My Vote for President in 2020
W.J. Astore
I've given a lot of thought to my vote for the presidency in 2020. Neither Trump nor Biden is attractive to me. These men haven't earned my vote. Who has?
I like Tulsi Gabbard, and I'm planning on voting for her in November 2020.
I know: she's pulled out of the race. She even endorsed Joe Biden. But I can't vote for the Biden/Harris ticket. To me, they're corporate cronies who endorse U.S. militarism and empire.
Trump, the Republican alternative, is a disaster. Totally self-absorbed and lazy to boot, Trump cares nothing about our country and will sacrifice anything and everything to his own definition of success.
Now, I live in a state that is safely blue; in the big picture, my vote is meaningless. But it's not meaningless to me. I want to vote for something I believe in, and I believe in Tulsi's stand against war.
Here's a recent statement from Tulsi Gabbard that convinced me she's still in the vanguard of reform. If only Biden/Harris would say something like this, but of course they won't.
STATEMENT FROM TULSI GABBARD
When I first ran for Congress in 2012, I knew that we needed to bring our troops home from Afghanistan and made that a central focus of my campaign. After two decades of fighting in a war that has no clear objective, cost thousands of lives, and continues to cost taxpayers at least $4 billion a month, most Democrats and Republicans want to continue this war. This is why I voted against this year’s National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) - a $740.1 Billion defense bill that disproportionately benefits the military industrial complex, continues to escalate the new Cold War, and needlessly continues our decades-long war in Afghanistan.
Unfortunately, this bill passed the House with bipartisan support.
Nevertheless, as a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, I fought hard to get many provisions added to the bill, including:
improving the quality of life for servicemembers and military families,
addressing sexual assault in the military,
providing transparency of the devastating humanitarian impact of U.S. sanctions,
allowing servicemembers to use over-the-counter hemp products,
and helping to mitigate and reduce the environmental threats that impact our troops.
We have much work ahead of us. I will continue to do all I can to bring our troops home from Afghanistan, work to end the new Cold War and nuclear arms proliferation, and ensure the safety, prosperity, and well-being of the American people and our planet.
Now, it’s time for Congress and this Administration to do the same.
Mahalo and be well, Tulsi
Update (8/16/20): I believe politicians have to earn our votes. We should never feel obligated to vote for them.
For the sake of argument, let’s say Trump wins. People will predictably argue that it’s people like me who are to blame, since I didn’t vote for Biden. (Nor will I vote for Trump.)
No. It won’t be my fault. If you wish to blame someone, blame the Trump voters. And blame the DNC for nominating a candidate (Biden) who didn’t earn the vote of people like me.
The same applies to Hillary’s loss in 2016. She lost to a con man and a reality TV celebrity because she ran a poor campaign, and because her hypocrisy and elitism were so obvious. Remember her “basket of deplorables” comment? Remember all the money she took from Goldman Sachs and the like? $675K for three speeches, even as she opposed Bernie’s call for $15 minimum wage.
With a $15 minimum wage, it would take a “deplorable” more than 22 years of hard work to earn what Hillary got in roughly three hours of speechifying.
And I’m supposed to admire Hillary and vote for her because the DNC said so?
And I'm supposed to vote for Biden because once again the DNC, joined by Obama and Hillary, gave the shaft to Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard?
If I vote for Joe, I'm rewarding the DNC for its blatant corruption. So I choose to vote for someone who's offering something more than the status quo of endless war and bottomless corruption.
Update (8/18/20):
I’m surprised that David Sirota, who worked for Bernie Sanders, had this to say about Democrats’ alleged “choice”:
“If the Sanders-Biden battle was perceived as a choice between Sanders’s daunting promise of an exhausting revolutionary struggle and Biden’s promise of a glide path back to normal, then it’s no mystery why Biden ultimately prevailed. Easy street was an understandably alluring vision for an electorate already tired out by Trump’s never-ending conflicts and controversies.
In reality, though, this was not a choice between two possibilities — it was a choice between honesty and fantasy, and Democratic voters picked the latter.”
https://sirota.substack.com/p/did-americans-want-a-political-revolution
I disagree with him because Democratic voters chose nothing. They had no choice. The DNC, the establishment, and especially Obama intervened to torpedo and sink Bernie just as he was riding high. Saint Obama even convinced Amy K. and Mayor Pete to drop out; we’ll see their rewards/price if Biden wins.
Democratic voters, when polled, broadly support Bernie’s agenda. But DNC operatives don’t give a f*ck about what voters want; they care about what the owners and donors want.
This is why I refuse to watch this convention. It’s a rigged, dishonest, show.
I know what happened to the two candidates I favored: Bernie and Tulsi. And I refuse to reward the DNC with my vote based on everything that we witnessed in this corrupt primary season.