Sunday, March 13, 2016

Before You Accuse Me ...

Sick to death of whinging, entitled Democrats insisting a vote for anyone other than Hillary Clinton is tantamount to supporting the GOP and their band of radical, theocratic, bigoted, plutocratic, authoritarian nutters, I started drafting this post to argue against that kind of strategic voting against my best interests. Then a string of tweets caught my eye and I decided to save time and just storify that, so you'll find that below.

Look, I voted for Bernie Sanders in the NC primary -- voted early, the primary is this coming Tuesday -- and there is no chance I will vote for a Republican in the general. However, I won't be voting for Hillary Clinton in the general election. I've had it with Wall Street-funded neo-liberal hawks being in charge; won't vote for another.

I get where the sentiment comes from. I voted for Obama, twice in the general (with great hope the first time) and I voted for Gore, Kerry, and Bill Clinton before that -- although I supported Jerry Brown in 1992. (In 1988, I wasn't old enough to vote to in the general, fell a few months shy, but I was for Dukakis once he sealed the nomination. Had been pulling for Jesse Jackson.) After Obama's first term, I was considering switching to Green and voting for Jill Stein, but ultimately played the game, thinking better Obama than Romney. Had tried to work out a vote swap arrangement where I'd pledge to vote Stein if a Republican leaning Romney would pledge to vote for the Libertarian candidate, but nobody took me up on the offer. Obama's second term was certainly less a disaster than a Romney one would have been, and I shudder to think how quickly Romney and the Senate would have shoved a Scalia clone down our throats, but I still regret not voting against drones, secrecy, and no end in site for the wars in the Middle East, not to mention our disgusting relationships with Saudi Arabia and Israel. It's been eating me up inside that, by voting for Obama, I undercut all my blogging about Saudi Arabia persecutes secular bloggers, and about Israel's apartheid state. I'm against them, but I voted for an administration that has done nothing I can see to try to change either. So, I've been part of the problem.

What I won't listen to are claims that my vote is, effectively, for Drumpf, or whoever the GOP end up nominating. Just as the premise that Nader supporters cost Gore the Presidency, and delivered us into the hands of Bush/Cheney was rubbish, the argument is still naff. Nader supporters aren't to blame for Bush. That's the fault of (among others)  Gore and Gore supporters not being persuasive enough on the progressive issues that Nader championed, which people actually cared about. After the next election, I'll be able to argue my positions with a clear conscience because I won't have voted for another neoliberal.



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