Again, The Orange Baboon

[AFTT47]

I definitely agree with you to a point. I would absolutely love third parties to be a choice because the two-party system keeps failing us more every time.

I have something keeping me from falling in step with you though. I hate to fall back on the "you're throwing your vote away" argument there, but that is also true to some level by going with the third party vote. If both major candidates were entirely equal in how bad they were, I wouldn't care about wasting my vote to make the third party look better. I've done that before, but this year is different. Trump as president is going to make my personal life a living nightmare and I don't want to beat myself up later on for not trying to stop that. I'm no fan of Hillary, but the worst I see with her is that we will tread water and go nowhere at all for the next four years. I'd prefer a waste of space president over a terror.

Given our Electoral College system, your reasoning only holds in battleground states. In a state dominated by Trumpeteers, a vote for Clinton may as well go to a third-party, and vice-versa.

I will hold my nose and for Clinton if Texas somehow becomes a battleground state. Otherwise I will vote Johnson, both to raise the Libertarian profile and to add my voice to those telling the two major parties that their offerings are unacceptable and they'd best change them.

Thump, I love you man. I'm fucking drunk right now so there's that but you're reasoning is so practical and so like my own. Of course I'm reaLLY FUVCKING DRUNK BUT WE'LL NOT GO THERE.

There is a time to use your vote to take a stand and a time to recognize that you better use it more pragmatically.

I voted for Ronald Reagan twice and for the elder Bush once. I voted Republican eaRLY ON because I saw the Democrats as dangerously weak against the Soviet threat. That threat lessened after Gorbachev and shit. Then the elder Bush brushed off climate change in Rio in 1991 or so. I found this irresponsible and decided to vote for Ross Perot. Then I watched the debates and was blown away by Bill Clinton. I still voted for Perot (to send a message that I heard his cry for fiscal responsibility) but only after the polls made it clear that Clinton would win. If there was any doubt, I would have stuffed my Perot vote and voted for Bill Clinton.

The bottom line is that there is a time and place for "protest votes." The pragmatic (rational) person will carefully analyze the situation and decide whether the protest is more important than riskihg electing a dangerous nut like Trump. The rational person says' no.