I wanted to take a moment and tell you about an exciting new book I wrote that exposes corruption inside the “Democratic” Party in a way that no other book has the guts to tackle. My Bernie Journey – An Inside Look at the 2016 “Democratic” Primary Through the Eyes of a Bernie Sanders Volunteer is the result of two years of intense hard work and hands on research.
The first thing that makes this book special is that I was actually in the trenches, traveling from state to state, knocking on doors, attending meetings and rallies and chronicling the insane corruption that I witnessed first hand.
There is an entire chapter of this amazing book just dedicated to ELECTORAL FRAUD inside the “Democratic” Party.
There is also an entire chapter where I went BACK ON THE ROAD interviewing the people who took Bernie Sanders’ message to heart and actually took steps to take over their local government.
But this book is about SO MUCH MORE THAN THAT!!
It’s also a personal story of how Bernie Sanders saved my son’s life and an epic story that talks about how we were labeled as terrorists and teargassed by helicopters in the streets of Philadelphia when we went there to protest the corruption of the DNC.
This book is fire in your hands and I personally guarantee that anyone who picks it up will be absolutely unable to put it down.
In short, I wrote the book that I kept waiting for someone else to write.
I wrote the book that blows the lid off the entire rigged “Democratic” primary, while interweaving a personal story of inspiration that will get you fired up to take your activism to the next level.
Or as my former Hillary supporting friend put it:
“I never realized the depths of the depravity engaged in by the DNC in 2016 and now that I have eyes for it, I see this corruption continuing in every move they make. Michael’s book made me cry, but it also made me angry and it inspired me to take action. I had friends who worked really hard for Bernie. Honestly, at the time, I thought they were kind of crazy. If I knew then what I know now, I would have been out there knocking on doors with them.”
And THAT IS WHY I feel this book is important.
People need to know OUR story.
They need to know exactly what happened from someone who was actually part of it.
Going forward into the 2018 midterms and on into the 2020 presidential election, WE NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN AGAIN!!
The first step to stopping it from ever happening again is to educate EVERYONE on how it went down in the first place.
I sincerely believe that My Bernie Journey does this in a way that is so fun and exciting that you could give it to the Trump or Hillary supporter in your life and they will come away with a new perspective.
Every Sanders supporter will want to read this.
And everyone who is not a Sanders supporter WILL BE by the time they put it down.
I really feel that strongly about it.
Here is a video where I talk about what’s inside the book in greater detail.
If you are in a hurry to order the book, you can skip the video, scroll down right under the video and order your FREE electronic copy (the E-Book can be read on your computer, phone or tablet) or if you want an autographed physical copy delivered to your door you can order that as well.
Thank you for believing in my work.
This book has been the hardest and most rewarding artistic endeavor of my life.
DO I EVEN NEED TO TELL YOU THAT THIS BOOK IS THE ULTIMATE CHRISTMAS BOOK FOR ANY BERNIE SANDERS SUPPORTER OR MAYBE AN EVEN BETTER GIFT TO GIVE TO THAT FRIEND OR FAMILY MEMBER WHO LOVES HILLARY CLINTON??or maybe nothing can wake those people up – I’m not really sure)
Scroll past the video to order or watch the video if you need more details.
How to Get the Book
To get your FREE E-Book copy of My Bernie Journey simply send an email with My Bernie Journey in the title to GoBernieGoBernieGo@gmail.com
If you want an autographed physical copy sent to your door, along with the second book The Independent Thinker Chronicles (included for free) then send $27 through PayPal by clicking HERE (Be sure to put your shipping address in the notes section)
If you don’t like PayPal you can pay through Square or with a check or money order by clicking HERE.
If you don’t like any of those methods you can order through Amazon by clicking HERE (I urge you not to buy through Amazon as they represent the very corporate entities which we are standing up to!!)
I suppose you could even follow me by clicking HERE and pay through Facebook messenger (did you even know that you could send money through Facebook messenger? I didn’t either until recently.)
Also feel free to DONATE a copy of the book to a random person.
What this means is that if you already have a copy and want to get one for someone who can’t afford one right now, just write “Pay it forward” in the notes line and I’ll write Donated by (Your Name) and donate the book to a library, school or individual who has limited funds.
Consider it a nice way to give the gift of Political Revolution to a stranger.
Anyway, I hope you love the book regardless of rather you pay for it or get the free copy.
Donald Trump is President of the United States and liberals are in chaos.
Around the country people rally in anti-Trump protests.
I can’t help wondering where these people were when Bernie Sanders supporters were screaming from the rooftops that Hillary polled poorly against Trump, whereas Sanders beat Trump in a head to head match-up by a record-breaking 18-24 points.
Actually, I know exactly where they were.
They were at their jobs and in their homes, living their lives, just as they normally would.
Sanders supporters were screaming about the impending iceberg, while Clinton voters were calling them “sore losers”.
They weren’t out knocking on doors.
They couldn’t be bothered.
Bernie people knocked on doors.
In fact we traveled from state to state interrupting people in their homes to talk to them about Bernie Sanders.
It wasn’t just that we believed that Bernie was a better candidate.
It was also because we had looked at the numbers.
We knew that it was likely that Clinton would lose to Trump.
I even wrote articles reflecting the reasons WHY this would happen.
But our voices were silenced.
Hillary supporters didn’t want to hear about universal healthcare or creating 13 million new jobs repairing America’s crumbling infrastructure.
They didn’t want to hear about expanding Social Security or making sure all qualified students could attend public colleges, regardless of socioeconomic level.
They didn’t want to force corporations to pay their fair share of taxes and they didn’t care about ending mass incarceration in for-profit prisons.
They wanted a woman president.
“It’s her time” they told me.
“It’s time for a woman.” they said.
“She’s just more electable.” they parroted.
The Hillary supporters didn’t seem to know why they were voting for her, outside of the fact that she was female and electing a woman president after a black president just seemed like the next step for liberals.
Never mind her hawkish record or weekly scandals.
They didn’t want to hear it.
They didn’t need our votes.
We were just “basement dwellers” who tried to disrupt their coronation.
When I tried to speak with my Hillary supporting friends about real issues they would say either…
“I don’t believe that!!”
or
“So what? You want Trump then?”
We didn’t want Trump.
We wanted Bernie Sanders.
We wanted free and fair elections.
We wanted veteran’s programs.
We wanted a fair living wage.
We wanted a candidate who supported LBGT rights since day one, not someone who supported DOMA and only came over to our team when it was politically expedient to do so.
We wanted someone who wouldn’t install a no-fly zone over Syria and start a war with Russia.
We wanted a candidate who could beat Donald Trump.
Now liberals are pointing fingers wildly.
Jill Stein is to blame.
The electoral college is to blame.
James Comey is to blame.
Sexism is to blame.
I have even heard people say that Bernie Sanders is to blame for not campaigning hard enough for Hillary.
Of course all of these arguments hold little basis in reality and point to an overall victim mentality that Hillary fostered throughout her campaign.
Bernie Sanders would have been our nation’s first Jewish president, but he never mentioned it, because Progressives know that it is inexcusable to vote for someone based on race, gender or sexual orientation.
Voting for someone based on gender is just as insulting as voting AGAINST someone for this reason, yet still Clinton and her supporters seem to point the finger at everyone but themselves.
I guess this is to be expected from someone who literally played The Woman Card as part of her disastrous campaign.
The blame for this complete and utter defeat lies clearly at the feet of the “Democratic” National Committee and Hillary Clinton and any attempts to blame others will keep the Dems from learning the lessons they so desperately need to learn in order to rebuild their crumbled party, which has become completely out of touch with the working class it once represented.
Hillary’s loss was not the fault of third-parties.
Jill Stein received 1% of the vote and if you look at the states where Clinton lost close races like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, you will see that Stein was not a factor at all in those states.
The Dems would do better to ask themselves why people feel so disenfranchised that they need to reach out to an underdeveloped party to feel represented.
Voters on both sides of the aisle are fed up with corporate money controlling their politicians.
When Sanders stood up and said that he refused to take money from super-pacs the people responded in a YUGE way.
Instead of the “Democrats” adapting, they just sabotaged Sanders and in doing so sabotaged their party.
Of course it is much easier to blame others for Clinton’s epic fail, than to ask why her campaign had multiple field offices in deep-red Texas, yet never stepped foot in formerly-blue Wisconsin.
Before blaming a third-party, it might be important to ask why 90,000 Michigan voters filled out their down-ballot, but refused to vote for president.
Perhaps they couldn’t bring themselves to vote for another Clinton after watching NAFTA send their jobs overseas and destroy their cities and towns.
Perhaps they could no longer support a party that left the children of Flint to drink poison water under the Obama administration, while Clinton used their suffering as a campaigning opportunity.
Of course it’s easier to blame James Comey for dropping a bombshell a week before the election, but perhaps the finger should be pointed at the party itself, who chose to force an already rejected candidate down our throats when The People clearly did not trust her.
And of course, winning the popular vote while losing in the electoral college is heartbreaking, but any Clinton supporter who cries foul is engaging in blatant hypocrisy, as they blindly supported a candidate who used closed primaries, corporate media propaganda and $uper-delegates to insure a “victory” for a candidate that was highly vulnerable against Trump.
And yet there are still Clinton supporters who actually believe that her loss was about sexism.
Of course people who voted based entirely on gender would think that others refused to vote for Hillary based on this same “reasoning”.
Clinton supporters didn’t want to talk about policy.
They wanted to talk about the first woman president.
Even as prominent feminists like Camille Paglia came out and stated why Hillary’s policies were anti-feminist, Clinton supporters continued to blame every criticism on sexism.
If you were to point out how female civil rights leaders were murdered as a result of Clinton’s foreign policy, then you were told that “you just can’t handle women in power.”
This election WAS largely about sexism, but not AGAINST Hillary Clinton.
The ugly sexism in the 2016 election was the fact that Clinton supporters voted for a genocidal tyrant based COMPLETELY on her gender.
Had Clinton been male, she would have been susceptible to the same scrutiny as any other politician, but instead her followers saw her as immune to criticism.
In the mind of a Clinton supporter, every scandal was the result of either a right-wing witch-hunt or an attack on her womanhood.
She was the victim of James Comey.
She was the victim of Bernie Sanders.
She was the victim of Jill Stein.
She was the victim of Julian Assange.
She was the victim of the electoral college.
She was a victim of the Russians.
Accountability isn’t part of the faux-feminism of the Clinton supporter.
Although I rejoice in the fact that Hillary’s cheating was not rewarded, it is sad that the “Democrats” had this amazing opportunity to reinvent itself as a true party for The People, but instead took the populace for granted and lost all branches of the government.
There is no doubt that there will be hard times in America with Republicans controlling the House, Senate and the presidency and our children’s children will be dealing with these alt-right Supreme Court judges that Trump will nominate.
In the words of Clinton supporter, Morgan Freeman, in The Shawshank Redemption, the time is now for Progressives to “get busy livin or get busy dyin.”
Our backs are against the wall and drastic activism is needed.
Although I find it laughable that Clinton supporters have chosen to wait until AFTER the election to finally start protesting, it’s good that they are learning how to use their voice.
We will need their voice.
Progressives can allow themselves a short period of time to say “I told you so.”, especially after the reprehensible way that they were treated by Clinton supporters over the last 18 months, but ultimately we have to move on and forgive if we are going to have an actual revolution in America.
Progressives and Independents must join forces with the LBGT+ community and Black Lives Matter and take hold of this amazing opportunity to rebuild the broken “Democratic” Party in our own image.
Our revolution is just getting started and we all have a common enemy in power.
The “Democratic” Party needs us more than we need them.
We can use that.
Their firewall is down and they are vulnerable.
Attention DNC,
Move to the left or perish.
Represent The People or be replaced.
If the 2016 election taught you anything..
It should have taught you that we will no longer be held hostage.
Sincerely,
The People
Hillary supporters direct your angry comments at this guy. For those of you who believe in Independent Progressive voices, you can support Michael’s work by donating $1 by clicking HERE.
About a month ago I wrote an article about how Bernie Sanders could be the first candidate in the history of the United States to win a state as a write-in candidate.
As a result of this article, some very special people volunteered and began working tirelessly to make Bernie Sanders the “President of Vermont”.
To be clear, Sanders winning Vermont will have no effect on the outcome of the presidential election.
Vermont only has three electoral votes and Clinton is supposed to win by a landslide.
So why have we invested so much time and energy?
Simple..
WE LOVE BERNIE SANDERS AND WE WANT TO CELEBRATE HIS LIFETIME OF COMMITMENT TO MAKING OUR COUNTRY A BETTER PLACE.
At one point our group was infiltrated by someone who told us that she was friends with Jane Sanders and Jane wanted us to stop our write-in movement.
We were heartsick to hear this (false) news, but Jane Sanders tweeted out that the person was lying and that she supported our idea for the people of Vermont to write-in Bernie Sanders.
This was very exciting news for our volunteers.
We now had permission from Jane Sanders herself to write in Bernie’s name!!
Here is the tweet where Jane refutes the words of the person who lied and told us that Jane didn’t want us to write in Bernie’s name.
Local Vermont TV stations and newspapers begin to pick up on our movement and we got a lot of media coverage.
As a result our phone-banking and canvassing have been going extremely well.
Most Vermont residents have treated our volunteers as heroes and are excited about the idea of writing in Bernie and honoring him for his lifetime of commitment.
In fact, our phone-banking success rate has been 48% (12% said that they were still planning to vote for Clinton and 16% said that they would be supporting Trump, 3% were for Gary Johnson and 21% were undecided).
That means that HALF the people we have called have agreed to write-in Bernie Sanders on their Vermont ballots!!
And our job just became a lot easier.
Bernie Sanders himself just came out and said…
“I think in Vermont I think it’s OK ’cause I think Clinton is gonna win. But in some states where it’s close, I want her to win. So if you want to write me in here, I think it’s fine.”
So now we have the endorsement of Bernie Sanders himself!!
But if we are going to make this a reality, we desperately need YOUR HELP!!
As of today, our phone-bankers have only been able to reach 22,000 people.
We are running out of time.
The exciting part is that our plan is an effective plan and IF we can get YOU to help us out the BERNIE SANDERS WILL BECOME THE FIRST CANDIDATE TO WIN A STATE AS A WRITE-IN CANDIDATE!!
This is not only a monumental tribute to Bernie Sanders, but also goes a long way to show what a dedicated group of people can do to restore Democracy in America.
If you love Bernie Sanders, I beg you to…
STOP EVERYTHING AND BECOME PART OF HISTORY RIGHT NOW!!
We just need you to make a few phone calls and read the following script…
Hi my name is (YOUR NAME) and I am with the Vermont Bernie Sanders Write-In Campaign.
How are you on this beautiful autumn day?
I know your time is valuable so I’ll be brief.
Hillary Clinton is predicted to win the Presidency by a landslide so we are reaching out to Vermont citizens encouraging them to honor Bernie Sanders for his lifetime of commitment to the people of Vermont by writing his name in for President this year.
We want to make clear that both Bernie and Jane are okay with Vermont citizens doing this and it will not affect the outcome of the presidency, as Vermont only has three electoral college votes and Hillary Clinton is on track to win by nearly 100 electoral college votes.
The last point I’d like to make is that Donald Trump has NO CHANCE of winning Vermont.
We believe that enough Vermont residents will write in Bernie Sanders for him to gain the victory, but if they do not then Hillary Clinton would still win the state, so this is a risk-free way of honoring Bernie.
So can we count on you to honor Bernie Sanders for his lifetime of commitment by writing his name in for President on November 8?
And then you’re done.
That’s it.
If they say “Yes“, thank them for their time and hang up.
If they say “No“, thank them for their time and hang up.
Calls take less than a minute.
The only question we ever receive is sometimes someone will ask…
“Are you working for Bernie Sanders?”
Each time we say…
“No. We are an independent group of volunteers seeking to honor Senator Sanders, but he is aware of our campaign and both he and Jane say that it is okay to write in his name.”
I know that phone-banking can be intimidating, but this is not normal phone-banking.
The people of Vermont absolutely LOVE Bernie and most of them thank us for calling.
They are usually really happy when they find out that they can write-in Bernie’s name.
But TIME IS RUNNING OUT!!
We need your help NOW!!
Please click this LINK to get started phone-banking.
You have a chance to be part of history and a chance to honor this amazing man!!
Let’s thank Bernie Sanders for everything he has done for us!!
Together, we can do this!!
Michael E Sparks is a freelance writer who doesn’t take money from corporate media outlets. If you value independent political writing, you can click HERE and donate $1, but he’d rather you keep your $1 and phone-bank for Bernie Sanders.
I was all about having America’s first woman president. I planned to work very hard for Bernie Sanders, but vote for Hillary Clinton if she defeated Sanders in the primaries. People on social media, recognizing that I was a hardcore Sanders volunteer, repeatedly asked me to join a circulating pledge called Bernie or Bust and repeatedly I refused. In a world full of lies, spin and deception, truth becomes a valuable commodity, so I won’t pledge something that I don’t believe in 100%.
At the first “Democratic” debate, I was still planning on voting for Hillary if she won. At the second “Democratic” debate, we hosted a debate party in our home and I actually stood up and gave a speech to the 40 people in attendance about Bernie or Bust. The response was overwhelmingly negative and I told my audience that I agreed with them, but that I felt the pledge had some merit. Following the third debate I came out publicly as Bernie or Bust and begin pushing the agenda that we live and die with Bernie Sanders. As most of my friends were hardcore Democrats, many distanced themselves from me and many said that they felt like I had joined a cult.
My best friend, always seeing the bigger picture, said
“Hey. I feel like you have become kind of radical, but I am fully aware that sometimes it takes radicals to get things done.”
My personal life fell to pieces, but I didn’t care. I believed in the concept with all my heart and accepted that it was an absolute necessity if we were ever going to be taken seriously by the “Democratic” Party. The importance of the movement was to insure a fair primary election for Bernie Sanders. The idea being that we would vote for Bernie Sanders and ONLY Bernie Sanders to present the “Democratic” Party with a dilemma, nominate Bernie Sanders, because he is the ONLY one we will vote for.
I begin daily discussions with people on why I felt that it was important that they publicly declare that they are Bernie or Bust. I organized events locally and traveled to other cities spreading the word. I was interviewed by Vox, Fox News, The Washington Post and several other corporate media outlets. Each time I was offered face time, I used it to promote one thing and one thing only, the idea that millions of us were ABSOLUTELY 100% DEDICATED TO VOTING FOR BERNIE SANDERS FOR PRESIDENT AND ONLY BERNIE SANDERS FOR PRESIDENT.
When I said that I was Bernie or Bust, I meant it.
The problem is, it seems like I am one of very few who did.
So what took me from being a Hillary supporter in 2015 to “throwing my vote away” in 2016?
Firstly, I began to actually pay attention to Hillary Clinton and started probing under the surface of what corporate media had been telling me about her for years. In 2015 all I knew about Hillary was that she was pro-choice and pro-LBGT rights. I also knew that she once fought valiantly for universal healthcare. And I’m not going to lie, the fact that she was a woman and a Democrat were important to me as well. It’s embarrassing that our country has never had a female president. I considered Hillary’s gender a bonus. In short, I was a typical head-in-the-sand Hillary Clinton supporter.
The more I learned about her, the more I realized that I could never vote for her. The more I learned about the “Democratic” Party, the more I realized that my commitment to only vote for Bernie Sanders was not only necessary, but it was the only way to use my voice in this vacuum of lies and deceit.
Watching the “Democratic” Party attack and deceive Bernie Sanders radicalized me. I literally devoted my entire life to spreading this message. Over and over again I told people
“You can’t bluff. You have to mean it. Because if we go back on our commitment, the Dems will just repeat their transgressions in future elections. You have to vote for Bernie Sanders even if he is not on the ballot. That’s the only power we have.”
I promoted the idea that we all meet in Philadelphia at the “Democratic” National Convention to show the DNC first hand that we were serious. Our message was simple. “We will ONLY vote for Bernie Sanders! We will accept NO SUBSTITUTES!”
They built a wall to keep us out.
They didn’t take us seriously.
They laughed in our faces.
As our movement gathered momentum it was very clear that it was about more than just supporting this great man who had fought for our rights for 40+ years. It was literally a fight to reclaim Democracy itself. By promising to vote for Sanders and ONLY Sanders we were taking a stand against the sociopathic elitist class that had been causing pain and misery since the dawn of time. We were drawing a line in the sand and refusing to back down. We were here to change the world and nothing was going to stop us.
As Hillary Clinton remained in hiding, Sanders solidified our commitment by tirelessly touring the country telling everyone that the time for change was now. Sanders would fly coach into a new city (because he didn’t want to abuse our donations by wasting money on first-class) and give a speech, then go out into the parking lot and give another speech for all the people who could not get into the arena, then he would jump on a plane and repeat the process.
Sanders was always working, so we kept working. We collected ballot signatures in the snow and freezing rain. We were called communists. We had our vehicles and homes defaced. We were physically attacked. But it didn’t matter. If Bernie didn’t stop, we didn’t stop. We canvassed scary neighborhoods in states we had never been to before. We talked to thousands of voters of every background.
Sometimes a Hillary supporter would ask…
“If Hillary wins, you will vote for Hillary, right?”
I would always say..
“In my capacity as a canvasser, it is not up to me to talk about my personal political beliefs, but personally I am pledged to vote for Bernie Sanders only. I cannot support a system that is rigged against him.”
This would anger the Hillary supporters every single time. I received so many lectures, so many fingers in my face. I remember one guy pulling his wife away, because she had gotten so worked up that I truly believe that she was going to strike me. As he guided her inside, he turned to me and mouthed
“If Bernie isn’t on the ballot in November, I’m writing him in.”
“Me too.” I mouthed back.
“But Mike, don’t you realize that they will throw your vote away?”
Absolutely I do! In fact I’m counting on it. But let’s be clear about how the this works. They WILL hand-count my ballot and record it. All the down-ballot candidates will be credited towards their totals. So I am only “throwing away” one part of my vote, the part that is asking me which sexual predator I prefer in the White House. Throwing my vote in a trashcan certainly has more dignity than voting for either of these atrocious criminals.
Some will say that I should break my promise and vote for a third-party candidate instead. While I support others who want to do that, it will not have the same effect. A vote for Bernie Sanders is absolutely symbolic. It is a message to the “Democrats” that we don’t want the candidate that they forced down our throats. It is a message that we do not support election fraud. It is a message that you can cheat your way into the White House, but you can’t silence our movement.
If millions of people keep their word and write-in Bernie Sanders then it makes a massive statement to the DNC. In fact, it would be the largest single-day protest in our nation’s history.
But my vote for Bernie Sanders is more than just a protest. I want to honor Bernie Sanders for his lifetime of commitment to fighting for Progressive values. I want to thank Bernie Sanders for the movement that he started that will never end. I will probably only have one chance to vote for this great man in the entirety of my life and I will not pass up on this opportunity. On November 8, I hope that everyone who knows that Bernie Sanders was cheated by the “Democrats” will make a YUGE statement by writing Bernie Sanders name on their ballot.
I want the corporate media to be forced to announce that “we won’t know the real winner of the election for a few days, because tens of millions of write-in votes have to be tallied and that could take several days.” In my wildest dreams I imagine that Bernie Sanders receives more write-in votes than Trump or Clinton receives ballot votes. I’d love to see the nation recognize that Bernie Sanders is the people’s choice, even as Hillary Clinton takes the throne that she cheated to obtain. Let it be a reminder to her each time Sanders puts legislation before her that she may have the title, but Sanders has the people.
If you have somehow rationalized voting for someone else, after you promised yourself that you would vote for Bernie Sanders, I submit that as the years pass, you will regret this decision more and more. On the day Bernie Sanders takes his final breath, I want to be able to say that in my one chance I had to vote for him, I took it.
Everyone else in America can be swayed by the political winds. But when I said that I was voting for Bernie Sanders and ONLY Bernie Sanders, I meant it.
I hope that you did too.
Come to the dark side by donating $1 HERE. Support Independent voices and destroy the corporate media.
(IF YOU ALREADY KNOW THE TWISTED BACK-STORY REGARDING THE FALSE QUOTE OF JANE SANDERS AND HOW JANE PUBLICLY CAME OUT AND TOLD US THAT IT WAS OKAY TO WRITE BERNIE IN, THEN YOU CAN SCROLL DOWN TO THE SCREENSHOTS OF THE CONVERSATION WITH THE PERSON WHO INFILTRATED AND DECEIVED OUR GROUP AND SKIP THE SET-UP)
Hi,
My name is Michael E Sparks and I have spent the last year of my life trying to do everything I could to promote Bernie Sanders and the ideals he champions for our country.
I was a state and county delegate for Bernie Sanders and I have spent most of the past year traveling around to primary states canvassing on behalf of Sanders.
About a month ago I wrote THIS article, which asked people to volunteer and follow my crazy family to Vermont to convince the citizens there of what I referred to as a “Hail-Mary chance for Bernie Sanders to win the Presidency” by taking Vermont’s three electoral votes away from Hillary Clinton and forcing the Presidential race to be decided by the House of Representatives.
I stated from the beginning that it was a long shot, but for those of us who are desperate to break out of this awful Trump/Clinton conundrum, a long shot seemed infinitely better than what we felt would be certain war and hardship, if either of these two took office.
As soon as the article hit, my life became pretty chaotic.
My family and I started rearranging our work and school schedules to get to Vermont, which was pretty hectic.
Also we were contacted by an amazing group called #OpDeny270, which had the goal of organizing a Sanders write-in for the other states where a write-in victory would actually be counted.
Vermont, New Jersey, Alabama, New Hampshire, California, Oregon, Wyoming, Delaware and Iowa do not require the candidate to register in order to win a write-in campaign.
I expressed to our group that I wanted to keep our campaign separate from #OpDeny270, because time was limited and flipping a single state was already a monumental undertaking and also because most of the members of our group were Jill Stein supporters and we did not want to do anything to hurt Jill’s chances of attaining 5% of the national vote, which would qualify The Green Party for federal funding in the 2020 Presidential election and would go a long way towards our Progressive goal of busting up the corporate duopoly.
From the beginning we were very careful to be respectful of Jill Stein’s campaign.
Part of the reason why we were focusing on Vermont is that our numbers indicated that there was a very small Green Party presence there and most people were reluctantly voting for Hillary and had overwhelmingly voted for Sanders in the primary.
We crunched all the numbers beforehand, so we knew exactly what we needed to do in order to flip the state and we were absolutely positive that doing so would, in no way, hurt Jill’s chances at federal funding.
We checked the Vermont write-in laws extensively and found out that we could actually achieve our goal.
Terje Oseberg wrote a fantastic phone-banking program and imported every phone-number in Vermont into it.
People started phone-banking and Vermont residents were responding positively.
We needed to convert 25% of the state’s voters in order to achieve our goal and we were initially flipping 40%.
Terje was constantly telling us how many bankers we needed from day-to-day and really motivating people.
While waiting for my vacation time, I continued to work in my off hours canvassing for Jill Stein locally, so you can imagine my confusion when we started receiving angry responses from people claiming that they were Jill Stein supporters and that they knew that our movement was actually a plot to help Hillary Clinton.
There was no logic to the argument.
For one, I am a very public figure and everyone knows that I am a radical Sanders devotee.
I literally met thousands of Sanders and Stein supporters at the DNC protest in Philadelphia and have been interviewed by everyone from Fox News to Vox to The Washington Post regarding my passion for Bernie Sanders and the values he stands for.
The argument against our movement being for Hillary Clinton made zero sense, because getting Clinton voters to write-in Bernie Sanders was clearly intended to take Vermont away from Clinton, where she currently has a huge lead.
The entire genesis of our movement was an attempt to deprive Clinton of the Presidency and give it to Bernie Sanders, where it rightfully belonged after a rigged “Democratic” Primary.
As we began assigning volunteers and getting organized, we were hyper-conscious of being infiltrated by people who may want to sabotage our operation to insure that Clinton won Vermont.
We were not expecting to be infiltrated by anyone representing Jill Stein, because our group is full of Stein supporters and prior to the event that I am about to explain, we thought of these people as allies.
In fact, I still do feel that Stein supporters and Sanders supporters are allies.
At least I hope we are.
The events I am about to explain leave me saddened and wondering about the intentions of some of those who I thought were on our side.
It was going to be two weeks before our family could arrive in Vermont, so we needed a canvassing coordinator on the ground in Burlington.
Let me be clear, we were absolutely DESPERATE for an experienced canvasser who was already on the ground in Vermont, who could house and train our traveling canvassers.
Enter Nicole Guerin…
In the following conversation Nicole is the gray bubbles and I am the blue bubbles.
Nicole was the key to the entire operation.
She was exactly what we were looking for.
Nicole was an experienced canvasser who supported Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders.
It was a perfect match!!
As it was my job to interview the canvassing coordinator, I was extremely happy that we had found someone who was actually in Burlington, Vermont.
I immediately liked Nicole and went to the group with my recommendation that we train Nicole remotely and give her canvassing literature and allow her to train our traveling volunteers.
Then she informed us that she actually was friends with Bernie and Jane Sanders.
Nicole and I seemed to be on the same page. I was incredibly excited to recommend her to the group.
Nicole expressed concerns that the people of Vermont did not want any part of a campaign that could possibly result in a Trump Presidency.
I informed Nicole that we had changed our group mission statement, in light of Clinton taking a huge lead in the electoral college polls, after the Trump misogyny tape was released.
I told Nicole that we had reframed our mission and that we had accepted that Vermont’s three electoral votes were not going to be enough to stop Clinton, but that we really just wanted to honor Bernie Sanders for a lifetime of commitment to the people of Vermont.
Nicole agreed that this approach would work much better and I had received permission from our group to offer her the position as our canvassing coordinator (not before the higher-ups in our group asked me if I was sure that she was the “real deal” about ten times and every time I assured them that she was.)
Nicole was ecstatic.
Nicole accepted our offer and even said that she could lodge some of our traveling canvassers.
Our group celebrated.
We now had our foot in the door.
The following day, Nicole sent me this message.
It was a video from Claudia Stauber, someone who I have been a big fan of for a while now.
It was Claudia telling people that our movement was actually working for Hillary Clinton.
As you can imagine, we were all hurt and disappointed to hear that Claudia had been misinformed and was unknowingly spreading false information regarding our movement.
I told Nicole that our movement was not related to #OpDeny270 and that I didn’t think such a huge initiative could work and that I felt like it could interfere with Jill’s 5%.
(To my friends at #OpDeny270, I have since changed my opinion in light of the amazing work you guys are doing. I now feel that it is absolutely feasible for you guys to flip Wyoming. But I have to present the truth and the truth is that I did say that it wouldn’t work when I first head about your movement.)
At this point, things began to get interesting.
Nicole was having a crisis of conscience or at least this is what I was lead to believe.
She said that she felt bad about running a secret operation in Bernie and Jane’s backyard and wanted to talk to them about it before she went any further.
She also complimented our canvassing materials.
Nicole reminded me again, how important the Sanders’ approval was regarding our initiative.
I didn’t say anything to her, because I believed at the time that she was laboring under an intense dilemma, but I really feared that talking to Bernie would kill our initiative, because I know that he is bound by his agreement to support Hillary Clinton.
I wanted to ask her not to talk to them, but how could I?
Asking her not to talk to her “friends” would be overstepping a serious boundary.
Then things became strange.
As Nicole had offered her home for canvassers, I told her the days that we would be arriving and told her that we would accept her offer to use her guest room.
At this point Nicole informed me that the room was full and reiterated that she was uncomfortable running a campaign that may be against Bernie’s wishes.
I knew that Bernie would be forced by his position with the DNC to denounce the campaign, but I also knew that we were packed and on our way to Vermont in two days and we needed Nicole to feel strongly about what we were doing, so I suggested…
Nicole agreed to speak to Jane, but not to Bernie.
I supported Nicole’s choice and went to bed that night feeling scared, afraid that all of our work would be ended by a single conversation with Jane Sanders.
Nicole messaged me Sunday morning and told me that the Sanders family was not at home.
Then later that day, Nicole messaged me again and told me that she had spoken with Jane.
I nearly vomited when I saw the message.
I was so scared that we might offend Bernie and Jane in some way, when we had all worked so hard to honor them.
I sat on pins and needles for several hours until the infamous messages came in regarding Jane’s message for us to cease our movement and support the candidates who are “on the ballot”.
I was deeply saddened.
I wrote THIS article (since amended) telling everyone that our movement was over, because Jane Sanders did not approve of it.
Our volunteer group had a range of emotions.
Many were angry with me.
Many were crying and inconsolable.
I have been through some tough events in my life, including the recent death of my mother and the death of one of my children, but I was not at all prepared for the intense grief that overtook me that day.
I told my family..
“Everything aches from my stomach all the way up to my throat. I’ve never felt anything like this.”
Carrie and my daughter were also deeply saddened.
We had worked very hard to juggle our schedules to go to Vermont and thought we were doing something compassionate and decent.
Now, after receiving Nicole’s message and hearing what we believed was Jane’s request to stop the movement, I felt foolish and embarrassed.
So many had worked so hard so hard and for what?
I asked Nicole if I could “use her words” to explain to everyone why we needed to stop the movement and she said that it was okay.
Dave Weigel, at the Washington Post, had been speaking to me on the phone every couple of days and had flown into Vermont to interview me regarding our movement.
I told Nicole to go ahead and do the interview on my behalf.
Nicole told Dave Weigel that there was “no story” and that the movement was over.
This is the part where Nicole said that it was okay to use her words to let people know that our movement was over.
I thanked Nicole for speaking with Jane Sanders and told our group that the movement was over.
Our group unanimously said that they would continue on the movement with or without me.
I told them that I admired their spirit, but that I had already canceled my trip to Vermont and that we had all contacted work and school and told them that we would be in as originally planned.
It was an incredibly chaotic turn of events for our family and for our volunteers.
Nicole informed me that she was grieving too.
I thanked Nicole again for her efforts.
Nicole read my article and told me that she was not comfortable with me going public with her words.
She then told me that she went back to talk to Jane Sanders and that Jane had told her that I shouldn’t use her words.
At the time, I thought this was kind of odd, but as I was grieving, I told myself that I was just reading too much into it.
I reminded Nicole that she had given me permission to use her words.
I told Nicole that I did not feel that it was right to summarize, especially when she had given me permission to “use her words”.
Nicole told me that she visited Jane a third time.
I told Nicole that I was upset about all the misinformation coming from Stein supporters on our efforts and she agreed that it had been ugly.
I told her that the whole thing had soured me on The Green Party, but I still planned to vote for Jill.
And those was the last words that Nicole and I spoke to each other.
Jane Sanders tweeted and said that the conversations were fabricated.
The people in our movement were incredibly angry.
Nicole immediately left our volunteer group.
I told the group members that we had to give Nicole 24 hours to tell her side of the story and we would not make any public statement until that time.
We asked Nicole publicly to make a statement and she did not respond.
Then someone sent us this.
Notice the date, October 13, around the time that Nicole said that she needed to talk to the Sanders family about our movement.
And then of course, Jane Sanders graciously came out and let the world know that Nicole had been lying to our group all along.
Once again, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Jane for letting us know that our movement was accepted and for giving us permission to follow our hearts and write in Bernie Sanders on our ballots.
Sadly it appears as if Nicole infiltrated our efforts and fed us lies.
I take full responsibility for this, as I am the one who trusted her and told others to trust her.
I find it deeply troubling that people who we felt were on our same team, went to such great efforts to undermine weeks of work from people who wanted nothing more than to honor Bernie Sanders and his lifetime of fighting for our collective rights.
Has the left become so fractured that Jill Stein supporters are going to great efforts to undermine Bernie Sanders supporters?
And if so, who wins?
The establishment wins! That’s who!!
We all know what it has been like dealing with Hillary Clinton’s deceptive Super-PAC, Correct the Record and now it seems that the victims of these tactics have began using them on others who are on the same team.
And for what?
We made no effort to change the minds of Stein voters in Vermont.
We only tried to flip the Hillary voters to write-in Bernie.
Why would anyone attack such a pure and honest movement?
Apparently we are not alone.
Our friends at #OpDeny270 sent us this (you will have to click it, as every time I enlarged it, the script became too blurry to read).
They say that this is a phone-banking script that some Stein supporters were using to undermine our efforts in Vermont.
I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this script and I am not interested in pursuing some sick war with other people who share the same Progressive values as we do.
I do not think that a war between Stein supporters and Sanders supporters is advantageous to our collective cause, so I would like to take this opportunity to ask that we all take a breath and rejoin forces against the establishment.
When elephants fight, the grass suffers.
I am quick to forgive, but in light of this new information, I will be focusing exclusively on Bernie Sanders Write-in and down-ballot candidates.
I know that Jill Stein did not put anyone up to this.
I know that all candidates attract all kinds of people.
But this event has left lots of people deeply injured.
I would expect something like this from those who support Hillary Clinton.
I never expected anything like this from those who support Jill Stein.
Addendum: After our story was released last night, Nicole released a statement admitting guilt and apologizing.
I have empathy for Nicole and it was very difficult for me to go forward with this story, but our group was implicated in something that we were innocent in and the people deserved to know the truth.
We all wish Nicole all the best going forward and we are grateful for her for being an adult and owning up to her actions.
We encourage ALL people who are not happy with their ballot choices to write-in Bernie Sanders as a protest to a rigged election.
Regardless of who you vote for in the Presidential race, please vote in Progressives in all down-ballot races.
They should be in the streets shutting down corporate profits.
I have visions of semi-trucks parked across interstates and major cities occupied.
I have visions of the American government trying to figure out how to stop a determined populace that responds to injustice by standing united.
I have visions of corrupt politicians and bankers fleeing America, fearing prison.
I see, in my mind’s eye, a million people marching in unison, demanding justice.
But these visions are ripening on the vine.
We aren’t there yet.
Multinational corporations rig a “Democratic” election to appoint Hillary Clinton, who is nothing more than a figurehead for corporate profits and never-ending war…
People gather around the water cooler to complain.
Racist, white police-officers, sworn to protect and serve, MURDER unarmed black men..
Maybe we take a knee at a sporting event.
Our government poisons the water supply and the food.
Innocent children die.
But hey, football is on.
Americans have been domesticated.
We are afraid.
We are spoiled.
We are pacified.
Injustice has become entertainment.
We are too busy.
We are distracted.
As bad as all this is, when Donald Trump is President, things are going to get worse.
This is Germany 1933.
The police unions have endorsed Donald Trump.
We’ve seen what Trump thinks of protesters.
He encourages violence against them.
He touts the Second Amendment while oppressing the First.
In Trump’s America, protesters will be murdered and he will say..
“They’re disgusting. We’re trying to fix this country and these people hate it. They hate America. They got what was coming to them.”
His followers will cheer for blood in the streets.
Decades of America’s corporate greed and subsequent destruction of opportunity have led to a deep-seated desperation in our blue-collar workforce and Donald Trump has tapped into that.
Trump’s white supremacist supporters are stockpiling weapons, waiting for Martial Law, so they will have permission to kill blacks, gays, Hispanics and liberals.
They call themselves patriots.
Trump gives their movement license.
Trump fuels their fear.
Trump fills them with bravado.
“Make America Great Again” is the same code as “All Lives Matter”.
It is rhetoric that translates to “ban and bomb all Muslims.”
It is hyperbole that says “black people need to know their place.”
It is oration designed to stir the rage of people who were led to believe that it is their birthright to have superiority over others.
When Trump vomits forth hate-speech about deportation forces and punishing women who have abortions, he taps into an angry segment of our population and encourages it to creep out of the darkness.
When Trump makes fun of the handicapped, children on playgrounds follow suit.
When Trump points his tiny finger of blame, people are assaulted.
Trump is sounding the alarm to gather the forces and to round-up all those responsible for your pain and suffering.
He is the ruling-elite telling you to kill your neighbor, because they stole your crumbs.
He is fascism, come to America, wrapped in the flag.
He is paranoia personified.
Bernie Sanders was right when he said that we must do “everything in our power to stop Donald Trump.”
But you can’t ask us to vote for Hillary Clinton, Bernie.
That’s asking too much.
This was the “Democrats” election to lose.
They had two strong candidates and the GOP could not produce a decent opponent.
A year ago most liberals would have agreed that Bernie was the better candidate, but that Hillary was still better than Donald Trump.
But Hillary lied to us.
She took us for granted and she mocked us.
She insulted us and she stripped away our voting rights.
And she cheated.
She cheated in an American election against a good man.
She cheated the American people out of $238,000,000 (the amount that we donated to Bernie Sanders).
She cheated us out of our literal blood, sweat and tears, that we shed while working tirelessly, in an “election” that we never had a chance of winning.
We sacrificed far too much to just forgive and forget.
I remember telling my kids that we couldn’t afford to do certain things, because “Bernie needs our help.”
My children volunteered with me.
We went broke, driving anywhere we could to help canvas.
Speeding tickets, gas, damage to vehicle, oil changes and lost wages.
We spent the last several months trying to recover from these excursions and millions of Americans made the same sacrifices.
The “Democratic” Party’s mistreatment of Bernie Sanders and his supporters painted us into a corner.
I am terrified by the looming specter of a Trump presidency, but still I cannot bring myself to support the embodiment of everything I have spent my life fighting against.
If you were just a casual Sanders supporter (was there any such thing?) then perhaps you could just pull your Sanders sign up and replace it with a Clinton sign.
But for those of us who gave our entire lives to this movement, it is not even a serious consideration.
Sorry Bernie, I cannot vote for Hillary Clinton.
She simply does not deserve my vote.
Hillary and the DNC burned the bridges.
It is unreasonable to expect us to rebuild them.
Maybe if the “Democrats” lose an election that they could have easily won, then they will learn to listen to the people next time.
But I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Perhaps the protests I am looking for will not be held in the streets.
Perhaps the next great protest in the United States will be held in the voting booth, where millions of liberals, that Hillary Clinton took for granted, will stand up in the face of tyranny and choose to vote their conscience instead of caving into the fear that the “Democratic” Party is banking on.
Maybe there is finally enough anger on the left to motivate them to get off their asses and actually build a true third-party for the people.
Maybe liberals will finally start paying attention to down-ballot races and midterm elections and rejecting corporate candidates in favor of true Progressives.
Maybe people will finally learn that voting with their dollars is where the real power lies and they will abstain from buying from the corporations that destroyed our democracy.
When confronted with the “choice” between being shot in the face or poisoned to death, the intelligent choice is to choose neither.
When confronted with the “choice” between someone who threatens to use nuclear weapons or someone who claims to be so ignorant that they did not know that “C” stood for classified, the rational person chooses neither.
When confronted with the “choice” between someone who will appoint alt-right Supreme Court judges or someone who secretly supports TPP, a trade agreement that will put corporate tribunals in charge of our government, the compassionate person says “HELL NO!!!”
Enough lesser-evilism!!
Hillary Clinton is pulling a Band-Aid off slowly, whereas Donald Trump is ripping it off fast.
Either way, it’s going to hurt.
Vote for Jill Stein or write in Bernie Sanders.
In an insane election, these are the only sane choices.
Some will say that this is throwing your vote away.
Nonsense.
Throwing your vote away is when you vote for someone whom you don’t believe in.
Throwing your vote away is voting for Donald Trump, a hate-monger who’s been spending daddy’s money and filing bankruptcy and charging it to the American tax-payer, while telling the people who are footing his bill that their poverty is the fault of other poor people.
Throwing your vote away is voting for Hillary Clinton, a warmonger who rode her rapist husband’s coattails into politics by representing a state that she wasn’t even a resident of, while supporting fracking and taking millions from the fossil-fuel industry.
With either one of these fools, you are doing more than throwing your vote away.
You are throwing your planet away.
You are throwing your dignity away.
You are throwing innocent lives away.
Neither have any business stepping foot in the White House and I do not and will not recognize their authority.
If you are insulted by your corporate “choice” for President, I suggest you exercise your Constitutional right to open rebellion.
Join with me in pledging to fight whichever one of these criminals is unfortunate enough to take office.
Let’s commit to being real activists.
Let’s commit to taking back our government.
Let’s lose the battle and win the war.
Hillary or Trump?
I choose neither.
If my voice is aligned with your voice, please consider donating $1 by clicking HERE. We are expanding our power by starting a YouTube show/Podcast that will be used to organize tremendous activism in line with the Progressive philosophies of Jill Stein and Bernie Sanders. Any money donated goes directly to purchasing studio equipment to make that happen.
With the latest insanity surrounding Hillary Clinton, involving her collapsing symbolically at a 9/11 memorial, I am reminded of how seriously fed up I have become with her sham of a campaign.
While corporate media focuses on an orange gnome with zero government experience, the rest of us are being force-fed a corporate, warmongering shill and we are supposed to be happy about it, just because she is “not Donald Trump”.
I honestly have tried to find something redeeming in the shit sandwich of her impending Presidency.
I have defended Hillary from time to time.
I agree with the assessment of her supporters, that she is better than Donald Trump, but without an ounce of facetiousness, I can say confidently that my dog, Butch, is a better candidate than Donald Trump.
Butch might relieve himself in the Oval Office, but at least he wouldn’t start a nuclear war.
I asked Butch about building a wall and forcing Mexico to pay for it and he just turned his head to one side, spun around in a circle three times and laid down.
As bad as Trump is, Hillary seems to be working overtime to prove she is nearly as pathetic.
Hiding medical problems from the American people, especially something as serious as neurological disorder, is just too much.
Is it unreasonable to ask that our candidates release their current medical records and have a psychiatric evaluation at least bi-annually?
Shouldn’t that be absolutely mandatory for anyone seeking to be in charge of the world’s most powerful military?
What difference does it make, right?
What fucking difference does it make?
I understand that Hillary is the choice of the establishment.
I know they have billions of dollars on the line.
I know they invested hundreds of millions to get her appointed into a position of power so that they could recoup their money 100 fold.
I know how this whole sham works, but seriously corporate America, do you have to make it so obvious?
For nearly a year she has hidden from the very people she is supposed to represent.
If only Hillary had chosen a decent running mate, then I would possibly feel confident, as it seems highly unlikely that she would even be able to complete her term.
But Tim Kaine?!
Uh, just no.
I am all for our country FINALLY having a female President, but at what cost?
Your campaign has become insulting to our intelligence.
Never mind that you have shown zero ability to be a decent leader.
Never mind that you can barely stand up unassisted.
Never mind that we are in desperate need of true leadership in our country’s most dire hour.
As much as we fear the idea of Donald Trump being President, you HAVE to let the people who vote for you keep their dignity.
When you repeatedly insult us, you make that impossible.
You honestly expect us to believe that you didn’t know “C” stood for classified?
You want us to buy into the lie that you are “looking into” releasing your Wall Street transcripts for 224 days now?
And I’m sick of hearing about Trump, every time I ask a legitimate question regarding one of Clinton’s glaring flaws.
If I ask about the Wall Street transcripts then I want to talk about YOUR WALL STREET TRANSCRIPTS!!!
Saying “Trump did not release his tax returns.” is not a suitable response.
My kids know that blaming their siblings for their wrongdoings is unacceptable.
Should I expect less from my President than I do from my children?
Given Trump as the alternative, I was willing to forgive a lot.
But Hillary, you simply ask too much.
For someone who so rarely speaks publicly, you certainly seem to put your foot in your mouth a lot.
Hillary, we do not “bring people to heel.”
We do not laugh at murder and say “We Came. We Saw. He died.”
We do not, under ANY circumstances, speak of political assassination as a way of winning a nomination.
We do not “land under Bosnian sniper-fire”, trivializing the heroes who actually have to face this real-life death from above.
Considering that the orange menace was my alternative, I was honestly willing to move on, if you were just willing to take some damned accountability and learn from your mistakes, but this campaign you took the dishonesty to a new level.
You can lie to the FBI and Congress and apparently they will give you a pass, but the American people WILL NOT!!
It would have been nice if you would have used this last 18 months to do something redeeming, so at the very least I could lie to myself and say that you had learned some valuable lessons and were trying now.
But you don’t try.
You take us for granted and we are beyond tired of your lies.
We are Charlie Brown and you are Lucy and we are done trying to kick the football.
We are done trusting you, only to land flat on our backs.
This has gone far enough.
You are clearly incapable of handling even the simplest task without mucking it up beyond all recognition.
You cannot appoint people to high-positions in our government in exchange for donations.
You cannot set up a charitable foundation and then donate the money to YOURSELF!!
Hillary Clinton, you are simply not a decent human being and I cannot vote for you.
You have burned all the bridges.
All you had to do was just be open and honest and you would have had my reluctant support, simply because you are, as you often remind us, not quite as bad as Trump.
But you couldn’t do that.
You could not treat us with basic human dignity.
You could not give us that which all humans inherently deserve.
If I give voice to your thoughts and feelings, please consider donating $1 by clicking HERE. Why would you want to do that? I am currently working to build a podcast that gives voice to Progressive values and the studio equipment is expensive. When it is complete we will have a real, non-corporate voice in the media. I believe in this movement with my entire heart and I will make it happen regardless of rather you can afford to donate or not. I do not believe that lack of funds should silence you. I will always do my best to make sure everyone who has been silenced has a voice.
Recently I had the pleasure of sitting down with a picture of Bernie Sanders and interviewing it.
Just to be ABSOLUTELY CLEAR, this is not a real interview. I am asking the questions and then answering them the way I believe that Bernie would answer them. It is for entertainment purposes, but not ONLY for entertainment purposes.
My goal with this interview is to illuminate why I believe that Bernie made some of the choices that he made. I am, in no way, trying to say that these are Bernie’s actual thoughts on the following matters. But as Bernie refuses to comment on many of these issues, the answers reflect my speculation on what actually happened.
The Independent Thinker: Hey Bernie! Thanks for being here today.
Bernie Sanders: I’m happy to be here.
Indie: You look great. You were starting to look pretty tired there towards the end of the campaign.
Bernie: Thank you. To be honest. I was getting kind of tired. I’ve been getting more sleep lately.
Indie: Let’s get right to the tough questions. Do you feel that Hillary Clinton’s win in the Democratic primary was legitimate?
Bernie: Secretary Clinton received 3,000,000 more votes than we did. I believe that makes her the winner.
Indie: Okay, but you’re not really here. You’re just a picture, so if we could do away with some of the stock answers and just be completely honest, that’s what my readers are looking for. So I ask you again, do you feel that you lost the primary legitimately?
Bernie: Off the record?
Indie: Sure, I’m willing to lie and say ‘off the record’.
Bernie: Well in that case, there appeared to be some shenanigans taking place all over the country. I believe we had more voters in Kentucky and I believe exit polling showed a wide disparity in Massachusetts and in several other states.
Indie: So you are finally willing to say that the results of the primary were rigged?
Bernie: Off the record, I’m willing to say that some of the results should have been looked at a little deeper, yes.
Indie: Bernie, you are a picture. Hillary Clinton cannot have you killed. The worst thing that I can imagine happening is that maybe she would send some of her goons over here to rip up the picture. So can you stop being so diplomatic, just for the sake of the interview? Or I can just keep lying to you and saying ‘off the record’ if you prefer?
Bernie: I actually prefer that.
Indie: Okay, then the whole interview is off the record. Just know that I love you and it pains me to lie to you.
Bernie: That’s very nice. Thank you.
Indie: So?
Bernie: Look. I don’t want to mince words here. Secretary Clinton had access to the same voter information that we had. You were a canvasser. Is that correct?
Indie: Yes I was.
Bernie: Do you want to explain to your readers what you were able to see on your canvassing app?
Indie: Sure. Through the app, we could see the addresses of the voters, how they were registered and who they intended to vote for.
Bernie: And what did you do with that information?
Indie: We were instructed to knock on the doors of the registered Democrats and Independents, depending on what state we were in, who were “undecided” and tell them why they should vote for you.
Bernie: So you knew before each primary who was planning on voting for me and who was planning on voting for Secretary Clinton?
Indie: Yes. In fact on election day in Indiana, people were freaking out, because initially you were down by 10 points. People kept calling me. I told them all the same thing. I told them that you were going to win Marion County by a landslide and that ultimately you would win the state by about five points.
Bernie: And how much did we win by?
Indie: Five points.
Bernie: Secretary Clinton’s team had access to the same information you did.
Indie: So what happened then? The exit polling was way off in many states. Are you saying that the DNC had the votes flipped at the machines?
Bernie: I’m saying that, judging by exit polling, it appears that there were disparities.
Indie: Even off the record, your answers are pretty reserved.
Bernie: Would you like me to be more EXTREME?!! (with this Bernie lunges forward in his chair with wide eyes and expands his hands wildly.)
Indie: No. I appreciate your honesty. Moving on…you won 22 states. But I definitely noticed some odd trends. For example, you would win by a landslide in states like Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, then across the border in Arizona and Texas, you lost by a landslide. My theory is that Clinton’s team conceded the states with low delegate counts and only rigged the states with high delegate counts. Your thoughts?
Bernie: Different states have different demographics. Secretary Clinton did very well among Latinos in Arizona and Texas.
Indie: Fair enough. But what about the closed polling stations in Arizona? And remember, this is off the record.
Bernie: What happened in Arizona was a disgrace to Democracy. People waiting five hours in the heat, just to cast their vote? That’s not what America is about. That’s not what Democracy is about.
Indie: But do you feel that the DNC was behind the closed polling stations?
Bernie: I honestly don’t know, but anyone who makes it difficult for people to vote is a political coward.
Indie: And what about New York? Many of us believe that New York was the turning point of the election. 3.2 million registered voters were unable to vote for you there, due to being registered as Independent. There were thousands of people who claimed that their registrations were switched to Republican or back to Independent, after they had switched to Democrat in order to vote for you. Your thoughts?
Bernie: What happened in New York is that the state had a closed primary, with some kind of a ridiculously long period, something like six months ahead of time, required to switch your party registration in order to participate. As a result, millions of New York voters who wanted to vote for our campaign, were unable to, due to the fact that they were not registered with the Democratic Party. This is a very exclusive club. They don’t want just anybody voting in it.
Indie: So you are saying that you feel New York was a legitimate win for Clinton?
Bernie: We knew the rules when we got involved. We decided that our best course of action was to run under the Democratic Party rules and we knew that closed primaries were part of that. Would I like to see open primaries in every state in the union? Yes, but we knew the deck was stacked when we declared our candidacy.
Indie: Do you consider closed primaries to be undemocratic?
Bernie: They are “closed” to millions of voters. By their very definition they are undemocratic.
Indie: Did you ever consider saying publicly that you thought that there was election fraud?
Bernie: It’s a very complex issue. We challenged in Kentucky and the recount came back the same as the original count. If we come out and challenge the legitimacy of the primary, then this is a very serious charge. We need evidence. How do we get evidence? A man or woman walks into a booth and does something very personal and very private. Later on, maybe someone says that the numbers don’t add up, but how do you prove it? We couldn’t challenge the closed primary in New York. We agreed to play by the rules of the Democratic Party. There was a hearing in Arizona and the court ruled that the results were valid. An appeal would have taken months and more importantly would have alienated us further from the Democratic Party, who basically holds all the cards in this scenario. Had we made any such claims, we would have been laughed right out of the campaign. It’s easy to say that we should have rocked the boat, but we were sitting in the boat. Once we realized that we were not going to be treated as fairly as we had hoped, we realized that our best course of action was to try to get the Democratic Party to agree to as many platforms that would help the American people as we could and that’s exactly what we did.
Indie: What about the Brooklyn voter purge? It seems that all of the voters who were purged were planning to vote for you.
Bernie: You knew ahead of time who the people were planning to vote for. Secretary Clinton’s team had access to the same information you did.
Indie: Okay let’s talk about that. You concede that you were treated unfairly by the Democratic Party. You’ve been in politics a long time. You have always been an outsider. You’ve chosen to be an Independent in the Senate and ran for Governor in Vermont as a Democratic Socialist. You had to know that the Democratic Party was going to do everything in its power to stop you.
Bernie: We figured that they would make it difficult, yes.
Indie: You said over and over again that you were not just an issues candidate and that you believed that you were actually going to win. Knowing how corrupt the Democratic party has become, did you really expect that you were going to win?
Bernie: First off, let’s define “winning”. Did we gain the nomination? No. But we mobilized people. We exposed corruption in the party and now we have thousands of people running for Democratic office who are working to take the party back from the establishment. We are moving towards a living wage and Medicare for all. There is an initiative on the ballot in California which we are strongly supporting. This initiative would make everyone in America automatically registered to vote when they turn 18. We are now, for the first time in a long time, moving in the right direction for the working people in our country. I believe strongly that Secretary Clinton, with the right people in Congress, will make the right decisions to move these initiatives forward.
Indie: Okay. Let’s talk about that. A lot of people, like myself, who voted for you, can’t stomach the idea of voting for Hillary Clinton. She is literally the embodiment of everything we have fought against with your campaign. I have to say, I feel angry and betrayed by you asking me to vote for her. In fact, I refuse.
Bernie: I don’t want to mince words here. Secretary Clinton has her issues and there are many things that we disagree on, but she is not the direct opposite of what we have been fighting for. Donald Trump is. There are several things that the secretary and I agree on, whereas I disagree with Mr. Trump on practically every issue. Secretary Clinton supports a woman’s right to choose, whereas Mr. Trump says that women should be punished for having abortions, as if that choice isn’t hard enough. Secretary Clinton may have been late to the party on the rights of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters, but at least she is now at the party. Donald Trump is a bigot and if he is allowed to nominate Supreme Court judges, we will lose everything that we have fought for over the past thirty years. I reject the idea that Secretary Clinton is my opposite.
Indie: Okay, I agree with that, but what about TPP? We know she secretly supports this awful trade agreement. Trump opposes TPP. Can’t I make the argument that it is better to have Trump than TPP?
Bernie: Do you know WHY the Republicans oppose TPP? Many oppose it because it is not powerful ENOUGH! They want to give corporations even more power than this disastrous trade agreement already gives them. Also you have may have noticed that our good friend, Mr. Trump, changes his position almost daily on nearly every issue. So, no, I don’t believe we can trust Trump on TPP or anything else for that matter.
Indie: So what? Hillary becomes President and TPP is passed?
Bernie: If Secretary Clinton tries to pass TPP, you are going to fight her. I am going to fight her. 13 million people who voted for our campaign are going to fight her. And I am hoping, that whoever Americans decide to vote for in November for the House and Senate, will also oppose TPP. We have a real opportunity to defeat this bill if we all work together.
Indie: I’m still not voting for Hillary.
Bernie: That’s your choice. I would never tell you who to vote.
Indie: What are your thoughts on the Green Party movement?
Bernie: It’s a good movement. They have a strong platform. I can’t claim to be an expert on it. I think America needs a non-corporate party. The challenge they will run into, is that it takes billions of dollars to run a party and raising those kind of funds without corporate donors will be very difficult. I believe it can be done. We showed that you can run a very strong campaign without corporate donors and I wish the Green Party the best of luck. I’ve believed for a very long time that America needs to break out of the corporate two-party system.
Indie: So why didn’t you accept Jill Stein’s offer to head the Green Party? You had the popular vote. Bernie, it just kills me that you didn’t accept her offer. Please explain your thinking here.
Bernie: This is a very complex issue. It’s something that we explored and by ‘we’, I mean my wife, Jane, my friend and campaign manager, Jeff Weaver and some other key members of our staff and in the end we came to the conclusion that it would have had catastrophic results, not just for the American people, but ultimately for the Green Party as well.
Indie: Explain further please.
Bernie: Well, it’s wonderful to see that so many activists in the Green Party, many whom I suspect are the same activists who helped our campaign, have gone out and put in the legwork required to get the Green Party on the ballot in, what I believe is now 47 states. At the time the invitation was extended, I believe they were only on the ballot in 20 states. This shows me that people are serious about expanding a new party in this country and I strongly support that, but the Green Party, even bringing over our 13 million voters is simply not in position to make a serious run at taking over the government at this time.
Indie: Due to lack of funding?
Bernie: Due to many things. We already discussed that the Democratic Party doesn’t play fair. If I were on the Green Party ticket, do you think that they would be on the ballot in 40 states currently? Or do you think that the DNC lawyers would have started fighting our ballot access? And then we would have to go to court in multiple states at once and they would have stalled, which would have cost us millions. The Democrats have very deep pockets and they have been playing this game for a very long time. It is my belief that my joining the Green Party ticket would have done more harm than good, but I understand that our voters were not privy to these discussions that took place behind closed doors and due to the nature of my relationship with the Democratic Party, I was not able to come out and say too much about this, but I support what they are doing in the Green Party and I know that Our Revolution looks forward to supporting Green Party candidates for the House and Senate going forward.
Indie: Are those the only reasons?
Bernie: Those are the main reasons. Even being on the ballot in 47 states means that you automatically lose in 3 states and that is extremely tough to overcome. Had the Democrats blocked our ballot access, then we would have had zero chance and I would have not only hurt the party, but I would have split the vote, which would have allowed Republicans to have total and complete control of our government, starting with Trump in the White House, complete control of the Supreme Court, possibly keeping control of the House and Senate. And then, let’s imagine that we were able to overcome all of that. Let’s imagine that we were able to get tens of millions of dollars in donations just to fight the Democrats in court and then somehow we get on the ballot in all 50 states and we win the Presidency, do you think the Democrats would have been happy about this? Do you think that the Democrats would have been willing to work with us on passing legislation?
Indie: No. They would have blocked everything you tried to pass.
Bernie: Every single piece of legislation that we tried to pass would have been obstructed. Would I be able to look to my cohorts in the Green Party to pass bills through the House and Senate? There aren’t very many Green Party members running for these seats. The party isn’t ready to take over the government at this time. Our best hope of political revolution is to use the resources of the Democratic Party to push a Progressive agenda. Had I accepted the incredibly gracious offer from Dr. Jill Stein, we would have lost all the progress that we made in getting the Democrats to agree to our platform.
Indie: Regarding the platform. What is to stop Clinton from just sweeping it under the rug? We have seen her lie and flip-flop on positions repeatedly. How can you trust her?
Bernie: If the Democratic Party were going to do that, why did they fight us so hard on it? They refused our $15 per hour minimum wage and opted instead for a $12 per hour minimum. They refused to oppose TPP. They refused to oppose fracking, something that we pushed very hard for. And there were several other issues we disagreed on. The Democratic platform is the basis on which all future decisions of the party will be made. We fought very hard and got them to concede many things to us, but sure, if we just sit around and ignore the promises that were made, then what will happen is that corporate lobbyists will come in and influence Congress to pass bills that work against the best interest of the people. The platform is just the foundation, but it is a strong foundation. Now we have to elect people into Congress that will support our positions.
Indie: In 2008 Barack Obama had a fairly Progressive platform. It was pretty much ignored for eight years.
Bernie: Barack Obama is a friend of mine, but in my view, he made a YUGE mistake by not holding his constituents accountable. Not me, us. Not me, us. I keep saying it. One person, alone, in this government, can do very little, but when millions of people stand together there is literally nothing we cannot accomplish. Barack Obama stirred up the people of America and then when he was elected, they went back to their lives. They didn’t run for office. They didn’t pressure their government. They didn’t vote in midterm elections. As a result, Republicans controlled the House and Senate and obstructed his Presidency. That is one of the key differences between Barack Obama and myself. Our movement is one of tremendous activism. Not me, us. That’s what political revolution is all about.
Indie: Let’s talk briefly about Our Revolution. There was some dissension in the ranks over the appointment of Jeff Weaver as head of the group.
Bernie: That’s not uncommon. In politics it is very rare to have everyone agree on every issue. For whatever reason, the media decided to take that story and blow it way out of proportion.
Indie: But setting it up as a 501c4, allowing big donors to support the movement, doesn’t this go against everything that your campaign stood in opposition to?
Bernie: That depends on who the donors are and what they expect in return. During our presidential campaign, we had Nurses for Bernie, as well as several large labor organizations, that donated large sums of money to our campaign. We also had many other organizations attempt to donate large sums of money to our campaign and we refused their donations. What’s the difference? The difference is that we did not have to compromise even a little bit to accept the donations from the labor unions. We were already fighting for labor unions. We were already fighting for equal pay for women. We were already fighting for paid leave and a $15 per hour minimum wage. These groups wanted to help with that. We didn’t have to compromise our movement. I’ve known Jeff Weaver for a long time. He is a very close friend of mine. One of the reasons why I put him in charge is I know that if some corporation or large individual donor comes up and offers him money, he will let them know that there are no strings attached and if they do not accept this, he will do exactly what he did during our campaign. He will refuse to accept the money. Jeff is a man of great integrity.
Indie: But the 501c4 filing status made it to where you could not coordinate with Tim Canova. Many feel that this cost him the win in Florida.
Bernie: Tim Canova is a good man. He is exactly the kind of Progressive we need to take on the big money interests in Washington, but the fact of the matter is that the incumbent always has a tremendous advantage, due to name recognition and having the financial support of the establishment. While it is true that the filing status prevented us from coordinating with Tim’s campaign, I do not believe that flying to Florida and giving a few speeches would have been enough to change the outcome of that primary election.
Indie: I noticed on the Our Revolution website that Act Blue was taking donations. They also take donations for Hillary Clinton. Will any of the money donated to Our Revolution go to Hillary?
Bernie: Absolutely not. Every dime donated will go to support Progressive causes and Progressive candidates.
Indie: So you agree that Hillary Clinton is not a Progressive then?
Bernie: No comment.
Indie: I feel kind of embarrassed asking you this, but…
Bernie: I’m just a picture sitting on your desk. You’ve been sitting here talking to a picture for hours. How much worse could it get?
Indie: That’s a good point. I was…
Bernie: I just want to make sure that you are taking care of yourself. Are you off your meds again?
Indie: I’ve been off my meds for years now, Bernie. I meditate and do yoga daily. I also do Crossfit and eat a strict vegetarian diet. Political activism and being creative are also part of my program. I find with all these things, I no longer need to take my meds.
Bernie: Well, the fact remains that you are talking to a picture.
Indie: Can we get back to the interview please.
Bernie: It’s your interview,
Indie: Okay, speaking of my sanity, I’m kind of embarrassed to ask you this, but my readers want to know. Did the DNC ever threaten you?
Bernie: Not directly, no.
Indie: They threatened you indirectly?
Bernie: Politics is a dirty game. I have been in the House and Senate for a long time. I’m the head of several subcommittees and I have a lot of relationships that I have developed over the years. As a result of these relationships, we are sometimes able to come to agreements on legislation and occasionally we can work together to get bills passed that help the American people. The Democratic establishment was growing tired of our campaign. They saw us as outsiders and their patience was wearing thin with our reluctance to concede and endorse Secretary Clinton. It was pretty clear that if I did not make the endorsement, then they were going to be unwilling to work with us going forward. On the other hand, we had some leverage within the party. We had 13 million voters and I wasn’t going to abandon them, so we had a series of meetings in which we got the party, as well as Secretary Clinton, to agree to push forward our initiatives in exchange for an endorsement.
Indie: But they also wanted a concession.
Bernie: Yes, but we were not prepared to do this.
Indie: Why endorse, but not concede?
Bernie: What if something were to happen to Secretary Clinton, God forbid? She has various issues with her emails and such. We wanted to be in position to take over the nomination, should she not be able to fulfill it for whatever reason.
Indie: At the convention, you asked if Vermont could go last during the roll call. After 49 states had voted and it became clear that the superdelegates had pledged to Hillary, you grabbed the microphone and suspended the rules. Why didn’t you just concede?
Bernie: We didn’t want to surrender our delegates. I wish Secretary Clinton all the best, but if she were unable to fulfill her duties, we wanted to be sure that we were next in line to take over.
Indie: Okay, I’m embarrassed to ask this, but there was a rumor circulating that you or your family were threatened physically and that is why you endorsed Hillary.
Bernie: That’s preposterous.
Indie: At the convention, you had a mark on your face. I believe this was the genesis of the rumor. Care to comment on the mark?
Bernie: Let me ask you something. I assume you did some research on me before this interview?
Indie: I’m a huge fan. I’ve read your books. I know more about you than I know about all my friends put together.
Bernie: In any of that reading and researching, did I strike you as the kind of guy who could be bullied or the kind of guy who would succumb to threats?
Indie: No. I never believed any of that stuff. I am just asking for my readers.
Bernie: Sometimes we let our imaginations get away from us.
Indie: One last question.
Bernie: Go!
Indie: Can I get a hug?
Bernie: Get over here.
If my writing adds value to your life, please consider clicking HERE to donate $1 to further the cause of building a true Independent voice in media.
As I pissed away my precious time looking at memes I did not understand and kittens I could not pet, I was interrupted by a loud
“Hey!!”
I looked up to see a police officer towering over me.
He continued..
“You aren’t allowed to have that in here!!”
He was pointing at my tablet.
I contemplated my next maneuver.
Who was this pathetic little man in front of me?
Without that badge and gun, I bet he wouldn’t be so brave?
Understanding the rules of society and my lack of power in the situation, I contemplated my choices.
I really needed to get those forms.
I drove all the way down here.
And now this bully was throwing a monkey wrench in my day.
There were several hours of people in the queue ahead of me and I had neglected to bring a book.
If I had to put my tablet away, I would just have to stare into space the entire time.
There was only one intelligent choice.
“I’m sorry.” I said “I didn’t know.” and closed my tablet without a trace of attitude.
He walked away feeling like a big man.
Without anything to distract me, I was forced to watch the other people waiting.
I wondered about their lives.
A man, about my age, walked in and pulled a number.
He had a tattoo of a razor-blade across his Adam’s apple.
He sat down and pulled out his phone.
The officer had a chance to feel worthwhile again.
He walked briskly from the corner until his crotch was even with the razor-blade man’s face.
“You can’t have that in here!!”
The man looked up.
There was no processing options.
He knew exactly what to do.
“Oh, Super-Cop, eh?!!” he said, standing up.
Then he added
“I don’t need this shit!!” and then “Fuck you!!” halfheartedly under his breath as he walked away.
The cop stared daggers in the man’s back and fingered his taser.
The cop thought better of it.
The razor-blade man escaped unharmed.
Eventually my number was called.
I had my meeting and all went well.
Because I went to the meeting my son will be able to get the medicine he needs to stay alive.
I wondered about what I would say to my son, had I chosen to rebel against the power-mad cop.
I contemplated a world in which some men have dominance over others and how to navigate such an unfair existence.
I thought about Bernie Sanders, Jill Stein, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and the turmoil our country as been in, as a result of our Schizophrenic presidential election.
I thought about my friends who supported Bernie Sanders in such an extreme way, that adjusting to the reality of a Hillary Clinton presidency has them angry and depressed.
I wondered if the same energy required to force real change in our government would doom that energy to implode if the leadership went missing.
I remembered when my friend said “Bernie or Bust is basically the Tea Party of the Left.”
I remembered being annoyed and saying..
“If you mean that we are pulling the Democratic Party to the left the way The Tea Party pulled the Republicans to the right, then sure.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” he said “The Democratic Party has moved to the right as well. The Bernie Sanders campaign is about overpowering the movement of the Koch Brothers and the 1%. It’s directly opposite. Your movement is strong, because it is radical, but never lose sight that the ultimate goal is to move the party back to the left.”
He was right.
The Democratic Party is broken.
It’s neoliberal centrism no longer represents our values.
It’s so controlled by corporate interests, that it often neglects to represent the people.
So those who are justifiably angry at the Democratic Party have some choices to make and they have to make them fast.
November is looming.
435 House seats and 34 Senate seats are up for grabs.
The chance to usher in a new Progressive age in America is at hand.
And Bernie Sanders army of supporters are in complete control of our country’s destiny.
But the Bernie people are angry and they should be.
They were mistreated.
They were silenced.
The election deck was stacked against them and what makes matters worse is that they are 100% correct about the flaws of Hillary Clinton.
They are right to criticize her hawkish war record.
They are right to demand her Wall Street transcripts.
They are right not to trust her, when she has repeatedly lied to them.
Many are angry that Sanders did not join with Jill Stein and get revenge on the Democrats for short-changing him.
But developing a third-party is a lot more than just running a President.
If you are serious about developing the Green Party, phone-banking, donating and canvassing are not enough.
If you are serious about developing the Green Party, then you need to make sure that there are Green Party candidates running for the important offices in your area.
And if there are not, then you need to run yourself.
If by some incredible set of circumstances, Jill Stein were able to win the Presidency, what would she be able to accomplish without a sympathetic House and Senate?
Do you have Green Party candidates running for Congress in your district?
Most districts do not.
So what’s the strategy?
How do we continue our Progressive momentum without supporting a candidate who represents everything we stand against?
We must decide and fast.
Because allowing Republicans to control Congress will absolutely destroy everything we have worked for.
What are the maneuvers that will optimize the progress we have made to this point?
Time for Independents and Greens to make some tough choices.
We only have two months to decide the fate of the world.
So am I telling you that you should vote for Hillary Clinton?
You can do whatever you want.
It’s your vote.
I will be voting for Dr Jill Stein, even though I do not believe she has a legitimate shot to win.
I am voting for her, because I want to see more options on my ballot going forward.
I do not want another choice between a warmonger and a reality TV star.
I am voting for Jill Stein because Hillary Clinton and the DNC burned all their bridges with me.
I am voting for Jill Stein because she is the candidate who most closely represents my values.
I understand why Sanders endorsed Clinton.
He accepted the fact that the system was rigged against him, so he traded his 13 million votes towards a Progressive agenda, knowing that if we did our jobs in November, Clinton would be locked into supporting our positions or she would accomplish absolutely nothing during her one-term presidency.
Sure she is a liar, but she will not be a very effective one with a Congress full of Progressives.
As much as I hate that Clinton and the corrupt DNC’s cheating will be rewarded with the presidency, I will not compound this problem, by allowing her to run amok and do whatever she pleases.
Instead we need to insure that she works for us.
There are ways to force her to keep her word.
If you agree that Hillary is untrustworthy, then you must also agree that it is incumbent upon us to make sure we are pulling the strings that control her.
It is entirely possible to support Jill Stein and the Green Party, while promoting down-ballot candidates that further the values Sanders and his supporters worked so incredibly hard for.
If you want to vote for Jill, then you should.
Vote for Jill Stein to send a message to the DNC and Hillary Clinton that we do not approve of the way we have been treated.
Vote for Jill Stein because she has good policies.
Vote for Jill Stein because part of bringing the Democrats to the left is giving them competition from the left.
But how do Progressives vote in the down-ballot races where there aren’t any Green or Independent candidates to choose from?
Are we so angry with the DNC that we are going to refuse to vote entirely, thereby allowing the Republicans to keep control of Congress?
Because if we do that, we will lose everything we fought for and Bernie traded in his 13 million votes for nothing.
It seems to me that the most logical way to vote for these open seats is to vote in the way that binds Hillary Clinton to Progressive policies, while taking away her ability to repeat her hawkish patterns.
If we have Progressives in the House and Senate then we have complete control over her.
We can stop her from passing TPP.
We can stop her from declaring war.
We can even block her Supreme Court nominees if need be.
I am sorry that I cannot stop Hillary Clinton from becoming president.
We all did everything we could.
Many of us went to Philadelphia to protest this heinous corruption.
I was hoping that we could get enough people there to shut down the city and for one night we actually did, but in the end there simply weren’t enough of us.
If you want to start occupying major cities and demand a Hillary Clinton indictment, then I am right there with you.
But if you aren’t willing to do that, then you are going to have to control the other branches of government and that means voting Progressives into every office.
If your area doesn’t have any true Progressives running, then you will have to make a decision on whether to vote for the most Progressive candidate or to simply run yourself.
We cannot allow Hillary Clinton to start any more wars.
We cannot allow Hillary Clinton to give tax breaks to her wealthy friends.
We will support Progressive candidates, regardless of what party they are affiliated with, because that is the only way to keep a reign on her.
Not voting is not an option.
We’ve come too far..
And this election is simply too important to throw away.
My goal is to build a media outlet that is free from corporate control. If my work adds value to your life, please consider donating $1 by clicking HERE.
I heard about you and Jane buying a new home on the beach and I couldn’t stop smiling, thinking about you out there chillin, grandkids running around, toes in the sand, drinking a Heady Topper or two, or three, or four, reflecting over the past year and a half.
Even though I dedicated my entire life to getting you elected, there was always this small part of me that wanted you to just go home and relax.
I worried about you.
You were working so hard that I feared that you would burn yourself out.
So the thought of you relaxing makes me extremely happy.
A few months ago, you asked me to vote for Hillary Clinton and because I hold you in such high esteem, I actually considered it.
I read the articles you wrote about it and I agree with you on many points.
It’s true, that if Donald Trump were to become president, America would be in for some hard times.
I read your book and I remember the sleepless nights you had agonizing over endorsing Bill Clinton, while the raccoon stirred in your attic.
I remember that you ultimately endorsed him, because you knew that Bob Dole would cut Social Security, but then you seemed to have some regret over it once NAFTA was enacted.
I know a lot of fair-weather people turned on you after the Hillary endorsement, but not me.
I totally get it.
You were in a really tough position and I admire you for doing what you felt was best.
But I can’t bring myself to vote for Hillary Clinton.
The time for lesser-evilism is over.
Times are desperate.
“Enough is enough.” right?
“Millions of people standing together.” right?
“Political revolution.” right?
I have imaginary conversations with you all the time.
We are sitting on the beach, waves calmly crashing into the shore.
Killer Mike is on his way over with a blunt behind his ear.
Mike and I are going to walk on down the beach and build up an appetite, before we start grilling out.
We will invite you to walk with us, but you will stay back and get the fire started.
In our conversations, you tell me why it is important to vote for Hillary and I tell you why I struggle with this idea.
You talk to me about the importance of Supreme Court judges and I agree with you completely, but I have to counter with Hillary Clinton’s support for TPP.
You and I both know that Clinton is the Trojan horse for this horrible trade agreement.
You and I both know that she is lying about opposing it.
You and I both saw the secret emails where she urged Congress to pass it.
And we both know that TPP is so powerful that it would take away much of the Supreme Court’s power anyway.
You tell me that a Trump presidency would mean losing all the progress we have made over the last decade and I mostly agree with you, but then I remind you that the Democrats will always run on the lesser of two evils ideology and that we have to take a stand against it at some point and that we are running out of time.
I remind you that you have been saying for decades that we need a third-party in America and that there will never be a better time than now.
I remind you that you called the Democrats “ideologically bankrupt” and that you made a point to stay out of their party for nearly your entire career.
In our conversation, you are not actually arguing with me.
You are arguing against your own words.
I keep quoting you back to you.
You keep giving me a pained smile.
You’re getting tired of my Bernie knowledge.
You’d probably rather argue with Alan Greenspan for another eight and a half hours.
In our imaginary conversations, we both admit that the choice between Trump and Clinton is not a good one.
We both end up temporarily discouraged and exasperated.
We both end up saying that we have to take massive action to ensure that this doesn’t happen again.
Then your grandkids all come running out in little Jill Stein T-Shirts.
I gave them to Jane, while you were in the restroom and asked her to send the kids out when I gave the signal.
Jane agrees with me on this one, Bernie.
And she promised the grandkids ice-cream if they would chant “Jill not Hill!!”
And Killer Mike just pulled up.
We have you outnumbered.
This is an intervention.
Back in reality, I agree with you wholeheartedly that a Trump presidency would be a disaster.
Having this maniac with the nuclear codes and the ability to nominate conservative judges scares the hell out of me.
We could compare and contrast all day, but all it would do is remind us that the choice between Trump and Clinton is no choice at all.
If this election has taught us anything, it’s that America is locked into a corporate duopoly, where the people are not being represented by their government and that this has to change.
Had we made our stand in 2012, the Green Party would have been a prominent party now.
You wouldn’t have had to run on the Democratic ticket and they would not have been allowed to abuse you the way that they did.
We cannot continue down this path any longer, my friend.
When you see what NAFTA did to cities like Flint and Detroit, do you still feel that endorsing Bill Clinton was right for America?
When you see how his crime bill decimated hundreds of thousands of black families, do you still feel that endorsing him ended up being the best move?
When you see how his repeal of Glass-Steagall lead to millions of Americans losing their homes and ultimately lead to a Wall Street bailout that the American people will be paying for, for the rest of their lives, do you still feel like lesser-evilism actually helped our country?
Would Bob Dole have been any worse?
Or would he have been equally bad for America, but just in different ways?
I know you see this, my brilliant friend.
The Republicans move to the right and the Democrats move in lockstep with them.
They always scream from the rooftops
“We aren’t as evil as the Republicans”
And Americans line up to buy the same lies every four years..
Because the alternative, on the surface at least, is so much worse.
As a result of this never-ending compromise, Americans are left feeling betrayed by the repeated broken promises of hope and this ultimately leads to a voter apathy so great, that the people barely have a voice at this point.
Is that really what you want to endorse?
The Bernie Sanders that I fell in love with was a man who stared into the face of evil and refused to blink.
The Bernie Sanders who inspired me was a man who said that people who suppress voting are “political cowards”.
The Bernie Sanders who got me off my ass and out knocking on doors was a man who stood opposite of Hillary Clinton and the multinational corporations she represents.
You said “Enough is enough”, Bernie..
And we listened.
Don’t ask us to vote out of fear, when you told us to stand together to fight against the 1%.
Don’t ask us to vote for everything you have rebelled against for the past fifty years.
Today I needed to go into a government building.
theindependentthinker2016 