With the near certainty that November will present a pair of the least-worthy choices possible for the office of the presidency, I am now grateful that the Libertarian Party will be on the ballot here in Oklahoma, because it means I do not have to leave that spot blank. So I shall be voting for former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson but hoping Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton wins. Why this curious combination? My bullet points, Watson:
Why I will not be voting for Ms. Clinton: She has never presented the slightest evidence she can lead or run a government. She has presented ample evidence that she is interested in personal power and enrichment, and on the few issues where she has a defined position I disagree with her.
Why I will not be voting for Mr. Trump: Because no one has hit me in the head with a baseball bat. If I were to go to bed as Mr. Trump and wake up as a fecal coliform bacterium I would count myself the most blessed being that has ever lived or shall ever live.
Why I will be voting for Mr. Johnson: He literally personifies "none of the above," which in this case is the only choice a thinking conservative can make.
Why I will be hoping Ms. Clinton wins: Whether she or Mr. Trump wins will make almost no difference in the way government operates. Both will be awful, and they share more positions on issues than many folks seem to realize. Because they will be awful, the 2018 midterm elections -- which I will now label "Our National Emetic" -- will very probably be a massive ejection of whichever party occupies the White House.
The ability of the nation to recover from whichever candidate our Sophie's choice of an election leaves us will depend in large part on not adding any more Alan Graysons, Sheila Jackson-Lees or Hank Johnsons to the legislative branch. A President Clinton would guarantee a gridlock Congress and even if she should somehow win a second term she would lose much of her ability to damage things. When he looks at the way party members held their noses so tightly it restricted carotid flow and enabled them to vote for a hairpiece homunculus, I suspect GOP chair Reince Priebus wants to jump off a building. The only thing that stops him is the vision of the campaign commercials President Clinton will write for him whenever she speaks.
Of course, there is no guarantee that the very likely GOP sweep of congressional elections in 2018 won't have its own crop of idiots -- see this year's presumptive presidential nominee if you disbelieve me. But idiots opposing each other are to be preferred to idiots who agree, because the latter have a much greater chance of doing something.
Nearly 30 years ago now, when I first registered to vote, and was actually excited by it, I never envisioned the future choices we have now. And I'm sad. And the 18-year-old me that's somewhere still in my psyche is sad.
ReplyDeleteMine's probably ticked off ;-)
ReplyDeleteSeveral local races offer the chance to cast a vote that matters, so that's what I'll focus on for the next several months.