I'll Never Vote for Hillary Clinton

Darn, I must be the only one around here doing something that bothers roger. What point is that, roger?

Has Hitler and or the Nazis been mentioned yet?

People are starting to get it
Thanks to Gadfly, via Twitter... this.

If Hillary Clinton ends up winning the Democratic nomination for president, some Bernie Sanders supporters will vote for her anyway. I can respect that decision. While the differences between Democrats and Republicans are often overstated -- to give just two examples (there are many), the same people advise Clinton, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz on foreign policy and Hillary Clinton is at least as cozy with Wall Street as most Republicans -- there are some real and important reasons to worry about a Republican White House. The Supreme Court and heads of agencies are, in my view, the biggest concerns in this vein. I'd have low hopes for Hillary Clinton's appointees but no doubts that they'd be better on balance than those offered by a Trump, Cruz, or Rubio.

Yet I will not vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. While I understand the lesser-of-two-evils mentality, I disagree with it; most of Clinton's policy positions are unacceptable to me. If Sanders loses the primary, I will probably vote for Jill Stein.

I don't know if Ben Spielberg of 34justice reads the same things I read or came to the conclusions I did months ago by reading Brains, but it's not all that big a stretch if you value actual progressivism and do some thinking.

Wouldn't that be a strategic blunder, some friends and family ask me? Democrats who aren't quite as polite ask if I'm an idiot. Don't I realize that this type of thinking led to George W. Bush becoming president in 2000 and that I may similarly "blow this election" by deciding to vote my conscience?

The premise of these questions, however, is completely wrong, and not just because, as Jim Hightower documented at the time, voting records show that "Gore was the problem, not Nader," in the 2000 election. In fact, refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton in the general election is both a principled and strategic decision that I encourage more people to embrace.

There are two possibilities when it comes to my vote: it will either impact the outcome of the election or it won't. If my vote won't impact the outcome of the election, I might as well vote for the candidate with the best policy positions, regardless of his or her supposed electability.

If my vote will impact the outcome of the election, I may have to decide which matters more: (a) the differences between a bad Democrat and worse Republican over the next four years or (b) the degree to which I'd undermine our chances to enact fundamental change to a broken political system in the long-run by pursuing a lesser-of-two-evils voting strategy.

I'm going to do the linear, bipolar Democrats a favor here by making their argument -- the one they need to make to non-voters, not to people like me and Spielberg.

"Not a dime's worth of difference." "Don't vote; it only encourages the bastards." (I have a Facebook friend -- a former Democratic precinct chair, then a former Green, now a voting atheist who uses that second phrase s good bit. THE most argumentative person, in the harshest of various ways, I have ever encountered. And that's quite definitive, but it's also a digression.)

Back on point.

... (T)he type of political "pragmatism" that would lead someone to choose (a) undermines power-balancing policy goals. Because politicians and Democratic party officials know that many voters think this way, they have little incentive to listen to our concerns. Instead, they can pay lip service to progressive values while crafting a policy agenda and decision-making process more responsive to wealthy donors than to their constituents.

That dynamic is on full display already in the 2016 Democratic primary election. Clinton is campaigning against priorities, like single-payer health care, that Democrats are supposed to embrace. While early union endorsements for Clinton initially improved her rhetoric on education issues to some degree, she is already backtracking to assure corporate donors that her positions are unchanged. The unions who endorsed Clinton early have no negotiating power relative to rich donors who make their support contingent on Clinton pursuing their interests; given that fact and her record, she seems unlikely to keep her promises if elected.

The Democratic National Committee's actions are also illustrative. The party establishment lined up behind Clinton before the race even started, and the DNC's debate schedule is, despite their protestations to the contrary, quite obviously constructed to insulate Clinton from challenge. DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz's recent decision to suspend Sanders' campaign's access to its voter data (in response to a data breach by a since-fired Sanders staffer; the access was restored after the Sanders campaign sued the DNC) has caused even party loyalists to believe that the DNC "is putting [its] finger on [the] scale" and pro-Clinton journalists to acknowledge that the DNC's behavior "makes Clinton's lead look illegitimate, or at least, invites too many 'what ifs.'"

What is developing for 2016 -- and I thought it was obvious before I wrote yesterday's post -- is that the 'status quo' candidate(s) are going to be, indeed already are, at a strategic disadvantage.

Both Clinton and party leaders are making a mockery of many of the principles the party is supposed to stand for. And pledging to support Clinton in the end -- no matter what she and the DNC do -- enables this kind of behavior. It's hard for me to see how we will ever fix our political process and reclaim our democracy by refusing to draw some lines in the sand.

I could accuse those who disagree with that assessment of propping up a sham political system. I could say that, by downplaying the unfounded smears the Clinton campaign has spread against Sanders and insisting that we must support Clinton in the general if she wins the nomination, they are destroying the Democrats' credibility and thus helping to ensure ever more privilege-defending and corrupt elected officials and government policy. But it would be a lot fairer of me to acknowledge that a lot of the Republicans are really scary, that my strategy isn't guaranteed to work the way I think it will, and that people evaluate the risks differently than I do.

That last sentence is the kindest acknowledgment that can be extended to the Clinton folks. Spielberg is about to make up for it, though. Bold emphasis is mine.

Similarly, those who disagree can continue to accuse people like me of "helping the GOP" in the 2016 election by pointing out that the Democrats have extreme flaws and don't always deserve our support. But it would be a lot fairer of them to acknowledge that millions upon millions of people have suffered at the hands of lesser-of-two-evils candidates over the years, that an open commitment to support a lesser-of-two-evils candidate robs voters of bargaining power, and that the Democratic Party has brought voter discontent upon itself.

Bottom line: if Hillary Clinton loses to Donald Trump, it won't be anybody's fault but HERS. I had to defriend someone on Facebook just yesterday who couldn't understand this, kept typing "Trump/GOP thanks you for your support," etc. and so on. There's no time to waste with horses' asses, led to water, who refuse to drink. Too many people outside the current electorate that need persuading to forfeit effort teaching swine to yodel.

Here is another olive branch.

Hopefully Sanders will win the Democratic primary and this discussion will become a moot point. In the meantime, it's good for those of us who believe in social justice to push each other on our tactics. We would just do well to remember that reasonable people with the same goals can disagree about which electoral strategy is most likely to help us achieve them.

Clinton people can do their thing, Sanders' people can do theirs, at least until he is disqualified. It makes more sense than to continue antagonizing each other on social media, no? I don't think not voting sends the right message -- somewhere around 75% of Americans already do that, and I don't get that the powers that be are listening. I also don't think writing in Sanders' name in November is a good way to go, but at least it's a protest vote and not a protest non-vote.

An alternative to vote in favor of, and not against some objectionable candidate or party -- outside the 'left-right, left-right' -- that matches up best with one's progressive populist principles. I also think that the movement -- a political revolution, thanks Bernie -- makes the strongest statement when it advocates for a living wage.

Bernie Sanders has many of the right economic ideas, but he's also still too beholden to the military industrial complex as well as an abbreviated version of the Second Amendment (truncating the "well-regulated militia" part, like the NRA and all of its adherents do). And I simply don't think that his social justice message is going to reach enough minorities to help him get to the lead, and even if he got a sudden groundswell of support that pushed him to the front after winning Iowa and New Hampshire, that the DNC establishment would allow him to claim the nomination.

So the question remains: cast no vote, cast a symbolic protest vote, or cast a vote that really sends the loudest message to the DNC. The choice has always been, and will continue to be, yours.

What a load of twaddle.... No, if Nader didn't take votes away from Gore, we wouldn't have had Bush or Iraq because Nader's votes would have went to Gore.

I think it's very difficult to associate past political outcomes with current ones because nothing in politics is the same from one period to the next. Even the party landscape changes based on who is running.

The second choice of 80% of Nader voters was Gore, according to polls. Even Nader people agree to this. The 2000 contest came down to Florida. Bush won Florida by under 560 votes. Nader got 90,000 votes in Florida. Give Bush 20% of that 90K votes, and Gore 80%, Gore obviously wins easily. In fact, if half of the people who voted for Nader stayed home because the choice was between Bush and Gore, Gore still wins easily.

There is no other way to look at it.

And you continue to make his.

Here's Fact Check:

Quote cicerone imposter:


Take a look at the official Florida numbers.
Bush....2,912,790
Gore....2,912,253
Nader.......97,488
Bush wins Florida by 537 votes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000

Add 20% of Nader's vote to Bush. Add 80% of Nader's vote to Gore.

Bush.....2,932,288
Gore.....2,990,243
Gore wins Florida by 57,955 votes. Margin is far too great for a recount to take it away.

Even if half the Nader voters stay home, then the results are:
Bush......2,922,539
Gore......2,951,785
Gore wins by 29,246 votes. Again, larger than an honest recount will make a mistake on-the margin of victory is over 10 times the number of problem ballots.

The facts strongly indicate that Nader made the difference in Florida.

Which is. . . ?

No, they will not. Please report them.

Gore could not carry his own state. Check out how many Democrats crossed over to vote Republican. Nader did not hurt Gore. Gore gored himself. Which is a shame, because I like him better than Bill or Hillary.

He may not have carried his own state, but, Blickers has shown the exit polls which were taken at the time which folks said their second choice was Gore. Personally I didn't like Gore too much, but I would have voted for him any day rather than Bush.

Covered this before, but I'll repost the numbers. It does not matter if Gore got Tennessee or not, the election still came down to Florida. According to CI's link, in Florida:


According to the polls, 80% of the Nader voters had Al Gore as their second choice, 20% had Bush. Even Nader campaign officials agreed with this.

Take a look at the official Florida numbers.
Bush....2,912,790
Gore....2,912,253
Nader.......97,488
Bush wins Florida by 537 votes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000

Add 20% of Nader's vote to Bush. Add 80% of Nader's vote to Gore.

Bush.....2,932,288
Gore.....2,990,243
Gore wins Florida by 57,955 votes. Margin is far too great for a recount to take it away.

Even if half the Nader voters stay home, then the results are:
Bush......2,922,539
Gore......2,951,785
Gore wins by 29,246 votes. Again, the difference is larger than an honest recount will make a mistake on-the margin of victory is over 10 times the number of problem ballots.

The facts strongly indicate that Nader made the difference in Florida. It does not matter if a better Gore campaign would have meant that the election wouldn't have come down to Florida. Gore ran a strong enough campaign that if Nader was not running, he wins Florida and the White House.

If Bernie voters do not vote for Hillary, they will be playing the same role that Nader voters played in 2000. And you remember how well that turned out.

Forget it. Edgar will never concede the point.

How do you concede when Gore was such a loser in the polls that Bush, the goofiest candidate ever, had him on the ropes.

#1) The Democratic Party assumption is that most, if not all of Nader's votes came from people who would have voted for Gore if Nader had not run. That is a myth according to exit polls.

In Florida, CNN’s exit polling showed Nader taking the same amount of votes from both Republicans and Democrats: 1 percent. Nader also took 4 percent of the independent vote.
...
Had Nader not run, Bush would have won by more in Florida. CNN’s exit poll showed Bush at 49 percent and Gore at 47 percent, with 2 percent not voting in a hypothetical Nader-less Florida race.
If Nader hadn't run, about half of the Nader voters would have stayed home according to the exit polls.
#2) OK. So you don't believe exit polls. Then let's look at the actual votes.

Gore lost 191,000 self-described liberals to Bush, compared to less than 34,000 who voted for Nader.
Let's repeat this because it reinforces point #1: self-described liberals overwhelmingly voted for Bush instead of Nader.
Thus simple common sense says that the assumption that Nader's votes would simply go to Gore if Nader hadn't run is wrong (just like the exit polls said).
#3) So why did Gore lose to Bush? Democrats.

there are two other Florida constituencies that cost them more votes than Nader did. First, Democrats. Yes, Democrats! Nader only drew 24,000 Democrats to his cause, yet 308,000 Democrats voted for Bush.
Nader wasn't the real betrayal of Democrats. Democrats were. Nearly a third of million of them.
Even more important, consider the math: since Bush was the main challenger, a Democrat voting for Bush hurts twice as much as a Democrat voting for Nader.
This is a fact. The reality-based community must learn to deal with it.
#4) Everyone seems to forget that there was more than 3 candidates running for office. In fact, there was TEN candidates that got more votes than the ultimate 537 margin.
For instance, Monica Moorehead, the Worker's World Party candidate, got 1,804 votes. I think we can be certain that people that voted for Moorehead wouldn't have voted for Bush. So why blame Nader and not Moorehead? In fact, that's exactly what Michael Moore does.

Had Monica not been on the ballot, it is safe to assume that at least 300 of her supporters would have voted for Al Gore. Exit polls confirm this fact. Al Gore was the second choice of over half of the Moorehead voters!
A vote for Monica was a vote for Bush.
In case you missed it, Michael Moore is being sarcastic. Please read the article. You'll see he doesn't buy the "a vote for Nader is a vote for Bush" for a second. Blaming Monica for Bush winning is actually more reality-based than blaming Nader.
But let's not stop there. There's also David McReynolds of the Socialist Party, who collected 622 votes. The Palm Beach Post speculated that it was McReynolds that cost Gore the election according to Wikipedia.
And finally there is James E. Harris, of the Socialist Workers Party who collected 562 votes.

So you see, supporting the "Blame Nader" logic of stealing votes from Gore (whether accurate or not), you must actually spread your blame out to at least three other leftist candidates in order to remain consistent.

#5) So who should a reality-based community really blame for Gore losing Florida? The answer is really quite simple: Al Gore is to blame.

Bush also probably would have won had the state conducted the limited recount of only four heavily Democratic counties that Al Gore asked for, the study found.
On the other hand, the study also found that Gore probably would have won, by a range of 42 to 171 votes out of 6 million cast, had there been a broad recount of all disputed ballots statewide. However, Gore never asked for such a recount. The Florida Supreme Court ordered only a recount of so-called "undervotes," about 62,000 ballots where voting machines didn’t detect any vote for a presidential candidate.
Gore's mistake was not asking for a general recount, only a partial one that he mistakenly thought would give him a better chance of winning. The implicit unfairness of a partial recount was the primary excuse the Supreme Court used to stop the recount. Gore's mistake was not trusting in democracy.
We can either blame every single third party candidate, and thus be anti-democracy, or we put the blame where it belongs - on Al Gore.
[Update: Why bring this up now? Because partisan Democrats stil raise the specter of Ralph Nader whenever there is a leftist candidate challenging an incumbent Democrat.
So why is it OK to mention Ralph Nader then, but not now? Especially when it is a myth?

[Update #2: I thought this was interesting.

Why are we only focusing on the votes he didn’t get from the much smaller Nader pool, than the votes he didn’t get from the much larger Bush pool?
And why are the Dems who voted for Nader expected to “do the right thing” and vote for Gore, more so than the ones who voted for Bush? Why isn’t the party condemning Dems who voted for Bush as turncoats and sell-outs, instead of simply bashing those far fewer who went for Nader? Answer: the Democratic Party is much more comfortable with their members who lean right, than those who lean left, and bashing the former might cost them in future elections, while bashing the latter is seen as safe, because, after all, we have “nowhere else to go.” In fact, Gore lost seven-and-a-half times more Democrats to Bush, than he lost Democrats and Independents combined to Nader.
[Update #3: OK. Some people need help with basic math.
third party voting means a vote for the OTHER party - you can NOT deny that.
Anyone that can do math can deny that. Here, I'll help you.
Let's say there is a race between two major parties: Party 'D' and Party 'R', just to make it simple.

Let's say a voter registered with Party D, votes for a third party. Let's say Party 'G'.
That vote hurts Party D by one vote, but it doesn't help party R.

However, if a voter registered with Party D votes for Party R, that both hurts Party D by one vote and helps Party R by one vote.
1 + 1 = 2

So you see, the 308,000 Democrats who voted Republican in 2000, hurt the Democratic Party many times more than the 24,000 Democrats that voted for Nader.
Yet the Democrats have decided to blame it all on Nader. It makes one think that maybe assigning blame based on reality isn't the point here.

[Update #4: A lot of people are saying that those hundreds of thousands of Democrats that voted for Bush were DINOs, so we shouldn't expect much from them.
Yet these same people are demonizing Nader voters. Well, about 76% of Nader voters in 2000 were not Democrats. They were largely independents.
Does it seem fair to give Democrats who voted for Bush a pass, but demonize independents who didn't vote for Bush?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/12/6/1260721/-The-Nader-Myth

Gore fought back. The polls had him down a week before the election, but then they showed him fight back hard. Any way you look at it, Nader's votes in Florida made the difference for Bush in Florida, which made the difference in the whole election.

You must not have even considered what I just posted. You are 100% wrong.

I think it was close enough the NRA was a decisive influence.