To My Republican Friends: Yesterday, in a post regarding the upcoming presidential election, I wrote:
This is no longer about personality. It is about positions.
I also implied that if your beliefs and positions were congruent with the Republican Platform and the statements of your nominee, you should vote for your nominee.
I humbly admit that I was wrong. The statements above do not apply when your candidate is batshit crazy.
Perhaps I should clarify this a bit with what I mean by “batshit crazy”. After all, it is a technical term.
Your candidate is batshit crazy if:
- They invite a foreign power to interfere in our Presidential election. This is true for any foreign power. Just as other countries are rightly upset if America tries to interfere in their elections, other than monitoring that they are fair, it is wrong for a foreign power to interfere in an election in a way that may change the outcome. However, that is just what the Republican Nominee, Donald Trump, has done when he said: “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said, staring directly into the cameras. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
- They establish a fund to influence an election against a candidate simply because they refused to endorse them. Donald Trump confirmed his plans during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” broadcast on Sunday, saying “I’ll probably do a super-PAC, you know, when they run – against Kasich for $10 million, to $20 million against Ted Cruz.”
- They encourage violating the constitutional separation between church and state by indicating they want to permit selected churches to influence government policy. At the RNC, Trump said, “At this moment, I would like to thank the evangelical community because, I will tell you what, the support they have given me — and I’m not sure I totally deserve it — has been so amazing. And has been such a big reason I’m here tonight. They have much to contribute to our policies.” (emphasis added)
As I said, I was wrong. There are some candidate actions that cross the line, and the above actions have. I am not going to ask you to vote for the Democratic Candidate, Hillary Clinton. I know that, independent of whether you trust her, you just cannot support the Democratic Platform. I get that.
Here’s what I would like you to do: Abstain from voting for the office of President. Vote for down office candidates (i.e., Senate, Congress, State and Local) who agree with your positions, but DO NOT vote for the Trump/Pence ticket. Let the world see, by the vote total differential, that you do not approve of this choice of your party, and that you feel the party has lost its reason. Feel free to investigate the third party candidates such as Gary Johnson, and vote for them if there is sufficient congruence (note that Stein, however, is also batshit crazy). But, Republican friends, please — if you believe that America should be the country that determines its destiny — do not vote for a man that encourages foreign countries to interfere in our elections.
P.S.: Think about this: There is already evidence that the DNC emails that were released had their contents altered. How can you trust the integrity of any email discovered by the Russians, when it is in their interest to skew the election in the direction of a candidate that will have a soft foreign policy towards them.
P2.S.: Of course, I would love it if you voted for Clinton, but I understand.
ETA P3.S.: From the pot calling the kettle department: PC World notes: IT security consultant Kevin Mitnick tweeted: “Donald Trump invites Russia to hack Clinton’s emails. Isn’t that aiding and abetting” under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act? [I’ll note that I actually went to camp with Kevin’s brother, Steve, who set loads of swimming records]
***
To my friends that are Bernie or Busters: I know you really wanted your candidate to be the Democratic Nominee. I know you believe the system was rigged, and the DNC emails prove it. I know you think that Clinton demonstrated that by giving Wasserman Schultz a cushy campaign job. You need to be aware of these facts:
- Hillary Clinton did not give Schultz a job, mearly a meaningless title.
- No matter how you slice and dice the numbers, Sanders would not have gotten the nomination. In the end, more people who could vote in the Democratic primary voted for Clinton. Despite her flaws.
Here’s what I would like you to do: If you can, follow the advice of your candidate, Bernie Sanders, and support Hillary Clinton. She is your best chance of getting progressives on the Supreme Court, which will ensure your agenda will be met. Vote and organize for progressive down ticket candidates, because they are where you can have the most influence. Legislation starts in Congress, not with the President. Congress will push your agenda.
If you absolutely cannot vote for Hillary, I understand. Do not vote for Trump as an alternative — he’s batshit crazy. Abstain for voting for the office of President, and to vote for down-ballot candidates that reflect your views. However, you need to be aware that in our system of winner-take-all in most states for electoral votes, your abstention (or voting for Jill Stein, who is unlikely to get a majority and is also batshit crazy) — while sending a message — may throw the election to the bat-shit crazy Trump, and doom the possibility of a progressive leaning Supreme Court for decades. If you want that on your conscience, feel free to abstain. After all, it is better to be idologically pure and not vote for an imperfect candidate than to make progress towards a progressive future.
Let me add to your advice for Berners: You don’t have to support Hillary. It’s enough to hold your nose and vote against Trump by voting for her.
That said, you really should watch the great speech Bill Clinton made at the convention last night. His daunting task was to portray Hillary as a human being, and one who cares a great deal about many issues that Bernie also supports. His other even more difficult task was to dispel what he called the “cartoon” version of Hillary that right-wing propaganda has drawn over the last two decades, and show us that the real Hillary is someone quite different. I think he did that quite effectively.
The speech is worth watching on YouTube, if only to hear one of the great orators enthrall an audience. Its effect on me was that I don’t think the clothespin I’ll put on my nose in November will need to be anywhere as tight as I expected. In fact, I might not need that clothespin at all.
In both cases there is something far better to do than abstaining: vote for a third-party candidate who you can get behind.
Yes, I know — a third-party candidate will never win. The system is rigged against them and none of them have the vast wealth necessary to mount an effective campaign. But there has never been a better time for people to say, with their votes and not just with their mouths, that we need other options. The goal isn’t to win the election; it’s to start influencing the discourse, to begin planting the seeds that could result in fairer ballot access for the next generation, to send a massive vote of no confidence.
I plan to vote for Gary Johnson. I don’t agree with him on everything, but my views have more in common with his than with either Trump or Hillary. And he’s pragmatic, not an ideological purist. But if some other third-party candidate floats your boat, go with that one. I’d like to see the “other” vote coalesce around one person, because (say) 5% makes more of a dent than a bunch of 1%s, but you shouldn’t vote for someone you can’t accept.
Certainly there are things said against Hillary that aren’t true or are semi-true but blown out of proportion. For me, though, as somebody who has held a security clearance and who is thus familiar with the very clear training and guidance that is given… well, if she were an ordinary person, her clearance would have been revoked. And I can’t abide a commander in chief who *either* doesn’t have a security clearance or has one and oughtn’t. This isn’t about whether she should or shouldn’t be *prosecuted*; it’s about Security 101, which she failed.
I disagree that Hillary would have been fired, or that she failed Security 101. I’ve had this argument with a number of people, and here are the salient points:
From everything I have read on this, it sounds like, at least on Clinton’s part, there might have been some administrative warning levels, but whether there were true infractions is unclear, and nothing reached the levels that was clearly illegal meeting the level of the law, which requires showing intent to disseminate classified information. There was some stupidity, yes. There was demonstration that Clinton was not a technology expert, yes.
Where there was a problem was in her employees, who should have at least been ensuring that the private server met the required security controls. My understanding is that there is no an investigation in that area.
It is also worth noting that other Secretaries of State have noted that her practice was in line with what they did.
As for the issue of third parties: Presidential elections are not the way to get a third-party to have inroads, especially with the way that electoral votes are allocated — which means that unless a third party can win majorities in a sufficient number of states, all they can do potentially cause the worse candidate to win. Further, any such President would be unable to push their agenda without congressional support. Go for your third-parties, but do so at the local, state, congressional, and senate level first. As for President, the way the system is now, you should vote for a third-party only if you are willing to accept having the worst of the main party candidates win your state and the election; the vote is essentially an abstain given that they do not have the ability to win sufficient electoral votes. If the system is “rigged”, that’s how it is done, but that rigging is an aspect of the electoral system we have.
I didn’t actually say “fired”; I was talking about having the clearance revoked. The training I received for my low-level clearance stressed that I’d face that penalty for mere negligence, like leaving classified documents around where those without clearance could see, regardless of intent. Maybe it was a scare tactic and they don’t actually do that?
You’re right to point out that State and Defense might have different rules. I based this on my DOD experience; I don’t know anything about State. It surprises me that either would allow an involved party to unilaterally unclassify something without notifications or the like, but I suppose it’s possible that “she had the authority to declassify that stuff” lets her off the hook. They ought to tighten that up a little to at least require explicit notice or something, I would think.
On third-party candidates: yes, they should build up from local elections; that’s how you actually build representation. *But* there are a lot of eyes on this election, so even though a third-party candidate cannot win, there is value in the exposure at this level. There is value in the news media having to deploy a third color on election-night maps, even if it’s only a couple electoral votes. There is value in prodding the large number of people who vote party line and can’t even name most of the people they’re voting for, getting them to say “huh, what’s that?”. Third-party activity at the national level is about starting conversations, not winning races. I have no illusions that this would quick or easy; this is about having conversations now that your children might benefit from later.
Leaving documents out is a bit different than email issues. Usually (from what I’ve seen) with email, there is a series of escalating warnings for sending messages classified at the time of sending. As for receipt, you are supposed to report it, but is not a chargeable incident as you didn’t originate the message. The fact that those receiving the messages did not report the receipt indicates (at least to me) that it wasn’t considered a systemic problem at the level of receipt. Think about it: If she was sending classified, then the person receiving it should have reported it if it was concern, and it wasn’t reported. In many ways (and I’m not trying to say she is perfect), this is more of a “let’s try to find something and turn a rumor into news” than anything else; from State’s point of view, it was a non-issue. Further, this is not the sort of problem that would happen in the Oval Office, as IT would be out of her control.
As with any candidate, there are imperfections. There’s never been a good examination of why the private server was there in the first place; that’s more of an issue of being a private person in an environment where the world is out to get you (the Clintons, in general, have been investigated more and raked over the coals more than any other president … and nothing chargeable has been found). I think it would be good for Hillary to just come out and address all the rumors, but I doubt she will (and that will hurt her).
With respect to third-party candidates, I only have a concern if they end up changing the results of the election in a way worse for the country. Nader arguably did that, giving us Bush 43. Will Johnson? It depends on what states he shows strength. If I was in a swing state, I’d worry more than being in a state strong in one direction. But the last thing we need is for a 3rd party candidate to result in Trump winning. That would not only be bad for the country, but could tarnish the attempts to grow the third party. It’s a tricky balance.