The closer it gets to a Trump presidency, I am being reminded more and more that the lesser of two evils is still evil

Well, I went ultra-anti-establishment, and voted for the full Johnson. :p

I complete agree with your title sentiment, however, which is precisely why I voted Johnson. "The only wasted vote is a vote you don't believe in." Both of them are terrible people, ill-equipped to be president, and not at all what I wanted to see. Johnson is not amazingly better, and he's hardly perfect, but he was obviously the best choice. In his own way, he was almost the establishment Libertarian candidate, if such a thing can even exist in this land.

Since you've mentioned before you're in a swing state, I imagine the choice was harder for you. If Clinton won here, she had the election in the bag, no question. So my vote was irrelevant either way. But I still believe that you should put aside the numbers, and projections, and swing state status, and vote your conscience, every time. If your conscience said Trump was the best candidate, then that's fine. If it didn't, I would argue you should have voted for the best person available; and if that means they are doomed to lose, and your vote doomed to be meaningless, so be it.

As for this election cycle, I can proudly say I have voted for my conscience; I voted for what was right, and true, and what I believe was in the best interests of Americans, but also others around the world.

I'm still slightly more optimistic for Trump than you are, I suppose, but only because the cynical side of me sees no upside to this man being president.

[–] boujeebagels [OP] 5 points (+5|-0)

I will never ridicule someone for voting for who they genuinely believe is the best choice. With that said, I'll say this. I understand the push for Johnson, however he's just never been presidential material in my eyes (inb4 you voted Trump). I did meet him back in 2012 when he ran then and I've followed him loosely ever since and he has done much to impress me. He's hardly Libertarian, some of his policies either completely miss the parties agenda or they are too far out there to ever get voted into office. He has supported the TPP (huge no-no as a so-called Libertarian) and has seemed very much so in support of the establishment his party hates.

He also just seemed very immature from when I met him. Like I said, I'll never ridicule someone for voting with their conscience (especially third party) but Johnson was never a real candidate in my eyes.

[–] TheRedArmy 5 points (+5|-0)

I think most of those points are completely reasonable; I agree with a fair bit of them.

Even among the Libertarian party, there were others I thought were more in line with my own views and held more acceptable stances on other matters. But of the big four candidates, I did feel he was the best.

I never met him (or anyone of any note, really), so I can't judge him on the kind of person he is, outside of interviews and the like. I think he's much more laid back in many ways than most politicians, which you can view as either a good thing or a bad thing.

[–] [Deleted] 3 points (+3|-0)

the point was never to name johnson president, he'd be an awful president, it was always to get someone else 5% of the vote. satan himself could have ran for president and if he were leading the polls of third parties, i'd vote for him. the last morsel of hope i had for the next 4 years died with bernie's campaign (though, to be clear, bernie was a good friend of hillary's and would hardly have been better than hillary) so the only reasonable response in my eyes was to look forward to 2020 and try to affect that election as best i can. i expect i will be in the same situation in 2020, just as i was in 2012.

if the lesser of two evils is still too evil for you, why not throw a vote at someone who wont win but who's votes could change the formula for the next election so its at least different than the last two?

[–] PMYA 4 points (+4|-0)

Edited

I just hope that he ends up rejuvenating my dying hope that he could really be the anti-establishment candidate he tried so hard to prove he was in the primaries.

That ship has already sailed. Just take one look at his cabinet picks.

[–] boujeebagels [OP] 2 points (+2|-0)

Yeah, I saw them and I am very much so not a fan. I'm willing to chalk those up as a mistake, though, assuming he does something with the actual presidency.

[–] SilverBanana 2 points (+2|-0)

I think that non-career politician will rely a lot in his day-to-day dealings on his staff even more than usual.

[–] mamwad 3 points (+3|-0)

The next 4 years will just be the White House and media trolling each other. Shit might actually get really bad.

[–] Mattvision 2 points (+2|-0)

Edited

One of the few anti-Trump arguments that couldn't simply be dismissed as SJW nonsense, was that he could have just been bullshitting everyone until he gets elected. It's starting to look that way now. For all we know, we just elected a New York Dem that's been acting like a redpilled alt-righter to secure the election for the leftists. Remember this?

Never, ever, have any amount of faith that politics in a democratic republic is anything less than corrupt all the way through. Nobody makes it further than city-council without lying and cheating.

[–] boujeebagels [OP] 2 points (+2|-0)

I do remember that and it gave me faith that he was going to come in more moderate than anything. I was completely okay with him shilling for votes by pretending to be on the extreme right (everybody does that in the primaries), but what I was afraid of seems to be coming true. I'm afraid he really was the corporate businessman who wanted more power so he took advantage of an entire country to earn it.

God I just hope I'm wrong.

[–] Boukert 1 points (+1|-0)

Be ready to be ruled by twitter!

I've said it all along he's a megalomaniac, used carsalesman with short sight and a short fuse. You forgot to mention his 35 yo Son-in-Law pick for advisor.... His finances are still not in order with his global assets. The rest of the world is either terrified or laughing it's ass off.

I'm guessing Trump was just what we needed to keep the EU together but I'm also guessing he's gonna wreck the US and the office of president . On the good side I bet there is an impeachment within 16-36 months

[–] E-werd 1 points (+1|-0)

My hope for a Trump presidency was that things would get screwed up so bad that it would be easier to convince people to fix things.

Kind of like having a house that needs a lot of work but could pass with a few cheap repairs, but deciding to start knocking down walls because--if I'm going to do this much work, then I might as well really get what I want. Then you end up knocking out support beams and it won't pass code, so you gotta tear it down and start over.

The closer it gets to a Trump presidency, I am being reminded more and more that the lesser of two evils is still evil

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/s/Whatever