Because, really, that’s all that’s at stake here.
I don’t hate Hillary and I’m not voting against her.
We really needed her once. We needed her in 2004 when the Bush administration was fucking everything all to hell. The Great Recession wasn’t even a twinkle in Wall Street’s eye but the deregulation of mortgage investing was about to put us all at the mercy of scum and villainy.
We needed someone to say, “What’s happened for the last four years cannot continue. We need a change.”
And the Democrats sent John Kerry to fight that battle. Seriously?
We needed Hillary then. We needed her popularity, the novelty of a woman president, the fierce life-long public servant that wouldn’t put up with Republican shenanigans.
And she failed us. Oh, sure, running against a sitting president is hard. Just ask Bob Dole. But heroes do it. They do the hard stuff because it needs to be done.
We needed her and she didn’t show up.
Someone probably told her the odds were not in her favor. Now she’s here and I don’t think she really wants to be. I think she’s here because the Democrats told her she needed to be. (“It’s your turn, woman-person.” Oh, well, thank you for finally giving me a chance. Assholes.)
There’s a chance she’s done all the public service she really wants to do but just couldn’t resist the lure of the can’t-lose campaign. (“The Republicans are a disaster, we’ll win easily. Queue Hillary.” Thanks for the vote of confidence, assholes.) It’s always been the people around the Clintons who make me queasy.
And there’s a chance she’s being used. Again.
Even if she wins, she’s not a hero. It’s more than likely she’s a puppet. Just like Trump.
The real power is in the Party and the Party doesn’t want a leader. It wants a win.
If one of the two major parties is going to win, they can sure as shit do so without me. Or you. Or that guy who keeps Liking all your Facebook posts telling me I’m wasting my vote.
Fuck you both.
I’m not voting against Hillary. I’m not even voting against Trump.
A Libertarian vote is for a party that doesn’t know it’s a Party. It doesn’t have the corruption of decades of power and entrenchment. It doesn’t have the stench of gerrymandering and election rigging and hanging chads and slanderous emails.
Sure, it’s a long shot. But the chances are better now than they’ve ever been. Better now than they were when I voted Libertarian in 2004 and Michael Badnarik finished fourth behind Ralph Nader, an independent. (Incidentally, Nader ran in 2008, too, and no one accused him of hurting the McCain/Palin ticket’s chances.)
If you really want things to change, you have to actually vote for change. Not change in the same old establishment asshole’s clothing.
Less than 1% of the vote doesn’t seem like much of a difference, still, pundits would have you believe that every vote in the popular election counts. I hear them:
A vote for a third party candidate is a vote for the candidate I hate more. So I should vote for the candidate I hate less and not waste my vote.
Again, fuck you.
Perot earned 18.9% of the popular vote but managed zero electoral college votes. And therein lies the trick: the electoral college will still swing whatever direction the Two Major Parties maneuver it to swing. In most states, the electoral college is winner-take-all.
All votes are created equal and the only one that doesn’t count is the one that isn’t cast.
So, really, your vote against Trump or against Hillary doesn’t really matter any more than my vote for Gary Johnson.
If you want to actually matter, stop your passive social media campaigning and get out there and volunteer: advocate and sacrifice in ways that demonstrate you have some skin in the game. Because though the pundits would have you believe your Likes and Tweets matter, in the end you’re just rallying the same feckless assholes who would vote a straight party ticket no matter who was on the top of the ballot.
Be willing to fight the good fight. Not the easy one.
Consider what life would be like if we weren’t under the hooves donkeys and elephants. Every election cycle Libertarians gain more traction and every gain is a win.
I’ll vote for that.
