Her disdain for Clinton and Trump is gaining support.
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It is precisely because people have been ignoring third-party candidates that an outsider like Trump was able to take over one of the two major parties that insist on exercising a monopoly in USA politics.
Mrs. Clinton angered Sanders supporters by choosing as her running mate Mr. Kaine, a veteran politician who has embraced pro-life positions and supported the TPP, and has taken other stances that are unacceptable to progressives. “She totally rigged it”, Trump said.
The question now for many Sanders supporters “becomes one of a trade-off”, says James McCann, professor of political science at Purdue University, in West Lafayette, Ind., in a phone interview with The Christian Science Monitor.
“Hillary can not stand up to Donald Trump because it’s the policies of the Clintons that have created the economic misery that has given rise to the right-wing extremism that supports Donald Trump”, Stein said.
Feeney said the booing from Sanders supporters can be characterized as them blowing off steam in the hard process of coming around to the Democratic party’s nominee. “So I say, thank goodness for Jill Stein because if not for Jill Stein, who knows what would have happened to that energy for change”, said Meraki, who crossed the country from Seattle to Philadelphia to be part of the rallies this week.
“If we were in Europe right now, in Germany or elsewhere, the idea of coalition politics of different parties coming together – you’ve got a left party, you’ve got a center-left party, coming together against the center-right party”, he said, before speaking more bluntly.
He said the party had received many emails and social media posts offering support from Sanders Democrats, even though it was not clear at the time that Stein would even appear on the November 8 ballot in Arizona.
Stein got about 470,000 votes in 2012, which shakes out to about 0.36 percent of the popular vote, according to the Federal Election Commission. “Let’s get those seats back”, Sanders said.
“Bernie’s movement has brought a lot of things to light that she also supports and so it’s so easy for us to segue to her campaign”, Hughes said while milling about in the crowd of protesters in the sweltering heat. He mobilized millions of Americans, many of them younger voters, who enthusiastically answered his call for a political revolution and are who are passionate about keeping the momentum going.
In fact, there are plenty of good reasons why atheists should not support Stein. “I don’t buy into that rhetoric of fear”, she said, adding, “Hillary Clinton is a scary candidate as well”. He said that he won’t organize for Clinton, but that she still has time to win his vote.
“I would caution them against that (voting for Stein) because, look at Ralph Nader”, said Michael Gordy, an Arizona Sanders supporter, referring to the third party campaign that some believe cost Democrat Al Gore the presidency in a tight race against Republican George W. Bush. “Sanders and I are on the same page”.
A July Washington Post-ABC News poll found that 14 percent of registered voters said they would seriously consider a third-party candidate but that only 2 percent specifically named Stein.
Stein’s supporters, whether they supported Sanders first or not, see this as a long game.
If we truly wanted democratic elections in this country, we would ditch the Electoral College, and vote for president in a two-stage runoff election, much like France, which also has a presidential system of government.
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In the meantime, Stein has reached out to the man who has inadvertently boosted her campaign and invited Sanders to talk about how they can collaborate. They see Nader’s third-party campaign as an ego-driven vendetta that gave us Bush, the Iraq invasion, and all the awful consequences that have flowed from that.
