Comparing the lineup at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, you might think you’re looking at a roster of the most popular and influential liberal faces for the past three decades on one hand and a Trump family reunion on the other. Following a highly controversial primary season, the Republican candidate had trouble securing wholehearted endorsements from the establishment faction of his party. As a result, he was left with few surrogates who didn’t share his last name that were willing to speak on his behalf.
After his children gave well-received speeches and his wife, Melania Trump, plagiarized sizable sections of First Lady Michelle Obama’s 2008 DNC speech, the former reality television star took the stage and drew a bleak picture of America today. His spiel was laced with dog-whistle politics and coded language, which said to disenfranchised, working class, white America, “I know that your neighborhoods, television screens, and elected officials don’t look the way they used to, and I’m here to end that.” The audiences in that convention hall and across the nation were reminded why they definitely were or were not voting for Trump as he promulgated his white nationalist agenda.
The following week, the biggest names from Democratic Party spoke on Hillary Clinton’s behalf, such as the tenacious Massachusetts senator, Elizabeth Warren, President Obama and the First Lady, former President Clinton, and the former presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders. Unlike her competitor, Clinton’s speech said more to appeal to those undecided voters that had been supporting Sanders, but doing so looked less like genuine concern for those causes and more like pandering to particular voter bases.
If you’re a progressive voter, you may feel like you’ve been robbed of your champion, Bernie Sanders (and in a way, you were, according to the leaked DNC emails that showed a clear bias for the Clinton campaign and attempts sabotage her opponent’s campaign), and now you’re forced to vote for a politician representative of Wall Street, reckless environmental policies, and hawkish war tactics in order to keep the xenophobic, racist, Islamophobic nightmare out of the Oval Office. But what if you had another choice?
The good news is, you do! The Green Party’s description from their website reads, “We are grassroots activists, environmentalists, advocates for social justice, nonviolent resisters and regular citizens who’ve had enough of corporate-dominated politics. Government must be part of the solution, but when it’s controlled by the 1%, it’s part of the problem. The longer we wait for change, the harder it gets. Don’t stay home on Election Day. Vote Green.” Their presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein, has a history of fighting for policies that would protect and promote “human health, social justice, a healthy environment and green economies.”
The bad news is, a third-party candidate has never been elected to the presidency. Is it because the Democrats and Republicans have two agendas so comprehensive that they serve all 323,730,000 of us? Of course not, but the continued success of the two-party system has less to do with its effectiveness and more to do with a media that is biased towards it. It’s unreasonable to assume 545 individuals who are, for the most part, either leaning ideologically one way or the other could understand the nuances of the American experience so well as to create policies that address their everyday issues. Rather, Americans are forced to sacrifice certain ideals in choosing a president, senator, congressman or congresswoman, and governor.
So, if you’re anti-establishment politicians but you’re also more prepared to become the 45th president than Donald J. Trump may ever be, you’re in a tough place this election. What you can do to ensure that you’re sending a message to a broken political system is vote for the Green Party if you feel like it’s platform has more to offer you than the binary-party system does. However, seeing as Trump is prepared to violate the civil rights of millions of us, a good rule of thumb under these circumstances is: if you’re in a swing state, vote for Hill, otherwise, consider Jill.
Despite the dissatisfaction you may rightly feel this cycle, this election is genuinely too important to sit out altogether. As President Obama so succinctly put it, “Don’t boo. Vote.”
