2016's Biggest Turkey Isn't Just Trump-- But The Whole Process

There's no way to know what Jill Stein's voters would have done had they not voted for her. Maybe they wouldn't have come to the polls at all. Maybe they would have written in Bernie or voted for Trump. Or maybe they would have voted for Hillary. In Wisconsin, if all 30,980 voters who cast ballots for Stein would have cast them for Clinton, Clinton's total would be not 1,382,210 but 1,413,190. Trump's total is 1,409,467. Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes would have gone to Clinton. In Michigan 50,700 votes went to Stein. In fantasy world, adding those vote's to Clinton's 2,268,193 puts Clinton at 2,318,893. Trump's at 2,279,805. 16 more electoral votes for Hillary. In Pennsylvania, 20 electoral votes are going to Trump because his 2,912,941 votes are 68,236 more than Hillary's 2,844,705 votes. Stein got 48,912 votes in the Keystone State-- would would give Hillary... not enough. Trump would still have won Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes... and the presidency.

Tuesday, New York published a much-discussed piece by Gabriel Sherman on the likelihood that Hillary actually won Wisconsin and possibly Michigan and Pennsylvania as well and should be President-elect now. Computer experts and election lawyers are urging Clinton to ask those states for a hand-count of the ballots, believing "they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked," wrote Sherman.

Last Thursday, the activists held a conference call with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case, according to a source briefed on the call. The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots. Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000. While it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review-- especially in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee.

According to current tallies, Trump has won 290 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232, with Michigan’s 16 votes not apportioned because the race there is still too close to call. It would take overturning the results in both Wisconsin (10 Electoral College votes) and Pennsylvania (20 votes), in addition to winning Michigan’s 16, for Clinton to win the Electoral College. There is also the complicating factor of “faithless electors,” or members of the Electoral College who do not vote according to the popular vote in their states. At least six electoral voters have said they would not vote for Trump, despite the fact that he won their states.

The Clinton camp is running out of time to challenge the election. According to one of the activists, the deadline in Wisconsin to file for a recount is Friday; in Pennsylvania, it’s Monday; and Michigan is next Wednesday. Whether Clinton will call for a recount remains unclear. The academics so far have only a circumstantial case that would require not just a recount but a forensic audit of voting machines. Also complicating matters, a senior Clinton adviser said, is that the White House, focused on a smooth transfer of power, does not want Clinton to challenge the election result. Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri did not respond to a request for comment. But some Clinton allies are intent on pushing the issue. This afternoon, Huma Abedin’s sister Heba encouraged her Facebook followers to lobby the Justice Department to audit the 2016 vote. “Call the DOJ…and tell them you want the votes audited,” she wrote. “Even if it’s busy, keep calling.”

Yesterday, University of Michigan Computer Science Professor J. Alex Halderman clarified the views attributed to him by Sherman.

How might a foreign government hack America’s voting machines to change the outcome of a presidential election? Here’s one possible scenario. First, the attackers would probe election offices well in advance in order to find ways to break into their computers. Closer to the election, when it was clear from polling data which states would have close electoral margins, the attackers might spread malware into voting machines in some of these states, rigging the machines to shift a few percent of the vote to favor their desired candidate. This malware would likely be designed to remain inactive during pre-election tests, do its dirty business during the election, then erase itself when the polls close. A skilled attacker’s work might leave no visible signs--  though the country might be surprised when results in several close states were off from pre-election polls.

Could anyone be brazen enough to try such an attack? A few years ago, I might have said that sounds like science fiction, but 2016 has seen unprecedented cyberattacks aimed at interfering with the election. This summer, attackers broke into the email system of the Democratic National Committee and, separately, into the email account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, and leaked private messages. Attackers infiltrated the voter registration systems of two states, Illinois and Arizona, and stole voter data. And there’s evidence that hackers attempted to breach election offices in several other states.J. Alex HaldermanJ. Alex Halderman In all these cases, Federal agencies publicly asserted that senior officials in the Russian government commissioned these attacks. Russia has sophisticated cyber-offensive capabilities, and has shown a willingness to use them to hack elections. In 2014, during the presidential election in Ukraine, attackers linked to Russia sabotaged the country’s vote-counting infrastructure and, according to published reports, Ukrainian officials succeeded only at the last minute in defusing vote-stealing malware that was primed to cause the wrong winner to be announced. Russia is not the only country with the ability to pull off such an attack on American systems--  most of the world’s military powers now have sophisticated cyberwarfare capabilities.J. Alex HaldermanJ. Alex Halderman Were this year’s deviations from pre-election polls the results of a cyberattack? Probably not. I believe the most likely explanation is that the polls were systematically wrong, rather than that the election was hacked. But I don’t believe that either one of these seemingly unlikely explanations is overwhelmingly more likely than the other. The only way to know whether a cyberattack changed the result is to closely examine the available physical evidence --  paper ballots and voting equipment in critical states like Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, nobody is ever going to examine that evidence unless candidates in those states act now, in the next several days, to petition for recounts.

I can imagine that a few specific counties in Michigan (like Macomb), Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida were very lightly hacked by Putin or Chevron or Mercer or the 400 pound man in his room and that Trump didn't win the electoral vote after all. WhatI can't imagine that there is any circumstance that could turn the election around at this point, since would be the spark that started a (real, shooting) civil war. (And remember who has the guns, amigos. In any case, Jill Stein is trying to collect the $2.5 million she needs to finance a recount in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. That seems nice of her. The money is pouring in at a shocking rate. She has the legal standing to get the recounts called. This thing never seems to end, does it? I woke up this morning and found the recount fund had gone to $2,979,458.09. Apparently people really want a recount. Just as this post was published, I looked again: $4,122,486.70! Nice goin'!

Libertarians Have Long Been Waiting For A Smart, Respectable Candidate To Represent Their Values... And The Wait Continues

When MSNBC's colossal bore, Chris Matthews, sprung his gotcha question on poor, befuddled Gary Johnson about what foreign leader he admires and looks up to-- is there one YOU admire and look up to?-- he succeeded in getting himself into the next day's news flow. But did he succeed in making a dent in Johnson's 7% national support? Probably not. I'd wager that Johnson's fans like him a lot more than they like the annoyingly shrill get-off-my-lawn asshole Chris Matthews. According to Quinnipiac almost 30% of voters under 35 said they would vote for Johnson. That's gargantuan-- and a very real problem for Hillary.

What Matthews and others on Team Hillary don't seem to grok is that the vast majority of people who are willing to vote for Johnson (or Stein or McMullin), aren't voting for them because they think they should or will become president-- or even necessarily because they want them to be. It's a very legitimate expression among young people that they are dissatisfied with the lesser-of-two evils choice the two dysfunctional careerist mainstream parties are offering. Is that so crazy?

What is crazy, however, is that any Bernie backers would show their displeasure with Clinton and Trump by backing Johnson rather than Stein. Stein basically agrees with everything Bernie stands for. Berniecrats in safe blue states like California, New York, Maryland, Hawaii and safe red states like Alabama, Idaho, Wyoming and North Dakota should vote for Stein. It's a luxury they and the country can afford. Voting for Johnson is a poorly conceived protest that won't do anyone any good at all.
It's not about Aleppo or other gaffes. Is it just because Johnson is a pot head? Is that the criterion? What millennial voters might want to consider before they waste a good protest vote on Johnson is that he's, at heart, just a somewhat stoned Republican who wants to repeal Obamacare, derides Hillary and Bernie for wanting to bring back free college tuition in public universities and, as Colbert pointed out above, is a Climate Change neanderthal. On top of that, he totally backs the Citizens United decision which allows the free flow of dark money into politics, backs NAFTA, CAFTA and the TPP, says private prisons are part of the solution rather than part of the criminal justice problem and-- most Republican of all-- wants to cut federal programs to the bone and cut taxes for the very wealthy. Just scratching the surface shows someone who disagrees with millennials on just about every important issue (but pot).

When really clueless hard-core Republican editorial boards, like the Chicago Tribune or the Detroit News, know they can't endorse Trump and won't endorse Hillary, they go for the implausible Johnson. "Today," crowed the editors of the Detroit News, "this newspaper does something it has never done in its 143-year history: endorse someone other than the Republican candidate in a presidential contest." Yep, every cockamamie Republican since 1873. "We abandon that long and estimable tradition this year for one reason: Donald J. Trump." They actually cite permission from the Koch brothers to do this! And they then went on to tell their readers that Trump is "unprincipled, unstable and quite possibly dangerous. He can not be president." OK, so they then made it easier for that to happen by urging those readers to waste their votes on Johnson and calling it "an endorsement of conscience, reflecting our confidence that Johnson would be a competent and capable president and an honorable one."

The right-wing Chicago Tribube did much the same this morning. "The Republicans," the editorial board whined, collectively, "have nominated Donald Trump, a man not fit to be president of the United States. We first wrote on March 10 that we would not, could not, endorse him. And in the intervening six-plus months he has splendidly reinforced our verdict: Trump has gone out of his way to anger world leaders, giant swaths of the American public, and people of other lands who aspire to immigrate here legally. He has neither the character nor the prudent disposition for the job. The mystery and shame of Trump's rise... is the party's inability or unwillingness to repulse his hostile takeover." They wrote that Johnson's anti-progressive agenda "appeals not only to the Tribune's principles but to those of the many Americans who say they are socially tolerant but fiscally responsible." In other words, someone from the Greed and Selfishness wing of the Republican Party, which is what the Chicago Tribune has always represented. They usually play footsie with the Hatred and Bigotry wing of the party but... Trump just takes it a tad too far for them.

We can't afford a Trump presidency. So voters in swing states like Florida, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Arizona, New Hampshire, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, Colorado-- and even folks up in the Alagash, down in Lewiston-Auburn or those crazy and wild college students in Bangor, Bar Harbor, Presque Isle and Orono-- just need to get a clothespin and help rescue the country from the MUCH greater and more existential evil. Everyone else: Jill Stein.

Yeah, If You Live In A State Where Trump Has A Chance, Just Hold Your Nose And Vote For Hillary... You'll Live

This week The Nation features dueling perspectives on voting for Jill Stein, Kshama Sawant's Don't Waste Your Vote On The Corporate Agenda-- Vote For Jill Stein And The Greens and Joshua Holland's Your Vote For Jill Stein Is A Wasted Vote. Unless Trump suddenly looks like he's going to have any chance of winning in California-- Clinton is up by an average of just over 19 points here-- I plan to, once again, vote for Jill Stein. Obviously, I don't expect her to win. It's simply a protest vote to send the Democrats a message that their dishonest corporate candidate is not acceptable to me. Yes, she's much, much, much preferable to Trump. So would a steaming pile of dog poop, but, unlike Divine, I'll respectfully pass on eating it. Unless you want the Democratic Party to just keep on nominating candidates like Clinton (up and down the ballot) you won't vote for her in any state that is safe from the Trumpist contagion. I have now switched my position enough to say that if I lived in Ohio or Florida or North Carolina or any state that could be a firewall against Trump, I would unhesitatingly vote for Hillary. That said, I don't represent Holland's assurance that between 75 and 90% of those who say that they’re planning to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in November won’t follow through and that the her support "is an expression of contempt for the Democrats that evaporates in the voting booth." If I voted for her instead of Obama last time, you can count on me not voting for Clinton this time. I'm not a typical voter though. Holland makes a pointless effort to bash the Green Party, pointless to me at least, since I see them-- at this point at least-- as nothing other than a vehicle to protest unbearable Democratic Party corporatism and corruption.

"Many Greens," he concludes, "think that their vote isn’t wasted because it sends a powerful 'message' to Washington. But why would anyone in power pay attention to the 0.36 percent of the popular vote that Jill Stein won in 2012, when 42 percent of eligible voters just stayed home? Political parties are merely vessels. The Green Party provides a forum to demonstrate ideological purity and contempt for 'the system.' But the Democratic Party is a center of real power in this country. For all its flaws, and for all the work still to be done, it offers a viable means of advancing progressive goals. One can’t say the same of the perpetually dysfunctional and often self-marginalizing Greens."

Voting for Stein in safe blue states (or even profoundly backward deep red ones where Trump will win by landslides-- say Wyoming, Idaho or Alabama) is a smart move for progressives who can then busy themselves trying to perfect the Democratic Party or the Green Party or any other party... and trying to make sure the Democratic Party reforms itself;f so that it doesn't steal the nomination from the next Bernie Sanders. Sawant sees the Green Party as a legitimate alternative to the Democrats. Good luck with that. "Most progressives," she writes, "will vote for Clinton to keep Trump out of the White House. That’s understandable, but even more important is building an alternative to pro-capitalist parties... [O]rdinary people feel disenchanted and disempowered. Donald Trump is an abomination, and consistently over 60 percent of people polled disapprove of him and his bigotry. Trump is the single-most-unpopular major-party candidate ever, and he deserves to be trounced. But, incredibly, the Democrats have managed to nominate the second-most-unpopular candidate in history: Hillary Clinton, whose disapproval rating stands at 56 percent. Make no mistake: I want Trump to lose this election. But progressives should not support Clinton. Her close ties to corporate America and its brutal neoliberal agenda will serve to increase the appeal of right-wing populism even if she wins."

Clinton’s billionaire backers, who wined and dined her throughout August, want her to promise as little as possible to ordinary people for fear of a mass movement developing under her administration. They know that working people, and young people especially, are fired up in a way that we haven’t seen in decades. E-mails recently leaked from Nancy Pelosi’s office contain explicit instructions not to agree to any specific demands from Black Lives Matter.

The Democratic Party has a special talent for enabling the right. President Obama was first elected in 2008 on a wave of opposition to eight years of George W. Bush’s wars and tax cuts for the rich. But he and the Democrats continued the bailout of Wall Street and stood by as millions lost their homes-- and the leadership of the labor movement and most progressive organizations gave him a pass. This created space for the Tea Party to exploit the legitimate anger of large sections of the working and middle class. It wasn’t until 2011 that Occupy Wall Street gave a genuine left-wing expression to the widespread outrage at corporate politics.

Change comes from mass movements, not from on high, as Bernie Sanders has said. His campaign proved decisively that ordinary people can build a powerful electoral movement representing their interests without taking a penny from corporate America. Polls consistently showed that Sanders would crush Trump in the election. But his campaign was trapped inside a party whose leadership was prepared to do almost anything to stop him.

We need to build a new political party, one completely free from corporate cash and influence... Many progressives will vote for Clinton in spite of their opposition to her politics, simply to prevent Trump from setting foot in the White House. I understand their desire to see him defeated, but even more important is beginning the process-- too long delayed-- of building an alternative to the pro-capitalist parties monopolizing US politics.

Not radical enough for you? Paul Street, writing yesterday for TruthDig also urged his readers to vote for Stein. "Every four years," he writes, "liberal-left politicos scream wolf about how the Republicans are going to wreak plutocratic, racist, ecocidal, sexist, repressive and war-mongering hell if they win “this, the most important election in American history.” The politicos conveniently ignore the plutocratic, racist, ecocidal, sexist, repressive and military-imperial havoc that Democrats inflict at home and abroad in dark, co-dependent alliance with the ever more radically reactionary Republicans. Democrats fail to acknowledge their preferred party’s responsibility for sustaining the Republicans’ continuing power, which feeds on the “dismal” Dems’ neoliberal abandonment of the nation’s working-class majority in service to transnational Wall Street and corporate America. They commonly exaggerate the danger posed by the right-most major party and (especially) the progressivism of the not-so-left-most one." he points to journalist Mark Leibovich's observation that DC has "become a determinedly bipartisan team when there is money to be made. … 'No Democrats and Republicans in Washington anymore,' goes the maxim, 'only millionaires.'" 

So why might a serious left progressive living in a contested state (someone like this writer) consider following the venerable left political scientist Adolph Reed Jr.’s advice this year to “vote for the lying neoliberal warmonger” Hillary Clinton? Part of it could be that lefty’s sense that it is better for “the U.S. Left” (insofar as it exists) and the development of the dedicated, day-to-day, grass-roots social movement we desperately need in place beneath and beyond the election cycle when a corporate Democrat occupies the White House. The presence of a Democrat in the nominal top U.S. job is usefully instructive. It helps demonstrate the richly bipartisan nature of the American plutocracy and empire. Young workers and students especially need to see and experience how the misery and oppression imposed by capitalism and its evil twin imperialism live on when Democrats hold the Oval Office.

At the same time, the presence of a Republican in the White House tends to fuel the sense among progressives and liberals that the main problem in the country is that the “wrong party” holds executive power and that all energy and activism must be directed at fixing that by putting the “right party” back in. Everything progressive gets sucked into a giant “Get Out the Vote” project for the next faux-progressive Democratic savior, brandishing the promises of “hope” and “change” (campaign keywords for the neoliberal imperialist Bill Clinton in 1992 and the neoliberal imperialist Barack Obama in 2008).

Hillary will be much less capable than the more charismatic Obama (under whom there has been more popular organizing and protest than some lefties like to acknowledge) of bamboozling progressives into thinking they’ve got a friend in the White House. Unlike Obama in 2008, she’s got a long corporatist and imperialist track record that connects her to the establishment and is hard to deny.

It is an urban myth that Republican presidents spark and energize progressive and left activism. True, they’ve done outrageous things that can put lots of folks in the streets for a bit. One thinks of Richard Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia and Bush Jr.’s invasion of Iraq. But the waves of protest recede, followed by repression, and everything tends to get channeled into the holy electoral quest to put Democrats back in executive-branch power. The second George W. Bush term was no activist heyday, thanks in significant measure to the great co-optive and demobilizing impact of Democratic Party electoral politics and the deceptive, not-so “antiwar” Obama phenomenon.

But the main reason it is easy to understand why many intelligent lefties stuck behind contested state lines might follow Reed’s advice is that Trump is no ordinary Republican wolf. By some dire portside reckonings (including Reed’s), “the Donald” is something like a real fascist threat worthy of mention in the same breath as Hitler and Mussolini. He’s a really bad version of the wolf who finally appears to devour the sheep in the ancient [Boy who cried wolf] fable.

...In warning about Trump and instructing lefties not to vote third-party this time, Reed reminds us of the German Community Party’s fateful error: choosing not to ally with the German Social Democrats against the Nazi Party during the early 1930s. The moral of the story is clear: All sane left progressives need to report to duty to protect the flock under the banner of the admittedly horrid (good of Reed to admit that) Hillary.

...[There is] enough to scare lots of left progressives into voting for “the arch-corporatist and Wall Street-sponsored neoliberal imperialist Hillary Clinton (a candidate whom Gupta has described as “right-wing fanatic” and “enemy of workers”) as the proverbial “lesser evil” in a contested state? Sure. For many lefties (this writer included), however, the Trump threat level does not rise that high. The wolf cry still falls on deaf ears. This is for at least six reasons.

First, ominous warnings from smart people notwithstanding, the American corporate, financial and imperial ruling class doesn’t yet need or want real or quasi-fascism through Herr Trump or anyone else at this historical moment. The U.S. model of corporate-managed and “inverted totalitarianism” (Sheldon Wolin) sold as “democracy” is not about strongmen and brown shirts. The notion that the nation’s “deep state” power elite-- the actual rulers who run the nation’s commanding-heights affairs behind the marionette theater of electoral politics-- would (a) let an uber-narcissistic man-child like Donald Trump into the Oval Office and (b) permit him to do the crazy things he talks about is far-fetched.

Neofascism is simply not where the American ruling class is right now. When it is, we will know. If and when it gets there, it will put forward a far more serious and capable frontman than the preposterous Donald-- a man so uninterested in the actual work of ruling that he offered the “moderate” Republican John Kasich control over “domestic and foreign policy” in a Trump White House if Kasich would be his running mate. Trump’s ascendency to the White House could well portend a further chaotic delegitimization of “homeland” authority and a pervasive sense of societal absurdity (I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that my anarchist streetfighter side would relish the installation of a commander in chief as completely absurd as Trump). Along with the humiliating black eye that a Trump White House would be for Uncle Sam on the global stage, this is something the American power elite has reason not to want. It would be bad for business-- and for American-style business rule as usual.

Second, it is frankly comical to think of the ludicrous, soft-fleshed, silver-spooned draft-dodger and pampered television personality Donald Trump as some kind of neo-Fuhrer. He is seen as “unfit for command” by most top military commanders and is far too monumentally unpopular with the majority of citizens to ever rally enough masses to overcome the hostility he faces with the corporate and imperial establishment.

Third, the populace would not be as pathetically supine and powerless as Gupta imagines in response to the election and policies of a vicious clown like Trump. His selection and installment as U.S. president would be understood by tens of millions of Americans as an incredibly provocative development-- provocative and dangerous enough to spark protests and mass mobilizations on a scale like nothing ever seen in American history. That, too, is part of what makes Trump a different kind of Republican wolf. I suggested above that ultra-left backlash theorists (folks who think “things have to get worse before they get better”) are wrong to assume that it’s better to have Republicans in the White House when it comes to sparking popular protest. Trump would be an exception to that rule. The “deep state” has zero interest in the riotous instability that would result from Trump’s election and inauguration.

Fourth, Trump’s not going to win. For all Hillary Clinton’s obvious terrible flaws as a candidate, the big insider cash, the national electoral demographics, and the Electoral College map (just ask Nate Silver and his team of multivariate election predictors at FiveThirtyEight.com) strongly favor her. Her health stumbles and some recent homeland terror attacks have, yes, boosted Trump in the polls recently. That will fade as cold campaign finance realities and corporate media bring the bipartisan ruling class’s long-chosen candidate Hillary to the moment she has literally craved for so long. The big and smart money is still on “the lying neoliberal warmonger.”

Fifth, the Green Party’s Party’s Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka are combining genuine social movement activism with an electoral campaign for a Green New Deal-- a many-sided program that is much more than just another bit of progressive policy wonkery. It’s an existential necessity for a decent future, one that combines a giant livable ecology-saving program of national and energy and economic reconversion with a giant jobs program and universal health insurance paid for by genuinely progressive taxation (long overdue in “New Gilded Age” America) and massive reductions in the nation’s giant Pentagon System (which accounts for half the world’s military spending). How does any environmentally sentient and peace-advocating lefty not vote for all of that in the current age of savage inequality, rampant militarism, and ever-more imminent eco-catastrophe?

Sixth, “lesser-evil voting” (LEV) has a “terrible track record,” as Stein reminded me last spring. The more American liberals and progressives do it, the more the Republican right wing is emboldened, the further the Democrats move into ideological and policy territory formerly held by Republicans, and the more dire the American and global situation becomes. LEV is a viciously circular, self-fulfilling prophecy that itself holds no small responsibility for the ascendancy of horrible Republican presidents and other terrible things like the tea party and Donald Trump phenomena. And one does not seriously challenge LEV only in so-called safe states. You have to draw some lines in the sand and exit left at some point: Protect the flock.

I am not so inured to the quasi-neofascistic evil of the Trump phenomenon and the ugly prospects of a Trump presidency-- especially on the ecological level-- that I cannot understand why many fellow leftists would mark a ballot for the hideous imperial corporatist Hillary Clinton to block Herr Trump. The intra-left bloodletting that takes place on a regular quadrennial schedule over the difficult question of how best to respond to the United States’ plutocratic electoral and party system certainly does not serve the progressive left cause. Let us join together after the latest quadrennial extravaganza to build and expand a great popular movement with a list of demands and the introduction of an election and party system that deserves passionate citizen engagement.

It's a point of view.I hope you're glad to have read it. You can contribute to stopping Trump here if you want to:

Is The Goal To Fight Trump Or Is It To Fight Evil?

There were always people who made the argument that the Hillary wing wasn't stealing every single primary battle, that there were some decisions that were legitimate. I didn't discount that and there may well have been a few primaries she actually won fair and square-- like in the South. But it was the whole process that was corrupted from start to finish and that makes her-- in my mind at least-- and illegitimate nominee. The latest manifestation, of course, was her crony at the head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, rigging the primary elections from the top even before they got going. The existence of Wasserman Schultz alone, still at the head of the DNC, is enough to guarantee that no one connected with her even tangentially well ever get a benefit of the doubt from me. Tainted by the rancid stench of Debbie Wasserman Schultz? Prove you're not as vile and corrupt and unworthy of public office.

I guess now we all know why even a politically right-of-center Democrat like Tulsi Gabbard had no choice but the quit the nest of vipers the DNC had become under Wasserman Schultz. Now it's clear that everyone on the DNC e-mail chain where they discuss weaponizing religion to take down a Democratic primary candidate needs to be fired and banished from Democratic politics.

In the YouGov poll of Bernie voters I referred to earlier, you saw that as of now, 23% of the people who voted for Bernie in the primaries say they will vote for Jill Stein. It's likely that Hillary's announcement last night that TPP- backing, Wall Street shill Tim Kaine will be her running mate, coupled with the latest scandal involving Wasserman Schultz's rigging of the primaries, will increase that percentage. Stein certainly thinks so. A Green Party press release emphasized that "Democratic Party elites have been caught red-handed sabotaging a grassroots campaign that tried to bring huge numbers of young people, independents, and non-voters into their party. Instead, they have shown exactly why America needs a new major party, a truly democratic party for the people... After such betrayal, if Senator Sanders repudiates the Democratic Party, I would welcome him into the Green Party to continue this political revolution. We now see that this movement is more urgently needed than ever. The leaked emails underscore why a revolutionary campaign can not survive within a counter-revolutionary party, and the urgent need to build the Green Party as a political vehicle to build the revolution."

Even Trump realized the Wasserman Schultz scandal is a good wedge for his points about endemic Democratic Party establishment corruption. It may not win him any votes but he wins by driving Bernie voters to Stein or to sit out the election. Is it still tenable for Hillary and those around her to keep Wasserman Schultz on as DNC chair? Again, from the Green Party press release:

The damning DNC emails released by Wikileaks include one from DNC press secretary Mark Paustenbach to communications director Luis Miranda discussing how to create a narrative in the media that Sanders’ campaign was “a mess”; an email from DNC Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall to CEO Amy Dacey proposing having someone ask Sanders about his religious beliefs in Kentucky and West Virginia, saying that Southern Baptists “would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist”; and an email in which DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz discusses how Hillary For America proposed using Israel as “an ideal issue to marginalize Sanders on,” exposing that the DNC was collaborating with the Clinton campaign on anti-Sanders strategy.

We can't count on the establishment-- Obama, Biden, the Clinton Machine-- to remedy the Wasserman Schultz contagion. Silly petitions won't do it either. Only one thing will: electing Tim Canova to replace her in the Broward/Miami-Dade 23rd congressional district in Florida. Please consider contributing to his grassroots, anti-corruption campaign here.

This morning, in his essay, Explaining the Problem with Lesser Evilism, David Swanson took on one of the two reasons-- the other being gender identity-- for progressive to consider voting for Clinton:

According to supporters of Hillary Clinton, anything other than a vote for her is "a vote for Trump," and according to supporters of Donald Trump, anything other than a vote for Trump is "a vote for Hillary." Whether you declare that you will vote for Jill Stein, vote for Gary Johnson, write in LeBron James, swear off elections, move to Canada, commit suicide, or take a job for a corporate media outlet that frowns on participation in democracy, no matter what it is you do, it's "a vote" for the undesired candidate. (Sorry to go morbid with that corporate media option!)

What is the appropriate reply to this?

First, I think it is usually going to be critical to get your lesser evilist friend to believe you understand what they are saying. Of course what they are saying is quintessential common wisdom pounded into everybody's head year after year. There's no way you could possibly not understand what they are saying. Nonetheless, it's important that you let them tell it to you in painful detail, and that you then repeat it to them with some variations. Go over the "reality" of the two-party system. Rehearse the existence of discernable differences between the two candidates. Take deep breaths during the demonization of Ralph Nader. Just listen and agree.

It's not as if their logic is wrong. Try very hard to get them to understand that you understand that, that you see their points, that you acknowledge that they make perfect sense, that you grasp their way of thinking. And, perhaps more importantly, thank them for giving a damn. Explain to them that you would much rather have a world of lesser evilists who care passionately about making the world evil at as slow a pace as possible, than a world of people who just don't care at what speed the world becomes more evil.

At this point, in about 50% of cases, you may be able to tease out, before having made any argument at all, that your lesser evilist does not actually believe in lesser evilism, that in fact he or she has more or less convinced himself or herself that either Clinton or Trump is actually good. If that happens, you'll have to turn to page 163 in this choose-your-own-adventure story. You're not on this page anymore. What someone who believes in the goodness of Clinton or Trump needs is a supply of critical information selected to fit their needs. Do they believe war is good or that one of these candidates opposes war? Do they support corruption or racism or corporatism or authoritarianism or plutocracy or environmental destruction or do they imagine that one of these candidates opposes some of those things? Or do they believe that their candidate is pretending to hold awful positions while secretly harboring good intentions? Depending on the particular case, each such person can be provided facts and historical background to bring them into touch with reality.

In the other 50% of cases your lesser evilist really does think of their candidate, at least when pressed, as evil. Even if they believe that a candidate who was any less evil could not compete in the U.S. election system, they are still a lesser evilist choosing one evil over another one. Now, your lesser evilist may not see their preferred candidate as being quite as evil as you see them, and may see the other candidate as being even more evil than you believe. There is a time and place for debating these details. It will be important for you to bring your friend to see the full measure of their candidate's evil. But it is important that first you get them to understand that you are able to see differences, that you don't believe their candidate is identical to the other one-- which would be ridiculous but is nonetheless what your friend will tend to think you think.

Only after you've convinced your lesser evilist friend that you are aware of differences between the two candidates, then you should begin to suggest the possibility that a less evil candidate might still be too evil. Ask your friend to try a few thought experiments. Let's say they are a Hillary Clinton supporter. Ask them if they can imagine a candidate worse than Donald Trump. If they claim to be unable to do it, ask them to consider whether they are really being rational about this. Suppose you had a candidate identical to Trump except that he insisted on the need to sacrifice infants on the steps of libraries to appease the god of children's books. Which of the two would be the more evil and which the less evil candidate? Now ask your friend, in a situation in which Trump was the less evil candidate, would your friend campaign for and vote for Trump? If not, why not? Isn't the logic of lesser evilism as solid no matter the details and no matter how evil the less evil candidate may be?

If your friend sticks to his or her lesser evilism, try this. Consider an election between a candidate who proposes immediate nuclear war and a candidate who proposes immediate nuclear war and encourages everyone to commit vicious crimes before the world ends. One is more evil and the other less evil. But both will quickly destroy all human life. Would you campaign and vote for the less evil one?

How about an election between a candidate who promises to make herself empress for life and a candidate who promises to make herself empress for life and to eat live mice. One is more evil and the other less evil, but both quickly create a situation in which, if your friend wants to continue to be civically engaged, he or she will have to try something other than voting.

Through these types of arguments it ought to become possible to bring your friend to see that there might be such a thing as too evil even while being less evil, and that there might be a situation in which something other than voting was required. From there it's not such a huge leap to the possibility that even in a situation in which voting is possible, something else might be needed in addition to or instead of voting. Now it still might not be time yet to argue the details of exactly how evil your friend's candidate is. Just getting them to accept that some candidate might be too evil is the critical first step. And you still may not have succeeded in that. Or you may have succeeded only in the case of a candidate that your friend thinks of as millions of times more evil than theirs.

We've arrived at the heart of the matter. You must now try to explain to your friend the real damage that lesser evilism does. This may be very difficult, because the main damage it does happens outside of voting, distant in time and space from the voting booth. There is a reason that many lesser evilists turn out to actually think their candidate is good, and that many others resist acknowledging the full extent of their candidate's evil. When you become a supporter of a candidate, even for lesser evil reasons, you enter into a particular universe. If you volunteer for that candidate, you encounter nothing but praise for them and denunciations of their opponent. Even if you never leave your house, your web searches gradually begin finding only news sources that slant everything in favor of your candidate. Millions of people put up yard signs and bumper stickers promoting their candidate, and virtually nobody puts a second sign beside the first one protesting some of that candidate's evil agenda. You can claim that lesser evilism leaves you independent and uncompromised, but you can't actually protest your evil candidate's evil in their local office-- you'll be off the team instantly.

Many lesser evilists claim to flip a switch within themselves after a particular period of time. For two weeks or six months or two years they choose to utter not one word against their evil candidate, while swearing that the rest of the time they will bring outside independent pressure to bear on the government without distorting anything in favor of one office holder or party over another. This is at best self-delusional in most if not every case. Right now we have the two parties in Washington, D.C., directing their "grass roots" groups in what to ask for and what to say about it-- the complete inversion of representative government. And this is because election season never ends and lesser evilism never ends right along with it. In January of 2007, the Democrats had just taken over Congress with a clear mandate to end the war on Iraq, and Rahm Emanuel told the Washington Post that the Democrats would keep the war going for two more years in order to run "against" it again in 2008. And so they did. And people who preferred having Democrats keep the war going to having Republicans keep the war going stuck tape over their own mouths and lay back and took it.

This is the problem. It's not that lesser evilism isn't logical in a voting booth. It's that it never ever stays within a voting booth. It poisons political activity every day of every year.

To grasp that point, one has to be brought to share the perspective in which voting is not the only important political activity. Now, I'm not against elections. I think we should have one some day! That would require some of these changes that cannot be voted in under the broken system that lacks them: public funding of elections, no bribery, free air time for candidates, automatic voter registration, open debates and ballots, no gerrymandering, hand-counted paper ballots, international monitors, no electoral college, no delegates, no superdelegates, and a three-month election season with a bit of actual governing before the next one.

You cannot vote those things in any more than women voted themselves the right to vote or children voted an end to child labor or any major change has come about through voting. Voting is a critical component in applying public pressure in a system lacking direct democracy, but it is only one small piece-- and it's even smaller when it's as broken as the current U.S. presidential election system. Why does someone like Hillary Clinton switch from opposing LGBT rights to supporting them? Not because she or someone else was elected to anything, but because a movement that has used dozens of different nonviolent tools has changed society.

Look for a minute at the Democratic Party primary system. On Friday WikiLeaks released emails from the DNC that made clear, as we all knew, that the DNC slanted the playing field for Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Not only might Sanders very well have won without that cheating, but polls for many months have shown him to be the stronger candidate against Trump. When Democratic Super Delegates throw their votes to Clinton they are, by lesser evilist logic, casting votes for Trump. Of course that doesn't change your options, doesn't give you the choice of Sanders on your ballot (unless you write him in). But if Clinton really wanted to defeat Trump she would drop out, and if you really want to defeat Trump you're expected to vote for her.

Maybe that's just the way it is. But try now to get your friend on the same page with you in terms of the extent of Hillary Clinton's evil. Provide some missing material in whatever area it's lacking. Seriously discuss some points like these:

• She says President Obama was wrong not to launch missile strikes on Syria in 2013.
• She pushed hard for the overthrow of Qadaffi in 2011.
• She supported the coup government in Honduras in 2009.
• She has backed escalation and prolongation of war in Afghanistan.
• She voted for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
• She skillfully promoted the White House justification for the war on Iraq.
• She does not hesitate to back the use of drones for targeted killing.
• She has consistently backed the military initiatives of Israel.
• She was not ashamed to laugh at the killing of Qadaffi.
• She has not hesitated to warn that she could obliterate Iran.
• She is not afraid to antagonize Russia.
• She helped facilitate a military coup in Ukraine.
• She has the financial support of the arms makers and many of their foreign customers.
• She waived restrictions at the State Department on selling weapons to Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman, and Qatar, all states wise enough to donate to the Clinton Foundation.
• She supported President Bill Clinton's wars and the power of the president to make war without Congress.
• She has advocated for arming fighters in Syria.
• She supported a surge in Iraq even before President Bush did.

Go into similar points on trade or environment or healthcare or wherever it's needed. Then trace back through a bit of U.S. history. Compare the positions and actions-- not the public images-- of past presidents. I'd take Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, Ford, or Nixon over Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton any day. I'd take the presidents who came before them over them too. And it's not as though people haven't been doing lesser evil voting and lesser evil living all these years. But when you elect a less evil candidate and do little else to improve your politics, the result is another election with a worse pair of candidates, both of them more evil than was the less evil candidate before. This course is unsustainable and leads inevitably to candidates that more and more of us will recognize as just too evil.

Too evil because we need independent uncompromised activism and can expect it to have an impact on whoever is in office. And too evil because we actually can swing this or some future election to an actually good candidate if we put our minds to it. We don't have a lot of time to play around with. While neither Clinton nor Trump has promised immediate nuclear war, both are eager to risk it and to exacerbate the crisis in the earth's climate. If we elect one of them, followed by someone else worse, we're pretty well doomed. If we elect someone actually good either now or next time, who knows?

The chance of electing a good candidate within the Democratic Party is very low. This election saw a perfect storm: a hugely unpopular candidate standing unopposed, and a single exceptional candidate jumping into the election with a stellar record and an independent streak. And it wasn't enough. For it to be enough would require the same perfect storm plus major systemic reforms within the party.

But 60% of the public cannot stand either Clinton or Trump. If a significant portion of those people back Jill Stein, she could mount a serious challenge and even win. Just saying you support her now while planning to turn against her in November would put her into televised debates with Clinton and Trump, thereby requiring both of them to speak to all kinds of critical issues they'd rather avoid.

So we arrive at two basic questions for your friend the former lesser evilist. First, do you see that non-electoral activism can be more important than elections? If so, are you willing to put your energies there? Second, if you stay focused on this election, would you support Jill Stein if you cast the only vote and effectively selected the winner by yourself? What about if she only needed a few more votes to win? What about if she had a slim chance? What about if a decent showing might help elect a good candidate next time around?

Up on the High Wire

Clinton and Trump, on the high wire,
Once side's ice and one is fire,
Putting on a show for you and me.

by Gaius Publius

I'm preparing for a month-long haitus (vacation, finally), and while I'll be reading the news I won't be commenting on it. Ahead of that, I'd like to offer these thoughts.

1. Our "Look Ahead" series will continue as the fall campaign kicks off. The outcome of the election, though, is very hard to predict. Each campaign seems determined to drive its own car into the ditch. Last car with wheels on the road will win this one. Plus there's those ever-present black swans, like this one.

As to what happens after the election, it gets more predictable. Whoever ultimately wins, we'll know enough in the fall to know nearly every player's fate for the next few years — Trump, Clinton, the progressive-hating Democratic leadership, the Koch-bossed Republican Party, Sanders-supporting progressives themselves; all of their Tarot cards will be laid out for reading, up to the moment when the climate throws its own card into the mix. We just have to be willing to look at what those cards say.

If you're interested, the parts so far of the Look Ahead series are these:

A Look Ahead: Neither Party Can Win Without Winning Independents

A Look Ahead: Coming to the Philadelphia Crossroad

A Look Ahead: "Event Risk" and the Remaining Presidential Candidates

2. Clinton is looking more and more vulnerable, according to the latest Economist / YouGov poll (pdf). Whatever you think of the outcome of the Trump-Clinton contest, so far no one has a real lead, and both are playing a high-risk game of High Wire, a tightrope act without a net.

Surprising Poll Results

The following look at some of the poll results comes from poster Vraye_Foi at the Reddit site r/Kossacks_for_Sanders. The poll itself is long and worth a further look, if you're so inclined. My thanks for this summary of just a a few of its findings (my emphasis except where noted):

Pages 12 and 13 of the report [the "enthusiasm" pages] are full of interesting data, some of which I'll highlight -

• 25% of Democrats are either Dissatisfied or Upset [Clinton] is the Democrat candidate for President
• 62% of Independents are either Dissatisfied or Upset that she is the Democrat candidate for President
• 43% of those polled across the board (includes all demographics and party affiliations) are "Upset" that she is the Democrat candidate for President

When it comes to Independents' view of Donald Trump, only 44% are Dissatisfied or Upset that he is the Republican nominee.

Enthusiastic Support for Trump within his party is at 51%. Hillary's Enthusiastic support within her party: 34%. 

The choices for this question are: Enthusiastic, Satisfied, Dissatisfied, Upset, Not Sure. The wording of the most extreme categories is Enthusiastic and Upset. So Trump starts the pre-convention head-to-head campaigning with more enthusiasm within his party and also with independents than Clinton does, by a lot if the poll is right.

When looking at support among women:

And continuing on the theme of "Enthusiastic Support", how about this surprise:

• 18% of female respondents are Enthusiastic for Trump
• 19% of female respondents are Enthusiastic for Clinton

So just an aside and speaking as a woman here, can the HRC campaign cut the shit bout how it's sexist if you don't support or vote for Hillary? Please? Because this poll shows that women are about as enthusiastic and thrilled about Hillary as they are about Trump. ...

On the negative side, when it comes to Hillary being the Democrats' candidate, 12% of the women polled feel "Dissatisfied but not Upset" and 42% are UPSET.

It must be troubling news for the HRC campaign to see Enthusiastic/Satisfied combined numbers (45%) linger behind the Dissatisfied/Upset numbers (54%). A lot of women are not happy that Clinton is the nominee.

We're not saying that situation is right or wrong, just that it is. Now about enthusiasm by age (emphasis in original):

The other shocker is that 49% of respondents age 45 - 64 are "Upset" she is the Dem's candidate. But wait - it gets even more shocking: 53% of respondents over the age of 65 responded "Upset" as well.

Hasn't the narrative been that HRC has solid support from the over 45s and women? This poll raises some questions about that. Just as with the women respondents, the 45 and older crowd's negative sentiments towards HRC's candidacy are HIGHER than the positive ones.

That "over 65" polling number is across all genders and party identifications, but so is the general election.

Gary Johnson and Jill Stein

There's Johnson and Stein polling in the report as well. The reddit poster quoted above notes this (regarding data on pages 21 and 23):

General Election | Johnson Preference

Would you say you are mostly voting FOR Gary Johnson, AGAINST Hillary Clinton or AGAINST Donald Trump? Asked of those who would vote for Gary Johnson

• I’m mostly voting FOR Gary Johnson 38%
• I’m mostly voting AGAINST Hillary Clinton 37%
• I’m mostly voting AGAINST Donald Trump 23%
• Not sure 2%

General Election | Stein Preference

Would you say you are mostly voting FOR Jill Stein, AGAINST Hillary Clinton or AGAINST Donald Trump? Asked of those who would vote for Jill Stein

• I’m mostly voting FOR Jill Stein 36%
• I’m mostly voting AGAINST Hillary Clinton 42%
• I’m mostly voting AGAINST Donald Trump 8%
• Not sure 13%

Page 25 of the poll gives data in general on whether people are voting For a given candidate or Against a given candidate. Those general results are mainly a wash. The split in voting for vs. against Clinton is 28%–23%. The same split for Trump is 23%–20%, with 2% each saying they're voting FOR Johnson or Stein.

But it's the Against Clinton number in the Johnson and Stein polling that should cause worry in the Democratic camp. The Johnson+Stein combined Against Clinton total, as shown above, is 79%. The Johnson+Stein combined Against Trump total is just 31%. In other words, prospective Libertarian+Green voters, as a group, are much more strongly against Clinton than against Donald Trump, at least prior to the start of the fall campaign.

Pages 27–30 are also interesting. The question is, "Would you consider voting for [Clinton/Trump/Johnson/Stein]?" Possible responses are Might, Would Never, Not Sure, with overall totals and cross-tabulated breakdowns by gender, age, and so on. The Might vs. Would Never breakdown for Clinton among Democratic primary voters who prefer Sanders is 59%–38%. The same breakdown  for this group (Democratic primary voters who prefer Sanders) for Johnson is 45%–28%, and for Stein is 44%–20%.

To put that more simply, 38% of Sanders supporters would never vote for Clinton. Where would they go? An even split — 45% would vote for Johnson and 44% would vote for Stein.

Independents Still Control this Election

It looks like it's still true, that this year's "radical independents," people who were attracted to Trump and/or Sanders as a way to raise a "pronounced middle finger" to the powers that be (Norman Solomon's phrase in a slightly different context), are likely to decide this election. They may not know who they're for, but they're pretty sure who, or what, they're against. For far too many voters, there is no good outcome.

 "Le Pendu," the one left hanging, suspended in time and awaiting the outcome (source).

Enjoy the rest of the summer. I'll be back with more in a month.

GP
 

Elizabeth Warren & Bernie Will Back Hillary-- But How Many Bernie Supporters Will Discover Jill Stein?

There may be some Bernie voters who persuade themselves that the way to teach the corrupt and repulsive Democratic Party a lesson is to vote for Trump. There aren't many Bernie supporters that out of their minds though. My guess is that most will vote for Hillary and that some will stay home or skip the presidential race and that others will write in Bernie. I suspect, however that the number of votes Green Party candidate Jill Stein gets in November will be significantly higher than the 469,501 show got in 2012 against Obama and Romney. Agenda-wise, she's a far better fit for Bernie backers than Hillary-- let along the racist, misogynistic xenophobic narcissist the GOP is about to nominate. The mass media has moved to marginalize her campaign of course, and Hillary's campaign will do whatever it takes to keep her out of the debates and any other national exposure. (I wonder when the contemptible David Brocks of the Hillary Sewer will start calling her a sexist for opposing her highness.) That 469,501 votes from 2012 were already more than any other female presidential candidate ever got in a general election. Bill Sher sized her up for Politico readers over the weekend.

Stein talks about continuing Bernie's political revolution but it's extremely unlikely Bernie will risk his status in the Senate by doing anything but endorsing Hillary. (He already buckled to overt threats from Schumer that he would lose his chairmanship if he dared to endorse progressive Senate candidates running against DSCC hacks in Ohio, Pennsylvania and, most importantly, Florida, where Wall Street/Schumercat Patrick Murphy is in a tight race against Bernie super-delegate Alan Grayson.) So the chances of Bernie ecen tacitly backing Stein? Zero.

Many of his backers-- how many is the question-- are, by nature, independent-minded and if Stein can persuade some of them, she can make a significant dent in Hillary's operation. Sher says she's "undaunted by the Democratic coalescing around Clinton. Asked in an interview with Politico Magazine this week whether the Warren endorsement presents a problem for her, Stein suggested that the Massachusetts senator lacks the progressive credibility to sway Sanders voters. She could be right-- about a few Sanders voters, but the bulk take Elizabeth Warren very seriously... which doesn't mean they will necessarily follow her into the Clinton camp.

You may be wondering: The Green Party? What’s that-- one of those European lefty outfits? And do they have a prayer of getting more than a fraction of the vote? As of today, Stein is but a blip. Eighty-seven percent of voters don’t know enough about her to register an opinion in a late May Quinnipiac poll. And Clinton’s lead over Trump appears big enough to weather a little left-wing erosion. But with a recent Bloomberg poll showing that only 55 percent of Sanders voters are ready for Hillary, the conditions exist for Stein to spark a larger exodus–if she can raise her profile and if Democrats can’t unify at next month’s convention.

And while the Greens have been under the radar in America for the past several years, they proudly claim at least 100 municipal officeholders, and from 2007 to 2015 they controlled the mayoralty of the 100,000-person city of Richmond, California. Now, like the Libertarian Party, the Green Party sees its moment in this season of widespread discontent, when both Clinton and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump begin the general election campaign with record-high unfavorables. Stein’s platform is nearly identical to Sanders’, only more pacifist (the two diverge on the use of military drones) and more ambitious (beyond providing free college, Stein would cancel all existing student debt).

And Stein may be making big strides toward being treated like a legitimate presidential candidate. In her 2012 Green Party run, she appeared on only 36 state ballots. But her campaign’s ballot access coordinator told Counterpunch last week that “we fully expect to get on the ballot in all but three states due to our petition drives” and will then litigate the “onerous” requirements in the three remaining states in hopes of hitting 50.

...She is beginning to register in the polls as well, at least when the polls mention her, hitting 5 percent in a NBC/SurveyMonkey poll and 4 percent in Ipsos/Reuters. Does that hurt Hillary? Maybe. The inclusion of Stein in the NBC/SurveyMonkey poll helped trim a 7-point Clinton lead over Trump down to a tighter four, whereas in Ipsos/Reuters, an already comfortable 9-point lead was bumped up to 10.

Sanders has drawn fire from Democrats for staying in the race despite lacking the delegates to win the nomination, but Stein may be even more politically brash than Bernie. Not only does she lack Sanders’ squeamishness about tipping the race to the Republicans, she is burying the tentative approach to presidential campaigning tried by 2004 Green candidate David Cobb. Following the 2000 election, when many blamed Nader for contributing to Democrat Al Gore’s defeat in Florida, Cobb pioneered a “safe-state” strategy-- hunting only for votes in deep blue and deep red states, thus successfully protecting the Greens from the “spoiler” label. But he wasn’t successful in winning votes, garnering only 120,000 votes compared to Nader’s 2.9 million.

Stein defiantly told Politico Magazine she has a “No Safe State strategy,” because “there is no safe state under a Democratic or Republican future.” She’ll be stumping in Pennsylvania later this month.

Stein’s willingness to antagonize Democrats goes beyond her travel itinerary. She laces into Clinton and the Democratic Party on a regular basis in her media appearances and on her Twitter feed.

“While it's horrifying to hear the draconian things that @realDonaldTrump is talking about, we've actually seen @HillaryClinton doing them,” she blasted last Thursday. On the online show The Young Turks, hosted by Sanders backer Cenk Uygur, Stein characterized Clinton’s record as anti-feminist: “I think it’s an offense to the concept of feminism to say that Hillary Clinton-- and her advocacy for war, for Wall Street and for the ‘Walmart Economy’-- represents feminism.”

But while Stein potentially has a bigger pool of leftist voters to chase compared to four years ago, she also has stiffer competition: the Libertarian Party ticket of former Republican governors Gary Johnson and William Weld.

Stein and Johnson are potentially in each other’s way in the pursuit of the third-party candidate’s holy grail: an invitation from the Commission of Presidential Debates to square off against the two major party candidates, which hasn’t happened since Ross Perot in 1992.

The Commission says it will invite only candidates who average 15 percent in "five national public opinion polling organizations selected by CPD.” But the commission hasn’t determined yet which five it will use or, more importantly, whether it will use three-way or four-way trial heats to gauge support. That would potentially make a huge difference. Johnson just hit 12 percent in a three-way race tested by Fox News (one of the five polls used by the commission in 2012), putting him in striking distance. But in four-way polls that include Stein, Johnson’s number has ranged from 4 to 9 points. The better Stein does, both in polls and ballot access, the harder it will be for polling outfits tapped by the commission to exclude her. In this respect, Stein is a major threat to Johnson’s hopes for a campaign breakthrough.

The appeal to Sanders supporters will be critical for both the Greens and the Libertarians. While the Libertarians are often viewed as an escape hatch for disaffected conservatives, Johnson also has been sharpening his pitch to the Feel-the-Bern crowd. And, so far, he has a bigger media platform than Stein’s on which to make it. Last month he made it onto the coveted set of NBC’s Meet the Press, and he can probably expect the bookings to keep coming thanks to his credible presidential résumé. The former two-term New Mexico governor has more elected-executive office experience than anyone other presidential candidate running, as does his veep. (Stein, conversely, is like the Ben Carson of the left—a citizen-doctor who argues she’s the right person to administer “political medicine.”)

Johnson, in an interview with Politico, hit on the themes that make him a plausible choice for the #NeverHillary left. But he also made clear there are ideological places he will not go, which may limit his appeal.

“We’re the same when it comes to social issues, marriage equality, woman’s right to choose, legalize marijuana, let’s stop dropping bombs,” said Johnson of Sanders. He even offers to solve the problem of “crony capitalism” noting that “government can play a role in leveling that playing field.”

But the libertarian is no socialist. “We do come to a ‘T’ in the road when it comes to anything free,” said Johnson, not even bothering to dance around the subject. “Somebody’s got to pay for what is free.”

And while Johnson sounded critical of the Trans-Pacific Partnership in an earlier Politico interview, in this later one he appeared to support it. “It is my understanding that the TPP does advance free trade,” he said. “Is it a perfect document? Probably not. But based on my understanding of the document, I would be supporting it [though] in a perfect world there wouldn’t be a document like that, there would just be free trade.” The statement makes him the only candidate in the four-person field indicating he would ratify the pact, which may raise his stock with anti-Trump free trade Republicans but muddles his case for the Bernie camp.

Johnson also drew a bright line between himself and Stein: “She is on the giveaway side. She is on the controlling the economy side, which in my opinion, that’s where you get crony capitalism.” Stein shot back that the Libertarian Party believes “there should be no restrictions on your freedom to put your money into the political candidate of your choice. … it will be very hard to end crony capitalism if you can continue to buy your way into whatever influence and position you want with government.” (Johnson has said he believes in “100 percent transparency” but not limits on donations.)

The two third-party candidates are not expending a lot of energy attacking each other, though Stein threw a little extra shade Johnson’s way regarding his campaign schedule: “I don’t know if Gary Johnson is out there doing a campaign actually. I think he’s talking to press a little bit, but I don’t think they hold events.” (A Johnson spokesman said the campaign is “underwater” with media requests but is looking to arrange an event in Washington, D.C., “in a few weeks due to demand from interested voters and media alike.”)

Johnson is also standing in Stein’s way on another big front: the goal of winning 5 percent of the national popular vote, which would give a big boost to a third party by qualifying it for federal public campaign funds in the next presidential election. With Stein presently polling at or just under that threshold, she may conclude a sharper attack is necessary to prevent him from scooping up voters she desperately needs.

Both candidates vehemently reject the notion that they are “spoilers.” But whether or not they end up impacting the final result of the presidential race, they may end up being spoilers for each other.

If Trump were smart-- he isn't-- he would funnel a few million dollars into Stein's campaign as a way of harming both the Libertarians (who will take general election votes from him) and, of course, Hillary. This was Stein explaining what would happen to Bernie 6 months ago:

Do You Consider Yourself A Democrat In A Party Sense? Why?

Monday, Bill Press wrote that "Sanders was right in arguing that the primary system is rigged against him. It is!" THe super-delegate system, though, wasn't invented just to prevent Bernie from becoming president. It was a full frontal attack against the grassroots of the Democratic Party, meant to thwart any populist uprising that offered changes unacceptable to the party establishment. The system is indefensible by anyone short of a universally discredited harridan like Debbie Wasserman Schultz-- universally discredited, that is, outside the careerist and corrupted establishment, where they recognize the Wasserman Schultz imperious impulses as their own. So far, state Democratic parties in Wisconsin, Colorado Maine, Vermont, Utah, Alaska, and West Virginia have all passed resolutions insisting 2016 be the last year of the super-delegate system. Elizabeth Warren has joined Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie is demanding the same.

Corrupt party bosses like the Clintons, Rahm Emanuel, Wasserman Schultz and the Big City garbage machines may have to find some other way to allow lobbyists and corporate interests to exert anti-grassroots pressure on the party.



This year there are 718 super-deleagtes-- 30% of the 2,383 votes needed to nominate a candidate. Under the watchful eye of Wasserman Schultz, this year's convention procedures have been carefully crafted not just to deliver the nomination to Clinton, but to keep the party establishment and it's policy agenda firmly in control. Anyone who falls for the calls for Democratic Party unity is a simple-minded idiot ready to enable the establishment and cast their power and their corporate agenda in stone within the party we like to deceive ourselves into thinking represents the interests of "the people." At best the Democratic Party is merely the lesser of two evils. Trump is just an exaggeration to the greater evil but that this election is even remotely competitive shows just how low the Democratic Party establishment has fallen.

I suspect that if Trump and Clinton are the party nominees, Jill Stein and Gary Johnson are going to do far better than anyone expects. DCCC and DSCC handpicked congressional candidates are no less odious in most cases-- not some cases, most cases. If you're not planning on voting for Hillary Clinton, be careful about the garbage congressional candidates Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer are saddling the party with. These are candidates you can trust; almost none are being backed by the DSCC or DCCC. They're among the only ones left upholding values and principles that have made us ever think of ourselves as members of the same party that includes a Rahm Emanuel or a Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

#BernieAndBoom-- A Guest Post By Sam Husseini, Founder Of VotePact.org

The dissent within the Democratic Party that Sen. Bernie Sanders has sparked needs somewhere to go.

It should go in a direction that doesn't back Clinton-- and doesn't help Trump.

That seems like you can't do both those things, but you can if you parse it through and do some real work.

That energy should not go to backing Hillary Clinton: We've been down that road before. Gov. Howard Dean was the ostensible "anti war" candidate in 2004, he got folded into the campaign of John Kerry, who was "for the war before he was against it." Dean promised a movement in "Democracy for America" and it's not delivered much so far as I can tell. It's difficult to believe that Sanders, after his likely endorsement of Clinton, will be in much of position to meaningfully change policy in a Clinton administration. Note that even Sanders' position on many issues, especially foreign policy, were at best weak tea. At best, realistically speaking, millions of Sanders supporters falling behind Clinton now will result in a hollowness and crumbs.

That energy should not go toward helping Trump: Some of Sanders' backers have been rallying around "Bernie or Bust." While I appreciate the sentiment, it needs to be more strategic than that. Many progressives and other supporters of Sanders correctly note that giving up on the electoral system, or voting third party when someone has a preference for Clinton over Trump, can be self defeating. Of course, if someone has equal distaste for Trump and Clinton, then one can simply vote for any independent candidate of their choice, but the reality is that many will feel compelled to vote for Clinton because they so fear and loath Trump-- just as many will feel drawn to voting for Trump because of hatred toward Clinton.

How to resolve this?

What I suggest at VotePact.org for Sanders supporters to do now: Reach out to Republicans in your life. Make a pact: You vote for an independent party candidate, like the Greens (Jill Stein is the likely nominee) or a socialist candidate and your Republican friend, relative, co-worker, whatever, votes for some candidate other than Trump. They can vote for the Libertarian (they just launched their Gary Johnson - William Weld ticket, both former Republican governors) or the Constitution party.

This way, you both get your political freedom. You're free of voting for Clinton with all of her lies and hypocrisies, her wars and Wall Street ties. And your friend is free of any compulsion to vote for Trump with all of this misogyny and racism.

People throughout history have risked their lives and fortunes for a measure of political freedom. It should not be beyond the capacities of Sanders supporters and would-be Republicans to team up and both vote against the corruptions of Clinton and Trump.

The U.S. public is now trapped by two incredibly distasteful figures. They can continue to fuel the hatred between the two of them -- and that mostly benefits Clinton and Trump, or they can have honest dialogues with people in their own life. Fueling the hatred virtually ensures perpetual servitude to the worst elements of each of the establishment political parties.

It should not be #BernieOrBust. It should be #BernieAndBoom. The dissent that he has begun to articulate on the national stage against a system rigged to benefit the one percent need not choose between two figures of that "one percent.

" Sanders say he wants a revolution. This is a revolution. It can take place in every living room, in every car pool, in every chat room, in every pool room. People who know and trust and love each other can come together and both reject the billionaire system, the perpetual wars and the racism.

Instead of people cancelling out each others votes-- one voting for Clinton because they fear, Trump and another voting for Trump because they hate Clinton, they can revitalize U.S. democracy in an unprecedented way. They can use their bond, their love and their trust to overcome the hatred and fear that the corrupt duopoly uses to enslave them.

It will take work. It will take maturity. People will have to have an honest conversation with people they disagree with. People will have to not dismiss their friend's views. People will have to hear others out. But at least they'll be people authentically articulating their beliefs, not endless talking points by political hacks. It could be a revolution of the heart far beyond what Sanders has spoken of so far: #BernieAndBoom!