Bernie supporters could blow this election [View all]

Why refusing to vote for Hillary Clinton will only make everything worse

By Gary Legum

The political left has been tearing itself up of late with a rousing game of “Who Wants to Be the Most Liberal Liberal Ever To Liberal,” much in the same way it seems to each and every election cycle. The current battle, between supporters of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, would be much more entertaining if the arguments for and against both campaigns weren’t variations on the same tired leftier-than-thou rhetoric and blind loyalty that were worn out even before Ralph Nader threw his rumpled corduroy blazer over his shoulder and slunk off into the humid Florida night.

I’ll get to some of those arguments in a minute, but first I’m going to pull on my old-man pants, hike the waist up to my armpits, shake my fist at some clouds, and share a couple of the strongest memories I have of the months leading up to the 2000 election, when I was a 26-year-old, semi-politically-aware liberalish Gen-X voter.

I recall a debate that year about whether true liberals should vote for Nader because, in his formulation, there was not a dime’s worth of difference between the two major-party candidates, Al Gore and George W. Bush. I recall email blasts from at least one acquaintance in a toss-up state trying to interest his friends in states that were safely for Gore in a voting trade of sorts, whereby one of us would cast our vote for Nader; in return, our friend would cast his vote for Gore. The thinking was that this would preserve a Democratic victory in both states while also registering liberal protests at the centrist drift of the party.

I recall spending the night before the election drinking in a P.F. Chang’s in Los Angeles with a group of friends, one of whom had brought along a reporter from the L.A. Daily News who planned on casting her vote the next day for Nader. There had been some vague concern over polls showing the race for California’s 54 electoral votes might be close, but she assured us all that this was not the case. California was safely in Gore’s column, so liberals might as well cast that protest vote.

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/02/bernie_supports_could_blow_this_election_why_refusing_to_vote_for_hillary_clinton_will_only_make_things_worse/

Yes, this is a couple of weeks old. But it's still true!