People are going to be pissed off no matter who wins this election and that is a very important social dynamic I believe is vastly under appreciated by the majority of mainstream pundits and analysts out there. This is also very distinct from the environment that prevailed in 2008. Four years ago, the financial markets were crashing and the economic future of America was circling the toilet bowl, yet a majority of Americans embraced the potential of a young, inexperienced biracial politician from Illinois who was saying all of the right things. Despite the gigantic disappointment he has proven to be as President, there is no denying that he had all of the Democrats and most Independents under his spell on this day four years ago.
Fast forward to 2012 and the county isn’t “divided” as mainstream media talking heads like to say. The country is pissed off. Genuine and legitimate frustration permeates the land from sea to shining sea and rightly so. Ever since the banker coup of 2008, crony capitalism has been institutionalized as the only real way to make money. If you aren’t connected or “too big to fail,” sorry but America isn’t the place for you. What makes the economic nightmare so much worse is that it is being coupled with a complete and total decimation of civil liberties. One by one the Bill of Rights is being ignored and indeed trampled on systemically by the political and economic oligarchs emboldened by their successful takeover of the executive, legislative and for the most part judicial branches of government.
– From the 2012 post: The Seventy Percent
The following data points are simple incredible.
From The Hill:
The Libertarian Party has seen a sustained surge of new members joining, with first-time registrants in May on pace to increase 20-fold over the same period from last year. New data obtained by The Hill shows that the Libertarian National Committee averaged around 100 new members a month last year, bottoming out with just 74 first-time registrants last May.
But beginning in early 2016, as the contours of the Republican and Democratic races began took shape, new membership began creeping upward to 148 in January, 323 in February, 546 in March, 706 in April, and now 1,292 in the first three weeks of May alone.
From 74 registrants to 1,292 in a year. While the absolute numbers remain small, that’s an extraordinary increase. Here’s what it looks like in chart form:
For the last year the Libertarian Party would get about 100 new members a month. Then, starting in January… pic.twitter.com/Bvu26wGUT8
— Jonathan Easley (@JonEasley) May 25, 2016
The Libertarian National Committee has also seen a spike in fundraising, bringing in $205,000 in April, its largest monthly haul since 2004.
A party operative told The Hill they are on pace to double that figure in May, estimating a $400,000 haul.
Those figures come against a backdrop of polls that find the two likely major party candidates, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, suffer from historically low approval ratings.
The Libertarian Party will hold its nominating convention this weekend in Orlando.
Gary Johnson, the former two-term Republican governor of New Mexico, is favored to win. He was also the party’s standard bearer in 2012, when he won about 1.3 million votes – a party record.
Several recent polls found Johnson taking 10 percent in a three-way match-up against Trump and Clinton.
I voted for Gary Johnson in 2012, and I’m probably going to vote for him again in 2016. And don’t tell me that I’m “throwing my vote away.” Throwing my vote away would be checking a box next to a name I don’t believe in and have very little agreement with just to stop the other person. I have too much self-respect to play that game. More importantly, how has the lesser of two evils worked out for America over the past several decades?
Of course, it’s not just people with libertarian sensibilities who appear finally fed up with politics as usually. Liberal-leaning supporters of Bernie Sanders feel the same way (see Bernie or Bust), and many have pledged to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein instead of Hillary Clinton.
She could recently be found making a whole lot of sense in an interview with The Hill:
Stein, who was the Green Party nominee in 2012 and is the near-certain standard-bearer this time as well, told The Hill that the likelihood of Trump and Clinton being the major-party nominees “creates a very propitious situation for the American people to actually have some choices.”
She insisted that the majority of people backing Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner, are doing so in order to keep Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee, out, rather than out of any real love for the former secretary of State and her policies.
“How about we allow the public to view the legitimate alternative to that?”
Asked what she would say to a voter who was sympathetic to Green Party policies but feared gifting the White House to Trump, Stein replied: “The first thing I would say is that Trump was created by the politics of the Clintons. Putting the Clintons in power will only fan the flames. Hillary is not a solution to Trump; the Clintons are the cause of Trump.”
She added, “The second thing I would say is, ‘Don’t be talked out of your own power.’… We need a policy of courage, not cowardice. We need to bring that courage into the voting booth. To adopt a position of cowardice in the voting booth is to surrender to a predatory political system on all fronts.”
“You have got to fix the rigged political system,” she said. “If you only have choices that are funded by the big banks, fossil fuels and the war profiteers, that’s what you’re going to get.”
For some of my thoughts on Gary Johnson and the 2012 election generally, see the following posts published four years ago:
My Thoughts on the Election: The Devil You Know
Meet Gary Johnson: The Libertarian for President Polling at 7% in Colorado
Who is Gary Johnson and Why is the GOP So Mad at Him?
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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I love your page, but making a big deal out of these minuscule number is silly. Vis-a-vis the numbers Trump has brought into the GOP it’s completely insignificant. The fact remains that the Libertarian Party is never going to win a presidential election nor a senate seat in an state (except maybe Alaska or Montana). This is because the social and political climate that would have be in place for a Libertarian candidate to win would entail such chaos that the electoral process would likely already have been laid waste. We would have already arrived at the smallest of governments, none. If liberty is to be advanced as our current Constitutional Republic stands, changing the GOP from within is the most viable option. Donald Trump’s opposition to the warfare state and his real world tax plan that, unlike the FAIR tax, has a chance of passing would greatly enhance the effective liberty of the vast majority. His destruction of PC culture is expanding social/cultural libertarianism every day. It took generations to get from the libertarian apex of this country in the early 1900’s. It will take many generations to return there. A Trump presidency has the potential to turn the ship around and begin the voyage home. A Johnson vote in any battle ground state is in effect a vote for Hillary and full speed ahead towards the iceberg. If you think that the best way to go I can actually understand the argument. But anyone arguing it is other than aiding the nation’s suicide run is being intellectually dishonest.
Thank you for your comment.
I’m not being intellectually dishonest at all. Voting for Trump or Clinton would be intellectually dishonest for ME, given my stance on the issues. It’s obviously different for you, which is fine.
When you get rid of Government, Lloyd Blankfein and Jamie Dimon rule the roost.
Don’t they anyway?
While Trump is not perfect,voting for anyone else is intellectually stupid.
Voting for the Libertarian candidate when they have zero chance will only guaranteed a win for Clinton and eight more years of disastrous policies.
Say goodbye to the 2nd amendment.
While Trump is certainly a wildcard,he can win and may actually turn out to be a great president.
Even brilliant Libertarians like Walter Block see it as being more reasonable to vote for Trump than to vote on principle and wind up with Hitlery.
Hi Ed, I hate to differ with you, also those of us whom have switched to Libertarian like ourselves view our switching based on the character of the nominees and the content of their message, If the message of insulting, minorities, demeaning and disparaging disabled veterans, reporters and women and listening to a man like Trump who we’ve yet to hear anything useful out of his mouth other than to promote violence and speak poorly of others at his so called rallies and promote violence as he has in the past and present, then by all means, vote for this low self esteem candidate who has committed fraud, invoked eminent domain on a 74 year old woman and who refuses to produce his tax returns & fought hard to make sure his casinos in Nevada were Union Free and is heavily in debt and refuses to pay contractors and employees and has a hidden agenda. By the way, President Ronald Reagan fought hard to bring down the Berlin Wall, now the republican party has a candidate that wants to build another Berlin Wall on our southern border, and why does he not advocate for a wall against our northern border is beyond anybody’s knowledge? His 15 judges’ list that he submitted had “ZERO MINORITIES” on this list, after all of his woes and his fumbles he has not proven to anybody that he has any plans on changing to anything other than the same racist/narsacist that he is named “Donald J. Trump”.
Wake up and smell the coffee, this guy is a con-artist and nothing else!
p.s.- The notion that Donald Trump has a magic wand and makes statements to the effect that he plans to bring back jobs back is a farce! There is not one corporation overseas right now that wants to bring back their business’ back to the USA. Donald Trump is lying thru his wig again. Also, read his ridiculous tax plan of 25% rich, 15% middle income and 10% for lower income. Mr. Trump, whom we all know does not pay taxes, he is at a 37% rate right now, why in the name of equality would a working man want to give the rich a reduction of over 12% is beyond comprehension? Wake and smell what Donald Trump is shoveling before it’s to late.