The Daily Jackass: Misandry Angie

There's a lot of bile in her two-parter, but this is the only segment worth excerpting.

You may remember that the 2000 election between George W. Bush and Al Gore came down to Florida, where each major candidate took about 48.5% of the vote, and third party candidate Ralph Nader took around 3%. The closeness of the race, the suspected election fraud in Tampa, the hanging chads in Miami, and a conservative Supreme Court gave the win to Bush. If the 3% of voters who chose Nader (including me) hadn’t, they must [sic] likely would have picked Gore, for the entire country.

Regrettably, what we have here is someone who feels personally responsible for having elected W president, when nothing could be further from the truth (as has been pointed out time and time again). Jim Hightower, writing two weeks before Gore finally threw in the towel on the recount.

Now it gets really ugly for the Gore campaign, for there are two other Florida constituencies that cost them more votes than Nader did. First, Democrats. Yes, Democrats! Nader only drew 24,000 Democrats to his cause, yet 308,000 Democrats voted for Bush. Hello. If Gore had taken even 1 percent of these Democrats from Bush, Nader’s votes wouldn’t have mattered. Second, liberals. Sheesh. Gore lost 191,000 self-described liberals to Bush, compared to less than 34,000 who voted for Nader. 

Angie, bless her heart.

You don’t have to vote for Jill Stein just because you’re unhappy with the current situation. Based on the mechanics of electoral college voting, Clinton or Trump will be president, and a split left in contested races can deliver all of a state’s votes into his hands. You don’t have to actively make the situation worse, as I did when I voted from ignorance of electoral in Florida in 2000. [sic]

At least Angie's not advancing the debunked smear of Stein being "anti-vaxx".  (That's already produced plenty of fresh Jackass O'Day prospects for me.)

On the chance that it's simply new to her, I will hope this long-standing, widely-dispersed, easily-available factual data about Nader and Gore and Bush and the 2000 election can console Angie's guilt, but after 16 years of self-flagellation I have doubts as to whether the best of professional counseling will enable her to forgive herself.

Some people you just can't reach.

Jackasses on deck: local Democratic activists Kris Banks and Allan Brain, displaying their "kick-the-cat" responses to the Stein/anti-vaxx smear.

Sunday Funnies

There are other choices ...

The Daily Jackass: Chris Hooks

The Texas Observer's political writer/Democratic gun-for-hire has been putting extra bitters in his cocktails while on duty in Philadelphia.

"Cranks", "dead-enders", "messianic" (in a description of Jill Stein and a hilarious comparison with Bob Bavakian) is nothing more than excessive spleen-venting from the most Green-hostile of Democrats sixty days ahead of the first scheduled presidential debate.

Dude.  I know it was hot and wet in the City of Brotherly Love (scroll down to 'Phooey, Philly') but maybe you should wait until the Greens start to actually register a little in the polling before you twist your knickers that tight.

Oh.  Well.  Maybe now is a good time to shit yourself.

With the counterpoint, Dr. Mark Jones of Rice University's Baker Institute has an exceptionally respectful, direct, and thorough advance of next week's presidential nominating convention here in H-Town.  Bold emphasis is mine.

Last week, national attention was focused on Cleveland and the Republican Party’s National Convention. This week, national attention is focused on Philadelphia, where the Democratic Party’s National Convention is being held. Houstonians should not feel entirely left out, however, since Houston will host the Green Party National Convention next week (August 4-7) at the University of Houston campus.

The main order of business at the Green Party Convention will be to nominate the party’s presidential candidate, Dr. Jill Stein. In doing so, the party will symbolically launch its national campaign, which includes not only Stein’s presidential bid but hundreds of other campaigns throughout the country for offices ranging from U.S. senator to state representative to county commissioner.

At present, Stein has formally qualified to appear on the ballot in 23 states (including the District of Columbia) and is expected to qualify in between 20 and 25 additional states before filing closes in early September. In addition to retaining the support of individuals who voted for her during the 2012 presidential election, Stein and her fellow Greens hope to capture the votes of Bernie Sanders’ supporters and others who want to cast a protest vote against Hillary Clinton, signal to the Democratic Party that it needs to move to the left, or who believe that the future of the country’s progressive movement does not lie within the Democratic Party but rather via the creation of robust alternatives to what they consider to be a two-party duopoly.

Stein’s prospects for victory are nonexistent. However, an improved performance by Stein would be positive for the Green Party in two principal ways. First, it would demonstrate the existence of popular support for the Green Party and its type of progressive agenda while simultaneously improving the party’s name recognition and brand among the general public.  Second, in a host of states, a good showing by Stein could represent the difference between guaranteed access to the ballot in 2018 and (in some cases) 2020 and either spending scarce resources on costly signature gathering campaigns to obtain ballot access or not being able to run candidates for public office.

Texas is one of the states where an improved Stein performance could be invaluable to the Green Party in regard to ballot access. In recent election cycles, Texas Democrats did not run a complete statewide slate of candidates, and the Green Party was able to maintain its ballot status by surpassing the required 5 percent vote threshold in the contests lacking a Democratic candidate. In 2016, however, Texas Democrats are fielding candidates for every statewide office, and unless a statewide Green Party candidate wins at least 5 percent of the vote in one of the eight statewide races, the party would need to undertake a very difficult ballot access campaign in 2018. To qualify for ballot access in two years, the Green Party of Texas would have to obtain 47,183 valid signatures in less than three months from registered voters who did not vote in the 2018 Democratic or Republican primaries. Since many signatures end up being invalidated, the Greens would need to gather close to a 100,000 signatures to safely cross this threshold and qualify for ballot access, a Herculean task for a party with very limited resources.

This year, in addition to Stein, the Green Party is fielding six candidates for statewide office in Texas (one for railroad commissioner, three for the Supreme Court and two for the Court of Criminal Appeals), almost 20 congressional candidates and around two dozen candidates for other offices ranging from state representative to sheriff to county commissioner. If Stein or one of her fellow Greens does not win at least 5 percent of the statewide vote on Nov. 8, this year could mark the last year for some time that Texas voters are provided with so many options to “vote Green.”

That covers every single base.  Nothing to quibble with and nothing to add.

Jackass on deck: Misandry Angie (who probably isn't capable of receiving whatever I blog as anything but 'mansplaining', but I'll offer it anyway).