If Hillary Clinton cannot win without the reported 5 percent voting for Jill Stein, despite her being the last remaining candidate of four relying on special interest money and Gary Johnson ‘taking’ 12 percent of the Republican vote, I suppose it must take deeming political opposition politically incorrect to do it.
It’s interesting that your number one claim of the purpose of voting is that your vote should be used to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Most interesting that the marginalized groups of America and the international community are not rallying behind Clinton, their supposed savior. Black Lives Matter, Standing Rock, citizens of the Middle East who stand to lose the most from a Clinton presidency, activists for campaign finance reform and the end of mass incarceration, veterans… these groups are not lining up to support Clinton because they know what the many slacktivists with Internet connections who claim to be ‘progressive’ do not: They must oppose eventual President Hillary Clinton’s administration to fight for progress.
Let marginalized groups speak for themselves and amplify their voices, do not speak for them. This is a great read from a friend on why you shouldn’t vote for Hillary claiming to protect the LGBTQ community:
And yet, the most perfect irony of your ‘dig’ on Stein supporters is the reality that to vote for Hillary Clinton is to put marginalized groups directly in danger. As she has said — we know what politicians will do in the future based on their record.
Clinton’s record shows the gutting of the middle and working classes through welfare ‘reform’ that, 20 years later, has doubled extreme poverty levels.
Her record shows Kissingeresque and Negroponte-like warmongering and her experience in the State Department has been endorsed by no less than the two men themselves (along with a string of neoconservatives).
Her record shows a lifelong attack against the LGBTQ community, only to ‘evolve’ twenty years too late to still call herself a ‘progressive.’
Her record shows a disastrous trail of failed states and a rejection of foreign policy expertise (you might remember she was appointed to the State Department with no relevant military or foreign policy leadership as a concession for her ‘loss’ in 2008).
Her record also shows the rejection of refugees from war zones she created as Secretary of State.
Her record is as pro-business, anti-Democratic, quid-pro-quo-ing as you get and you would like to hand down classifications of Stein supporters who would dare take five percent of Hillary Clinton’s already meager gains, in the name of progressive issues?
Wow, okay. I mean, that level of cognitive dissonance is sort of jarring to encounter.
The Washington Post has stated multiple times that Clinton’s international policies are to the right of Donald Trump. Really, can you claim you ‘care about’ (or fight for) marginalized groups and vote for someone who has spent their entire career — from her pro-segregationist past to her war profiteering present — targeting and further disenfranchising those very groups?
This, from your article, represents an utter lack of understanding of activism:
“Whether you’re Greenpeace activists attacking Hillary Clinton, or you’re shrieking about the TPP..”
Greenpeace activists do not attack Hillary Clinton, they oppose her policies and duplicitous record. People are not shrieking about the TPP, which you clearly do not understand the gravity of, they are opposing candidates who support a trade deal that facilitates corporate fascism.
Agitation of government spurs change of government — always has. You have those workers who “shrieked” in protest to thank for the 40-hour workweek and labor rights they fought for so you don’t have to. You can thank the “attacking” suffragettes for women’s rights and the list goes on and on and on and on.
Voting is an extremely marginal way to participate in democracy — and from the content of your post alone (I could be wrong), you don’t understand much about civil disobedience and its effect on government. If that’s correct and you’re not out being an agitating activist or attempting to hold office to change government from within, then what is your qualification for claiming to know what benefits or harms marginalized groups? Let the groups organized and working for change define their own agendas — which, for now, are not pro-Clinton.
But I suppose with the advantage Clinton holds with eight years’ head start as the de facto Democratic nominee with the full support of the corporate Democratic Party behind her, the millions and millions of dollars she has taken from special interest donors, and the inherent advantage of being one of two candidates out of four with any political experience whatsoever…she really doesn’t have anything to worry about, does she? Even without the support of the groups she campaigns on protecting, either she has earned enough votes to win or she has not.
If Clinton needs that five percent of voters to win, maybe you should ask why the DNC backed a candidate with such pisspoor odds against Donald Trump, despite predictions as early as January that she would not fare well on the national stage against him.
