My Vote Project: Free Your Mind



Chapter One of long, protracted national nightmare reached it's formal conclusion last week with the DC Primary. It's over. At last and we find ourselves left with two of the least appetizing candidates imaginable: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. There are still some things left to discuss...  what does Bernie extract in terms of support/platform planks to official endorse Hillary? Who are the Vice Presidential picks going to be? Will the country disintegrate in disgust between now and November? Will be finally have an answer to that fateful question: 'What if they held an election and nobody came?'

I don't know, but as I noted, these choices are less than thrilling. My socks are remaining firmly in the 'up' position and have yet to show any indication they're going to be rolling up and down any time soon. So, here's where this nightmare of a primary season has left me:

1. Donald Trump: Nope. Nope. Nope. Big bag of nope. Hell nope. Let me tell you a little story about a man called nope! Nopity nope nope nope.

2. Hillary Clinton: Maybe. (But probably not.) I'll have to do my homework a bit more on Mrs. Clinton, but 'NOT TRUMP' is not a good enough reason for me to vote Clinton. Whoever wins, we're stuck with them for four years- I'm not voting against someone else just to find out that the person I did pick sucks out loud, albeit in a slightly more palatable way.

(Plus, fuck the Establishment. I mean seriously? We can't get together on reducing magazine sizes or banning assault weapons? We can't even shepherd one lousy bill through Congress to tackle this pressing problem of guns? Really and truly, if I endorse anyone or anything, it's this notion: vote them all out. Every last one of them, Republican and Democrat alike. Vote literally for anybody else- Green, Libertarian, Constitution, hell, Socialist. Send a message to the two big parties that if they can't get together and do the important things, they don't deserve to have jobs. This is why we need a Plan C- if for no other reason than a healthy fear of unemployment to motivate Democrats and Republicans to do their damn jobs for once.)

So if the Big 2 are unappealing, who are we left with?

1. Gary Johnson: Honestly, I'm probably going to vote Libertarian this election. I've got to roll my sleeves up and get digging through websites to lock it in, but I think at worst, they'll crack 5% at best, they'll break 15% and get into the debates- either way, if there's a leader of this ship of fools, right now it's Gary Johnson.

2. Jill Stein: I dig a lot of what the Greens say, especially about political reform and bringing our government back to the local level to encourage participatory democracy and citizen involvement. I voted for Stein in 2012 and although she's pushing hard for Bernie to come run on the Green ticket with her, I don't think Bernie will bite.*

3. Literally anyone else. Weirdly, the Natural Law Party always intrigued me a bit, but I don't know if they're still around and kicking. If I was in Minnesota, I'd be digging on Independence Party candidates and probably throwing my weight behind them.

This is not the way I imagined the primary season ending when it began, but it's over and if the two main choices don't appeal to you, well then, maybe it's time to do like the video says and 'free your mind.' The rest, undoubtedly, will follow.

*Look, I don't want to sound like a tinfoil hat wearing Conservative, but the whispers about Hillary and this damn email stuff are still out there. Bubbling quietly in the background... if the wishful thinking of the Right actually turns out to be true and the Democrats turn their lonely eyes to Uncle Joe at a Convention which would be thrown into chaos, I have no idea what Bernie might do. Suddenly, the Greens and their offer might be sort of tempting. But who knows...  people have been whispering 'indictment' for months now and none have appeared, which makes me thinking this is a 'Field of Dreams' type moment for the right. If they wish it, it will appear sort of thing. But you can't count it out either.

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