Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

Trump’s Disintegration Means It’s Not Just Safe to Vote Green, It’s Mandatory
20 Oct 2016
🖨️ Print Article

A BAR radio commentary by Bruce A. Dixon

Hillary’s most potent argument among most people isn’t her own record, positions or abilities. It’s the proclaimed need to keep her opponent Donald Trump out of the White House. It’s only this need to prevent a disastrous President Trump that keeps many leftists and progressives in Hillary’s big stinking tent. But the self destruction of the Trump campaign frees them from worry that they might throw the election to the Donald, and opens up the possibility that millions can finally vote their hopes, not their fears.

Trump’s Disintegration Means It’s Not Just Safe to Vote Green, It’s Mandatory

A BAR radio commentary by Bruce A. Dixon

The election is more than two weeks away but the outcome isn’t the least bit in doubt. Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States. It’s high time for leftists, so-called progressives and generally sensible people to reconcile themselves to this fact.

The Trump candidacy has shot itself in both feet again and again. Scores of high profile Republican officeholders have deserted their party’s nominee. Donald Trump has failed to rally the section of America’s ruling elite that traditionally backs Republicans seeking high office. Millions in donations one that percenters usually invest in a Republican presidential candidate are finding their way to Hillary, who has opened up a double digit lead in the polls. So many Republican voters are staying home or casting their ballots for Hillary that Democrats may carry some states like Georgia which are normally well out of their reach, and Democrats expect to gain control of the US Senate.

The Donald is certainly a racist demagogue, a thief, liar, a hyper-entitled sexual predator and a loathsome buffoon. But he’ll never be president. Since Trump will in fact never be president, speculations on what kind of neanderthals the imaginary President Trump might appoint to the EPA or the Supreme Court, nightmares about how many millions he’d deport, how high a wall the pretend president might build, or who the imaginary President Trump would jail, drone or nuke after a 3AM Twitter fit are not frightening possibilities we need to take urgent action to avoid. They are bogeyman stories, make-believe, bad science fiction without the science.

If there was ever a need to unite to prevent a President Trump that need is over because the make-believe President Trump has prevented himself. Trump’s definitive meltdown and the temporary or permanent near destruction of the Republican party locks down a runaway victory for Hillary Clinton. It’s a new day, an historic opportunity which opens the way for even the most cautious among us to vote our hopes, not our fears.

Now the Henry Giroux’s of the world who claim voting for the Green Party’s Jill Stein and Ajamu Baraka, the only peace, jobs and justice candidates will lead straight to President Trump and “concentration camps” can stop hyperventilating. The Angela Davis types can reconsider whether those who don’t share their fears of the imaginary President Trump are “narcissists,” and the Hillary shills who claim voting for third parties is “white privilege” can just go away.

Since Hillary Clinton has a double digit lead in the polls, she doesn’t need the votes of so-called left and progressive activists. But those activists have their own needs. They need to build their own political home, their own political party. Right now Stein and Baraka are running at four and five percent in nationwide polls, even though restrictive ballot access laws banned Green candidates from the ballot in four states, and forced them to run as “independents” with no party affiliation in seven or eight more.

If Stein and Baraka get five percent of the vote in November, ballot access for Greens will be a done deal in most states, and the possibility of additional federal campaign funds in presidential years opens as well. So the only ways for left and progressive activists to waste their votes is to stay home, or to give them to Hillary. The only place where your vote matters this year is with the Green Party.

For Black Agenda Report, I’m Bruce Dixon. Find us on the web at www.blackagendareport.com.
Bruce A. Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report and a co-chair of the GA Green Party. He lives and works near Marietta GA and can be reached via email at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20161020-bd-new-day.mp3

More Stories


  • BAR Book Forum: “Black Study and Abolition”
    Anima Adjepong
    BAR Book Forum: “Black Study and Abolition”
    29 Jul 2020
    The lesson is to remain woke, because not all abolitionists share the goal of Black liberation.
  • BAR Book Forum: Erika Edwards’s “Hiding in Plain Sight”
    Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
    BAR Book Forum: Erika Edwards’s “Hiding in Plain Sight”
    29 Jul 2020
    Anti-blackness manifests as black invisibility in Argentina, a society that was determined to marginalize and discriminate against Black women. 
  • “This is the Scene of a Crime”: An African Artist/Activist Journey, Part II 
    Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo, BAR editor and columnist
    “This is the Scene of a Crime”: An African Artist/Activist Journey, Part II 
    29 Jul 2020
    An interview with Dr. Karen Wilson- Ama’Echefu.
  • Oh Boya: If It’s Goya, It Has To Be No Good
    Will Guzman
    Oh Boya: If It’s Goya, It Has To Be No Good
    29 Jul 2020
    Goya’s CEO thinks Trump is a “blessing,” so the brand has been cursed with a boycott. 
  • The Poor People’s Economic and Human Right Campaign: a Case for How Change Works
    Belinda Davis
    The Poor People’s Economic and Human Right Campaign: a Case for How Change Works
    29 Jul 2020
    With no well-financed publicity department and no links to the machinery of big party politics, movements like PPEHRC can sometimes seem lost in plain sight.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us