primary) I would probably do that, if I was pretty sure that my (first choice) other candidate would not be able to win against the candidate that (most likely someone from the opposing party) in the actual election.

Healthcare and environmental.

I think we have politics all wrong right now, issues are important, but are almost always best handled in the gray area between our ideals. That’s what is good for the most people.

So I look for someone who isn’t a dick, is open to listening to others who know more on an issue than they do, and doesn’t mind compromising with the “other side” for the greater good. To my thinking, that’s how government should act.

It’s dark times for that kind of candidate.

Hate to admit it but religion.
I do not mind if you are of the faith but if you flaunt it, imply you are the better candidate because of it, denigrate those who are not of your particular brand of religion or use it as a justification for people to vote for you then you have lost my vote.

I will vote for the candidate that when asked “What is your religion?” answers “None of your damn business” whether or not they attend church on a regular basis.

^respect

I don’t have a hard, fast litmus test but it’s usually obvious when a candidate is playing certain cards to get elected. That’s usually an automatic no from me. I want to know how someone really stands. If I said that I did not have a few key checkmarks I’d be lying though. Neither party represents my political spectrum so I find it hard to vote at all these days. These things will likely result in a “no” vote from me:
You’re anti-gun
You’re taking any biblical based stance
You pull your party line till the end
You want to raise taxes
You’re campaign has overtones of electing a person based on race or gender.

Freedom of speech. Seriously all kind of shit happens because the government only wants to hear nice things. They run the country but they aren’t freaking God. I would like to see for once someone who isn’t afraid of criticism.

But then again this isn’t only a political problem, but also a cultural problem. My culture is so obsessed with hearing nice things that people’s skins get so thin and people invent all kinds of rules just to avoid rubbing people out. It affects every aspect of life, including politics.

@Mimishu1995 Should a trans teen boy be allowed to pee in a boy’s bathroom at school? Trans boy means they were born with a vagina but identify as a male. I only ask because freedom of speech among locals says it is wrong.. These locals only want to hear nice things.

There is no single issue of over riding importance to me. The character of the candidate counts for a lot with me and I wouldn’t vote for anyone who seemed untrustworthy, stupid or bigoted.

@ARE_you_kidding_me What does “anti-gun” mean?

@Rarebear I know you didn’t ask me specifically, but for me, ‘healthcare’ doesn’t necessarily mean single-payer. I WANT single-payer but it’s a lot to ask for right now. I’m not entirely a single-issue voter but I basically meant that I will not vote for anyone who wants to limit access to healthcare more than it is already.

It means they will always side on legislation that restricts or limits the use, possesion or manufacture of firearms. I’m for streamlining and makig gun laws that are effective and practical that do not essentially outlaw them. We have quite a few gun laws that make no logical sense whatsoever simply because it was feel good legislation. Almost none of which I may add actually make America safer.

@ARE_you_kidding_me Got it. Thanks. Are “pro-gun” “anti Bible” candidates hard to find?

Nearly impossible.

Not a lot of atheist libertarians running for office.

I haven’t seen anyone else bring it up so I will. My main issue is the Economy. I’m not a single issue voter but the economy is my biggest issue. When the economy is growing robustly everything gets easier.

@Jaxk I assume you mean someone who expresses the same free market laissez faire ideas you have to grow the economy correct?

I mean just mentioning the economy and how it needs to grow anyone can do and no one, with the exception of a few of us, would disagree with the statement.

But would you vote for someone who suggested we can grow the economy by limiting monopoly, common sense market regulation, providing a living wage, a progressive tax structure that increases with the ability to pay and for growth that takes into account and gives value to the quality of life of the community and the preservation of the natural environment?

High quality public education. It reduces crime and poverty, promotes equality, boosts creativity, advances technology, grows the economy, diminishes the power of every stripe of liar, and helps every person make good choices in all areas of life. There is nothing more important for the health and future of a modern society.

I guess it doesn’t have to be public, but when has a private system ever been interested in equality?

@rojo – I find the terms you are using to be as ambiguous as my merely stating the economy. Common sense regulation is always the trick. A little cost/benefit analysis would go a long ways in determining what is common sense. Same with a progressive tax system. 1%, 2%, 3% is progressive, so is 10%, 50% and 90%. However,One will grow the economy and one will stifle it. If the economy is growing at 3–5% the living wage will take care of itself, we don’t need to turn McDonalds into a career.

Profits are what companies use to reinvest and expand. Tax away the profits and we stagnate. History has proven that. I believe that government spending is the least efficient use of money possible. Government is not incentivized to be efficient but rather to expand their budgets. Leave as much as possible in the pockets of the people and the businesses and they will spend it more wisely. Anyone espousing those principles is likely to get my vote.

@Jaxk I wouldn’t be so quick to parrot the corporate mantra of slapping the profit motive on any and everything. The government has more than amply demonstrated an ability to generate efficiencies. The proof ranges from the model operations of the social security system through the establishment of the zipcodes.

@Jaxk Thanks for clarifying. I appreciate your point of view.

I agree with @Jaxk. “The economy” is too vague for me too. Everybody wants the economy to do well. It’s just that there are radically different ways to approach it. Do you approach it like @Jaxk with a more economically conservative point of view (which I favor), or like @stanleybmanly with a more governmental activist point of view?

@Rarebear @Jaxk – you’re both smart guys. What evidence have you found that presidential policy impacts the economy as a whole?

To me, it looks like Presidents can shift the money around a little bit, and possibly shorten downturns, but outside factors generally determine the health of the overall economy. Their biggest affect may be simply who’s eager to trade with the US or not.

Put another way, I haven’t seen any evidence that conservative policies or large government spending (which has to include defense) make a difference in the bottom line. They just shift the money around. But I’d like to learn if that’s incorrect.

@funkdaddy – I’m not sure what you’re looking for but let me take a shot. We have 1–2 Trillion dollars in corp earnings, sitting in overseas accounts. It isn’t coming back to the US because taxes will take half of it the moment it hits our shores. If we repatriot that money it becomes a multi-trillion dollar stimulus for our economy. The president can’t do that alone but he has the ability to push it through. Regulation consumes almost half of our economy. The cost of regulation is killing us. I’m not advocating eliminating regulation but if we could drive the impact down to a quarter of our economy, it becomes another massive stimulus. The president has a lot of control over regulation and it’s impact on the economy.

Taxes are the bane of our economy and capital investment is directly affected by tax code. If a small (or large) business invests a million in their business with the depreciation schedule it can take 10 years or more to recover that investment. That means you can’t do it again for another 10 years. If we move it to expense the reinvestment cycle becomes much shorter. Business investment is how the economy grows.

Finally the tax cuts under Kennedy and Reagan sparked tremendous growth. The tax cuts under Coolidge did the same. We have ample evidence that tax cuts stimulate the economy even when in recession. The tax cuts under Bush were temporary and as such don’t have the same impact. Same with the meager tax cuts Obama put through just before raising taxes. There’s a lot more to all this but it’s hard to track all the advantages without writing a book about it, so I’ll let it stand.

I wasn’t specifically writing about presidential policy. I was just mentioning that saying the “economy” as a litmus test issue is too vague, and as a rare social liberal/economic conservative as a side note I agreed mostly with @Jaxk comment.

Appreciate the answers and I’m sorry for some poor wording there, I was just looking at Presidents as a “if they can’t affect it, who could?”... you could say Congressional trends matter more, but the two are tied together, so looking at Presidents was just a shortcut.

I guess as much as anything I’m saying if we back out to look at the full economy, in something like this chart (real GDP growth by year) or this chart (real GDP per capita), there’s no indication what economic policies were in place at a given time. There’s growth and downturns in cycles that have little to do with who’s in power or their positions.

The only time you see large departures from the trends are when one or more industries failed. (great depression, WWII, S&L, Tech Bust, whatever you want to call 2008, etc). We could argue whether those were a result of policies or not, but I don’t think you could say that over regulation was the problem in any of those.

So let’s say an economically conservative approach makes sense to me logically, but I’d like some proof. Where do I look?

@funkdaddy I wish I were better read on this to give you book recommendations. There are plusses and minuses. Clinton and the Republicans deregulated the banking industry and although that led to huge economic gains it also led to wealth inequality and ultimately the housing crash. So sensible regulation is good. It may slow down the economy but it could also prevent the wild swings as we have seen in the last 20 years. So I’m with the Sanders supporters here in wanting Glass-Steagall to be restored. But I am not in favor of going to pre-Reagan tax rates.

The President has limited power in fiscal policy—that is Congress’ job. The Executive branch can ease or pass regulations that make it easier or harder for business to do what they want to do. As I said, some regulations are good, some are not. Some are Executive branch power, and some are Legislative branch.

Monetary policy is interestingly enough separate from all three branches, and that’s a problem according to libertarians. The Fed controls monetary policy and is appointed, not elected.

So as you can see “The economy” is complicated and if you ask Paul Krugman or Milton Friedman (if he were alive) you’d get completely different answers on how to fix it.

@Rarebear I’m with you on restoring Glass-Steagall but that wasn’t the cause of the housing bust. The Community Reinvestment act of 1977 holds the key to the housing bust. Designed to help low and middle income applicants get a home loan, it created an atmosphere where banks needed to make loans they normally would not have made. That gave rise to adjustable mortgages, 0 down, and Stated Income loans. It became so easy to get a loan, that by 2008 everybody that wanted a house had one (two if they wanted). With no more buyers, the market crashed.

That’s not to say Glass-Steagall didn’t contribute to the severity of the crash, it did. As the subsequent Stock Market crash took a damaging toll on their investment portfolios their assets dropped. With lower asse3ts they needed more cash to stay viable. To add insult to injury, the banking rules had changed (I think under Bush but I could be wrong) so that the asset value of their loans were required to be re0evaluated monthly. When the housing market was rising this was a great tool for the banks but when it dropped, once again they needed more cash. Significantly more cash. Consequently the Bailouts. The Bailouts, right or wrong stabilized the banking industry and everything began to level off.

I’ve gone through this basically to show that you can’t get a good feel for what is happening with a few macro level graphs. And as usual, when things go horribly wrong, there is more than one cause. I freely admit that I am not an unbiased observer and I do tend to point at one thing as the cause. When dealing with something like the economy, you can’t hold everything constant and vary one input to see how it reacts. Everything is moving all the time and things that happened 30 years ago rear up and bite you. At least that’s my opinion. That should carry some weight because I am after all, the smartest person on earth :)

Wait a second. To fault the financial collapse on the Community Reinvestment Act is a rather dubious method of shifting responsibility from those handing out money to those willing to take it. In other words, it’s a cotinuation of the specious argument that the banks were the victims. Sorry @Jaxk, but there’s no getting around the fact that the catastrophe was the most clear cut example you will ever see regarding straight up REGULATORY FAILURE. It is also the paradigm example of the systemic corruption of the governmental process by the financial sector. There is no more glaring example of out and out malfeasance than the enforced “legality” of the Ponzi aspects inherent to the operations of Wall Street and the banks.

Thanks @Jaxk. I stand corrected.

@stanleybmanly “To fault the financial collapse on the Community Reinvestment Act”
It was a part of the equation for sure, the housing collapse was a perfect storm of bad economic programs and deregulation.

I’ll vote for anybody who promises to do away with Daylight Savings Time.

You don’t like Daylight Savings? I wish we HAD Daylight Savings.

It’s a relic of another era, when people lived in rural areas and had crops to harvest. Not so big an issue in our urban era.

We don’t have it in Queensland, Australia. It confuses the cows and fades the curtains.~

We also don’t have any twilight. One minute it’s day, the next night. I loved when we had a trial for daylight savings. We could sit outside in the sunshine and eat dinner! The longer days were wonderful.

@NomoreY_A Yeah but winter is rough, and most people who deal with it would certainly give up those evening hours for extended evenings in the summer. Plus, rural still exists. They feed you.