Lizzie, the numbers don’t lie.

There’s a reason for the phrase “Lies. Damn lies, and statistics.”

I think I showed that they do lie — at least they lied when you used them to compare the 2012 election to a reason why every vote counted for Obama — the President, by the way, who brought us indefinitely extended Bush tax cuts, no less than five new wars in addition to becoming the only President in American history to have been at war for the entirety of both terms by extending the two wars he committed to ending, an extended and expanded Patriot Act, a bigger and ‘worser’ drone program with a 90 percent failure rate (failure rate, by the way, means they kill targets who were unintended, typically civilians, not that they just ‘missed the mark’), even friendlier relations (it was, surprisingly, possible) with Big Oil than Bush Jr., increased night raids to deport undocumented immigrants, a health care bill written by insurance companies, and is now pushing for the TPP.

Oh boy, I sure am glad that we rallied together for ‘hope and change’ like we did! To think, we could have had a corporatist, warmongering elite in the White House! Close call.

Hillary or Trump will be our next president because over 80% of likely voters want one of those two to get the job.

Are you really suggesting that 80 percent of voters “want one of those two to get the job?” Then you have not been paying attention the ‘lesser evil’ narrative and fear-tactics both parties are using against the other. Only 9 percent of America actually voted to put those two in contest with one another in the first place. Only 68 percent of Clinton’s polled supporters say they will “definitely” vote for her in national polls and 67 percent of Trump’s say the same. 80 percent of voters do not want one of those two to get the job. In fact, Gallup reports the percentage of people who dislike *both* candidates doubles the numbers of 2008 and quadruples the numbers of 2012 in record distaste.

It’s nothing but pure fantasy to pretend there’s some plurality of disaffected progressives waiting in the wings to elevate Jill Stein from her 2% polling average.

I believe you have mistakenly assumed both my goals and my beliefs to be that Jill Stein will win this election? No. And, again, I ask you why you’re so worried about Stein if she has only 2 percent — so much so that it is nearly all you do on Medium to attack posts relating to third party support ;) ?

According to Pew, Johnson is taking 11% of the Republican vote and 7% of Democratic voters — still a 4% margin on “his candidacy hurting Trump’s chances,” if you believe those votes inherently belong to the party they are affiliated with. Stein takes 3 percent of Republican voters and 6 percent of Democratic voters in the same poll — still a net 1% margin in favor of Clinton. Further, Clinton is taking 5 percent of the Republican vote and Trump 4 percent of the Democratic vote… so she’s up another percentage point from people supporting their party’s direct opposition.

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 as the last remaining candidate of four still relying on special interest money (and ironically claiming to be a champion of campaign finance reform ;)), 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? Again, third party candidates still net 1% negative from Trump’s assumed supporters. Either she has earned enough votes to win or she has not.

I’m sorry you dislike the Democratic nominee so much…

I do not have a vendetta against Hillary Clinton as a human being, it is her record I take issue with. In fact, I even took her advice — examine the record for indicators of what a politician will do in the future.

…(though your comparison to dead meat smacks of ageism)…

Nice try, but it’s simply putrid menu items that were the comparison — and I had to find an analogy that conveyed the churn in my stomach the same way the thought of either of these two Plutocratic besties leading ‘the free world’ does.

You’re not the only one with an opinion, so at some point you have to show a little faith in your fellow citizens who share many of your values that our preferred candidate isn’t the she-devil she’s been made out to be.

I have faith in citizens — I have faith that they can overturn an antiquated two party system rejected by 90% of the developed world that continues to produce ‘lesser evil’ voting options in which the people lose either way. I also have faith that they can make quality decisions with all of the information.

What I do not have faith in is the mainstream media’s interest to convey “all of the information” to the American people.

And the reason why Democrats despise the Green Party is because they’re a competitor siphoning from the pool of liberal voters.

They also ‘siphon’ from the Republican pool of voters and read above for how the Libertarian Party is actually ‘siphoning’ more of their voters. And what happened to that faith in the people you claimed to have just in the sentence before? Do you not have faith in third party voters to make informed decisions? Your argument relies entirely on the idea that third parties ‘siphon’ votes that already ‘belong’ to one of the two parties? And yet 60 percent of Americans (arguably, you don’t sound like one of them) want more parties to represent them — how do you think that happens, exactly?

There’s obvious overlap between the Democrat and Green platforms (e.g. climate change, income inequality, racial equality, women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, health care reform, criminal justice reform, etc., etc.), so of course we want all of the progressive voters to join us under the tent of the Democratic Party.

Yes. There is obvious overlap between what the Democratic Party and the Green Party say. The difference is that I don’t believe for a second that the Democratic nominee (nor her predecessor, whom I voted, campaigned, and donated to) has any intention on enacting those reforms thanks to the muddying of the water from the ludicrous amount of support she received from corporate donors. As I said, Clinton is the last remaining candidate of four relying on special interest money to get elected — and, boy, does she have a lot of it. Her war chest is nearly three times that of Trump’s.

I suppose she can show us what that money can do for her that our votes couldn’t — since she deemed being the last willful violator of the public’s interest in campaign finance reform more important than their support.

How are these outcomes to be logically expected?

• Environmentalist policy from a beneficiary of fossil fuel money who “sold fracking to the world.”
• Wealth redistribution or policies to end income inequality from a Plutocrat who helped exaggerate it.
• Racial equality from a surrogate for the 1994 crime bill who fought against the Civil Rights Act and from the party who does not support the platform of Black Lives Matter.
• Women’s rights:

• LGBTQ rights from the champion of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and DOMA, who ‘evolved’ on her position 20 years too late to pass for ‘progressive.’
• Health care reform from the Insurance Party candidate who claims single-payer to be ‘impractical’ for the country she claims is exceptional. So exceptional, in fact, that we are one of the only remaining developed nations without this ‘impractical’ solution.
• Criminal justice reform from the OG spokeswoman for mass incarceration a la “superpredators” despite predictions that it would have exactly the racist, classist effect the 94 crime bill does today. If Hillary were to campaign on ending the War on Drugs, it would go a long way to garner support. She has not.

To say one supports these issues and to vote for someone who is arguably incapable of enacting effective reform for them given her conflicts of interest through her donors and the fact that she had a prominent hand in causing or expanding the problems one seeks solutions for must require a logic beyond my ability. Does not compute.

Are we interested in taking politicians at their word or their record?