This is an excerpt from a column I wrote last Friday for Dome Magazine:
By Chad Selweski
… How can a Millennial voter switch from a candidate (Bernie Sanders) who endlessly preached during the primaries in favor of Medicare health coverage “for all” to a different candidate (Gary Johnson) who seeks to decimate funding for Medicare and all federally funded health programs, plus eliminate Obamacare? How does one make that leap? Is that intellectually honest, or just “trendy?”
The reality is, on a national debate stage both Johnson and Jill Stein probably would have imploded within 60 minutes. I’m reminded of this past summer’s unhinged Libertarian Party convention where an 11th-hour debate among the five candidates took place. Johnson engaged in typical party doctrine but he was booed by the audience because he refused to adhere to dogma that the government has no right to require driver licenses for motorists.
Since then, Johnson demonstrated, with his infamous “What is Aleppo?” remark and his inability to name a single world leader that he is a man who is such a neo-isolationist that he apparently pays little attention to the outside world, or to the fate of the earth. He has comically claimed that climate change is not a worry because scientists say the sun will eventually engulf and burn up the earth – in about 5 billion years. What’s more, he essentially embraces the standard Libertarian mantra that EPA regulations are not needed because victims of toxic pollution – or their surviving relatives after they have died — can sue the corporate polluters for the damage done.
The former New Mexico governor advocates dramatic cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, privatizing Social Security, ending all campaign finance restrictions, and eliminating minimum wage laws. His deep-rooted preference is for a laissez faire (dog-eat-dog) world of economics.
An Even Quirkier Candidate
As for Stein, she is an even quirkier candidate who focuses on pet issues related to pseudoscience. A medical doctor, she panders to “anti-vaxxer” parents who believe childhood vaccines create autism. She rides on the superficial path of hysteria over genetically altered foods (GMOs). And she favors government funding for research into thoroughly unproven “alternative” health care such as naturopathy and homeopathy.
Critics on the left have proclaimed that her understanding of broad-based economics is incomprehensible and that her derogatory summary of eight years under Obama is replete with eye-rolling moments. Her running mate, Ajamu Baraka, labeled the president as an “Uncle Tom,” an assertion that Stein has declined to criticize.
She may be at just 3 percent in polls but that represents a quadrupling of her 2012 support, but based on what? For disgruntled young voters, Stein apparently serves as the Michael Moore-style ultimate anti-establishment progressive. And Johnson is the pot-smoking, New Age oracle, a Renaissance Man who stands above the fray of realpolitik.
You can continue reading here.
