Monday, July 25, 2016

Jill Stein?

Folks are tweeting at me that they are going to choose Jill Stein, of the Greens, because they don't like Hillary Clinton.  Might I suggest that they don't like America?  Ok, that is brutal, but let's consider a few things:

1) The separation between Stein and Clinton on the issues is actually quite narrow as Stein herself admitted:

So, if you care about the policies that affect Americans, then perhaps one should vote for the person who is likely to win rather than waste a vote.  There is a time for purity, and there is a time for doing what is best for the county.

2)  The other 91%?  Not great, Bob.  Banning of GMO's? Replace NAFTA?  Free tuition?  Cut defense spending by 50%?  "Restore the National Guard as the centerpiece of our defense"  hee, hee.

3)  Voting for Stein and not for HRC helps Trump.  Trump has promised to be almost everything that Stein stands against--a homophobic VP, destructive to the economy, nasty policies for immigrants and on and on.  There is a reason why African-Americans and Latinos are voting en masse for HRC and very few for Trump. 

I could say that voting for Stein is a great example of white privilege, but that would be unkind.  Trump, to put it as bluntly as I can, is essentially an existential threat to democracy, peace and prosperity.  So, voting for Stein might feel good, but is pretty much one of the worst things a progressive or left wing person can do this fall.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Most of Bernie's followers are Independents, it was this integrity which attracted them to Bernie like flies and why many of them categorically refuse to vote for Hillary esp. now since the Wikileaks emails came out and expose Hillary and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz as rigging the primary process against Bernie from Day 1.

This doesn't attract political scientist too much because there's a qualitative factor here and not a quantitative one. You can't quantify or rationalize the integrity vote. It may very well mean that Trump will get in but if the DNC had operated with more integrity and transparency, this would have never happened.

Anonymous said...

Thank goodness, dear commenter, that your opinions don't resemble the vast majority of Democratic-leaning independents, nor Sanders supporters in the first place.