Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "A Hillary Presidency Sustains The Neoliberal Nightmare - Or Does It?" video.

  1. I think the democratic party might've got caught crying wolf too many times, and now that there is a wolf, some people don't want to recognize it. Romney and McCain, and all the others would have been bad for the country, but Trump would be an unmitigated disaster--for women, for minorities, and for the middle class generally. It's hard to imagine a worse candidate for president. Jimmy's wrong because of the timing and focus of his comments. His focus is on winning the presidency, as if that's a new strategy for the progressive left. Instead, the progressive left disappoints itself when it continues to hope for a silver bullet, especially one with such a short expiration. You're not going to get to the top of the mountain by trying to jump really really high. Timing is also an important factor in Jimmy's argument. It's six weeks from the election, and Jill Stein has a negligible share of the vote. At least with Bernie would could say that he was making good headway, but Jill is not. That's not entirely her fault, but it's true nonetheless. Gary Johnson (whom I think would be worse than Clinton) has only a slightly greater, but still insufficient, share, and lately he's been fumbling in the media. So count him out. These third party candidates would need a miracle to win anything close to 20%, and even then they would still lose. And what did Jimmy do when Bernie was on the verge of losing? He kept railing on about how Hillary might be indicted or how one of her other scandals would remove her from the race, in other words, that something miraculous would happen. It didn't. Those kinds of comments are fine as speculation, but they aren't constructive. The notion that the electorate will suddenly flip on the two-party establishment (without the necessary pre-election foundation and propaganda, but from the sheer exhortation to do so) can only lead to false disappointment when we should be optimistic about the political future. Even though Sanders lost, he showed that you could mount a strong left wing political campaign without appealing to the donor class. That's a powerful idea, and we're already seeing other progressive campaigns using it. The 2018 election is going to be incredibly important since so many democratic seats will be open. Again, if you'd asked me a few years ago, or even during the primaries, I would have said that voting third party is valid, but there has to be some point when you cut your losses, and I guess mine was sooner than some other people's, and it started a little after the time Bernie lost and Trump won. I happen to live in a securely blue state so I may still vote for Stein, but I'll have to see. Jimmy's vehemence and self-righteous indignation are entirely misplaced.
    3
  2. While I agree with Jimmy's logic, Trump really is a valid exception. I voted Green in the last election, even when everyone was trying to run a scare campaign against Romney. The fact is that there will never be a Republican candidate that will not fit the "worse of two evils" narrative. There will never be a time when the democratic establishment says, "Ok, we're pretty secure, go ahead and vote for an opposition, third party." Never. But Jimmy vastly underestimates how bad a president Trump will be, and that bad outweighs whatever benefit may come of a third party vote. Trump would surpass GWB as the worst president in modern times. Third parties have to do a better job of promoting qualified candidates for smaller positions in government. That's where the focus should be directed; that's where they can do the most good.
    2
  3. Just to prove Robert's point, in the most recent election, there was a Green candidate running for I can't remember what--a local position of some sort. The Republican and Democratic candidates had several paragraphs of information about them in the voter pamphlet, but the Green candidate had only her facebook profile listed. Not only does that look unprofessional, but it shows a lack of interest in informing the voters. Jimmy was also distorting the argument when he kept emphasizing the Iraq vote, because there are a lot of crazy things Trump would do beyond starting wars that would hurt the US domestically. As bad as Clinton is, she wouldn't condone policies that overtly target racial minorities, like stop and frisk, and she would at least be somewhat amenable to public influence. I'm not sure the same could be said of Trump. The other aspect is that Clinton would block at least the most egregious of Republican legislation, which is important because as Robert tried to point out, Republicans have successfully taken over the majority of local and state government, partly because of unpopular democratic policies, yes, but also because they ran winning local campaigns. Trump, however, would let those bills through. If we'd had a serious, sustained discussion and push to elect a third party a few years ago, we might have had a shot. But Stein is polling at 2-4% 6 weeks from the election. There's no way she's going to have any influence this time around. It's a case of too little too late.
    2