Tag Archives: Gary Johnson

by - 0 comments

Should the two major parties make the rules? It’s debatable.

thirdpartychoiceAnother reason why so many Americans are frustrated, despondent, and bitter this election year.

Both parties have lost ground among the public. Independents now outnumber either Democrats or Republicans, with 40% of Americans choosing that label, according to the Pew Research Center.

But the private, Democrat and Republican-created and -controlled Commission on Presidential Debates announced on Friday, Sept. 16, that only Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will be allowed on the stage for the first presidential debate.

This when:

  • In a recent Quinnipiac University poll that asked likely voters, “Do you think that Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate for president, should be included in the presidential debates this year, or not?”, 62% answered “yes.”
  • Johnson is going to be on the ballot in all 50 states and the District of Columbia
  • A new Washington Post/Survey Monkey poll shows Johnson is in double digits in 42 states. In 15, he’s at 15 percent or higher, including 25 percent in New Mexico, 23 percent in Utah and 19 percent in Alaska, Idaho, and South Dakota.

So here we have a Commission that’s a creature of the two major parties setting the ground rules for who gets to be on the debate stage, securing free airtime for its choices on C-SPAN, ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC, as well as all cable news channels including CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and others.

Not exactly a reason to celebrate our political system, is it?

by - 0 comments

Libertarian Gary Johnson: an emerging threat to the status quo?

thirdparty

He must be getting under their skin

The major media have all but ignored Libertarian presidential candidate, Gary Johnson, until now.

On Thursday (9/8), Johnson flubbed a question from an MSNBC commentator about Aleppo, the besieged city in Syria. After months of repeated exaggerations, lies, and bluster from Clinton and Trump, the media went ballistic over Johnson’s blunder.

All of a sudden, the reliably liberal New York Times, which has done little more to date than report on Johnson’s poll numbers, questioned his fitness for the presidency.

“Gary Johnson, the former New Mexico governor and Libertarian Party presidential nominee, revealed a surprising lack of foreign policy knowledge on Thursday that could rock his insurgent candidacy when he could not answer a basic question about the crisis in Aleppo,” the Times said. “The stumble could be a serious blow to Mr. Johnson’s campaign…”

The Times followed up with, “…Mr. Johnson’s presidential chances appear shaky…And on Thursday, Mr. Johnson’s credibility suffered a blow when he fumbled over a question about the crisis in Syria…”

Media of all stripes have piled on with wall-to-wall coverage, most of it suggesting Johnson proved he was unfit for office, some saying it showed he should withdraw from the race.

“Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson may have just disqualified himself as a common-sense alternative to Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton,” said the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Reflecting the concern among progressives pols and pundits, on Saturday (9/10), NYT Op-Ed writer Timothy Egan said Johnson doesn’t deserve the votes of people disenchanted with Clinton and Trump.

“A voter of conscience, in a normal year, could go for Johnson and feel O.K. about it,” Egan wrote. “But this year, in a tight election, any vote by an independent or a Democrat for Johnson could burden that citizen with a lifetime of guilt for handing the world over to Trump. His presidency could “lead to the end of civilization,” as his own ghostwriter, Tony Schwartz has said.”

If you want to know why the liberal gang is now after Johnson, just look at the polls.

Johnson is going to be on the ballot in all 50 states and a new Washington Post/Survey Monkey poll shows he’s already in double digits in 42 of them. In 15 of them, he’s at 15 percent or higher, including 25 percent in New Mexico, 23 percent in Utah and 19 percent in Alaska, Idaho, and South Dakota.

Then you have today’s revelation that Johnson is the top choice of respondents in the most recent polling of the military community.  The poll was conducted between Sept. 7 and Sept. 10 via SurveyMonkey.

Johnson was preferred by 37 percent of respondents, which include active-duty, retired and former members of the military, as well as their family members.  Trump came in second, at 30 percent, and Clinton third at 24 percent.

Who would have thought that Hillary Clinton, who expected her march to the White House to be a cakewalk after Donald Trump secured the Republican nomination, would be forced to add Gary Johnson to the equation?

Nothing like a real challenge to their power to get the powers that be all charged up.

 

by - 0 comments

Think third party: your vote will not be wasted

hillaryEvilQueen2Trumpclown1

It doesn’t have to be a choice between an evil queen and a bombastic clown, two toxic, fatally flawed candidates.

About two-thirds of prospective voters consider both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton dishonest and untrustworthy. That’s millions of Americans who hold both candidates in high disregard, but appear ready to just hold their noses and vote for one of them, unwittingly helping to preserve the status quo. That’s insanity.

The idea that a third party candidate can’t win will then become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But there is another option in this presidential race. Support, and then vote for, a candidate from another party, such as  Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson or Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Your vote won’t be wasted and America will be the better for it.

As Eugene V. Debs, five-time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party of America, observed, “It is better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don’t want and get it.”

The potential receptivity of Oregonians to a third party is reflected in the fact that about a third of Oregon’s three million registered voters don’t belong to the Democratic or Republican Party.

Some of that is surely a clear decision by voters refusing to align themselves with one of the major parties. Some may be tied to Oregon’s new policy of automatically registering voters when they visit a Department of Motor Vehicles. Under that process, voters are automatically registered as “unaffiliated” and later given the option of picking a party choice, but most do nothing.

Nationally, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center recently reported that the share of independents in the public, which long ago surpassed the percentages of either Democrats or Republicans, continues to increase. In a 2016 report, based on 2014 data, 39% identify as independents, 32% as Democrats and 23% as Republicans. This is the highest percentage of independents in more than 75 years of public opinion polling, according to Pew.

In a 2014 Gallup poll, 58 percent of U.S. adults also favored having a third party because the Republican and Democratic parties “do such a poor job” representing the American people. Only 35 percent said the two existing major parties do an adequate job of this.

Your willingness to express support for a third party candidate will have one immediate impact. In 2000, the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), a private company, approved rules stipulating that, besides being on enough state ballots to win an Electoral College majority, debate participants must clear 15% in pre-debate opinion polls.

At a minimum, if you express your support for another party’s candidate, that person will have a better chance of joining the presidential debates, making Americans more aware of their positions and enhancing the possibility that they will emerge as a serious contender.

Don’t cop out by endorsing write-ins instead. If you agree that voting is about expressing a political preference, write-ins only signal a defection from the two-party system, not support for another person and agenda. Voting for a third party conveys endorsement of a recognizable set of principles, a public platform.

Even if your third party candidate doesn’t win, your vote will have an impact. Willie Sutton reputedly replied to a reporter’s inquiry as to why he robbed banks by saying “because that’s where the money is.” Politicians follow a similar principle. They go where the votes are. If voters reject the history, values and solutions of Clinton and Trump, other politicians will become more open to alternatives.

Americans will not be throwing away or wasting their votes by casting them for people and policies they support, rather than for the lesser of two evils.

As John Quincy Adams said, “Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, and you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost.”

The only wasted vote is one that’s not cast at all.

(Postscript: The Chicago Tribune agrees: Editorial: Let Libertarian Gary Johnson debate Clinton and Trump, http://trib.in/2b6FGv4)