Let's just be honest about the situation regarding this electoral clusterfuck: Democratic voters support Hillary Clinton because they're afraid, well, mostly. They're afraid that unless Clinton wins, the Supreme Court will be stacked full of wingnuts who will destroy everything. But what's there to destroy at this point? The Repigs and the Dems have both had their hand in this destruction of the commons for decades.

They know it. So do their donors, and so do their talking heads. They just don't want us lay people to figure it out. So they keep us good and scared, and a few of us even bully the ones who step out of line, at least, that's how it works with the Ds and Rs. The ever-more-aggressive behavior at TOP since Super Tuesday should be enough evidence for that.

Even as a lifelong NPA, I voted with the Dems because the Repigs scared the shit out of me. Libertarians were even worse, at least in the context of American politics. Those guys are completely honest about wanting to give Wall Street the keys to the treasury. Ds and Rs wanna do it too, but they don't really tell you that until there's already a smoking gun. But the reason they didn't scare me one single bit is because they don't have the strangle hold over the electorate like the Democrats and Republicans do.

We've denied this for years, but what has it gotten us to 'Vote Blue No Matter Who'? Not much. We got a health care plan with a gutted public option and medicaid expansion because the 'Blue' refused to stand up and fight for those. Sure, the medicaid expansion evisceration was due to an activist supreme court, but I digress. We got continuation of tax breaks that are robbing this country blind and in some cases, like the Bush Tax Cuts, they were made permanent.

We also got more trade agreements, more micro-wars for profit, more education privatization and more needless testing, more Social Security and Medicare cuts via the Catfood Commission...the list goes on and on regarding how we've all been stabbed in the back. That's why at TOP, I often referred to our two party system as little more than good cop/bad cop extortion. These days, the Dems are running on a platform of little more than 'Hey, you see those guys over there? Well, if you don't vote for us, they're gonna take what's left'. That's just the kind of crap we can't afford to be afraid of anymore.

One of the big reasons I refuse to get behind Hillary Clinton is because to do so would be to give in to that fear. A fear I no longer want any part of. A fear that I let go of momentarily when I voted for Ralph Nader in 2008 after seeing Obama race the Republicans right off a cliff. A fear I felt when I saw that Mitt Romney was a blatant sociopath who only cared about his giant golden money towers. I wanted to vote for Jill Stein so bad but didn't because I was scared of what might happened had Romney actually won.

I'm not going to make the same mistake again. I refuse to fall for the 'Vote Blue No Matter Who' nonsense, because that IS giving up. If Sanders loses, I'm backing Jill Stein in the general because she represents my values far better than Hillary Clinton EVER will.

The Democratic and Republican Parties can be fruitful and multiply with sharp sticks for all I care. I'm not going to play their game of good cop/bad cop extortion anymore. That being said, I'll gladly support folks down ballot who support things similar to Sanders or Stein because there's too much at stake to do otherwise.

See ya around,

Aspie