To my many friends and readers who plan to vote for Hillary Clinton: please stop bullying me.
Also please lay off other people, progressives and liberals and traditional Democrats and socialists and communists, citizens who identify with the political left, who plan to vote for Dr. Jill Stein or stay home.
I’m not going to vote for Donald Trump. I agree with the mainstream liberal consensus that he should never hold political power, much less control over nuclear launch codes. He’s dangerous and scary. But that doesn’t mean I have to vote for Hillary Clinton.
So I won’t.
- The main reason that I’m not going to vote for Hillary Clinton is the same exact main reason that I’m not going to vote for Donald Trump: I don’t vote Republican. Being age 53, Nixon was the first president I remember. Hillary Clinton’s politics (and her paranoia and insularity) remind me of Richard Nixon’s. I can’t bring myself to think of a Democrat as someone who solicits millions of dollars from Wall Street or votes with crazy Republicans (like George W. Bush, whose stupid wars she aggressively supported) to invade foreign countries just for fun. She plays a Democrat on TV, but we know the truth: she’s a Republican.
- I’m anti-political dynasty. There should be a constitutional amendment banning anyone related by blood or marriage to a former president from running for the presidency.
- There’s a big difference between an impressive resume and a list of accomplishments. Hillary has the former, not the latter. I hold her resume against her: she has held tremendous power, yet has never reached out to grab the brass ring. As senator, her record was undistinguished. As Secretary of State, she barely lifted a finger on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, contributed to the expansion of the Syrian civil war, and is more responsible than almost anyone else for destroying Libya. What she did well she did small; when she went big she performed badly.
- #MuslimLivesMatter. More than a million people died in Iraq. She voted for that. So she isn’t, as the current Clinton campaign meme goes, merely a “flawed” candidate. Voting for the violent deaths of over a million people, and the maiming of God knows how many more — when there was no reason whatsoever to think Iraq had WMDs — is not an “oops, my bad” screw-up. Those were real people, real human beings, and they’re dead because of her. You don’t get to soak your hands in that much blood and just walk away, much less into the White House.
- She still hasn’t made an affirmative case for herself. By clinging to President Obama, she’s running as his third term. The standard way to pull this off is to present yourself as new and improved: the old product was great, the new one will be even better. Her campaign boils down to “I’m not Donald Trump.” No matter how bad he is, and he is awful, that’s not enough. Watching her in the first presidential debate, at the beginning when Trump was besting her over trade, I kept asking myself: why doesn’t she admit that the recovery is good but has left too many Americans behind? Why hasn’t she proposed a welfare and retraining program for people who lose their jobs to globalization? A week later, the only answer I can come up with is that she has no imagination, no vision thing.
- She has made no significant concessions to the political left. Frankly, this makes me wonder about her intelligence. Current polling shows that the biggest threat to her candidacy is losing millennial, working class, and Bernie Sanders supporters to the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson. She would not have this problem if she’d picked Sanders as her vice presidential running mate. Even now, she could bag the millennial vote by promising the Vermont senator a cabinet post. Why doesn’t she? For the same reason that she won’t embrace the $15-an-hour minimum wage (she gets $225,000 for an hour-long speech but wants you to settle for $12) — she’s a creature of the corporations and therefore the political right. She’s not one of us. She doesn’t care about us.
- My vote is worth no less than the vote of someone who supports a major party nominee. So what if the polls say that Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will be elected president? Why, based on those polls, should I strategically vote for someone whose politics and personality I deplore? By that logic, why shouldn’t they change their votes to conform to mine? I have my vote, you have your vote, let Diebold add them up.
I don’t have a problem with you if you plan to vote for Hillary. This year is the best argument ever for lesser evilism. But the fact that we are selecting between two equally unpopular major party presidential standardbearers indicates that the two-party system is in crisis, if not broken. We need and deserve more and better options. The only way to get them is to start building viable third parties — voting for them, contributing money to them. What better time to start than now?
Anyway, there’s absolutely no way that my refusal to vote for Hillary will put Donald Trump into the White House.
How do I know? Arithmetic. The closest state margin in an American presidential election was four, in Maryland in 1832. Like you, I only get one vote. Whatever I do can’t and won’t change the result.
(Ted Rall is author of “Trump: A Graphic Biography,” an examination of the life of the Republican presidential nominee in comics form.)
16 Comments.
As an Arkansas voter, I checked the statistics for the state and discovered (a couple of days ago) that Trump is leading Clinton by approximately 20% (at the least). My vote wouldn’t help Clinton overcome that margin, and it would violate my conscience. If Trump carries the state, it won’t be because of my single vote for Dr. Jill Stein, but my vote might assist the Green Party in becoming viable in the future. Go, Stein! 🙂
I’m going to vote for Stein.
I voted for Sanders when he spoke truthfully on the issues, before he succumbed to the Democratic Party’s corruption that destroyed his candidacy. The issues he raised were there before he raised them and they are still there now that he has gone silent and compliant to the corrupt.
I think we and the world are screwed if either Trump or Hillary wins, and I will bet what’s left of my life that the next president will come from this Tyrannic Duo.
There is no upside. That’s why I think this election is the least important of any other before in my life.
So, too bad for us who are not them.
But I really had hopes of Trump and Clinton getting each other so dirty in a mud wrestling match, so that they could both destroy each other’s credibility and both be delegitimized before the electorate. What is it going to take for people to walk away from these corrupt bozos?
There is nothing I’d like more than to see the Duopoly drag each other down into a pit that neither can climb out of.
So, Go Trump. Destroy Hillary. Go Hillary. Destroy Trump. I’m cheering for both of you.
Needless to say, I want Trump to bring what he’s got to Hillary more effectively in the next debates. I am truly neutral in respect to both of them.
The bell is about to ring for the next round
So get up off the mat, Trump, and let’s see you give Hillary a lickin’.
> There should be a constitutional amendment banning anyone related by blood or marriage to a former president from running for the presidency
But by all accounts, John Quincy Adams was a good president. I’m far more concerned about dynasties of wealth than I am about politicians. With enough wealth, you can buy all the politicians you need.
I often make similar statements, such as only allowing people actually affected by a law to vote on it; or only allowing people who are familiar with a problem to vote on that. The problem there is that it puts the government in charge of deciding who is allowed to vote: the cure is worse than the disease.
Similarly, Ted’s suggestion above. It puts the government in charge of deciding who can be president. George Washington has thousands of blood relatives today, even if he didn’t father any children of his own. Should they all be barred? Should I not be able to vote for one if I thought she would make a good president?
So, nice dream, but ultimately impractical. (also ineffective – the wealthy would just buy an unrelated politician)
That’s the one point on which I disagree with Ted. The Roosevelts were good/great presidents, and RFK might have become a good president had he lived and been elected.
I know I’ve been beating this one around for a while, but I’m gonna say it one more time. Every HRC supporter is in for a hell of a surprise.
1. She won’t have a Senate majority.
2. She won’t have a House majority.
3. The Republicans will actively block every single thing she tries (which won’t be much anyway) because they actively despise her. That means the Supreme Court. Ginsberg will retire or die, HRC will nominate, and the Republicans will fire off a letter to her that reads something like, “Remember Obama? Yeah, that was a test case. And he caved. So will you. So sit down and shut up. If we pick someone, we’ll tell you, and you can put on your ‘Queen President’ sash and pretend it was your idea.” Check the law. The Supreme Court requires a quorum of six justices. There’s nothing in there about nine justices. And when the Republicans get the count down to seven, it’ll be 4-3, conservative.
Hillary Clinton cannot “win” the presidency. She can get elected and probably will. But she will not have the legislative backing necessary to get anything through (assuming her corporate owners want her to put anything through). And as soon as Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s body gives out (she must be going solely on willpower by now), HRC can kiss good-bye the Supreme Court’s 4-4 ties.
I hope I’m wrong …
Odds are quite good that Trump will give St Hillary a majority in the Senate. Most likely, 50 seats (plus the VP).
Can they filibuster a presidential appointment? According to Wikipedia, ‘Yes’, so a Democratic Senate can block St Hillary’s court appointments by use of the filibuster (the Democrats should have a majority, but are very unlikely to have 60 Senators).
Keep in mind, the DINOs. HRC might get to 50 D’s, but she’ll never get them all to line up. And she’s running as Obama’s Third Term (remarkable, isn’t? She keeps hammering how she’s an accomplished woman down everyone’s throat, but all her selling points are either that she’s NOT some guy or she’s a CONTINUATION of some other guy). So she’s gonna be playing “the long game” or “13-dimension chess” or whatever it’s gonna be called by the bots.
I just want it down for the record: people knew her presidency was going to be a complete disaster. People knew it, people warned about it, and if I’m proven right, I don’t want to hear a word — not a syllable — from any Clinton voter for the rest of time on anything political.
And if HRC turns out to be the best thing to happen to the Republic since FDR, I’ll do the same.
Hope you’re wrong, too – although I’m not sure that any other option is palatable either.
I think it comes down to which candidate will have the least negative affect on their party. Will GOP or Dems stay away in greater numbers?
Only 57.5% of the electorate bothered to vote in 2012. With that poor a turnout, small changes can make a large difference.
CrazyH,
Another thing I simply haven’t been considering because it will, literally, cause my brains to drip out of my ears. …
Can the Electors can simply sidestep Trump? Trump wins, the Electors vote in Pence? Or Rubio? Oh, that’ll turn the country into a bloodbath.
I remember ’68. Humphrey said the war had to go on forever, since losing would start those dominoes falling, and winning would cause China to jump in on the side of North Vietnam with far more soldiers than the entire US military. Nixon said he had a ‘secret plan’ to win an unconditional victory very quickly. We still don’t know the ‘secret’.
Whimsical says we should all have voted for Humphrey. Not what we wanted, but better than Nixon (not clear how), that failing to vote (or voting for the ‘secret plan’) gave Reagan the presidency in the ’80 election. Again, not clear how.
Prof Krugman wrote on Monday that anyone who does not vote for either Trump or Clinton is casting half a vote for Trump. This is, of course, completely wrong, but Prof Krugman is a rabid Clintonbot who agrees that all St Hillary’s so-called ‘flaws’ are lies by the Deplorables, and everyone who does not vote for the Greatest Candidate the US has ever known is being a traitor!
When an LA Times poll showed Trump ahead by 5, they did NOT give those polled the choice of the two major minor parties. 538 says most of those 3rd party votes would have gone to Trump, so they lower Trump’s national percentage of voters from the polls by 6%. So the more people vote for Johnson, the more likely it is that St Redbeard will be our next president, and force regime change on Syria and Russia.
Which (the US MSM assures us) is the Right Thing To Do!
I have been waiting for our self-proclaimed intellectual superior to appear and lecture us on the 1968 presidential election – yet again.
I don’t know whether to rejoice or complain that someone else has to bring up Whimsical.
The thing about 1968 that “W” never brings up is the third party candidate George Wallace. After deducting the votes Wallace got in the five states he won, there were about 7 million votes cast for him in the rest of the country. That’s over 12 times the the overall popular vote total that separated Nixon from Humphrey.
But, of course, the (today’s derisive name for sane voters) were the problem!
Just 7 reasons not to vote for Hillary? Can we expect to see parts 2, 3, 4 and 5 in the coming weeks?
Interestingly enough, that libertarian icon (and my dear colleague), Ronald Ernest Paul, seems to be leaning toward endorsing Jill Ellen Stein, whom he states is «probably the best on foreign policy at the moment». Myself, I’d far prefer to see Ms Stein in the Oval Office than any other candidate – at least among those of of whom I happen to be aware – but perhaps my views and those of Dr Paul are biased by an esprit de corps among medical doctors ?…
Interesting also to note that that self-declared «libertarian» who frequently posts to these fora, seems to feel that Donald John Trump is a true libertarian, or at least worthy of their support. But then, alas, our friend is not always well-informed….
Henri
I attribute all that transpired in her husband’s tenure to HRC also. They did declare a co-presidency.
To that end Ted is off by one million dead Iraqi’s, half of them children – the constituency HRC likes to claim as her own.
WIll & Hill faithfully maintained the vicious and murderous “economic sanctions” (a collective punishment war crime if there ever were one) instituted by Pappy Bush for longer that Pappy and Bimby Bush combined.
The ghoul Madeleine Albright, Cliintons’ Sec. of State, who did not deny the death count in a TV interview and, moreover, proclaimed it “worth it,” appeared on stage at the recent Dem convention.
I guess those kids were a bit too ruddy-skinned to care about and, hell, once you have a country nice and softened-up why not vote for the kill?
This is a thread that I’d like to follow, and I always click on the box “Notify me when new comments are added.”
New comments have been added since mine, but I am not receiving email notifications. Is anyone else having this problem?
Hey, WEBMASTER! Can you fix it?
Just a thought, but the guy with perhaps the best resume who was elected president was James Buchanan. Just saying.