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In reply to the discussion: The "extreme left" didn't give us Trump. The path to hell was paved by [View all]Warpy
(110,746 posts)The only vote you control is your own. Period.
Stein gained protest votes. In no way were those voters ever considering a vote for Trump or Clinton. Had Stein not been in the race, they'd have gone to Johnson or one of the other microparty candidates. Had no other candidates been in the race but Trump or Clinton, most of those voters would have abstained in the top race. Those votes never belonged to either Trump or Clinton and never would.
There is nothing you can do about this. You don't have to like it, but the only vote you control is your own.
Otherwise, it's like pundits and losing candidates in the other party complaining that if POC or women or poor folks or naturalized citizens or Democrats in general couldn't vote, their lousy candidates would have won. As if.
I'm sick of this blame game. If you want to know why Clinton isn't in the White House, look to James Comey, who is still sitting on everything he's got on Trump's Russian connections even after he torpedoed Clinton's campaign with innuendo less than a week before election day. You want to rail about a spoiler, pick him, not Stein or any of the other small party candidates, and certainly not the voters who had the gall to disagree with you and vote for one of them.