Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin. Could a third-party candidate do this?by Thomas NeuburgerI'm thinking out loud these days, trying to crack the uncrackable nut, escape the inescapable trap laid for policy-minded voters, the one that says “It's a Republican or a neoliberal; there's no other viable choice. Pick one.”More and more, people want to pick neither.
When MSNBC's colossal bore, Chris Matthews, sprung his gotcha question on poor, befuddled Gary Johnson about what foreign leader he admires and looks up to-- is there one YOU admire and look up to?-- he succeeded in getting himself into the next day's news flow. But did he succeed in making a dent in Johnson's 7% national support? Probably not. I'd wager that Johnson's fans like him a lot more than they like the annoyingly shrill get-off-my-lawn asshole Chris Matthews. According to Quinnipiac almost 30% of voters under 35 said they would vote for Johnson.
Before the faceoff between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, many were pleading that Lester Holt, the NBC anchor and moderator Monday night, to be a “fact checker.”Any delusions in that regard should have been dashed right away as he perpetrated a root falsehood at the very start of the event.Holt claimed that the event was “sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization.
This week The Nation features dueling perspectives on voting for Jill Stein, Kshama Sawant's Don't Waste Your Vote On The Corporate Agenda-- Vote For Jill Stein And The Greens and Joshua Holland's Your Vote For Jill Stein Is A Wasted Vote.
The answer is that it surely has to be. While many Americans have been complaining about the two-party system for decades, never has the inherent idiocy of that system been so pronounced and obvious as in 2016 and the fact that the presidency will be contested by either a celebrity demagogue who at least half […]
There may be some Bernie voters who persuade themselves that the way to teach the corrupt and repulsive Democratic Party a lesson is to vote for Trump. There aren't many Bernie supporters that out of their minds though. My guess is that most will vote for Hillary and that some will stay home or skip the presidential race and that others will write in Bernie. I suspect, however that the number of votes Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets in November will be significantly higher than the 469,501 show got in 2012 against Obama and Romney.
The dissent within the Democratic Party that Sen. Bernie Sanders has sparked needs somewhere to go.It should go in a direction that doesn't back Clinton-- and doesn't help Trump.That seems like you can't do both those things, but you can if you parse it through and do some real work.That energy should not go to backing Hillary Clinton: We've been down that road before. Gov.
The NeverTrump movement doesn't really seem to be getting off the ground, although some of the OurPrinciplesPAC ads aren't bad, even if they seem to be largely ineffective. Over the weekend, the New York Times' Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin looked at the GOP establishment's puny efforts against the fascist bully who's been running circles around them.
When I was growing up, my grandfather always told me to never trust the Democratic Party. "They're not as bad as the Republicans." he always said, "but they're bad in their own way. They make believe they stand up for the working class, but they're just out for themselves." Even back then, it was clear the party was dominated by careerists. The Republicans complain about their party in the same way.
