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Et tu, Libertarians? — 62 Comments

1. The dilemmas can be finessed by ranked-choice voting, which you’re dead set against.

2. Art Deco:

   Ranked choice voting introduces other problems.

3. I remember my professor of ethics crying when Bush won Florida in 2000 because he just had to vote his concience and vote for Ralph Nader. Even better now is listening to everyone talk about sucking it up, make nice, and please don’t go to court to challege the results this time.

4. Knew some people who didn’t like either party but would have preferred republicans. But voted Perot. Why? To them, the dems were a lost cause but teaching the republicans a lesson would be worth it.
   Freaking idiots.

5. Ranked choice voting introduces other problems.

   It’s fine as long as you have a hard and fast rule that no ballot which arrives in the mail after the morning of the election day is to be deemed validly cast. You collect those in a lockbox as they arrive and return to sender after results are certified.

   It’s been used successfully decades in Ireland and in Australia making use of the complicated Hare system method of tabulation. The prevalence of single-member district elections here (as well as elected executives) allows for the simpler multi-round tabulations.

6. I’m sorry, but no.

   Libertarians are perpetually being told to “just bear with us one more election” and they’re fed up with it. If either major party were to embrace some of the Libertarian ideas — something like reduced regulation and abandoning gun confiscation for the Democrats, or maybe drug policy and criminal justice reform for the Republicans — the moderate to heavy Libertarian voters will embrace the alternative in droves.

   As it sits right now, Libertarians are in the perfect position to be the third-party coalition builders in Federal elections and I don’t see giving that position up just because Biden sucks or Orange Man Bad. To the hard-core Libertarian, both major parties suck differently, and there’s no real net gain to embracing one or the other.

7. Tim, I learned a long time ago that anyone running for office as a Libertarian wasn’t one.

8. Yeah, I voted Perot in 1992. I thought Perot made sense with his “can do” attitude, and Papa Bush seemed out of touch with the common folk. (He hadn’t seen a product scanner in a grocery store – a device first introduced in 1974 and very widely used by the 1980s.) I won’t make that mistake again. Not that I have that many more elections in front of me.

   I’m really down on mail in ballots. California, Oregon, and Washington all use universal mail in ballots. All are Democrat controlled states, and becoming more so every year. This year only one Republican won statewide office in all three states. With all the unopposed violence and unpopular pandemic rules, I expected Republicans to make some inroads this year here in Washington and possibly the other two.. Nope! In fact the Dems had a “blue wave” here. It makes me wonder if the fix was in here and has been for some years. 🙁

9. Tim:

   The Libertarian Party is sort of the dilemma you face when your homeless crazy uncle will decide to live with you instead of your estranged brother? 🙂

10. I agree that Libertarians are slitting their own throat but I don’t think the votes were significant. If all those votes had gone to Trump it only means Dems would have printed more fraudulent ones. Dems were all-in for cheating, there was no way they could win the Electoral College vote legitimately. There simply aren’t enough blue votes in red or purple states.

    When 2024 comes, if GOPe solidifies control and nominates, say, Haley or Sasse, I think you’ll find a LOT of conservatives going the Libertarian route: maybe vote Repub down-ballot but otherwise give GOPe every bit as much support as they gave our guy (none or less than none, really).

11. Chases Eagles:

    Oh, clearly so. Libertarian candidates tend to run the gamut from staunch Republicans wanting a vanity run to the more Libertarian-ish candidates. What’s a Libertarian to do, though? Obviously the “grit the teeth and bear it” strategy hasn’t had any real effect over the years: freedoms continue to be eroded, taxes continue to be misspent, and deficits continue to rise.

    This election clearly pointed out that, while truly locked out of Federal high office for the long haul, Libertarians cannot be ignored as a potential ballot resource. I don’t think we’ll see a landslide election for another 50 years barring some major reconciliation or drastic change of tone in party politics, and thus the Libertarian vote must be considered an important factor for future elections.

12. Om:

    That description is also apt to the past several elections, by my reckoning. I think you’re also being a bit generous: put 4 Libertarians in a room to discuss policy and you’ll get 19 different policies out of the discussion. 🙂

    You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.

13. But voted Perot. Why?

    Because he was running as a deficit hawk.

    1. Bush acceded to a tax increase and then got rolled on spending. The ratio of the federal debt to domestic product did begin to decline – not when the tax hike went into effect, but when the Democrats lost control of the Congressional committee architecture in 1995.

    2. Bush sat on his hands while Saddam Hussein butchered the opposition in the course of the uprisings which ensued after his troops were run out of Iraq.

    3. When Bush was casting about for a Supreme Court nominee, he landed on some shmuck Warren Rudman was pushing. (To be fair, he pulled out the stops for Clarence Thomas).

    4. Bush had no interest in cleaning up the tax code. Like Clinton, he fancied complications to feed his preferred clientele. His shtick was lower rates for capital gains. The problem with the capital gains tax is that phantom gains from currency erosion are taxed. The solution is to multiply the purchase price by the change in the GDP deflator between the time of purchase and sale and apply the levy rate to the real gain rather than the nominal gain (and allowing the taxpayer a credit with the IRS should he have sold at a loss). Bush wasn’t pushing that, nor was he pushing taxation of real interest rather than nominal interest. He pushed lower rates on capital gains, which is inadvisable policy and bad salesmanship; it’s what you’d expect of a political party devoted to the interests of Christine Todd Whitman et al. It was the one policy he was willing to go to the mat for.

    5. If my memory serves me, the Republican cave on racial preference schemes began with Papa Bush. (I’ll take correction; Bush the Younger was certainly worse than useless on this issue).

    6. Have a gander at the elder Bush’s cabinet: Ford Administration retreads, Capitol Hill apparatchiks, and a couple of others (among them Jack Kemp). A scandal erupted at HUD during those years, which might have been a boffo opportunity to attempt to persuade Congress to dismantle the department, but nothing was done.

    Your problem with Bush the Elder was that he was a capable man with no interest in ideas at all. Politics was just a field for his competitive impulse. As an haut bourgeois satisfied with American life, there were certain boundaries he wasn’t going to cross, but beyond that he had no set of criteria for evaluating government programs and no criteria for evaluating subordinates other than they came with the right connections. He actually appointed Democratic megarentseeker Robert Strauss to a series of diplomatic posts – among them Ambassador to the Soviet Union at a crucial point in time.

14. J.J. It wasn’t a product scanner that got Poppy’s attention. He knew about those. It was an improved model which could read a damaged bar code.
    So they got you, too?

15. (He hadn’t seen a product scanner in a grocery store – a device first introduced in 1974 and very widely used by the 1980s.)

    That was a bogus meme perpetrated by our lying media. He expressed surprise that the product scanner he was being shown could read torn barcodes.

16. JJ, wasn’t that supermarket scanner story debunked and it was a simple lie to smear Bush?

    Tim, I think Trump made some inroads on criminal justice reform and the Repub position on drug legalization seems irrelevant as state after state passes legalization. I’m not dunking on you at all personally, believe me, when I say that the hardcore Libertarians will see a real difference soon in the two parties’ approaches to massive government overreach. There’s some restraint in the GOP, there is wild joy at the thought in the Dem party. The groundwork is being laid for some very bad stuff, just watch.

    They came for the Trumpsters and I did nothing because …
    They came for the GOP and I did nothing because ….
    They came for traditional Americans and I did nothing because ….
    They came for Libertarians and there was no one left to do anything for me.

    Libertarians have heard this before, and will pooh-pooh the thought. I think this time will be different. If Trump can’t swing the ballot-fraud, we’ll soon see.

17. Tim, I learned a long time ago that anyone running for office as a Libertarian wasn’t one.

    Ann Coulter had a funny story. She at the time lived in the district of Christopher Shays, a vaguely liberal Republican. She approaches the Connecticut Libertarian Party with the idea that she’ll challenge him. Her meetings with them didn’t go well. “I discovered they didn’t give a rip about anything but the drug laws”.

    If you want to see what’s happened to faculty libertarianism, compare Milton Freidman and Richard Epstein with Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok.

18. I like a lot of the libertarian platform, because it is an alternative to the Rs which are usually RINO-ish. This time may have been the only exception I’ve seen in my short adult voting span (at least for President. No idea about that GA race)

19. I would suggest that anyone voting Libertarian had absolutely no idea what was/is at stake here.

    (On the other hand, that should be perfectly OK in a Democracy…. Should be, but not this time, alas.)

    Still, I wholeheartedly agree with JimNorCal (3:26 pm) that it would NOT have mattered: the Democrats had ballots printed and ready and waiting to be used if and when necessary (I’ll just post this one again)…
    https://www.theepochtimes.com/pennsylvania-100000-ballots-with-implausible-return-dates_3572942.html

20. Anyone who thinks Libertarians just take votes from Republicans is IGNORANT. I was a state chair for the LP back in the early 90’s. We got accused by a Republican who lost his race for state senate for “spoiling” his campaign, so I did a survey. It wasn’t very scientific or large (about 50 libertarians). I asked them “how would you vote if there was no Libertarian in the race?” The answers I got were 1/3 Republican, 1/3 Democrat, and 1/3 Wouldn’t vote. More current studies have shown that of the people who leave the LP and go to some other party, about half go to Democrats and half go to Republicans. So this whole argument that Libertarians take votes from one side or the other is just so much bs.

21. I’m really down on mail in ballots. California, Oregon, and Washington all use universal mail in ballots. All are Democrat controlled states, and becoming more so every year. This year only one Republican won statewide office in all three states. With all the unopposed violence and unpopular pandemic rules, I expected Republicans to make some inroads this year here in Washington and possibly the other two.. Nope! In fact the Dems had a “blue wave” here. It makes me wonder if the fix was in here and has been for some years.

    Congress can prohibit the use of postal ballots in federal elections. It can also direct that federal elections be held on the 1st Saturday in November.

22. Heh…
    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/north-carolina-democrats-thousands-outstanding-votes

    (And only one week after the elections, too…)

23. The term “moral narcissism”, appropriate for much of the left, also applies to the Libertarians. Michael Medved has another term for voting Libertarian, which I won’t directly say here, just Jeffrey Toobinism.

24. “…just so much bs.”

    Well in the 90s, perhaps it was.

    These days, not even I think that a Libertarian who voted for the party of morally virtuous STASI operators led by a phony and long-time crook of international proportions (whose only saving grace is his dementia) is very amusing.

25. Thanks to all for setting me straight on the barcode scanner story. At the time, I was not spending much time on politics, I had a job, some hobbies I enjoyed, and got all my info from the MSM. 🙁

    Your criticisms of Papa Bush are all valid, Art Deco. But how much worse was Clinton? Other than Reagan and Trump. our choices have been between GOPe and ever left moving Democrats. McCain would not have been a conservative president if he had been elected, but he would have been a far sight better than Obama. Same with Romney, IMO. YMMV.

26. More current studies have shown that of the people who leave the LP and go to some other party, about half go to Democrats and half go to Republicans. So this whole argument that Libertarians take votes from one side or the other is just so much bs.

    IOW, the Libertarian Party is chock-a-block with proponents of abortion on demand, open borders, free trade in street drugs, unilateral disarmament, and hostility to cops. Luscious.

27. Didn’t matter, cheater joe would only need to manufacture more mailin ballots to offset the libertarian votes that went to trump even if they got on the trump train, result would have been the same regardless, though the results would appear even more ridiculous than now, but don’t believe democrats and their voters care.

28. My past experience of Libertarians was of the Ayn Rand types. That may not apply much anymore.

    Who are Libertarians these days? Is Ayn Rand over?

29. It’s easy to say it doesn’t matter, that they would cheat anyway to get Trump. But the figures show it did matter. Where they could they cheated (apparently) but with overwhelming figures they could not and if they did, it didn’t matter.

    When I was child I was taught this was cutting off your nose to spite your face. I think we’ve all been spited and we will all pay for the self righteous votes of those who thought they were above the fray. Well, they aren’t, we are really all in this sinking ship together. They will all go down with us.

30. Your criticisms of Papa Bush are all valid, Art Deco. But how much worse was Clinton?

    They lost Congress in 1994, which constrained Clinton. The Clintons had a deleterious effect on the culture of the Democratic Party, of course. That was character, not ideology.

    You had the choices you had in 1992 (Bush or Pat Buchanan running as a demonstration candidate) because you had the choices you had in 1988. In 1988, the competition was between Bush, Robert Dole, and Pat Robertson. Everyone else who set up a campaign committee evaporated. Republican voters did that to you.

    The other candidates running that year were Jack Kemp, Pierre duPont, and Alexander Haig. You got the impression that Haig ran to stick a stilletto into George Bush, of whom he thought little. (He and Donald Rumsfeld eventually endorse Dole). Kemp, who was much admired by the WSJ editorial board and the sort of people who attend CPAC, was making his first attempt at running a campaign outside of a safe suburban / exurban district in Western New York; the results were unedifying. DuPont (who had an advantage over the others of experience both in executive positions and in Congress) was peddling himself as a liberalish Republican who had seen the Reaganite light; he may have been perfectly on the level with that, but it’s a gamble as a sales pitch.

    Robertson was attempting to rally evangelicals and social conservatives, which he managed to do to a degree (while being unsalable outside the evangelical nexus and even to some degree within it). It’s a reasonable wager he’d have been absolutely creamed running contra any Democrat not named Jesse Jackson.

    Someone once referred to Robert Dole a ‘the classic Capitol Hill apparatchik’. Another referred to him as ‘the tax collector for the welfare state’. His voting record was quite starboard, but his field of vision did not extend beyond the minutiae of committee mark-ups and votes. And he favored some dreadful legislation, like the Americans with Disabilities Act. He didn’t have any ready principles of action that militated against it as long as Republicans on the appropriate committees acceded to it.

    The Republican Party has been for 60 years bedeviled by a bloc of voters who have constituted (conservatively) 1/3 of the Republican primary electorate. These are the voters who always have the same candidate: the-guy-whose-turn-it-is. That gave you Richard Nixon 3x, that gave you Robert Dole, that gave you John McCain. And, of course, that gave you George Bush the Elder in 1988.

31. My past experience of Libertarians was of the Ayn Rand types. That may not apply much anymore.

    Ayn Rand’s interests were primarily literary and philosophical. Ditto her literary executor, Leonard Peikoff. She was never emotionally invested in practical politics and was at home with the notion that politicians will disappoint you every time. She actually endorsed Gerald Ford. Peikoff et al were derided by some libertarians because they were content with George W Bush’s foreign policy.

    You get some real Rand acolyte going, they will exhaust you discoursing on Aristotle.

32. Francis Melton, who blogs as the Manhattan Contrarian, is an avowed Libertarian, but awhile back he wrote a very good piece on why he would vote for Trump.

    He correctly said that when the final result was tallied, there were only two meaningful choices.

    I think it is sad that so many people actually voted for Perot that the Presidency was thrown to Clinton. Really sad if a vote was actually cast on the pretext that G.H.W. Bush, the youngest Naval Aviator in WWII, a Head of the CIA, and VP was out of touch because he did not know about grocery scanners; as though a man who shouldered so many responsibilities did not have better things to do than stand in a grocery line.

    Oh well, the American electorate is what it is.

33. I voted Libertarian (and by mail! mail in ballots are not invalid/cheating/stolen/etc…), but only because I was in a state that I knew would goto Biden by large margin. If it was remotely close I would have voted for Biden.

    Don’t assume that Libertarian are just out there are just wayward republicans. I care about fair immigration, free trade, and civility. I don’t like the democrats record on those topics either, but Biden’s positions are better than Trump. Also at a personal level I can listen to a Biden speech, even though I disagree and see a different set of “facts”. Trump to me is unwatchable, his style of communication is an instant turn off.

    I am pretty happy with this election. I most likely got my best outcome. Biden president, and a republican senate. Although, if republicans keep on living the denial that is getting more ridiculous by the minute, they may loose that. And that would be sad.

34. Libertarians are fools cloaked in righteousness.

35. Michael, your esteemed Biden is DEMENTED. Can you not get that?
    You meet my just-posted comment on Libertarians.

36. WRT the Germans, they are delighted about Biden because he will he re-enter the Paris Climate Accords ( among other things). We have a Green party here which gets a lot of media play and scares the general population. Of course,in the US you don’t need a Green party because you have all the Environmental activists who screw things up everywhere.

37. Art Deco: As usual your comment to mine had nothing to do with my concerns. I wasn’t asking about Ayn Rand — for the record I’ve read two bios of her — but Ayn Rand types who once upon a time (70s/80s) were the Libertarians I knew. Furthermore, none of them so much as mentioned Aristotle.

    How about leaving my comments alone and save your self-advertisements for other occasions?

38. Libertarians are autistic #@$^wits. They are living proof that having a high IQ (there do not appear to be any dimwit Libertarians) does not imply an iota of common sense about the human condition.

    They’ll still be debating the finer points of pot legalization while the barbarian hordes are taking liberties with their daughters.

    If Libertarians are as smart as they think they are, they’d put down the Mises for a month and pick up Spengler. But no… they’re Idiots — as in misfits who can’t grok the Agora.

39. Well, Michael I am sorry for your affliction.
    What a shame that you, and your accomplices, infected so many others.

    Maybe you are like my daughter. I have spoken of her here in various contexts. She is a clearly intelligent, high functioning Executive level professional. She is also a loving and attentive daughter. On the other hand when her mother spoke to her of Biden’s obvious dementia, she became incensed and informed Mother that, “he stutters”.

    So, unfortunately, you are not alone with your obvious myopia.

40. Art Deco: As usual your comment to mine had nothing to do with my concerns. I wasn’t asking about Ayn Rand

    You would benefit from a better attitude.

41. As an illustration of how mentally barren Libertarians are, try this by contrast:

    https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2020/11/10/rene-girard-imitation-and-life-without-god-2/

    It’s not necessary to agree with all or any of the contents, but can one even imagine a Libertarian straying that far off his arid little reservation just to take a look see?

42. The Libertarian Party served, at one time, as an outlet for those who were fed up with a Republican Party that acted (original reference to Dole I believe) as tax collector for the welfare state.

    Whatever defects the “GOPe” has had in the decades followimg, it has brought in many more constitutionalist style libertarian voices into the party.

    It’s possible I suppose that Libertarians are still talking about the disbanding of regulatory agencies, and their replacement with tort law, or some such expedient, but frankly, I have not heard of a single interesting governimg idea they have had in years.

    My guess is that their drugs and euthanasia crowd are not migrating to the Republicans under any circumstances anyway. What main enthusiasms Libertarians have nowadays a recent exLibertarian might know. Probably open borders, decriminalization of all drug dealing, lowering the age of consent, and cartoon porn featuring drug taking stuffed animals on broadcast TV … or something.

43. You would benefit from a better attitude.

    Art Deco: And you don’t even understand how to address someone politely.

44. Oldflyer: “Really sad if a vote was actually cast on the pretext that G.H.W. Bush, the youngest Naval Aviator in WWII, a Head of the CIA, and VP was out of touch because he did not know about grocery scanners;…”

    On paper papa Bush was the most qualified man to be president in recent times. He had the experience in business, many government posts, and was a true gentleman. Though his physical courage was great, he did not have the emotional makeup to be a great president. (IMO, few do.) If you ever read his book, “All the Best,” which included many of his personal letters, he revealed that he was a deeply sensitive man who did not have the stainless steel spine to standup to the emotional blackmail that the left deals out. Only Reagan and Trump have shown that ability, IMO. That said, I deeply regretted voting for Perot, and learned my lesson.

    Art Deco feels that things turned out better as a result of Clinton winning. He might be right. Newt Gingrich and the Contract For America might not have happened without Clinton in office. They managed to create a balanced budget for a couple of years – a real rarity. But all water under the bridge now.

45. Art Deco: And you don’t even understand how to address someone politely.

    I address people politely umpteen times a day. You get what you deserve.

46. I’m rather libertarian myself, but also a realist.
    Too many “Big L” Libertarians are glad that Biden might come out as having won, as they think it will speed a true Libertarian society after the socialist utopia collapses or similar nonsense.
    Like “True Communism™”, or “True Socialism™”, no matter how appealing you find it, “True Libertarian Society™” doesn’t work when it comes in contact with real humans and reality. I’d like to get as close to it as possible, and that will not happen voting for the nutters the Big L Party keeps propping up. Didn’t pay any attention to the latest ones, but the 2016 set wasn’t even all that libertarian, and really were just “legalize weed/drugs!”

47. At least in this election, those who voted Libertarian demonstrated themselves to be fools.

    That said, in the larger scheme of things, it would not have mattered had not one person voted libertarian.

    The democrats were going to invent as many votes for Biden as were necessary.

48. @Geoffrey Britain:

    True. But still is good to call them Fools, for that is what they are. Zaphodzebub (Hang on to your ectoplasm, Ymar) has some very fixed ideas about the strong desirability of a sweeping Rectification of Names.

    I very much like the Z-Man’s habit of using a clown horn honking sound effect every time he mentions Libertarians in his podcast.

49. I haven’t read the comments above, but Gore/Nader and H Clinton/Stein show how third parties have hurt Demmies, and Perot hurt somebody–I think it was HW Bush, but I am not sure. Would the Perot voters really have gone to Bush? The only Perot voter I know is a priggish, smug liberal who was too good to vote for Bill Clinton.

50. Geoffrey Brittain is right. The Demmies were going to manufacture votes sufficient for Biden to win in key states: PA (Philadelphia), MI (Wayne County), WI (Milwaukee), and maybe Fulton County (Atlanta) in GA. In 2016, they weren’t ready, and Trump won. This time they were ready, and the pandemic gave them the tools–mail-in ballots and social distancing in the counting rooms.

    Those late night “halts” in counting are the key. They got the observers to go home, and they figured how many votes they needed to create because they could see the level of the election day turnout for Trump. Then they created them.

    I have lived in Chicago for 50 years. Before Illinois became a Demmie lock in the 2000s, we used to see this behavior all the time in Cook County. Now they don’t need to do it here anymore, because the Illinois GOP self-immolated. As Illinois has become more urban and suburban, the Demmies win everything. They have successfully gerrymandered the state, so they are unlikely to lose in the foreseeable future.

51. in hindsight the observers should have stood their ground and refused to leave until they finished the counted, they really dropped the ball.

52. Dave:

    I believe that in many cases the observers were told the counting was shutting down for the night and therefore they should go home. But it resumed again without them.

53. There are actual communist leaning people who tell others that they are libertarian.

54. Even more pernicious than Democrat shenanigans, the Libertarian Party are the ultimate villains of this election because, if they had gotten out of the way, Trump would have beaten even the fraud.

    Blaming other people polarizes Service to Self. This helps move you closer to the dark cabal.

    Also, no, Trum can’t beat 70 million fraud votes;l even if the Libertarians had obeyed Trump instead it would have made no impact.

55. Oldflyer,

    I have a friend who seems similar to your daughter. He has a PhD and has a long career as an engineering researcher at a high level for a major corporation. In other words, very logical. He shared some of his political thoughts on a text thread we are on with other close friends. I was stunned at his naivety and his lack of knowledge of facts contrary to his narrative. I shared some Biden quotes with him that match and exceed Donald Trump’s rhetoric on race, immigration, foreign affairs, the environment… He was stunned. Had never heard any of it.

    I chose to stay away from speculation on Biden’s mental health. After 47 years as a public figure with a middling intellect it’s easy to find many idiotic, erratic and contradictory things Biden has said without speculating on early onset dementia. And yes, one can do the same thing with Donald Trump, who has also been a public figure for over 40 years. It’s just amazing that so many people who voted against Trump because of his “character” have never researched Joe Biden’s character. To choose Joe Biden as a paragon of character is a joke. And the joke is on us for the next 4 years.

56. Regarding the thread topic, and whether Libertarians swung the election, or whether Trump will win in the courts, or whether Biden will be our next President, or whether Kamala will be sworn in due to Biden health concerns…

    Put not your trust in princes.

    It is a true tragedy that too few in the American electorate understand the brilliance of the structure of our Federal government, and its intentional limitations on central power. We are already structured so that folks in Portland, Oregon can have the civic structure they desire and folks in Salt Lake City, Utah can have the civic structure they desire and folks in Tyler, Texas can have the civic structure they desire.

    But that’s not good enough for us. The folks in Portland want to also rule the folks in Salt Lake City. The folks in Chicago have to rule the folks in Effingham.

57. After 47 years as a public figure with a middling intellect it’s easy to find many idiotic, erratic and contradictory things Biden has said without speculating on early onset dementia. And yes, one can do the same thing with Donald Trump, who has also been a public figure for over 40 years.

    He required a TelePrompTer to answer questions from the likes of James Corden. Having kept him in his basement for months, they fly him out to Carnegie-Mellon in order to give a speech to a group of technicians and camp-follower reporters. All of his events were tiny and could be cancelled at short notice. (And some were graced with huge TelePrompTers just out of the view of MSM cameras). There’s a reason for this odd behavior, and it’s not because he’s been a blithering fool for 47 years.

58. Art Deco feels that things turned out better as a result of Clinton winning.

    I don’t. I would never advocate a bank shot.

59. }}} sabotaging the very values libertarians hold dear for smaller government and less interference with our freedoms.

    Their argument — and I cannot say it is itself inaccurate — is that the GOP — and yes, even Trump — have NOT been the “smaller government” party.

    He has advocated for controls on/against legitimate business transactions (i.e., his actions against China, and the mercantilist/protectionist actions regards tariffs)

    The deficits have continued to rise, considerably — and this was even before the justification that CV has brought about.

    Trump has also come down on the side of more gun control, in terms of rules about bump stocks and other related issues.

    He did the drone strike against Suleimani, which libertarians are emphatically against.

    And I can’t argue with that.

    That said, there are two parties —

    There is no question that one of the parties is less than ideal in a number of ways as a libertarian.

    The other party is fucking batshit crazy on multiple counts.

    So, by not holding their nose and voting for Trump, they enabled the Batshit Crazies to have a legitimate claim to the executive office, regardless of the challenge results.

    This was self-evidently not a case where their votes benefited the Libertarians — they got nothing no matter the turnout, as it wasn’t enough to provide them election benefits.

    It was not a case where a protest vote was wise, because it WAS clearly going to be close.

    And yeah, as a result, “Thanks, assholes!” to the cap-Libertarians.

    In my 45+ years of voting and political involvement, I have YET to see a single important issue which Libertarians managed to get behind as a group where they didn’t support the wrong thing…

    Not once.

60. Two cheers for Libertarians!
    I’ve been a registered Libertarian, voted Libertarian, and ran twice for office as a Libertarian. My goal was to get more votes than the D-R difference, to show the losers that they maybe could have had some other, better policy. (Was more Sci-Fi Heinleinian than a Randroid)

    Now that I’m married and more socially responsible, I’m a Republican; maybe some other former Libbers are now Dems. I’m also in Slovakia, usually voting absentee – this year with mail-in. Last year visiting America I heard from many Dem friends that Trump was: “Hitler”, “Creepy”, “Racist”, “Vulgar”, “a Bully”.

    As Michael mentioned (Welcome!): I can listen to a Biden speech, even though I disagree and see a different set of “facts”. Trump to me is unwatchable, his style of communication is an instant turn off.

    A negative emotional response to Trump – reasons won’t change this, and insults are likely to make it worse.

    Both parties have problems. Is Michael one of Neo’s Trump hating friends? (Or one of mine? I recommend this bog to many…) Trump-hate is emotional. But as Biden recently said, oh so ungenuinely, “we are all Americans… Not the enemy.*”

    Telling any Libber he’s stupid is unlikely to encourage him to return here. This is how echo chambers form, for the comfort of those inside. I’d prefer to allow Montage & the few other (disagreeable?) commenters who disagree to feel more welcome but disagreed with.

    In political hardball, the Dems stopping the Greens even getting on the ballot should be used by Reps as proof about how THEY, the Dems, are into Voter Suppression. Have you heard any Reps say this? I haven’t.

    Neo: The Democrats were smart to do this, Especially if Reps won’t even try to to honestly state the Voter Suppression reality that is there.

    I love America. I hate US flag-burning. I love that America, for years, decades, centuries, has had “freedom enough to burn”. I’m glad that flag burning is legal – many countries don’t allow it. Free speech, and free thinking, remain key to America. And Libertarians are the most freedom loving Party there is. Unrealistically so, with humans and other cultures as they are, but with an ideal of freedom far from Dems.

    Like many comments above on cheating, had Libbers not voted, had Greens voted more, the Dems would have adjusted their cheating as needed.
    I’m 100% sure the Dems cheated – they are stealing the election.
    Only 20% chance that Barr works effectively enough to stop the stealing –
    thus 80% Biden wins / successfully steals.

    It’s not Libbers who are the thieves. It’s the Dems. And it would be a lot better if more Dems voted Libber or Green than for Dem Biden.

    Any who vote “third party” (over 10 different choices?) are better than Biden voters.

    [*The same day other Dems are talking about blacklists and Truth commissions to punish Trump supporters. Too OT]

    As America becomes a corrupt Dem sh*thole, wouldn’t it be better to peacefully protest, now, before the courts accept Dem lies? How do normal folk living under dictators try to get rid of the corrupt leaders? Massive protests.
    For new elections.
    For Free, Fair, Honest elections – with rules that the gov’t follows.

    MAGA protests for Honest Elections are needed. (Don’t expect, nor ask, for Libbers to be there.)
    Honest elections have rules.
    Breaking the rules means Fraud.
    Evidence of rule-breaking is evidence of Fraud.

    400 000 fraud ballots or more, but none say “this ballot is a fraud”.

61. Libbers won’t protest for Free, Fair, Honest elections if MAGA people are involved?

    What use are those kind of Libbers?

    None. But curiously close to being useful idiots, or just stoned.

62. There is no question that one of the parties is less than ideal in a number of ways as a libertarian.

    The other party is fucking batshit crazy on multiple counts.

    Exactly.

    Remember that Babylon Bee headline from last month, “Christian Just Voting For Whichever Political Party Less Likely To Make His Faith Illegal One Day”? Yeah, kinda like that, except “constitutional rights” instead of “faith”.

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