I am getting awfully fed up with people equating a vote for a third party candidate with a vote for Donald Trump. After all, Trump supporters, whatever their flaws, have the courage of their convictions and the strength to vote accordingly. Unfortunately, Jill Stein supporters lack such fortitude. This election is as clear a choice as our country has ever faced; on every issue, from taxation, to climate change, to basic democratic norms, Clinton is on one side, and Trump is wrong. Yet Stein supporters seem unwilling to choose. Voting for Jill Stein may not be a vote for Donald Trump, but it is a decision to opt-out of the most consequential election our nation has ever seen.
By refusing to support Clinton, Stein voters think they are sending a powerful message to a corporate elite. But the truth is that the people to whom they are sending a message are the downtrodden, the poor, the exploited and all those who will suffer under President Trump -- and that message is that they will not fight for the least among us, that their moral and ideological purity is more important than the lives and livelihoods of millions.
So I wish to speak for a moment to any Stein supporters who may be reading this. Your decision to not vote for Hillary Clinton is no doubt based upon deeply-held convictions. I understand that many of you see her as corrupt, as militaristic, as deeply flawed. I believe these claims to be categorically false, but with only a few dozen hours to Election Day, the time for such debates has passed. What matters is that if you think that corruption and a fondness for military action are as bad as things get, you need to expand your horizons.
Donald Trump is an out of context threat to American democracy; he transcends any battle between left and right, between business and labor. And to ignore his rise, to abandon your chance to stop, him is an act of cowardice. On November 9th millions of Americans could well wake up to a country that is no longer their own. And by not voting for Clinton you will have let it happen.
That is what a vote for Jill Stein means: It means that as hatred and racism have returned to this country on a scale we have not seen for a hundred years, you shrugged. It means that as immigrants lay awake at night, terrified for their children’s future in this country, you stayed silent, and as a titanic struggle between fear and hope ensued, you opted-out.
So many of you possess admirable convictions – and this is the moment to muster every fiber of your moral strength to make the right decision, not for a country, or a flag, or a person, not for any ideal, but for the untold millions who live in terror of President Trump. I have heard Stein supporters complain at being asked to vote out of fear, but this election, for the first time in most of our lives, we should be truly afraid. Donald Trump threatens our livelihoods, our futures and our democracy. There is only one choice on November 8th that will save us from this encroaching peril, and it isn’t Jill Stein.
