I'm not trying to get Jill Stein elected president. I'm trying to get her party enough votes for Federal funding so that when the Democratic party continues to push an economic agenda that undermines the wealth of the middle and lower class, there will be a competitive, grassroots, left wing alternative available to the progressives who won't be able to afford to influence the Democratic party anymore.

Plus, an additional mainstream party pushing leftist values into the mainstream will help legitimize those values among the people. The libertarian party will probably reach that threshold for Federal funding this year. While they may weaken the Republican party's chances as right wing presidential candidates, don't think for a second that their existence in the mainstream won't be helping legitimize right wing fiscal views that have also been undermining the wealth of the middle and lower class.

There is no mainstream political party looking out for the economic security of the middle and lower classes right now. This should be your number one priority. This would dramatically undercut the economic insecurity and atmosphere of fear that leads to things like Brexit and demagogues like Trump.

And that is an entirely valid reason to vote for her. I was just worried people were jumping on board without realizing what they might be getting themselves into.

Understandable, but the Green Party is still in a malleable state. The language regarding homeopathy has already been removed from their platform and guiding it towards something less pandering and more evidence based should not be very difficult compared to trying to fight billionaires for the soul of the Democratic Party. While I understand your frustration and unwillingness to vote for a General Election candidate, please consider throwing yourself behind the reasons above for a Green Party vote. The lesser evil fallacy has shown itself to be nothing more than a choice between how fast we want to race to the bottom and if we want to break free from that, we need to convince enough people to think about voting strategically for future elections.

This is a good outlook... except for the fact that doing so now is voting for the dumpster fire with a bad spray-on tan.

When isn't a vote against a dumpster fire?


Nixon?
Regan?
Bush Sr.?
Bush?
Mitt Romney?
Trump?

I mean come on, these guys are all fucking repugnant on their own merits. The best I can say about any of them is that Bush Sr. at least wasn't completely incompetent.

I think the term 'dumpster fire' is meant to specifically imply something particularly messy and out of control. A complete disaster is the main Urban Dictionary definition. Sure, all the Republicans you mention here (and some would argue the intervening Democrats as well) were indeed repugnant, but nevertheless fairly deliberate and controlled. The real question is whether Trump truly is a 'dumpster fire'.
If so then he's one that people seem to be drawn to like moths to, well, a dumpster fire.

But this is literally the argument every time. Believe it or not, some of us a poor as shit and don't have forever to wait for moderates to catch up with current and real needs. How many times do we have to accept this line of reasoning before it's reasonable for us to cry foul?

Sure, I get your point.
All I can say in general is that it sucks waiting for moderates to catch up with current and real needs, but it sucks more watching conservatives actively deny them.

Sure, but giving me not what I need is not exactly helpful. I am not saying both parties are the same, but I am saying that neither party is prepared to do things we actually need to do in order to say competitive, to relieve poverty, or honestly... save the fucking world before we turn into Venus.

So yeah, I get you. I really do, but we are approaching the point were further delay on ANY of those things is disastrous for our present and future.

This is the inevitable outcome of the "lesser evil" strategy - you just get bigger and bigger evils as time goes on.

That entirely depends where you live and the electoral system that states has.

If you live in, say, California, there's nothing wrong with voting for Jill Stine. If Hillary can't win California she's already lost the election to Trump.

If you live in a battle ground state- well, that's another story.

Who is president next doesn't really matter as much as the two SCOTUS justices they're going to nominate.

Right. Maybe next time the Republican candidate will be an adorable puppy. That way, if I vote my conscience like the selfish jerk that I am, the worst that will happen is President Puppy chews on the White House drapes.

Yeah, I don't want Stein to win, I want the Green Party to get enough votes to earn a seat at the big kids' table. My hope is that when that happens, they'll realize that disaffected progressives are a much more valuable demographic than moonbats, cranks, and crystal-gazers and adjust their platform accordingly.

Well, judging from other country's Green parties, I would not hold my breath. Though, to be fair other countries tend to have a much more progressive left wing.

People always tell themselves "I'm doing this to make the Green party/third party viable!" during a presidential election when it makes pretty much no difference for the Green party. Jill isn't getting elected.

How come no one gets high and mighty about 3rd parties during the 2-year local elections? Why aren't they getting Green party congressmen in office, to actually make a Green party presence in government?

Its isn't about wanting a viable third party. Its thumbing your nose at the other two.

5% of the popular vote in this election will qualify the Green Party for $10+ million in federal campaign funding in 2020. That's going to do a lot more to establish them as a viable third party alternative than just electing a couple county dog catchers would.

And let's face it, most Republican and Democrat voters don't bother showing up to the polls in off years either.

People do get high and mighty during the 2-year local elections, but how often do you hear about a state legislature race three states over?

I'm voting for Jill Stein solely to piss off Dan Savage.

Now that sir, is a protest vote.

That old coot Sanders is another pseudoscience loon, although his crackpot notions about sex and cancer are kind of endearing.

I am pretty sure Sanders does not still support that position, and did not flip flip back and forth after he changed his mind?

Also, the dude was 28 at the time. I remember being a 28 year old shit head, willing to try stupid shit. It wasn't that long ago.

Do you have something better than this?

I guess, unlike you, I don’t view 30-year-olds as some kind of embryonic stage in human development – I consider that damn near middle aged.
Grown men who are fond of idiotic ideas grow up to be old men fond of idiotic ideas.

How does that even work? Do you stop having new experiences altogether, or do you just stop learning from them? Either way sounds pretty sad.

It's true that you change a lot more as grow old and have new experiences, but that entirely depends on the foundation holding all your experiences and letting you trim and weed out things you no longer agree with.

This is why older generations stop liking new things.

So, you contend that someone who is 28 has the same amount sense as someone someone who is 39 years old? Someone that is 70+, provided they do not have some of dementia? Because I will tell you right now, that is just plainly retarded.

I am not saying he wasn't an adult responsible for himself, I am saying that everyone gets older and not everything people believe last forever.

In the case of Jill Stein, this is current events.

30 is the new 20. Has been since the financial crash started about 10 years

I bet you eat your bread with the butter-side up like a Yook.

Numbers doesn't understand the difference between describing something and believing something. He's convinced that Eli Wiesel was an anti-Semite.

I would make individual Trump and Gary Johnson posts explaining how they suck shit, but I am pretty sure everyone here is already well aware.

I haven't looked in to gery johnson. He seems "reasonable" for a libertarian candidate, in that it would be about the same as another bush as opposed to how crazy trump is. Are there any Crazy ideas/ things he's said that I missed that show him to be particularly nuts?

Well, Gary Johnson can claim that he not for regressive social change, but that is simply not correct according to his views on abortion:


Don't require insurers to provide birth control. (May 2012)
No federal funding for stem cell research. (Jan 2012)
Women's right to choose until fetal viability. (Jun 2011)
Right to choose up until viability of the fetus. (May 2011)
Leave the decision up to the woman. (Jan 2001)

So, he once held the position I could agree with in 2001. Sadly his mind has change towards and awful outlook.

He would like to make it possible to bankrupt individual states, which might solve some problems but is absolutely going to most harshly effect the poor the poor, mostly of state that Republicans have driven into the ground with the sort of tax reforms he would like to impose.

A party built on basic distrust of government in general can never do anything useful.

So how is a medical doctor and researcher calling for more medical research a bad thing?

My favorite part about this attack piece is when the hack writes "Stein insults progressives like me by claiming the real reason we’re concerned that she’s promoting vaccine distrust is that we’re part of a conspiracy to smear her."

Hack writer who is conspiring to smear Stein is insulted that Jill Stein would claim that the hack writer is part of a conspiracy to smear her.

Because "we need more research and regulation" as a response to already-clear research and regulation is the language anti-vaxxers use to avoid saying anti-vaxx. "Oh, vaccines in general are fine, it's just OURS that do things we cannot back up with actual facts."

This is a perfect example of why people need to remember fucking context. She was talking to anti-vaxxers when she made the comment. I agree that she did not say vaccines are bad, but that is base pandering, and anyone with who can understand the context the statement is given in can understand that.

This woman should not court atheist and rationalist as she has been trying to do, if she does not understand that we are not just going to forget that shit. We make fun of that shit when elected politicians do it, why would we vote for a candidate that we know will do it if elected?

Care to elaborate, Hugh E?

Interesting, but I would also argue irrelevant because Jill Stein will never be elected President, and considering how passionately her supporters hate Hillary Clinton, I doubt pointing out Stein's faults will dissuade them. They can always argue 'who cares if she's an anti-vaxxer? It's not like she'll actually be President'.

Yes, but at this rate neither will Hillary. I am pointing out Jill Stein's bullshit because I honestly believe it's bullshit and think people planning to vote for her should be aware of that. It's not exactly a small number of people currently, we are talking about millions. No, she wont win, but I do see the validity in question any candidate that might have a real effect on the election.

What do you think about the argument that the Neo Liberals, having left the progressives behind, assuming progressives will vote Neo Liberal, don't deserve the vote because there drifted so far right they're essentially Reagan-Republicans.

I would say you are in line with my own feelings exactly. Democrats have fucked this up by just assume everyone in the "Big Tent" will stay in just because someone else is worse. That is a stalling tactic that is destined to one day stop working, and this probably not that, but it's at least a start.

The DNC took what should have been a slam dunk election and worked overtime to fuck it up. They let us have a token champion, but stacked the deck against him to ensure the candidate they wanted eventually won. Most flabbergasting of all, is that they probably did not need to do that to get the desired results.

It feels a lot like the election cycle Bush Jr got elected.

My first election. To say it's stuck with me would be a massive understatement.

Hillary has my vote.

I think what some of our younger, more obstinate friends here fail to fully appreciate is the immediate, often dire consequences of accepting the greater of the evils. Or that sacrificing short-term compromise for perceived long term greater good can bite you in the ass, hard- and that long term greater good might still never come.

Or, as Seth Meyers eloquently put it-
Hey! A Message to Bernie or Bust Die-Hards


Also, I'll state for the record that for all of Hillary Clinton's faults, both real and imagined, the issue of reproductive rights alone is enough for me to cast an unequivocal vote for her. Not to diminish the importance of income inequality, money influencing politics, hawkish foreign policy, etc etc, but the freedom to decide one's own physical destiny is pretty damned fundamental. Anyone struggling to justify their decision might want to consider this.

Oh, please, don't act like this conversation is happening in a vacuum. For the past year I've watched you repeatedly harp on the young Bernie supporters while espousing the exact lesser evil strategies that have gotten us into this mess. Your generation has sold out an entire country and you keep trying to shift the blame to the disenfranchised people who are realizing that sooner or later people are going to have to fight and suffer for their economic security. You offer no solutions, seem to be completely oblivious to what's happening outside your own little sphere of existence, and have no historical awareness of what happens when an entire class of citizenry become so disenfranchised they find themselves with no civilized options left available to them. I don't want to see the world burn, I want avoid what's happened in ever other fucking country throughout history that has already stepped down this path. Excuse me if I don't have the patience for your ignorant, shortsighted, get in line, narrative.

edits: typos galore.

First of all I appreciate your actually using words to respond.
But somehow you've gotten a completely wrong impression of my views on Bernie, his young supporters, and all of the issues raised by his campaign, which in fact you and I are at least 99% in agreement with. Somehow, in your narrow, tone-deaf bubble, you've decided that my view of the voting populace as problematic and nowhere near ready for the kind of dramatic reformation espoused by his campaign (as demonstrated by the lopsided results of the primary campaign) makes me the enemy of the Revolution. Really too bad, and strategically inept if the idea is to try to win people over to the cause. Here you accuse me of some kind of generational chauvinism, and yet you condemn my entire generation for 'selling out the entire country, and shifting the blame to the disenfranchised'. So who's engaging in pointless, divisive generational warfare here? Probably it's pointless to tell you that the vast majority of my peers, including my wife and myself, were eager Sanders supporters, and even in choosing the dreaded lesser of two evils, are still strong advocates of single payer health care, $15+ minimum wage, free universal college education, income redistribution, ending institutional racism etc etc.
So do yourself a favor and save your indignant spittle for your real enemy- like maybe the actual fascist who's about to take us down that path of 'no civilized options'. Or just keep blaming previous generations for all your problems and see where that gets you.

God damn it, Jill.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07/29/jill-stein-on-vaccines-people-have-real-questions/?tid=sm_fb#comments

See, it's not just the democrats that can totally fuck up the future of their party.

And they say the right is anti-science.

She just can't help herself, it seems:

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2016/08/jill-stein-worries-wi-fi-is-dangerous-for-kids/