Election 2016: No Endorsements (Except For Jill Stein)

I normally post endorsements in select political contests in various parts of the country just prior to Election Day.  Not this year.

This blog endorses no one for any office up for election this year, except for Jill Stein of the Green Party for President, and I made that endorsement back in June.  I have not followed any of the crucial House or Senate races, or the small number of gubernatorial races, for 2016, and I see no reason to waste my time making any endorsements for them now.  Why should I?  I'd only endorse the Democratic candidates because they are not as bad as the Republicans (though I have in the past endorsed Republicans on occasion), and I'd be endorsing these Democrats for their interchangeable, predictable stands on the issues - issues that, incidentally, haven't been resolved for a quarter of a century.  Why am I still bitching about high-speed rail years after the publication of Joseph Vranich's book on the subject urging that it be built in America?  Why are we still talking about campaign finance reform?  Why are we still trying to do something about a shrinking middle class?  What does it matter if I endorse a candidate who says he or she is going to do something about a problem when I know full well that nothing is going to be done about it?

As for the major-party presidential candidates . . . to hell with them.  Donald Trump is a bigot and a megalomaniac who should never have gotten this far. Hillary Clinton is a flawed, untrustworthy candidate who got the nomination of her party through the bullying and the neutering of her opposition.  Hillary is the Democratic nominee not because she's a woman but because she's a Clinton, and I am sick and tired of living in a system that recognizes dynastic entitlement - Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton, with a period of Obamus Interruptus - at everyone else's expense.  At this point, I don't care that the FBI has cleared her of any wrongdoing on the basis of the last of these newly discovered and mostly redundant e-mails. 

The Presidency, as Martin O'Malley once said,  is not a crown to be passed between two families.  Or three.  Trump is not from a family that has produced a President before, but if he wins, you can bet that his adult children will end up helping him run the country, with their own little fiefdoms in the executive branch.  Although one may take comfort in the idea of Ivanka as White House chief of staff, one cannot take any comfort at all in the suspicion that Trump has always treated his presidential bid as a money-making scheme, and if you think it's bad now, imagine how he and his family could use the Presidency for their own collective enrichment! 

So, yes, I'm voting for Jill Stein.  I have been told that if you don't vote for Hillary, you're essentially a sexist, and if you vote for Jill Stein, you are a sexist who is voting for a woman whom you know isn't going to win simply to hide your misogyny.  Let's get something straight; I was ready and eager to vote for whomever got the Green Party presidential nomination, male or female, and it's actually hard to vote for a minor-party candidate when you know she isn't going to win simply because of that fact.  But the Greens need five percent of the vote on Tuesday to get federal matching funds for 2020, and ballot access in all fifty states (something they couldn't quite achieve this time), and even though I may be marginalizing myself by voting Green, I am prepared to do just that . . . in the interest of helping to dismantle the two-party system as we know it.

Sadly, Jill Stein is the only Green Party candidate for any office in my precinct.  I'll vote for Democratic or write-in candidates in the down-ballot races, but I'm pretty steamed over the fact that I have no other Greens to vote for.  If you can vote for Greens in down-ballot races, and if you feel comfortable voting for them, you should do so.

Okay, I'm off my soapbox.  I won't be blogging on Election Day, because I understand that hackers, possibly from Russia, may be wrecking havoc with various Internet sites and possibly the Internet itself.  I'll be back Wednesday or Thursday after this mess of an election is over.  As Dan Rather would say, courage.  Go out and vote.