My answer to those who say they will vote according to their "progressive principles"
In my view it is hypercritical to claim that you are voting third party or not voting at all because you are obeying your "progressive principles". Why? It's simple - you are not using your vote to stop Republicans from taking control of the White House, both Houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court when you know that if that were to happen many people who can least afford it will suffer under Republican rule.
It's disingenuous to claim you are acting in accordance with your "progressive principles" when your actions, or lack there of, puts others in harms way. The main difference between progressives and conservatives is that conservatives only seek to take care of themselves while progressives are concentrated on the greater good. You have a right to vote anyway you please, but if you are going vote third party or not vote at all, quite lying to me and yourself by saying you are are acting in accordance with your progressive principles. True progressives don't behave in that manner.
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That I like bring them down a notch by illustrating to them that the they are behaving despicably when judged in accordance with their own progressive principles. They don't have prepared talking points for that line of reasoning because when viewed from that perspective their proposed course of voting for the Green candidate is totally indefensible.
Then there is the small matter that the Green candidate, Jill Stein, who is a medical doctor, who has no experience running thing bigger than a girl scout troop. She has run for Massachusetts House of Representatives, the Massachusetts Senate, the office of Massachusetts Secretary and President of the United States and was defeated in very large to huge margins in every one of those races. The only office to which she has ever elected was one of 22 "Representatives to the Town Meeting" of her home town of Lexington, Massachusetts, a town of just over 31,394 people.
Jill Stein couldn't be elected dogcatcher anywhere else and that's probably a good thing. If she won she would be so unprepared that she would probably have a nervous breakdown her first day in the White House.
Good post!
