I have heard several people, including libertarians, say they will vote for Hillary because Trump is worse. I hate to admit it, but if a gun were put to my head and I had to vote for one of the two I would vote for Hillary, despite some perverse thoughts of wanting to poke the noses of some arrogant liberals by voting for Trump. Our country does not yet force us to make such choices. So I won’t vote for Hillary or Trump.
Here’s a partial list of reasons to not vote for Hillary:
-She is so clearly tied to special interest groups and policies that are damaging to low income people. Examples include milk price supports, agricultural subsidies and ethanol production. All these things increase the price of food, which hits all of us, especially those with low incomes. For example, demand for corn has increased because of its use in making ethanol and that means, under that ever-wise law of supply and demand, that corn prices are much higher. These policies are also bad for the environment. Environmentalists used to promote ethanol but now admit it was a mistake; the subsidies remain.
-Hillary is truthiness challenged. She has provided many explanations of her private email system, some of which have been proven to be untrue. Even if you choose to excuse her, her decision to have a private email server in the bathroom of her home doesn’t speak well of the decision-making ability of someone who would be President. Furthermore, it is very likely she lied about Benghazi as evidenced by the fact she told her daughter shortly after the attack that it was a terrorist attack. To the public she said over and over it was the result of an anti-Muslim video posted by an American. Evidently the Obama administration didn’t want to admit how active terrorists still were so it blamed the attack upon a distasteful video.
-She not only defends entitlement programs, she wants to expand them. This might be the single most important problem facing the United States, (and Western Europe and Japan), more important than our rivalries with Russia and China. I don’t understand how young people can support anyone who defends entitlement programs; the programs must be curtailed if our children are to live in a country not weighed down by debt to the point of bankruptcy. I receive benefits from those programs (Social Security and Medicare) and at the same time feel guilty and fear for my daughter’s future.
-She supports all of the Obama administration’s interventions; Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen and elsewhere. Drone attacks, more surveillance too. Some refer to her, appropriately, as Hawkish Hillary.
These kinds of policies date from the Bush administration and before, and have continued (expanded in some cases) under the Obama administration. For some strange reason, most liberals object to these policies only during Republican administrations and most conservatives object to them only during Democratic administrations.
Reason Magazine’s Nick Gillespie had one of the best comments about voting for Hillary; voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for evil. (“Libertarians: Just Say No to Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.”)
Rick Miller
October, 2016