Why Third Place Sucks

No one wants to read yet another piece about how crazy Trump is and how much they should vote for Hillary Clinton. All how Jill Stein is an election spoiler and just runs to protest the two party candidates. Then there is the libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson. I don’t know why it is that Bernie supporters feel the urge to vote for someone who is so obviously not Bernie Sanders. While I can understand why a Bernie Supporter would be drawn to the Green party I can’t for the life of me figure out their desire to vote for Gary Johnson.

Let’s look at it rationally and perhaps point by point to better understand the similarities and glaringly obvious differences:

-         Bernie Sanders believes in doing something about the environmental crisis. Gary Johnson strongly opposes doing something about it.

-         Bernie Sanders ran on the idea of taxing the rich and more tax breaks to the poor. Gary Johnson believes in taxing the rich less.

-         Bernie Sanders believes voter registration should be easier so more people have the ability to vote and will vote. Gary Johnson thinks our current system is fine and does not want to do anything about it.

Those are just three major points that seem to be obvious when you think about what the libertarian party is. Libertarian means more autonomy or freedom while socialism means community or groups. So why would those who so ardently supported Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist, stand to support someone who would in essence be the complete opposite of their savior?

You will see articles such as this one, 6 Reasons Why Bernie Sanders Supporters Should Vote for Governor Gary Johnson. These articles are all fine and good but what they fail to mention is these three key points of Johnson’s campaign. The three things that I feel any Sanders supporter should feel strongly about. That is unless you really are just so ardently supporting Sanders because he is a Washington outsider and all you want is to vote for someone who is not a part of the system. If that is the case you should just stop reading shut your computer, or turn off your phone, and wait to vote for Trump in the fall.

That is another section of the Bernie crowd I can’t seem to understand. Do they actually care about the future of the country or do they just care about stopping “The Man” from keeping power? They think that if a person who is not a Washington insider gets office the heavens will open up and mana will fall from the sky. I can admit that is a sweet dream to have and I voted for Sanders because I wanted some of that dream. Perhaps the heavens would not open up and the mana would only come every other Thursday but it would happen in spits and spurts if he was elected.

That was the main argument from the base Democratic camp when Bernie was still in the race. His plans can never work they “will never work”, “He won’t actually get anything done”, and all sorts of other things to discourage people from wanting to vote for him. I think it worked a little, people told themselves it would never work so they voted for the other “guy” and we are where we are now. This is not a rant against Hillary or the DNC but a discussion about the choices we have to make in the coming months. When I voted for Sanders I did that knowing that not everything he said would happen but I wanted him to try. Isn’t that what campaigning is all about, making speeches about things you want to see change, getting elected and then trying to make the changes you spoke of? If not, then why bother with the whole circus in the first place. I know that Hillary may not fulfill all the “promises” she makes on the campaign trail but I am willing to give her a shot at trying.

So if your whole thing is finding someone who is all about being outside the corrupt two-party system then maybe you should look to Jill Stein. I mean she is even more liberal than Bernie Sanders and she has explicitly said, “The two-party system is broken.” So why not go for her? She seems like a great choice for ardent Bernie Supporters. Very liberal, check. Outside the system, check. Able to defeat Donald Trump, absolutely not. While Jill Stein may seem like a good choice for those who just don’t like Hillary Clinton or the two-party system I think you may want to reconsider your options.

Let’s start with the obvious one first. While Sanders, Clinton, and Johnson have all held a public office or two, Jill Stein has only ever been a candidate, and not a very good one at that. She said to the New York Times before the 2012 election that she was no longer a practicing physician and said, “I’m now practicing political medicine because politics is the mother of all illnesses.” An admirable answer to the question but what is she really doing by running other than pulling liberal voters away from the candidate who can actually do something?

Her stance of campaign finance reform is was pushed her away from the two-party system and drove her into the loving open arms of the Green party. A stance that fit nicely into Bernie’s view on campaign finance but perhaps she should take a page out of his book because in this election alone, an election that Bernie is no longer in and was only in during the primary, Bernie Sanders raised $228,557,735 while Jill Stein has only raised $859,155. That is only a little more than 0.003% of what Sanders raised. In 2012 she raised about the same amount and walked away with 470,000 votes, roughly 0.36%. Do you know how many people voted in 2012? 129,085,403 people voted in the general election. Do you know how many Gary Johnson walked away with? 1,275,971 people voted for Johnson, which is almost 1% of the vote. By comparison Romney walked away with 60,933,500 votes (47.2%) and Obama walked away with 65,915,796 (51.06%). That means that if you factor in all the percentages from all four candidates there were still more people who voted for someone other than Jill Stein (0.39% to be approximate).

I digress though and need to get to my original point about Dr. Jill Stein and I use the doctor because I think she needs to give back her degree. When she was asked about the anti-vaccination movement, a thing I wish didn’t exist, she had this to say, “there are real questions that needed to be addressed. I think some of them at least have been addressed. I don’t know if all of them have been addressed.” Which is the most backwards answer to the question if ever I heard one. She says there is public distrust in the FDA due to perceived influence from the pharmaceutical industry. The problem is not with the FDA and it never has been. While the narrative has shifted to the “distrust” with the FDA and how they are “in bed” with the pharmaceutical companies it all started with a falsified report from a doctor in the UK. A doctor whom I might add has since lost his license because he made up the study and put the entire world in danger because he wanted to be proven right or something stupid like that. As a medical doctor and someone seeking public office Jill Stein should not be as concerned with some perceived distrust in the FDA and more with the health and public safety of her constituents. She puts us all at risk by not denouncing the anti-vaccination movement and should not be trusted to run our country.

Maybe I am overreacting to something trivial but I think I should end by saying this. I want to vote for Bernie Sanders. If I wasn’t so afraid of Donald Trump as president I would write his name in and hope for the best but I won’t and for one simple reason, he asked me not to. When Bernie Sanders stood before the world and declared his support for Hillary Clinton he did not do so lightly. He stood before us and proclaimed that after a very long race and some very heated exchanges he would support Clinton because she is the best choice going into the November election. He promised that he would work not only with a Clinton presidency but with his supporters to continue the revolution he started. He was not giving up he was shifting his focus. If he can’t make the changes as president he will do them as Senator and countryman.

Don’t get me wrong I was reluctant to vote for Hillary at first as well and as you most likely know I was quite critical of her candidacy during the primary race. My shifting support does not negate my critical eye towards her candidacy and potential presidency. I have the right as an American to be critical of my elected officials and hold them to a higher standard than I would myself or my fellow man. So just because I am going to vote for Hillary Clinton does not mean I will not still look for her to answer questions I have about how she works as President. That being said I will vote for her and I will do it happily.

Now think about your vote for a second, no really think about it. Where should it go? Should you put all your efforts into stopping Donald Trump a man who is literally the antithesis of Bernie Sanders? Trump may be an “outsider” and not as “corrupt” as Hillary and the other candidates but he is not above making shady backroom deals and lying about those deals after they are made. Think about it this way. Bernie Sanders got in this race to fight the 1%, the billion-class, and stop them from running this country. Donald Trump is a billionaire, a one percenter, and should be stopped by everyone who fought on the side of Bernie Sanders. So as a Bernie Bro or whatever you wish to call me I am standing by Hillary. She may not be the candidate we need right now but she is the candidate we deserve.

Let’s be real for a minute here and chat about Secretary Clinton. I want to vote for her not just because Bernie asked me to or because I can use a cool quote from The Dark Knight to describe this race. I want to vote for her because she speaks in positives. She wants to make changes because we can be better. She does not go to a campaign rally and call people names and kick babies out. She has not offered to pay the legal fees for someone committing an act of violence at her rallies. I am not saying she doesn’t pull out the negative words sometimes, we all do, but she does not run at 99% negative like Donald Trump. He yells about walls, that he will make others pay for, while she talks of finding a way to make it easier for these people who so desperately want to be here to find a legal and safe way to do so. He says we should stop all people of a certain religion from entering the country, Christians and Jews are just as likely to commit act of terrorism, while she speaks of welcoming them and loving them so as to not bolster the ranks of dangerous terrorist organizations such as ISIL.

We should not think our vote above that of others and vote for Hillary. You saying it does not matter to you so you will vote for Stein or Johnson or write-in Sanders is privileged speak coming from a privileged place. I know that we cannot allow Trump to win and the best way to do that, no, the only way to do that is to vote for Clinton in the fall. By allowing your voice to say you would rather allow Trump to win and destroy the lives of millions of Americans, and potentially the world. Is saying you do not actually care about your fellow man like Sanders does. It is saying that the problems Sanders has fought so hard for do not matter so much as making a statement.

I am a working-class white man that was born in Washington state. I don’t speak another language, although I have tried to learn a couple. I don’t drive American cars, but who does these days, and I am basically set if Trump wins. I will find myself in a world of little change. You know why, because I have privilege and that is just that. I am not trying to hold that over your head or anything. I was born with it, like brown hair or detached earlobes. Yet I know I have privilege and I am speaking from a place of privilege and I know that Donald Trump is the wrong choice and Hillary Clinton is the right one.

So from a white guy I am asking you, other privileged people, to please not throw away your vote and hand it on a golden (only the best, no silver for Trump) platter to Trump. We live in a world with a two-party system and that is what we have to live with. So pick one or the other and stop being idiots. You can either have a candidate that may get some of the stuff Bernie talked about done or you can have Trump. You will not get Stein, or Johnson, or Bernie, or some other ridiculous third, fourth, or fifth party candidate. You will get one or the other and you should do everything in your power to not let it be the GOP.

If you must vote third party, then do it at the local level. Get your community organized to vote in those third party candidates for state city council, state representative, county officials, and everything in between. That is how you can get the narrative changed. That is how you can send a message to the folks in Washington that you want real change in this country. That is how you tell Hillary Clinton that it is time we stop living by the party rules and we want real and direct change in this country. That is how we get single-payer healthcare, $15 minimum wage, higher taxes for the rich and lower taxes for the poor, and free-college tuition. We can do it from the ground up. You know it, I clearly know it, and obviously that is what Bernie’s Our Revolution is all about (the announcement is not for another couple of days but I bet I’m right).