Part of me deciding to *attempt* to *create* this *content*
each week in anticipation of another painful and pretentious American
Presidential election is to evaluate my own nonsense with relation to political
preferences. (Life should be about evaluating your own nonsense, all the time,
because none of us have gotten this shit untangled completely. Few even get
close. One is lucky to even make progress to be honest.) And my basic political
preferences can easily be broken down into two points: A) I always vote third
party if available on the ballot; B) if not available, I vote for whoever is
not incumbent. Always, no takebacks. I feel like we could use more choices in
this shit, and if I throw my piddly pretend-make-a-difference vote at some
third party schmuck, then maybe it gains momentum. I also feel like if we’re
going to have to keep dealing with the same two parties, I’d rather neither of
them become entrenched, at any position, so always switch them, keep them
unsettled, fuck them.
So for this week’s dumb list I decided to do some maths and
see what living human beings had gotten the most love in Presidential elections
from outside the two mainstream parties. Tallying straight votes made the
spreadsheet explode a little much, so I limited it to percentage of the popular
vote (none of these people got any electoral votes), and let them accumulate
it, so I could see what living, breathing, still existing upon earth human
beings were the most (but not real) viable alternatives. In my mind, I hoped
this would be no-nonsense black ladies and gay natives and crazed anarchist
poet-philosophers and that type of stuff. Sadly, the results sort of reaffirmed
the two main parties had echoed so strongly through the popular vote that even
with our alternative choices, it’s not really all that alternative. But here
are the top 14 living people who accumulated the most popular vote percentages
in Presidential elections of the American variety.
#1: Ross Perot (Reform Party; 18.91% of vote in 1992, 8.4%
in 1996) – Your all-time top alternative choice is a billionaire white guy. I
remember my dad still being alive and being pretty stoked to vote for Perot
even though he thought Perot sucked, just because it was somebody different
than a D or an R. A lot of my distrust of wealthy people is inherited from my
father’s ramblings, and while nothing in my life’s experiences has
contraindicated these paranoias, I do actively work to not let it paralyze me
like it did my dad. Perot is still alive, still a billionaire, but has mostly
not used that money to push the Reform Party as a legitimate third choice,
probably because you don’t become a billionaire by wasting money on bad
investments. The Koch brothers have shown it’s far easier to purchase
established brands and make internal changes than it is to create an entirely
new political brand. People are wary of change (unless “change” is the new
slogan of a traditional brand).
#2: John Anderson (independent candidate; 6.61% of vote in
1980) – Anderson had been a long-time Republican congressman from Illinois when
he ran for their nomination in the 1980 election, which of course the partial
memory of history tells us Reagan won, and cowboyed his way into the hearts of
all Republicans everywhere as one of the greatest heroes the world ever saw,
culminating in him spin-kicking the Berlin Wall onto Mikael Gorbachev. But John
Anderson established himself during that 1980 nomination process as a firebrand
alternative to traditional Republicanism, so much so that he was encouraged by
supporters to run for President as an independent, since many folks were pretty
blah-bored with Jimmy Carter and Reagan. He crossed a significant obstacle by
actually getting himself included in a Presidential debate, which Jimmy Carter
then refused to take part in because it was too demeaning to be on-stage with an
illegitimate third-party contender, and ultimately Reagan became Reagan. Still
though, with all the Reagan worship, it’s interesting to see that there was
obvious lack of inspiration in him in the beginning of his run as Presidential
Persona, which led to one of the largest single-election third-party vote
tallies in the past fifty years.
#3: Ralph Nader (Green Party mostly; 0.56% of the popular
vote in 2008, 0.38% in 2004, 2.74% in 2000, and 0.71% in 1996) – Nader made a
fairly consistent stab at third-party presence, but that didn’t really amount
to anything bordering on credible until the ho-hum 2000 election, where voters
were like, “Fuck, Al Gore or George Bush, huh?” Nader gained enough of a
contrarian-to-the-two-parties following that the Democratic machine had to dust
off and bust out the “don’t waste your vote” guilt trip media barrage on
potential Nader voters. That 2000 election though saw the controversy of an
extremely close vote in swing-state Florida, where Bush won by 537 votes. Nader
was blamed for swinging the vote in favor of a dimwitted brushfire attendant,
so that we didn’t get the mundane lizardbot many “smart” people felt we should
have deserved. I’ve never personally understood the “throwing your vote away by
voting for somebody who won’t win” thinking because essentially you could use
that exact same logic to not have more than one choice, since somebody’s going
to lose. I voted for Nader in that election, and being I’ve heard some
super-sketchy “off-the-record” things through the streets about Al Gore, I
never would’ve voted for that dude, ever, in a zillion years. I think it’s hard
to just straight apply, “Anyone who voted for this person would’ve actually voted
for this D or R candidate instead if not given the choice” because a lot of
people teeter at the edge of completely jaded but some fucked-up third party
shithead gives them a momentary lapse of nihilism where they briefly believe in
the meritocracy myth and that we can take incremental steps towards progress,
which the two main parties never do. (Well, Obama sort of specialized in
exploiting that psychology in 2008, but that’s a whole ‘nother issue.) By the
time Nader ran in 2004, he seemed motivated more by ego than principle, and
geopolitics instilled a strong fear in most voters that they better tow the
two-party line or risk DEATH TO OUR ACCUSTOMED WAY OF LIFE. Pretty much DEATH
TO OUR ACCUSTOMED WAY OF LIFE: R vs. D is the only game in town now.
#4: Ed Clark (Libertarian Party; 1.06% of the popular vote
in 1980) – Libertarians have generally been the hottest third-party candidates,
and the fact two third-party candidates were able to get over 1% of the popular
vote in 1980 is further testament to Ronald Reagan not being the inspirational
figure in foresight that he became in faded hindsight. Clark had gotten over 5%
of the vote in the 1978 California governor race, as a free market
sort-of-Republican type, which is what a lot of the Libertarian Party has been
exposed as in the past decade – big business types not happy with how much they
can get away with. The notion of Libertarianism meaning individual liberties
and less government intrusion on civil life has always played a backseat to
less government intrusion on business taxes and oversight of sketchy shit. In
fact, you know who Ed Clark’s running mate was in 1980? David Koch – one-half
of the notorious Koch brothers.
#5: Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party; 0.99% of the popular
vote in 2012) – Johnson was Republican governor of New Mexico who felt
Republicanism wasn’t quite the right fit, so did the “business-minded white
dude Libertarian” switch as well. Most notable part of this is the
fifth-largest popular vote percentage-getter still currently alive did not even
get a full percent. This shows how deeply entrenched the two-party system is,
to where what is basically a clone of the Republican candidate, just with a
little more charcoal to his charcoal grey suit, can’t even siphon off a random
percent of the vote. Part of that is because Obama vs. Romney was very much
positioned as another MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION EVER IN THE HISTORY OF HUMANS
BEING CLOTHED & HOLDING ELECTIONS showdown where any vote outside of those
two would literally jeopardize the future existence of American humanity. And
while that is exaggerated in tone, that’s basically how this shit gets
presented to people. It’s also how it will get presented to us again, IN
NINETY-ONE SHORT WEEKS!
#6: Harry Browne (Libertarian Party; 0.36% of the popular
vote in 2000, 0.5% in 1996) – Browne was a white dude who talked about shit
like “the economics of freedom” and worked in marketing and advertising, which
is essentially all a political campaign is anyways at this point. Still, it
wasn’t enough to make himself relevant, even in the shitty Gore/Bush election
of 2000, probably because Nader siphoned off a good bit of the Libertarian
Party’s core base of people who go to vote, thinking “man, I hate all these
assholes.”
#7: Ron Paul (independent candidate; 0.04% of the vote in
2008, 0.47% in 1988) – Ron Paul built his base brilliantly off an
anti-establishment sentiment, even though he never really felt strong enough to
make a move off the establishment, never breaking cleanly from the Republican
Party. It’s interesting in looking through these old elections at how the
Libertarian Party lost relevancy the same time a Tea Party influence started to
exist, and how David Koch was a Libertarian VP candidate in 1980. It’s created
this false alternative within the party, which has actually shifted the party
as a whole further towards that fringe. This fringe element will make its
hardest push for legitimacy through Ron’s son Rand (lolol) in this election cycle,
as Rand Paul has all the same pseudo-libertine business-friendly notions his pops
did, but doesn’t look like a scary old man who might accidentally use the
n-word.
#8: Patrick Buchanan (Reform Party; 0.43% of the popular
vote in 2000) – Buchanan is an angry white guy who still has a voice on that
weekend “white people talk about news shit” show on PBS. I find him sometimes
funny on that, but only relative to watching a “white people talk about news
shit” show on public broadcasting, which usually lasts for about 43 seconds
maximum if I’m more than 5 minutes away from any Joy of Painting with Bob Ross
episodes. Buchanan was the post-Perot Reform Party’s attempt to maintain
relevancy in the 2000 election, which ultimately led to Buchanan clamoring that
he might’ve affected the Florida outcome as much as any other third-party
wasted vote. Ultimately, that’s his Presidential election legacy – that he
MIGHT HAVE indirectly influenced a sketchy vote, but probably not probably some
other guy.
#9: Bob Barr (Libertarian Party; 0.4% of popular vote in
2008) – Hey look! It’s another white dude in a suit and tie with strong
economic opinions for you who ran as a Libertarian! At least this one looked
stupid one time in the Borat movie though.
#10: Jill Stein (Green Party; 0.36% of popular vote in 2012)
– I have voted Green Party when they’re on the ballot because I’m anti-poverty
and like “fuck coal mining” in my personal life. But I actually looked into
their structure in the state of Virginia, and even for a fringe third party,
there’s all these rules and lines you have to follow; and the people I emailed
with were fairly condescending and short and annoying. I think that comes with
the territory with politics – you are always going to be dealing with somebody
who is so confident in what they think that they want to push that onto
everyone else. I always have a problem with that, being far too esoteric for
that type of shit. Ultimately, that’s what politics is though, which means we’ll
always have limited choices, and true loungers will never represent the people
to any extent because true loungers got better sense than to give a fuck about
running for political office. This may not be entirely true on the local level,
which I say because I probably have a friend who might read this who has ran at
the local level and I’m trying not to hurt their feelings, but yeah it’s true
on the local level too actually.
#11: Michael Badnarik (Libertarian Party; 0.32% of popular
vote in 2004) – This guy is a horrible AM radio talk show personality, and you
can never convince me that AM radio talk show personalities are worthwhile
human beings. “News” or “sports” or whatever, none of them are worthwhile human
beings. The only two exceptions I’d make is if there is a local country AM radio
station with a call-in show where people sell old refrigerators and livestock
and shit like that, and you consider the host of such a show an “AM radio talk
show personality” then I’d let that pass. Also if there is a Spanish-music
station that has a call-in show that I only understand every seventh word, I’d
have to say I don’t understand Spanish fast enough to condemn that person
either, although I usually don’t pick up on too many references to “pinche” or “gringo”
or “chivos” so my leniency is gonna pretty thin.
#12: Lenora Fulani (New Alliance Party; 0.07% of popular
vote in 1992, 0.24% in 1988) – This is the first candidate I would say I
actively like. Ms. Fulani was the first African-American to get ballot access
in all 50 states, as well as the first woman to do so. The New Alliance Party –
which no longer exists – was born from the Patriot Party, which itself was born
from the original Rainbow Coalition put together by Fred Hampton in Chicago in
the 1960s. I was reading about hillbilly white anti-government types recently
who actually used to lean pretty hard left before becoming co-opted by fear,
and there was this video I found of fellow Black Panther Bobby Lee speaking
with, building with, and cultivating a coalition with southern twanged out
folks in Chicago. Poor folks are trained to hate other poor folks, or at least
be afraid of each other, which allows hate to ferment. And then whatever huge
percentage of people who are fooled by demographical trick-knowledge into
thinking they’re middle class become afraid or want to help only one part of
that poor people pointed against each other equation, while simultaneously
berating the other part of the poor people pointed against each other equation
for being too goddamned ignorant. So many pawns, so few squares.
#13: Andre Marrou (Libertarian Party; 0.28% of the popular
vote in 1992 election) – Another white dude, but at least Marrou is gained
notoriety for being one of the few Libertarians actually elected to national
office, as Congressman from Alaska for the 1985-1987 session. As it being an
Alaskan battle, I think it important to point out he succeeded a dude known as
Doc Fritz to get the office, only to be beaten by a former cop called Claude “Swack”
Swackhammer. After losing, Marrou moved to Las Vegas, perhaps the ultimate
Libertarian paradise on this here earth.
#14: David Bergland (Libertarian Party; 0.25% of popular
vote in 1984) – If you are into numerology and how our shared reality is woven
through mathematical “facts” to reinforce our subjugated state, then you’ll no
doubt see the ironic significance of the “Libertarian” candidate for President
receiving a perfect quarter of a percent of the vote in that ominous year of “1984”
which conjures up Orwell’s worst nightmares as actual living reality. Hahaha, I
don’t actually know what that last sentence means, just talking nonsense since
this is the internet. But with 1984 in mind we do actually have a pretty
weirdly cryptic and creepy NSA system utilizing this program called internet to
keep track of a lot of shit. It depends on them being able to analyze raw Big
Data with the right software, and really the only limitation is time. Thus by
writing as much nonsense gibberish into the internet as you can, which says
things, or maybe doesn’t say things, or maybe you google translate old Martha
Stewart recipes into a different language, then into another, then back to English
and post that on your website to seem like maybe it’s coded talk, or maybe
important, or anything, the program has to waste time going through it, even
though it’s just a chill peanut butter pie recipe that went through Turkish
then Mandarin then back to English. Such acts are far more important than
voting, even voting third-party. Voting is not an action any more – it’s a
passive acceptance of inaction. So promise me you’ll try to shut the fuck up
about how important voting is in 91 weeks when we have THE MOST IMPORTANT
ELECTION EVER! Yet again.
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