Speaking of Libertarians

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Libertarians could play spoiler this year. Maybe even demand time on the MSM news.

Gary Johnson might be on the verge of becoming a household name.

At the moment, he’s probably most often confused with that plumber who fixed your running toilet last month or your spouse’s weird friend from work who keeps calling the landline, but he’s neither — he’s the former governor of New Mexico, likely Libertarian candidate for president, and he’s polling at 10 percent in two recently released national polls against Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

A Morning Consult survey published Tuesday and found Clinton getting 38 percent of the vote, Trump 35 and Johnson 10, with 17 percent undecided. A Fox News poll conducted from May 14-17 showed Trump leading over Clinton, 42 percent to 39 percent, but Johnson at 10 percent as well. Lest you think this is some fluky May development, a Monmouth University survey conducted in mid-March — while the political universe was still busy wringing its hands over the Republican nomination — found that in a three-way race, Clinton would get 42 percent, Trump 34 percent and Johnson 11 percent.

Given that Trump and Clinton are sporting historically high negative ratings, Johnson’s polling makes a fair bit of sense; Gary Johnson is neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton. He might not win a state, but he could make some noise.

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It only makes sense for a strong 3rd party showing this year.
Full disclosure: I'd prefer ANY 3rd party candidate over Hillary and Donald. Even Libertarians, because at least they believe something.

As for Bernie fans, there actually is a party looking to gain their favor - the Green Party.

Jill Stein is the presumptive nominee of the Green Party in 2016. The main planks of her presidential platform include a "Green New Deal," ending mass incarceration and police brutality, ending wars and drone attacks, a $15 per hour federal minimum wage, a single-payer health care system, universal public education and the abolition of student debt, breaking up big banks and nationalizing the Federal Reserve, initiating a global treaty to reverse climate change and ending extreme forms of extraction.

Jill Stein: So, I think the Green Party and my campaign [are] "Plan B" for Bernie supporters because the Democratic Party is the opposite of everything they've been working for and building for the last eight months or so, and to simply be dumped into Hillary's campaign right now is kind of unthinkable.
The sabotage of Bernie's campaign by the Democratic Party really makes the point about why we need an independent party, because it has shown that it is very hard to have a revolutionary campaign inside of a counterrevolutionary party. What's happening to Bernie is similar to what happens to other candidates, not only Dennis Kucinich, who never got the momentum that Bernie did, but you can go back to Jesse Jackson, who certainly did have it, or even to Henry Wallace, who was vice president and had a huge amount of momentum. [The Democratic Party] basically shut off the microphone and adjourned the convention in order to block his nomination in 1944.
So this is what the party does, and it has only become more corporatist, militarist and imperialist even while it has allowed very inspiring, progressive campaigns like Bernie's to be seen and heard for awhile. After George McGovern was nominated in 1972, the party changed the rules of the game over the course of the next decade so that that kind of a grassroots campaign could never happen again. So Bernie had to fight on a very steep playing field and it's just that the machine is powerful. Over the decades, as the Democratic Party continues to fake left, it continues to move right. I think that is the take-home lesson here -- that we are not creating a more progressive, more grassroots party; it is only becoming more of a corporate instrument.
What's really interesting right now is that Clinton and Trump in many ways are kind of converging around corporatism. Clinton is going after Republican donors and Republican voters. It's hard to tell who's the greater hawk on foreign policy. Trump, at this point, is all talk, but Clinton is a first-class war hawk by action and has really led the charge, from Iraq to Libya to Syria. Bernie supporters, I think, only need to be informed that they have another place to go where they can continue building the revolution in a way that it will not be dismantled by the party infrastructure.
The Democratic Party is funded by predatory banks, fossil fuel giants and war profiteers, and a few other usual suspects. At the end of the day, that's who calls the shots. So if Bernie would like to see his hard work live on, I think it really benefits him to get outside the box and do right by himself, and his supporters. Instead of letting that just become gobbled up by the predatory Democratic Party, head in a new direction. If there's one thing I can say to Bernie Sanders, it's to recognize the power of this movement. If he were freed of the constraints of the party, he could, for example, join my call, the Green Party's call, to cancel student debt that has a 43 million-person demographic that has no other place to hang its hat.
So, for all those reasons I think it's really important for Bernie and his base to stand up and do the right thing, and if Bernie is too much a creature of the Democratic Party to do that I think his base has every reason to stand up on their own behalf and take charge of their future.

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elenacarlena's picture

OTOH, if someone doesn't have the majority of the electoral college, then Congress decided who the President is. That's not helpful.

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Please check out Pet Vet Help, consider joining us to help pets, and follow me @ElenaCarlena on Twitter! Thank you.

America - maybe the world - gets screwed either way.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

They got let into the process in 1876, and took it over completely in 2000.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

lunachickie's picture

These may seem like harmless comments/opinions:

Go, Gary Johnson! Take tons of votes away from Trump! OTOH, if someone doesn't have the majority of the electoral college, then Congress decided who the President is. That's not helpful.

More likely the Supreme Court decides. They got let into the process in 1876, and took it over completely in 2000.

but repeating variations of them over and over and over and over and over and over and over again is really starting to get old, and that's what has been happening the last few weeks. The aggregate result is one of overall defeatism. I'm not saying that anybody here specifically is doing it more than anyone else (I do it too!), I'm Just. Saying. Please. Stop. It.

Can we just stop? Please? We come up with ideas and then we immediately shoot them down. Christ, it's a wonder we've gotten as far as we have.

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the trigger per his own dictat, and ban tom tomorrow fromthe hallowed orange pages.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

shaharazade's picture

at dkos. He only post's Democratic friendly cartoons or at least one that never ever harm her majesty. He too spreads the fear of The Hairball and mocks the RW media nuts but excludes the likes of Rachael. Guess he gets paid well. I like Matt Bors but he too pulls his punches for dkos. Where's droney? Tom is in the bag for the Hill.

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lotlizard's picture

to really zero in on the behavior of the Clinton camp.

http://www.thenation.com/article/sanders-is-for-schmucks/

The rest have been all Trump hahaha, all the time, in keeping with der Gleichschaltung.

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lotlizard's picture

featuring Droney & Co. has gone missing lately, the Hunter who wrote this essay at TOP about U.S. use of white phosphorus seems to have been missing now for a decade.

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shaharazade's picture

a millennial voted for Jill Stein in our primary here in Oregon. She skipped Bernie and went right for who she wants. She came of voting age in Obama's era and got really tweaked with his bait and switch. It's rigged she said when she hit registering age why should I bother to vote. We managed to convince her to register but she balked at Democratic after the reality of Obama. She voted for Jill Stein in the primary here in OR. You think these young people are going to vote for Hillary? Forget about it my granddaughter is not a rabid lefty just a smart young person who see's whats going down.

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annieli's picture

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@eState4Column5

election this year. May I just suggest that you not be taken in by Gary Johnson. He is a real libertarian----the selfish types who don't want any of their money going to anyone else. Has never agreed to pave his own roads though. And you should know this---he jogs/races (at least he used to). You haven't lived until you open the local newspaper to see your governor running in a Speedo right on the front page. And there is a card with a number covering his wares. And as long as you're reading this, ponder: Have you ever seen Gary Johnson and Christie Todd Whitman in the same room together?

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To be fair, it wasn't just jogging. It was full-blown triathlons.

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To be fair, I said he jogs/races. He also vetoed every bill passed by our legislature that could possibly help our very poor population. Prior to becoming governor, he owned a construction company. That company got nailed "bigly" by OSHA. And just the other day during an interview he said very clearly that he doesn't want his money going to help anyone else. He's a selfish SOB. The damage he caused NM is minor compared to the damage he could do to the country. We can speculate about the damage Trump can/will do. Gary Johnson has a track record.

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Sandino's picture

The fire department came anyway.

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BSanders2016's picture

I hope Bernie supporters don't move to the Green Party.
Personally, I'd like to see Bernies' Party, Independent, become the next party to rise to power. Imagine 10 to 15 Independent Senators in Congress. If that happens both Dems and Repubs will be fighting for their support on bills. This is how we overcome the 2-party system! We already have 2 Independent Senators. They have way more power then the Green party anyways.

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"YOU must be the change you wish to see in the world." ~ Mahatma Gandhi

no choice but to vote green. You don't break from the two parties with a candidate that has bound himself to them. Independent doesn't mean anything, and can be Donald Trump if he chose that route. You have to ditch winner take all to have independent be workable.

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