in support of third party voting
This is all very annoying, Gail Collins’s ultimatum that Republicans who are running away from Donald Trump…
… cannot slide over to “write in” or to the Libertarian candidate…
Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, an early evacuee from the Trump train, said he was going to wait until October to deal with the problem. Senator Lindsey Graham said he might “just pass — I may write somebody in.†Mark Kirk, who’s generally regarded as the Senator Most Likely to Be Defeated in November, gave Illinois voters an excellent example of his leadership capacity when he announced that he was going to write in David Petraeus or maybe Colin Powell.
In 2004, then Republican Senator from the state of Rhode Island, Lincoln Chafee, wrote in “George H W Bush” for his vote. The electoral college configuration makes the import of voting for Hillary Clinton versus Donald Trump a moot point for all but a handful of states, and so I’m all in favor of symbolic votes. Gail Collins… er… isn’t…
Here’s the bottom line: There are only three things you can do when it comes time to elect a president. You can stay home and punt; you can choose between the two major party candidates; or you can cop out by doing something that looks like voting but has no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the race.
But at least she rephrases my supposition. It’s just that I have a broader understanding of when your vote has no effect whatsoever on the outcome of the race…
The Libertarian ticket is pretty interesting this year… and well note the Marxist “Jacobin” Magazine’s unveiling that the Libertarian Party is (gasp) not Progressive in any way.
Susan Collins said she could support the Libertarian ticket if only it had been reversed, with vice-presidential candidate William Weld on top. You can’t totally dislike Weld, who once told me that being governor of Massachusetts was pretty much a walk in the park.
William Weld was a controversial pick for this anti-statist party, who this year for the ticket if not the platform have waded as far into the mainstream of politics as they ever will. Johnson’s mainstreamishness they could swallow, but Weld — got just under 50 percent in the first ballot, and just over 50 percent on the second ballot. The “If only Weld were at the top of the ticket” sentiment seems to be where a lot of Republican office-holders trying to squirrel away from Trump land.
I suppose the take-away from all this…
Right now we live in a world that’s been messed up by the bad decisions George W. Bush made about invading Iraq. He was elected president in 2000 thanks to a few hundred votes in Florida. A state where Green Party candidate Ralph Nader got 97,488 votes.
Most of the Green voters undoubtedly thought they were showing their disdain for both Bush and the deeply imperfect candidacy of Al Gore. And Nader is a man of fine principles. But look where those 97,488 votes got us.
… is to demand who Marco Rubio is voting for. Trump, as so happens.