I had an awesome phone-banking experience today. After a discussion about a local campaign finance reform vote, one of my callees wanted to debate the presidential election as well. She thought I was calling on behalf of the Clinton campaign. Ha! I told her that it would be pretty ironic for someone from the HRC camp to support campaign finance reform, seeing as they raised a billion dollars. Eventually, we got to the point where she asked me, “So you really think, that if I go vote for Stein, that may stop some eventual war some day?”
And when I told her yes, she said “Ok, then I will.” It was a pretty cool moment once I realized that she meant it. But I really feel like she wanted to vote for Stein anyway. Even though she did donate once to the Clinton campaign, I got the feeling that she knew something was wrong. She knew there was a real reason not to trust the DNC. She knew war and fracking suck. So why was she, up until this point, going to vote for Clinton? Well, basically because of Trump. Because of the notion that we owe our votes to Clinton, and the audacity of neo-liberals who claim that we should be blamed because she is a garbage candidate. Of course Trump is worse, but there are more than 2 options.
This is amazing to me. The duopoly needs to be broken, and this is obvious. Yet, so many of us think that we should only vote for the person that might win, even if they don’t represent us. This would be like a 49ers fan deciding that he’s going to switch to the Patriots because they have a better shot at the Super Bowl this season. But a real fan doesn’t do that. People have more loyalty to superfluous symbols than their personal values.

Our priorities are messed up
There are way too many people who don’t care AT ALL about the corruption and poor judgement on display in the major parties. I can almost understand if you are so far removed from the notion of cyber-security, that you want to ignore the emails. But what about climate change? Especially parents…how do you claim to want a future for your children, when you are unwilling to throw your support to the planet? Exporting fracking is not an environmentalist’s position.
And does anyone remember the troops? A classmate of mine was killed in Afghanistan TODAY. Does anyone want to vote against war? Clinton suggested a military response to the email hacks; that’s not my kind of candidate. I guess people think they are automatically voting on values if the candidate is a minority or woman.
We are giving up our own democracy when we continue to play the establishment’s game. The corporations that set the policies of major parties do not care about us! If you really do care, at all, about your American freedoms or rights, please try to find the fortitude to start voting like who you are; you are not a sheep.