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Vote For Jill Because She Can Win

Published on: October 7, 2016 at 9:26 AM
By Caitlin Johnstone

Yes, you read the headline correctly. Jill Stein can win.

That’s right. I said it.

No Jill Stein supporter would ever say in an argument that they are voting for her because she can win. They vote for her because she’s the best candidate, because her policies are the best, because she’s clearly the sanest person running, because she’s the only person running who has never been a Republican, because they want to get the Green party over the five percent federal funding hump, because her grip on foreign policy is formidable and even Ron Paul, darling of the third party candidates but also famously a libertarian, endorses her over the libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. They say they vote for her because it’s not a negating vote, that it’s a positive step towards what they want.

But regardless, where we stand today, a week into October 2016, no Jill Stein supporter would say they are voting for her because they believe she can win.

So I’m going to be the first. We can win this. With Jill. I know, right? Sounds weird. I even feel a tiny bit silly typing it out. But there are some key signs I want to point your attention to. First, I want to show you how much energy is going into us not winning.

Countless pages of editorial have been spent deriding Jill, Ajamu, and their entitled-white-privileged-but-also-basement-dwelling supporters. How exactly does that work, oh million-dollar media hacks? How can someone be overly entitled, but stuck living in their Mom’s basement, at the same time?

So there’s that. Just look up “Jill Stein anti-vax,” the creation of a neoliberal think-tank, and you will come up with pages and pages of superficial editorial and smear. On that one lie alone, there are thousands upon thousands of deceitful and maliciously manipulative words written on it designed to paint her as anti-vax without any actual evidence. That’s a tricky two-step. Takes a lot of creativity to make up such ornate lies.

They sure do spend a lot of time on us. Anyone who didn’t know better would think we were a threat.

You certainly would not think that we were a footnote protest vote that will amount to less than a percent of the vote.

Of course, they use that line too. We are merely a percent or two in the polls. But their vitriol betrays them.

Their own polls betray them too. When you drill down in the data of a CNN poll, for example, you will find that they have exorcised all millennials, Gen-Xers, minorities, and anyone not living in a southern state, from their sample set.

That’s a whole lot of people they’re not asking anymore. Basically, if you’re not a fifty-plus white person from the south, you don’t get polled. Now, why is that, I wonder? Hmm. They could not be hiding something…could they?

Check out this personal account on Facebook of the CNN studio poll too, after the last debate. All of the third party voters (which was a whopping 12 out of the 19) were forced to say they were “Undecideds” instead of “Third party.”

There have also been rumblings in the Jill Stein groups of people being switched from Green to Democrats on their voter registration. This happened to literally hundreds of thousands of people in the primaries. Approximately 160,000 people in Bernie’s hometown of Brooklyn alone were “accidentally” switched. Whoopsie! It was nationwide. That time, it affected all the people who had recently switched from Independent to Democrat. They were mysteriously switched back to Independent again, but it was a big problem then because it meant that all those Independents who had switched party affiliation in order to vote for Bernie, could no longer vote for him.

This time, it’s weird and irregular but it doesn’t really matter to the voter because they can still vote in the general for whoever they like, no matter what their party affiliation.

But I think you’ll agree, that’s a weird thing to do for no reason. That’s a lot of illegal effort to go to, for nothing. They’re doing something there. Bumping up Democrat numbers? Trying to hide the Dem exit? Not sure.

In this election, the real news is in the omissions, and in the seemingly contradictory actions.

So all the stories tell us that we’re not even a nuisance, but all the actions, the brigading by paid shills, the constant public shaming for our choice, weird voting registration anomalies, the huge media energy that is going into all those smear pieces, and the glaring lack of any kind of progressive viewpoint in even those same publications as a show of balance, tell us that we’re hovering over something big here.

If it was a game of hotter and colder, they’re yelling “Hot hot hot!” in spite of themselves.

Why spend money on shills to go at people that don’t matter? Why aren’t they going after the Trump people? Isn’t that kind of fascinating to you? Why are the shills pointed almost exclusively at progressives?

Because we, not Trumpsters, are the big threat this election.

This is unprecedented. But probably not surprising. I’ll tell you why.

A few days ago, I asked Hillary supporters, where was the moral line for them? What was something that if Hillary was found to be doing, you could no longer hold your nose and vote for her? What crime was so wrong or evil, that if she was found doing it, she would lose your vote?

Now it probably won’t surprise you, but no one stepped up and answered this voluntarily. So I found a kindly, middle-aged Hillary supporter, a sweet-hearted woman who had voted for Bernie in the primary, and I asked her this very question.

She squirmed. A lot. She was so clearly uncomfortable, even I felt bad for her. She evaded answering the question many times, but I held her to it.

She eventually admitted there was no crime that could sway her. No leak was going to matter. She just wanted Trump out, and she was willing to put any misgivings she had about Hillary aside.

So there you go people. Hillary could pull off a rubber mask and turn out to be the zookeeper who killed Harambe, and Hillary people would still vote for her. She could literally dig Harambe up from the ground and shoot him again and wear his hide as a winter coat, and it wouldn’t matter. It’s a tribal thing I guess. She’s one of them, even when she’s not. It’s all leftover monkey stuff from our evolutionary heritage.

It broke my heart a little bit when she said defensively, “I suppose you think I’m immoral now?”

But not enough for me not to reply, “Well, technically, I think that’s ‘amoral…’”

I may have a big heart, but I’m also a bit of a pedant.

Now, although my sample size was only one, I’m thinking she’s probably typical. When I posted the original article with that question, lots of progressives warned me that no one would answer. “You tell them one fact, and they scream ‘Conspiracy theorist!’ and flounce off” they told me. Hillary supporters, bolstered by the bluster of the mainstream media which keeps their attention off the ball and on the audience, always come in brimming with the same confidence Republican voters used to have when Karl Rove was writing their lines for them. It’s all keywords and stock phrases, but there’s no substance. No morality. No strength. We have the strength of our convictions. That anchors us in a way that Hillary supporters just can’t hope to attain. They’re held there by clever words and soothing think pieces that excuse away the most heinous and psychopathic acts as normal and “That’s just what all politicians do.” All politicians rig elections. They all call for assassinations. They all pick fights with nuclear superpowers and make war with sovereign nations for business reasons. Killing kids is okay. That’s not psychopathic. Murder is fine if it’s war.

It’s fine, that’s normal, that’s politics, go back to sleep.

So there’s no substance, but that’s because they don’t want to look. Looking is painful. Looking shows up too much truth. Better just to use the soundbites. Like my Hillary friend, they don’t want to be right, they want to feel right.

Ha! Isn’t that a great line? It’s not mine, I stole it from Jimmy Dore, but isn’t that so true of Hillary supporters? So they get skittish when presented with facts, and they often don’t know what to do. They don’t want to stare their newfound amorality in the face, but even a little research turns up even more horrors, so their only option is to run away. Only the paid shills can really engage you on that level, and even they resort to “Tinfoil hat!” accusations because, really, where else is there to go other than reach for ridicule?

And I mean, for real, it’s a funny old world when boring fact sounds like conspiracy theory. Sometimes I just stop and catch my breath and think, “Wow. Can this really be happening? Hey guys! Check it! We really live in an oligarchy guys! Guys? Guys? Can you believe it? This is really happening!”

Do you ever do that? Just take a deep breath and let it all in. Here we are, October 2016. A year ago, we had a tiny flame of hope in our heart for our once-in-a-lifetime candidate that we naively thought had a fair shot in a democratic election that was designed to popularly elect a president.

Well, a year on, it turns out he was a twice-in-a-lifetime candidate, paving the way for the most impressive woman I think I have ever come across. At a time when our planet seems so sick, so deeply insane, it is easy to lose hope.

But fear not, ladies and gentleman. There is a doctor in the house.

[Featured Image by Win McNamee/Getty Images]

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