I agree. This is not Trump v Hillary, it is SCOTUS and the entire regulatory environment of kill the business people. So, vote to be Venezuela with Hillary or drain the swamp with Trump. Nothing else matters due to the immediate impact (forget the grandkids) on our lives.

As to “no one will want to buck the establishment in the future”, I doubt that’s the case. Trump has a large base of enthusiastic supporters, and win or lose most of them are likely to remain politically engaged and become a huuuge force in the Republican Party, displacing the Romneys and Bushes.

I applaud the educational work that you and the libertarian party has done and will do in the future.

My point is that in THIS election we actually have a decent chance of slowing down socialism, giving freedom loving people more TIME to do more education before the country falls deeper into decline. In previous elections, the differences between the candidates have been small. In this election, there is a successful business person with halfway decent ideas on freedom vs a definite posterchild for socialism and cronyism.

Dont worry. Trump is a one of a kind candidate. There wont be another one standing up to the establishment like him. We wont have this chance again. In the future it will be more of the socialist vs more socialist candidates.

They won't get fixed by the statists.

Why are you telling us Johnson supporters what we “should” do? I’m not telling you what you “should” do with your vote, I’m just helping make the case that voting for Johnson is preferable to voting for Trump. As an LP member for 44 years, I do try to “educate” others about individual freedom between elections, and politically support Libertarian candidates during elections. Over the years the LP has done a great job bringing freedom issues to the attention of voters, “educating” them if you will, and as a result it is a growing and increasingly recognized political party.

All the points you raise about Trump really apply 100x to Hillary. He will slow down the march to socialism and complete government control. She will keep the establishment in power, and in fact increase their power over all of us.

Trump is the last chance we will have to buck this socialist establishment. After this, no one will want to buck the establishment in the future (look at how the media trashed trump and how much negativity he faced), and we will be on a slow decline until all the wealth in the country has been spent by the socialists. Only THEN will it make sense to politically support a Johnson. That was even the case in AS as Galt didnt surface until the establishment was weak

I point I raise is that the election process IS rigged to favor the two powerful parties that exist now. Plus, the election system itself isnt anywhere as foolproof as most people think. Its NOT just about hanging chads. There is electronic machine fraud, the media favoring one candidate or another, the huge amounts spent on the campaigns..... Fix those things first, THEN spend you time trying to elect a third party candidate

Which is a more desirable friend, the foul mouthed bully that secretly gives large donations to St. Jude's, or the priest that hears our confessions and baptizes our babies but secretly likes to help the alter boys in and out of their robes?
It is a discipline to judge people by what they do rather than what they say. Talking about girls and bragging about conquest is really a high school behavior that grows into adult BS. It's immature, disrespectful, and a distraction. Failing to answer the call for help from Benghazi, then blaming the whole thing on a video, followed by lying to the survivors of the dead are actions. As are quid pro quo regarding the foundation, and destroying subpoenaed emails. Judging by actions, my choice is clear

Its way too early for political success with libertarians. The culture is way too far gone educationally for politics to get anywhere. Education will take quite awhile and money spent on politics is totally wasted at this point.

I agree totally. Its about whats going to happen in the next 4 years. Hillary will antagonize Russia and further the cold war we are already in. Once the oil price rises again, Russia will expand its grasp over the weak USA that Obama and Hillary have presented. Its a real danger that Russia testing Hillary will result in war.

The choice today is between Hillary and Trump. There is no chance for a third party to win in this election. If Trump is not elected, we get Hillary for at least the next 4 years, and she will push us into socialism and less control over our lives. She will also tighten the control that the establishment has over our country. This makes it less likely for third party candidates to succeed in future years.

Trump is the only choice to slow down the rise of socialism and establishment control in this country. He is also the best electable choice to keep us out of dangerous conflicts with Russia. Johnson has some good ideas, but its way too soon for those ideas to get substantial traction.

The people who vote for Johnson should pull back political support for him, and concentrate on furthering education of free market ideas during the times BETWEEN elections.

IF this were to happen hc is elected, I personally do not believe for one moment it will she will speed up the process of men shutting down their businesses and ATLAS WILL HAVE SHRUGGED.

I recall Perot bought an hour of air time and did a lecture with a whiteboard. I thought he was a wonk. It never occurred to me his candidacy might be a ploy. I thought he was honest but nerdy. I was 17 though.

I actually volunteered for Perot. It was an interesting experience. At one point, I was stuffing envelopes and the woman to my right was a life-long Republican and the one to me left a life-long Democrat.

Watching Perot's weird antics with respect to this wedding and getting in and out, I came to the conclusion that his goal was to block Bush. Once Clinton was ahead he backed out, when Bush recovered, he got back in. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it was because Bush was head of the CIA when we were trying to get MIA's out -- and Perot felt strongly about that. Just a guess.

Admiral Stockdale was intended to be a placeholder but wound up being stuck as a VP candidate when there wasn't time to get another. When a reporter commiserated with him on the two months of chaos he wound up involved in, his response was memorable. He said that it wasn't bad, that he had spent longer than that in North Vietnam lying naked on a cement floor with a broken hip.

I remember that election. I was 17 y/o. Perot had a shot, dropped out, and then came back. It seemed like if he hadn't dropped out he would have had a good shot. Bush seemed to be running on war fervor, which had died down by the election. Clinton did the famous "it's the economy, stupid" thing, which I believed at the time and reject completely now. Of course Bill Clinton wanted to play up the economy b/c we were in the middle of the recession of '91 and people wrongly blame the president for the economic cycle.

In '96 I voted for Nader b/c I knew Clinton would win. I do not agree with that vote anymore. I believed the line that if we just had a president not beholden to special interests they could use the levers of power to solve the worlds problems. That was embarrassingly naive on my part.

I was in FL for the 2000 election. Before the election they mailed me a sample of the ballot and a thing showing which chad numbers should be poked for which candidate. I voted for Gore and checked the chad number, so I know my vote was executed properly. In a fair count Gore probably lost by a couple hundred votes.

Your comment brought back memories. Sorry for that trip down election memory lane. :)

If I could ever find a candidate which I completely agreed with I would vote for him. But since I don't plan on running that isn't going to happen. This leaves me with a number of candidates who I partially agree with and partially disagree with.

Well, in 1992, for a while Perot was actually in the lead and may have had a reasonable chance of winning. And, as I said, as a Californian I can pretty much vote any way I want and the Democrat will easily get the electoral votes.

But if I lived in Florida, we saw how that worked out. The people who voted for Nader would almost certainly have preferred Gore to Bush. But they got Bush.

Voting for the lesser evil has created the statist monster that loots our production. Voting for either Trump or Hitlery repeats past errors and will conitinue to increase state power and crony cartels, reduce individual liberty, and suppress free markets.

OTOH, that last point is a good one, WS.
Winner take all by state should be unlawful, and it exists only to benefit the statist parties and to frustrate and prevent representation for the people, imo.

"If, on the other hand, you think trump would be less damaging than Clinton, you voting third party will increase the likelihood of greater damage."

Could you generalize this statement to "If you think one mainstream candidate would be less damaging than the other, you voting third party will increase the likelihood of greater damage."?

If that's true, no one should vote third party?

Third party candidates may be hurting Hillary because there are a lot of unhappy Sanders supporters. If, on the other hand, you think trump would be less damaging than Clinton, you voting third party will increase the likelihood of greater damage.

Of course if you live in a state that is not in play, such as I do in California, it doesn't really matter what you vote.

The author is a GOP politician and Bush appointee. Likely biased for the statists.
She is from Maryland, a state that has a reputation of be in favor of big government instead of individual liberty. (Apologies, I don't have time to find the articles I read in support of that assertion right now as I am being paged, but later I will when I have time.)
The problem with Trump is not just his personality. It's his lack of ethics and use of government for his own enrichment.
Fear mongering instead of principle.
Yes, that has worked so well in the past, let's keep making that stupid mistake until we are all enslaved.
WAKE UP and get some courage to fight for your liberty.

This is nonsense. Yes, Hillary is as bad as the article states. No, that does not mean that voting third-party is the heinous moral crime this article claims it to be. The article’s dismissive tone regarding those of us voting third-party is insulting (at least to me) and does not address the actual impact of third-party voting in this election. The polls are showing that third parties are hurting Hillary’s chances, not helping them. Jill Stein is drawing votes predominantly from left-wing Democrats. including Bernie Sanders supporters, who dislike and distrust Hillary. Gary Johnson is drawing votes from both Hillary and Trump, but more from Hillary according to most polls. In a close race, third parties might actually enable a Trump victory which would not have occurred without them. You’re welcome.