"I got to stamp my feet and refuse to vote for Hillary."

[JCanete]

53. Look, I myself am voting for Hillary, mostly because Bernie was able to move the party

platform left, if only in a token and non-binding way. I'm going to try to be hopeful and be part of the people "helping" the future President and the party remember and enact its liberal obligations, but when I was on the fence, it had nothing to do with Bernie or Bust, or wanting Trump to be President.

If my dilemma had ever been as simple as voting "the lesser of two evils," then yes, it would have been a no brainer, as people want to depict it now, to vote for Clinton. My very real concern was that we were all just playing into a kabuki theater of politics ... a good cop bad cop that continued to result in a nation and planet sliding into the abyss. I still feel very strongly that we owe the Trumps and future Trumps of our nation to the last 30 years of the corporatist wing of the democratic party--the dominant wing--as much as to the wholly owned GOP, because together, they have taken us backwards on so many fronts, a consequence of pro-corporate legislation and being almost entirely mum on issues of campaign finance, small business killing trade deals, Wall Street deregulation, and on and on. I still feel very strongly that this happened in large part because the population has been in equal parts lulled to sleep and convinced to give up on our political system.

Both parties have been content to fight over the symptoms, which as a democrat, amounts to really bad strategy if you want to make the world a better place(and if you want to actually distinguish yourself from the fiscal policies of the GOP in ways that are popular), or really good strategy if divide and conquer is your game and you are working for the same corporate interests. We've avoided class warfare like the plague, which could have been the thing that galvanized the poor and the middle class together, rather than allowing the GOP to divide us with race baiting, wage shaming of public employees, etc.. Together, the parties have eroded the power of labor unions to just a ghost of what they once were. Our schools have gotten worse at the hands of both parties, and an undereducated populace is now freaking out about losing its shirt. Well its no surprise that there are predators waiting there to help them turn their frustrations on each other.

Wouldn't it have been nice if our party hadn't been working for(and weren't one in the same as) the very people that we could have legitimately channeled that righteous rage towards?(btw, not looking for a Bastille Day, people are people, and rich people aren't bad, they just have too much power to advocate their own self interests). Wouldn't it have been nice if we had had a message that wasn't so easily filtered and distorted through the reactionary lens of "if you are fighting for them you are fighting against me," that has been propped up by our corporate media?

I just wasn't so happy about adding my vote to a Clinton "mandate," if what I was going to get for it was messaging from the media and the party that said the voters clearly approve of more corporatism. I would never vote for Trump because there's no way I'm adding my vote to his mandate or popularity, and I think he's a horrible embarrassment, and that his damage to our standing in the world would be a legacy that we would feel for some time. But if my opinion is that we're all sleeping at the wheel while we drive towards a cliff, and that a Trump is going to step on the gas and wake us the fuck up, and if on top of that, my opinion is that this man is so dangerous and unpopular that we might actually get some bipartisan activity in opposing him and shutting down his agenda, not to mention bringing some direct Sunlight to his politics and world-view that they can't possibly survive the disinfectant,

and most importantly, if I am convinced that if we don't drastically change our trajectory as a party and a nation that we are going to get more and more popular demagogues like Trump for the privilege, then I appreciate a more analytical and thoughtful means of persuasion than simplistic memes and shaming techniques. I know that Bernie or Busters, purists, or just cynics like myself, come in all flavors, and there are some that truly were courted from a more right-wing mindset(which is an accomplishment, not a failing of his campaign), and maybe their reasons for never voting for Clinton are weak and unexamined, and that my own process can't be applied to everyone, but I don't think it does any service to unity or mutual understanding to try to paint everybody with a broad brush, nor does it serve to tackle the very serious misgivings that may be keeping some people from coming over.

Edit:

So here are some good reasons to vote for Clinton and push a democratic ticket loudly:

the Presidential ticket usually drives voters. If we have depressed turnout, we may lose even more seats in congress and the Senate.(I don't know what the current seats at risk for taking or losing are at this time) So, even though I never had any intention of not voting down-ticket, an enthusiasm gap could really hurt getting people to the polls. Whether any of these individual democrats are particularly good or bad is probably worth determining on an individual basis, but we know what it looks like when republicans aren't stymied by gridlock. Yeah, I think they're both working for the money, but one side does it a hell of a lot slower than the other does. Democrats have a different base to appease after all, so please god lets not stop sounding like liberals in our own party. Even if Trump has no shot in hell, Hillary could inherit a really conservative congress and senate, and I don't have high hopes for what attempts at compromise are going to look like.

If there is any hope of pushing Hillary left, then she actually needs that mandate to enact left policies. Whether that is going to happen remains to be seen, but assuming the best, the more support she has from an engaged left, the more likely she can and will do something for us.

Supreme Court Justices: Hopefully we don't get appointments like the one Obama just put up, which I guess was a smart political play because he knew that he could make the republicans look ridiculous by turning it down, but I'm hoping for somebody far less conservative on fiscal issues. The question is whether we can get that from Clinton, but we know we can't from Trump.