this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2024
705 points (97.3% liked)
Asklemmy
43943 readers
422 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Source on this? I was young but I remember that election. Perot seemed to be like some kind of ultracapitalist "run the country like a business" moron that people respected because he was rich. My grandpa loved him and I rarely heard him talk politics. He was also only educated to the sixth grade for what that's worth.
Seems like the kind of guy to take a bite out of the conservative vote.
I'm gonna fix my ignorance and go look him up right now though.
Edit-- I'm back, learned a lot. I love that he supported electronic direct democracy way back in 1992. He was in favor of gun control and money for AIDS research. Openly supported gay rights in 1996 but notably not until his second campaign when he really had no chance.
He didn't believe trickle down economics worked. Was a billionaire who spoke against greed which is really strange. But me calling him an ultracapitalist is probably misplaced. Also not a moron. He was into taxing the wealthy, starting to like this guy, but balancing the budget by cutting social programs, nevermind do not like.
He opposed outsourcing factory jobs and favored environmental protection. He wanted to decrease the budgets of both the military and NASA. Wanted to cancel the space station.
Quite the complicated guy. I love some of his policies and hate others. Seems like a weird mix when viewed through a modern lens. I think I'd have considered voting for him if I was ten years older in '92. Probably would have voted for Clinton though who notably achieved one of Perot's primary goals, which was to balance the budget.
So I ended up researching Clinton's campaign and it was straight up racist against black people. He also pledged to end welfare "as we know it". I think I actually would have voted for Perot! Maybe there's something to what you're saying about reducing Clinton's margin of victory.