A reader who heard me say on the radio last week that Hillary Clinton is my least favorite Democratic Presidential candidate of my lifetime (even worse than Michael Dukakis) emailed to ask me for whom I am going to vote.
Lord knows that Hillary Clinton is driving me crazy.
She’s matched up against a racist, sexist, lying blowhard, one that, for some reason, otherwise-serious people in the Republican Party cannot bring themselves to disavow. All she has to do is set herself apart by telling the truth and she’d be up 20 points and coasting to a landslide victory. Instead, the truth—which, admittedly, is sometimes painful and often uncomfortable—is a shifting concept for her, much to her own detriment. The truth can’t possibly be as bad as the lies that her detractors make up about her.
However, while Clinton is the worst Democratic candidate of my lifetime, Donald Trump is the worst presidential candidate of all time. He’s worse than white supremacist George Wallace, who actually won five states in the 1968 election. He’s even worse than Aaron Burr, whose sole claim to fame is that he killed one of the Founding Fathers.
A quick note on Trump: When I watched him make his climb to the top of the GOP heap (it was like watching a bus accident in slow motion or, worse, like watching an episode of The Bachelorette in real time), I tried to make sense of it all. Maybe, I thought, he was like Bob Roberts, the fictional troubadour-turned-politician with a fascist undertone in the eponymous mock documentary. But that would have given him way too much credit.
Then I thought maybe he was a real-life Willie Stark (All The King’s Men), a hustler who tapped into a populist anger and rode it to political victory. But even Stark had some good in him before absolute power corrupted him absolutely.
After listening to him blubber and reading his tweets over the past couple weeks, it finally came to me. He’s not Bob Roberts or Willie Stark; he’s Chance the Gardener, the fictional idiot whose inane babbling is mistaken for deep, plain-spoken truth by people who really, really should know better.
Anyway, when I got to the end of the email, it turns out that the reader was pushing Gary Johnson, the guy who is heading the Libertarian ticket. The quick and final answer to that question is hell to the no! Mr. Johnson (and the Libertarian Party from which he diverges on a regular basis) are both so out there, they almost make Donald Trump look rational. Almost.
Let’s forget that Johnson probably couldn’t pass a high-school Social Studies course. So what if he didn’t know what Aleppo is; he probably bogarted that joint one time too many. And he can’t name even one world leader? He’s an isolationist; big deal. Donald Trump could probably only name one and that’s only because he has the warm, trembling thighs for Germany’s Angela Merkel. If you asked Trump to name the Mexican president with whom he shared the most-uncomfortable press conference of all time, he’d probably say Speedy Gonzales.
No, it doesn’t matter than Johnson is a dolt. We’ve had lots of dumb-ass presidents. The real problem is that Johnson’s stances on some very basic issues are flat-out frightening. Here are just a few:
• When asked whether there might be some reasonable restrictions on the purchase of firearms, such as background checks (which are favored by a majority of both Republicans and Democrats), Johnson said, “I don’t believe there should be any restrictions when it comes to firearms. None.”
• Not only does he oppose the raising of the minimum wage, he doesn’t believe that there should be a minimum wage at all. Like lots of other rich white people, he wants the “market” to determine wages. Besides, he has been quoted, “nobody works for the minimum wage anyway.”
• He wants the government to shrivel up and die and, in the meantime, he wants what government there is to butt out of private business. For example, he doesn’t think that government should be able to tell people that they can’t smoke in public places, including restaurants. Yeah, let’s go back to those good old days.
• Both Johnson and the Libertarian Party want to do away with public schools, despite the fact that public education played a major role in America becoming a great country and a world power in the first place. Like the teacher-hating jerks in the Arizona Legislature, Johnson and his Party want the “marketplace” to determine the education of America’s greatest resource. Yeah, great idea! Moron.
He opposes almost all taxes and is against paid medical and/or family leave, but favors the Citizens United decision that allows corporations to pour endless amounts of money onto the political battlefield.
And please don’t try to convince me to vote for Jill Stein. Last I heard, she was on the lam after an arrest warrant was issued for her in North Dakota. Yes, North Dakota … the birthplace of Gary Johnson. Maybe it’s a conspiracy.
People who want viable third-party candidates should come up with viable third parties.
This article appears in Oct 13-19, 2016.
Most fun article I have read since this election campaign began. That was this year, right??
All she has to do is tell the truth…and she can’t. At least republicans turned on their party. Dems had a chance with Bernie, but couldn’t make a simple decision and think for themselves. Just wait until you see what an international joke they become.
Tom does not like Trump? What a shock, who would have guessed? It seems imminent that Clinton will win. The only thing worse than having that monster as president is that we all will miss out on the meltdown Danehy would have had if Trump won.
It’s so easy for the ignorant to simply call someone a racist.
It’s so easy for the intelligent to simply call Wrong, Again a racist.
Mr Danehy, I read this column and found myself asking, what has happened to our country? Twenty years ago the Democratic party was defending Bill Clinton from charges of WH sex, which he lied about, even under oath. But the party faithful said, “that was his personal life, and it is in his past.” What has changed sir? What has changed is the hatred that now dominates political reaction.
The media has stopped reporting and become either a cheerleader or an enabler to turn the opposition into a villian. Do you remember journalism school at all? What are you doing?
You have taken the bait that the HRC team has thrown out there and run with it. Rather than talk about real, serious issues that confront our country, you want to talk about sex and cast aspersions on someones character. Why didn’t you do the same to Bill Clinton? It is blatant hypocrisy. Is Hillary only a worthy candidate because she is female? That is very dangerous.
Had you paid attention to the real issues you would know why Hillary Clinton set up a private server in her basement. She did not want Americans to know what she was doing.
1. She works with a group that is planning to overthrow the Catholic Church. Remember that Separation Clause you always like to defend?
2. She has a plan for a borderless country where anybody can come and go as they please. READ THE EMAILS. She encourages the increase in minimum wage while she floods the country with immigrants. This will not work any better than the Affordable Care Act.
3. She despises average Americans, and then adds “needy latinos” and blacks that do not successfully integrate.
4. She has made the world increasingly dangerous. Hundreds of women and children are being slaughtered in Allepo, and she can only think about a cut and run strategy of relocating them all to the US because of her inability to deal with Bashar al-Assad.
5. The email server was used to hide activities from the public. She supports Obama’s plan of doing everything by executive order, in effect, giving us a dictatorship. Did you take Civics in high school?
While Podesta and the Clinton Foundation people continue to claim the Russians have hacked them, they have not denied one email. Not even the one calling Gov Richardson of NM a *&$!.
Why is that?
You sir, need to take a good long look in the mirror. See any truth?
So true! You may be fooling college kids, but not the hardworking American taxpayers that have to support all her nonsense. No more years of Obama.
Agreed that the Green Party has failed to become a viable force in electoral politics at the national level, although it has succeeded in some smaller jurisdictions around the country. However, your flippant dismissal of Jill Stein’s arrest warrant bears closer inspection.
She was arrested at Standing Rock, in solidarity with hundreds of tribal nations that have gathered to resist the domination of the fossil fuel industry and the damage that its stupid, dangerous, and fundamentally unnecessary pipeline would do to their water, health, cultural integrity, sacred ground, and ancestral graves.
If more politicians had the kind of spine Jill Stein has–you know, integrity, utilitarian values, commitment to principle, courage to stand up to corporations rather than kowtowing to them, all the things Billary Clinton lacks–then we would not be in the mess we are in.
You don’t have to vote for Ms. Stein, but you could at least show her the respect she has earned.
“People who want viable third-party candidates should come up with viable third parties.”
Otherwise we are voting for the most deceptive Clinton yet? That makes no sense.
The country was in trouble any way? What a campaign theme.
Come on everybody take a look at today’s leak John Podesta and the HRC crew were discussing how to get rid of the President’s emails on her private server. He said he never was involved and didn’t know anything about it. He had the address and they talked about hiding them…and then 33,000 emails were bleach bitted.
This makes it appear the President lied again. he also told us he had to give Iran cash as we were not setup to wire transfer money. Now we find out he wire transferred money.
Meanwhile Iran makes aggressive moves towards our destroyers in the Gulf. Raytheon missiles were fired on Wednesday.
Barack and Hillary. Birds of a feather, make great liars.
And lousy presidents.
I find myself nodding, nearly in agreement, with Danehy. He appears to recognize that Clinton is a seriously deeply flawed candidate who has earned the distrust of a majority of voters. And I can’t argue with anyone who sees Trump, not the Republicans or conservatives in general, as a bombastic fool, an indictment of our system of selecting presidential candidates.
“People who want viable third-party candidates should come up with viable third parties.” Really? We obviously do not have viable political parties (unless the term refers to sharks and cockroaches). We have two inbred mega-organizations representing the political interests of minorities of voters surviving on the largesse of the most wealthy and powerful.
How about viable (like adaptable and strong) Democrat and Republican parties as a first step? I’ve been around long enough to say I’ve never seen a presidential election offering two choices, one worse than the other, to slither from the pit and take the reins of power.
Shouldn’t that be “Chauncey Gardner”?
Hillary Clinton is the most prepared, qualified person for president in a long, long time. She’s not perfect– who is? Everyone running for anything has a few skeletons in the closet.
I think I get it here: irony happens when the Republican “base” is so angry, so shortsighted, so backward, and quite simply so damn dumb that they vote in the primaries for the ONLY person that will most disadvantageously lose to Hillary Clinton. With the possible exception of T Cruz, I think ANY one of the other guys had bona fides enough to win the general election this year. Trump may be rich (on paper), but he is so lacking in integrity that the ball won’t bounce his way – ever again.