I have some confessions to make. I’m to the left of most of you. I seriously considered voting Green in 2020. Why didn’t I? Why did I vote for Joe Biden, even though the Green Party’s views are closer to mine? Because Donald Trump himself talked me off the ledge. He said in one of his debates with Joe Biden that if he lost, he would not accept the outcome of the election. I had to put country over party.
I looked into voting Green again in 2022 or 2024. But several things converged to talk me off the ledge. First, Donald Trump talked me off. Not only was he not sorry for what he did on January 6th, he stole classified documents, tried to flip votes in his favor, and tried to have fake electors to reverse the outcome of the November election.
Furthermore, the Green Party itself went to pot. I thought that they had the money and the organization to carry on the fight that Bernie Sanders waged to bring us Medicare for All, a $15 wage, and a Green New Deal. But then they didn’t. They got kicked off the ballot here in Missouri because they did not get enough of a share of the vote in 2020. During the Green Party Presidential campaign of 2020, it turned out that the infighting there was even uglier than in the DNC between Bernie supporters and supporters of other candidates. There were fights between supporters of Howie Hawkins and supporters of other candidates who accused Howie of rigging and hijacking the party, being a Russiagater, and being a tool for the DNC. There were efforts to draft Jesse Ventura as a candidate, which went nowhere. He clearly thinks he’d be a better President than anyone on the ballot, but he’s made it clear he’s not interested in running.
And then there were the YouTube stars who all sprung up at this time. One such personality is Jimmy Dore. He started off on The Young Turks, but then broke off to form his own show. He was on fire. He was not going to compromise his beliefs. He was going to debunk spin on mainstream media, and he was going to do for the Bernie Sanders movement what Jon Stewart did for Progressive Democrats during the Iraq War years, make it cool to Feel the Bern. In those days, the look on his face as he was playing mainstream media figures lying to the public was priceless. He was going to hold AOC and The Squad’s feet to the fire through the Force the Vote campaign, pushing them to use their votes as leverage to get votes on Medicare for All and put politicians on record on where they stood. I supported him financially. He was not going to sell us out like the likes of The Young Turks, David Doel, Sam Seder, and other such “closet Democrats” (as he viewed them) did. Until Jimmy Dore sold us out.
All of a sudden, he started posting propaganda about vax denial. And then, he went down the rabbit hole:
--He supported the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse;
--He supported the right-wing trucker protests in Canada;
--He had a boogaloo boi on his show;
--He said that Ron DeSantis was more anti-establishment than the Squad.
People are entitled to have wrong opinions here and there. But when denying vaccines became Jimmy Dore’s primary purpose, I got out, because my support was doing more harm than good. After a while, it became obvious what his game was — sheepdog people like me disappointed by how Bernie Sanders’ campaigns in 2016 and 2020 turned out into voting Republican. How can I tell? Most of his videos are criticizing Joe Biden and the Democrats. He rarely, if ever, criticizes Republicans. In fact, many of his recent videos are portraying Donald Trump as a victim of a political persecution. One video claims that Big Tech censorship originated with trying to stop Donald Trump and Brexit. He is also promoting Vivek Ramaswamy, who is even more unhinged than Donald Trump himself, if that is possible.
And he is hardly the only one to make the jump from left to right. Tulsi Gabbard has done it as well. Her leaving the DNC national committee for Bernie Sanders in 2016, and then running her own peace-centered campaign seemed like a principled stance, until it wasn’t. Jackson Hinkle started out as a leftist, but then morphed into an incoherent worldview he calls “MAGA Communism.” He also fawns over Putin. Ana Kasparian started out as a Progressive, but now sounds like a FOX News shill when pushing for the criminalization of homelessness. And now, she has slid into TERF territory as well. Tara Reade seemed like a continuation of the MeToo movement until she defected to Russia and now appears on Russian propaganda.
I’m not saying that all leftist or liberal YouTubers are bad. But a lot of it is a cesspool of infighting when we should be developing solidarity in fighting for the working class and eradicating Trumpism once and for all. In fact, there is a whole channel, The Vanguard, much of which is dedicated to the latest Leftist versus Leftist YouTube fights.
And anyway, what is their alternative? There is a place for third parties in this country. Canada and the UK have a viable three party system. But none of the third parties in the US provide a viable alternative to Joe Biden or Donald Trump even if one believes that a vote for Jill Stein is not a vote for Donald Trump. Cases in point:
--The Peoples’ Party was launched with great fanfare in 2016 following Bernie Sanders’ defeat in the 2016 primary. Since then, they have fielded zero candidates for office. They are all talk, but they don’t actually run anybody.
--The Libertarian Party now believes that we should secede from the union. That makes them more pro-war than the parties they claim to be against on principle. Seceding from the union would ignite a civil war; the Civil War we did have was the most destructive in our history. So if you enjoy seeing Americans getting killed, vote Libertarian.
--The Green Party has gone to pot. By their own admission, they are on the ballot in only 20 states, which is half of what they were on in 2020.
--Cornel West doesn’t know what he believes. First, he starts out as a Peoples’ Party candidate. Then, he runs as a Green. Then, he wants to be his own man.
I’m one of those people who likes to figure things out for themselves. Ever since that period in 2021 and 2022, it turns out that Joe Biden has suddenly started backing up everything he talked about. He has created 14 million new jobs, continuing the record of Carter, Clinton, and Obama, which has led to 60 million jobs created in the country. He has made massive new investments in the country which have started paying off. Where I live, I’m starting to see a lot more road work this year, which forces me to be creative in dodging all the construction during summer. It’s annoying at the time, but it’s a good problem to have. It means fewer potholes in the roads and less wear and tear on my car. Our educational system held up remarkably well compared to the rest of the world. Hundreds of millions of vaccines went in peoples’ arms, although COVID-19 is not over. Inflation, one of the biggest problems I had with Biden, is getting under control, and besides, he is not a dictator who can just make phone calls to people. We should call it something else — price gouging. He has been making the kind of deals at home and abroad that Donald Trump bragged about doing, but never could do in reality, because he never had the temperament.
It turns out that Democrats are the adults in the room (for the most part). The problem with certain leftists like the Muslims who want to push people to “Abandon Biden” is that ideology can turn into purity contests, which turns into infighting. I read blogs by the late Louis Proyect, who offered a fascinating look into American Marxism. Part of it was movie reviews; the movies he recommended are well worth checking out. He has a fascinating life story, and he hated Putin and Assad. But many of his posts were about arcane purity contests between the many different factions of Communists who accused certain other Communist factions of deviating from the original teachings of Marx and/or Lenin and selling out to American imperialism. We see this all the time in the GOP now as well. This is a good example. Regardless of whether you are on the right or the left, it’s pretty hard to govern when it’s your way or the highway.
Don’t be a purity troll.