I live in Maryland so it’s not like my vote counts, but even if I was in a swing state, I’d still vote third party. I’m fed up with “anything but, we just need to make sure the next four years are safe and worry about the consequences the election after that,” it’s like having gangrene in a toe and refusing to amputate, hoping that other methods will work and it will be healed, and then the whole foot has it, but you keep pushing the alternative methods, until finally the whole leg has it and then the other leg has it and you either amputate both legs or die. It could have stopped with just losing a single toe.
Securing the next four years isn’t enough if Romney will fail to turn things around (and I believe he will fail) because it weakens the position of the Republican candidate in 2016. They will put Obama back up, and he will win if Romney fails to get it right in the next four years. Not only will Obama win, but he’ll have another 4 years of blaming his predecessor.
I would rather have his predecessor be “The Democrat Barry Obama” when he fails over a four-year period instead of “The Republican Mitt Romney.” I would rather see him attempt to blame Bush when Bush hasn’t been in office for 6 years, than see him say “If only you’d elected me, we wouldn’t be in this pickle! I’ve only had 2 years to clean up Romney’s mess, what do you expect?” Make no mistake, the policies in place now are going to make the next 4 years difficult no matter what. Romney won’t turn it around, because he’s not conservative, even if he’s Republican.
This is the second election where I’ve been old enough to vote. There is only one way my voice will be heard in a state like Maryland, and it’s not by voting for Romney. That’s saying, “I will do anything to keep my toe, though it’s probably futile.” I’m voting third party because it’s the closest I can get to saying “I will do anything to stop this infection.”
“This is the second election where I’ve been old enough to vote.”
I am sorry you have had such muck candidates to choose between. I was fortunate to get Reagan in the second cycle, after watching the hapless and insipid Ford lose to the even more hapless and insipid Carter.
I wish I could truthfully tell you that it gets better.
I live in a solid blue state. [Ca.] But I have been voting for over 50 years. You have already learned what I wish I had realized years ago. I have been holding my nose while voting all but twice in all that time. I now realize that every time I did that I gave the liberals the thumbs up sign. Each candidate offered was more and more liberal. I fell for the Chicken Little The Sky is Falling argument without remembering that it is a Children’s Story. I hope you can do for my grandchildren what I failed to do. Thank you.