Barley Literate: Don’t vote for Johnson or Stein “to make a statement”

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Don’t vote for Johnson or Stein “to make a statement”

Paul Krugman laid it right out in yesterday’s New York Times:

"Nobody cares” if you vote for Johnson or Stein on November 8 because you want to raise the middle digit to "the system."

Krugman’s key point: Clinton or Trump will be the next president of the United
States, so “don’t vote for a minor-party candidate [just] to make a statement. Nobody cares.”

Rightly enough, he says that if you really think Johnson or Stein, and the platforms of the Libertarian Party or the Green Party, are right for America and they should have the power of the presidency, then by all means vote for one of them.

But. Seriously.

Krugman bets that many Johnson/Stein supporters are mostly anti-Trump/anti-Clinton kinds of people, who haven’t read those party platforms and really haven’t thought through the consequences of Johnson or Stein getting to redecorate the Oval Office.

Here’s Krugman summarizing the Libertarian platform:

“…it calls for abolition of the income tax and the privatization of almost everything the government does, including education. What really struck me, however, was what the platform says about the environment.

It opposes any kind of regulation; instead, it argues that we can rely on the courts. Is a giant corporation poisoning the air you breathe or the water you drink? Just sue: ‘Where damages can be proven and quantified in a court of law, restitution to the injured parties must be required.’ Ordinary citizens against teams of high-priced corporate lawyers — what could go wrong?”

Here’s my simple summary of the Green platform:

It's chock full of really good, really feel-good, and mostly unrealistic ideas that have nothing in particular to do with world trade or job creation or infrastructure investment or effective regulation of the financial markets or health care reform or bipartisan government or…..