There Is A Clear Choice For White House In 2016

It is neither Trump nor Clinton.

With the Democratic National Convention almost over and the first presidential debate looming, Americans are expected to disgruntedly cheer for one of the two major party nominees until the election night in early November, ignoring the evidence that they are the worst picks from both parties in a long long time.

Hillary Clinton is a pro-corporatist warmonger. She runs with extemely negative messaging of shaming everyone (first and foremost Bernie Sanders supporters) into voting for her while not even pretending to acknowledge the failings of her campaign. And it goes without saying that she has a royalty-like mentality of expecting to become President and is probably the only Democratic candidate that can be realistically beaten by Donald Trump. Not to mention she is literally the worst possible first female US president. Even Carly Fiorina could be better, and it is not like I’m a big fan. Elizabeth Warren would be much better, and I’m not a big fan either. I’m for more women in power though, so hopefully there are more female candidates for the higher offices in the future.

Donald Trump is not the fascist abomination the media paints him to be. The biggest concern with Trump is that no one can realistically predict what his presidency would be like. He is a man who doesn’t care about policies, the single most important thing in politics as basic word analysis suggests. Don’t believe anyone who says what Trump in White House entails, whether it is negative or positive — even Trump doesn’t know. Voting for Trump is like drawing a lottery ticket with a 1/1000000 chance of winning. You’ll need all the stars to line up correctly and pray for the best. Or you need to be pissed off at establishment as much as American lower-middle class is right now. Justifably so, considering their living conditions haven’t been improving much for the last few decades and the establishment both Clinton and Trump represent have been lacking in empathy.

But this election is special not only because both major candidates are disliked by most voters. It is also the election with one of the most competent tickets for the White House I’ve ever seen. Enter Gary Johnson and Bill Weld of the Libertarian Party.

You may think libertarians are batshit insane, and often they are. But these two are far from insane. On the contrary, they are among the few reasonable people left in the election season which brought much drama and little substance.

Just look at their records. They were Republican governors in predominantly blue states and were both reelected with comfortable margins. While in office they cared about what most people do care about: education, healthcare, infrastracture. They balanced budgets, brought down unemployment and opposed War On Drugs, arguably the main reason for the current state of black communities across the US. They were not ideological purists and did what they considered to be the best options for their states at the time. By the end of their tenures Johnson and Weld received rave reviews both on the left and the right.

The Libertarian ticket is still a hard sell not only because of the American two-party system, but also because Johnson is kind of goofy and Weld is kind of boring, the qualities that voters have a hard time getting over unless you have big donors backing you up. The Johnson/Weld ticket shouldn’t just be written off though as for the last few years the American political system has been undertaking its usual transformation that happens once in about half a century. This is the time third parties become relevant in two-party systems, the time when major parties platforms can be influenced or the parties themselves can even be replaced if they are not viable anymore.

Most importantly, in politics it is not always about winning most of the popular vote. Sometimes it is about bringing the winning ideas to the table. No matter how cliched it may sound, the combination of fiscal conservatism and social liberalism is something most Americans will eventually get behind.