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Wednesday, November 9, 2016

FINAL COUNT IN: Green Party's @DrJillStein helped Trump win!

[Updated with final vote totals 15 November 2016]

On November 8th many elements of capitalist reaction came together to make Donald Trump president-elect of the United States. The white nationalist Atl-Right movement, financed by Robert Mercer and organized through Breitbart and a host of Mercer funded agencies, and fronted by con artist Trump, was able to completely take over the Republican Party, use it as a vehicle to channel the discontent of white people caused largely by the neo-liberal policies of the Democratic Party. Added to this is an electoral system that allows Donald Trump to claim the presidency even though a majority of Americans voted for Hillary Clinton. These were the principal causes.

But there were also many "contributing factors" coming from organizations and institutions we have every right to expect neutrality from:
  • Wikileaks worked as a virtual arm of the Trump campaign as it released damaging exposures about only one side. I would love to see what these fascists write when they think they have their privacy.
  • Russia and Putin were the most likely sources of the Wikileaks hacks of DNC and Podesta emails.
  • The mainstream media gave lopsided coverage to the Trump campaign from the very beginning.
  • The FBI made empty noise about more legal jeopardy for Hillary just when it looked like Donald was on the ropes.
Take away any one of these and there is a good chance Donald Trump won't have made the cut. And then there is the Green Party, the Jill Stein candidacy and the #NeverHillary Left. Now they've got what they wanted, and we'll all get to learn what it means to forgo the chance to pick a lesser evil. But Jill Stein's influence was tiny. She actually got less than 1% of the vote. How could she possibly be a significant factor in Trump's victory?

Let's run the numbers:

Looking at the vote totals for certain key battleground states, we can see that in Michigan, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by only 11,423 votes, whereas Jill Stein got 50,690, which is to say that if all those that voted for Jill Stein in Michigan had instead voted for Hillary Clinton, she would have won Michigan and its 16 electoral votes.

Gary Johnson got more votes than Jill Stein in Michigan and the other states we will discuss, but polling suggests Johnson votes came equally from Clinton and Trump, if not more from Trump, so his supporters probably didn't hurt Clinton, but the Green Party, with its pro-Trump "Jill not Hill" campaign slogan, set out specifically to divert Clinton votes.

The same analysis shows us that if most of the 30,980 Jill Stein voters in Wisconsin had instead voted for Clinton, it would have been more than enough to overcome Trump's 27,257 lead and, in that case, Wisconsin's 10 electoral votes would have gone to Clinton. But even with Michigan's 16 and Wisconsin's 10 added to the 232 she had won in other states, she only comes up to 258, and still 12 electoral votes short of beating Trump.

That would seems to settle things because the next close state was Pennsylvania with 20 electoral votes. Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 68,236 or almost 19,000 more than the 48,912 citizens that voted for Stein in Pennsylvania, so even if every person that voted for Jill Stein in PA had instead voted for Hillary Clinton, she still would have lost the state and the election, so you can hardly lay the blame at Jill Stein's doorstep.

Or can you? Remember, I have shown elsewhere, as others have, that less than half of the citizens who claim to be Jill Stein supporters in polls end up actually voting for her. What do the others do? Well, maybe some decide not to waste their vote after all, while others decide that if they are doing to waste their vote, by voting for someone with no chance of hitting the 5% mark and less chance of being elected president, why bother voting at all?

data from Politico [updated 15 Nov. 2016]:

Candidate Count % Michigan [16] Wisconsin [10] Pennsylvania [20] Florida [29]
Donald Trump 60,526,852 47% 2,279,221 1,409,467 2,912,941 4605515
Hillary Clinton 61,324,576 48% 2,267,798 1,382,210 2,844,705 4485745
difference 11,423 27,257 68,012 119,770
Jill Stein 802,119 0.7% 50,690 30,980 48,912 64,019

Looking at the Real Clear Politics poll average for Pennsylvania for the day before the election, we can see that Jill Stein had dropped down to a paltry 1.5%. Still, this is almost twice the 0.8% that actually voted for her. From this we can see that if even half of the roughly 43,000 Stein supporters who said they were going to vote for her and didn't had voted for Clinton instead of staying home, Clinton would have won Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes for a total of 274 and become President instead of Trump. RCP PA polls:

The situation is very similar in Florida with its 29 electoral votes. Trump beat Clinton by 119,770 votes, which is more than twice the 64,019 Jill Stein votes, but again, when evaluating Jill Stein's effects as a spoiler, its important to not just count the number of votes she gets. It may be more important to consider the number of voters she discourages from voting for Clinton. RCP Florida polls:

The bottom line is than when evaluating Jill Stein's effect as a spoiler, the important number to consider, even though it may be hard to determine, is the number of citizens she discouraged from voting for Clinton, which could actually be much higher even than those that poll to be her supporters.

Consider that the Jill Stein campaign was focused on targeting Clinton far more than it targeted Trump. It gave citizens many very good reasons for not voting for Clinton. It was not so effective in giving them good reasons to vote for the Greens. So its entirely possible that she convinced many more citizens not to vote for the lesser of two evils, than she convinced to vote for her.  It's not a stretch to imagine someone leaving a Jill Stein rally, or website, and being thoroughly convinced not to vote for Clinton without also at all being convinced to vote for Jill Stein. If she convinced just twenty thousand more Pennsylvanians to refuse to vote for the lesser of two evils than actually voted for Jill Stein, or less than one stay-at-home for every two that cast ballots for her in PA, then its safe to say she threw the election to Donald Trump. And Florida? We don't even have to go there.

My other recent posts relating to this unique election cycle:
Did @DemocracyNow helped elect President Trump?
How Green Party's Jill Stein tells two lies at once
Donald Trump wants to be the Last US President
Trump/Stein -- Stronger Together
Will Wikileaks "salt" the Clinton-Podesta emails before the election?
Trump Super Predator behavior is Workplace Sexual Harassment writ large
Is US Green Party's Jill Stein a holocaust denier?
Jill Stein now claiming Donald Trump is less of two evils
Did Dishonest Jill Stein change her Syria statement on the sly?
Republican support for Green Party @DrJillStein is emerging
Why "Jill not Hill" is a pro-Trump slogan
Donald Trump can only win if Jill Stein stays in
Does Donald Trump's secret plan to defeat ISIS involve using nukes?
Why doesn't "What's the Triad?" trump "What is Aleppo?"
Green Party Jill Stein's campaign in context
What should the Green Party do?
Greens could give White House to Trump as poll numbers even
Why Green Party's Jill Stein should drop her presidential bid
Amy Goodman should address this extremely important statement by her guest
How Jill Stein Tweets for Trump
HuffPost item shows how @JillStein campaign whitewashes @realDonaldTrump
Trump tells his '2nd Amendment people election will be stolen to prepare for insurrection
Trump didn't threaten Hillary, he threatened violent insurrection
Meet Green Party's Jill Stein, Putin sock-puppet & Assad apologist

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

Monday, November 7, 2016

For America & Syria’s Sake, Don’t Vote Green

Published today on Muftah

Muftah launched in May 2010 to provide English-speaking audiences with incisive analysis on countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) that eschewed the Western media’s focus on terrorism, oil, and Islamism, and highlighted the complex factors that shape and influence regional countries and populations.

7 November 2016

In general, the Western left has taken a shameful attitude toward the Syrian conflict. Instead of supporting the Syrian people’s struggle against dictatorship, many leftists have promoted an anachronistic view of Russia and its allies, and accused Syrian revolutionaries of being Western proxies. The approach to Syria taken by the U.S. Green Party, which is largely representative of the left in the United States, largely reflects these tendencies.

Louis Proyect, a well-respected radical that for eighteen years has run MarxMail, an email list-serve of over 1500 Marxists activists and scholars, has, until recently, been a strong supporter of the Syrian revolution. He, like me, went against the tide of non-interventionist sentiment and supported Libyans and Syrians fighting against Russian-backed dictators to bring democracy to their countries.

Anyone who has taken this path knows it can be a hard and lonely road. As it turns out, supporting the “wrong” revolutions can lose you friends fast on the American left. But, this year Proyect decided to come in from the cold and support the Green Party’s presidential candidate, Jill Stein – an American politician who actively favors the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Proyect’s support for the Stein campaign raises questions about how he can square this decision with his opposition to the Assad regime. He attempted to address this divergence in The Green Party and Syria, which was published on Muftah, on October 4, 2016. In his article, Proyect excuses Stein’s terrible position on Syria, in the service of building a third-party in American politics. It is a position that is both naïve and dangerous. More...

My other recent posts relating to this unique election cycle:
How Green Party's Jill Stein tells two lies at once
Donald Trump wants to be the Last US President
Trump/Stein -- Stronger Together
Will Wikileaks "salt" the Clinton-Podesta emails before the election?
Trump Super Predator behavior is Workplace Sexual Harassment writ large
Is US Green Party's Jill Stein a holocaust denier?
Jill Stein now claiming Donald Trump is less of two evils
Did Dishonest Jill Stein change her Syria statement on the sly?
Republican support for Green Party @DrJillStein is emerging
Why "Jill not Hill" is a pro-Trump slogan
Donald Trump can only win if Jill Stein stays in
Does Donald Trump's secret plan to defeat ISIS involve using nukes?
Why doesn't "What's the Triad?" trump "What is Aleppo?"
Green Party Jill Stein's campaign in context
What should the Green Party do?
Greens could give White House to Trump as poll numbers even
Why Green Party's Jill Stein should drop her presidential bid
Amy Goodman should address this extremely important statement by her guest
How Jill Stein Tweets for Trump
HuffPost item shows how @JillStein campaign whitewashes @realDonaldTrump
Trump tells his '2nd Amendment people election will be stolen to prepare for insurrection
Trump didn't threaten Hillary, he threatened violent insurrection
Meet Green Party's Jill Stein, Putin sock-puppet & Assad apologist

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

Sunday, November 6, 2016

How Green Party's Jill Stein tells two lies at once

According to Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, anyone who actually participates in deciding who the next president of the United States will be is wasting their vote. She says this is true because she claims there are no significant difference between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump so it doesn't really matter which one is our next president.
Either she is blind to the realities of the world or there is a reason behind her willful deception. Her campaign slogan "Jill Not Hill" gives us a clue. She is trying to neutralize Clinton voters exclusively. She is running a pro-Trump campaign. She is protecting his Left flank.
Of course, that's not the reason she gives for running. Her main sell, the main reason she gives citizens for voting Green, other than some progressive elements in her platform, is the need to build a progressive third party in the United States. While this need has never been greater than it is today, as this election year has clearly demonstrated, the Green Party is far from that party, and this election year has also demonstrated that.
The Green Party continues to do little of the grassroots community work essential to the building of a successful third party. It continues its narrow appeal to an elite white demographic. It continues to have very shallow answers to deep questions in a politically flawed, pro-Putin platform.Yet once again it has emerged from hibernation after four years to run a spoiler candidate.
Everybody knows Jill Stein has zero chance of winning the election, so the one goals she has set for her party and the big reason she gives for asking progressives to stand down from the fight to keep the white nationalist Robert Mercer financed fascists out of the White House is that if the Green Party can get 5% of the vote, if will guarantee it a place on the ballot and millions of federal dollars in 2020.
Jill Stein put this forward as her one achievable goal, but the reality if that she has about as much chance of winning even 5% of the vote as she has of working from the Oval Office. She claims this goal is possible because they are already polling close to 5% so getting 5% of the vote should be within reach. This is based on two, shall we say "misrepresentations," that is a nicer word if size doesn't matter as it does in a tweet.

This claim is false on two grounds:

1) She has never been at 5% in the national polls. She came into the race with a solid 4% but has drifted down to about 2% 1.8% as she has gained more exposure.


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2) Her poll ratings are not reflected in actual votes. Not even close. In 2012, she was running a steady 4% in the polls, but on election day she received only 0.36% of the popular vote. In other words, more than 9 out of 10 voters who toll pollsters that they favored Jill Stein, either voted for someone else on election day or they didn't vote at all. The reason for this disparity is that while many progressives like to show their colors when talking to pollsters, they aren't really buying the Green Party line and throwing away their vote on election day. On Friday, Harvard Business Review published a report on how polls over estimate support for third-party candidates. This analysis has "Stein showing negligible levels of support from voters."
So the real "hill" that Jill needs to climb is not from 2% or 4% in the polls to a showing of 5% of the vote, but from a popular vote total of 0.36% in 2012 to over 5% in 2016. Since she isn't even doing as well in the pre-election polls this year as she did in 2012, that ain't going to happen. This is the truth that the Jill Stein campaign is trying to hide from its supporters. The truth that even if you give your vote to Jill Stein in the hopes of winning a place on the ballot for the Green Party in 2020, you are throwing you vote away.

My other recent posts relating to this unique election cycle:
Donald Trump wants to be the Last US President
Trump/Stein -- Stronger Together
Will Wikileaks "salt" the Clinton-Podesta emails before the election?
Trump Super Predator behavior is Workplace Sexual Harassment writ large
Is US Green Party's Jill Stein a holocaust denier?
Jill Stein now claiming Donald Trump is less of two evils
Did Dishonest Jill Stein change her Syria statement on the sly?
Republican support for Green Party @DrJillStein is emerging
Why "Jill not Hill" is a pro-Trump slogan
Donald Trump can only win if Jill Stein stays in
Does Donald Trump's secret plan to defeat ISIS involve using nukes?
Why doesn't "What's the Triad?" trump "What is Aleppo?"
Green Party Jill Stein's campaign in context
What should the Green Party do?
Greens could give White House to Trump as poll numbers even
Why Green Party's Jill Stein should drop her presidential bid
Amy Goodman should address this extremely important statement by her guest
How Jill Stein Tweets for Trump
HuffPost item shows how @JillStein campaign whitewashes @realDonaldTrump
Trump tells his '2nd Amendment people election will be stolen to prepare for insurrection
Trump didn't threaten Hillary, he threatened violent insurrection
Meet Green Party's Jill Stein, Putin sock-puppet & Assad apologist

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

Tuesday, November 1, 2016

Donald Trump wants to be the Last US President

Owing to the fact that the Masters of War have seen fit to give the President of the United States the unbridled power to launch enough nuclear weapons to end this experiment called humanity in less than four minutes flat, and no one can stop him and no one can call the missiles back, the most important outcome a week from today is that Donald Trump gets no where near our nuclear codes.

Every other question raised in this election is way secondary.



Not only is Donald Trump a power hungry madman out to show the whole world how important he is, he is obsessed with nuclear weapons. He makes a fetish of them. I rushed this video together because it is apparent that with the help of Wikileaks, Putin, the FBI director and whoever's next, Trump could still win this thing. I also did this because while there are a lot of videos that focus of Trump and nukes, none I've found really illustrated his profound madness on the subject.

As you watch and listen to this 60 second production, think about how you would feel about a neighbor that talked about guns the way The Donald talks about nuclear weapons. If you wouldn't be happy with such a neighbor owning an arsenal, I hope you will circulate this video and do anything else you can think of to get out the vote to stop Trump by electing Clinton.



My other recent posts relating to this unique election cycle:
Trump/Stein -- Stronger Together
Will Wikileaks "salt" the Clinton-Podesta emails before the election?
Trump Super Predator behavior is Workplace Sexual Harassment writ large
Is US Green Party's Jill Stein a holocaust denier?
Jill Stein now claiming Donald Trump is less of two evils
Did Dishonest Jill Stein change her Syria statement on the sly?
Republican support for Green Party @DrJillStein is emerging
Why "Jill not Hill" is a pro-Trump slogan
Donald Trump can only win if Jill Stein stays in
Does Donald Trump's secret plan to defeat ISIS involve using nukes?
Why doesn't "What's the Triad?" trump "What is Aleppo?"
Green Party Jill Stein's campaign in context
What should the Green Party do?
Greens could give White House to Trump as poll numbers even
Why Green Party's Jill Stein should drop her presidential bid
Amy Goodman should address this extremely important statement by her guest
How Jill Stein Tweets for Trump
HuffPost item shows how @JillStein campaign whitewashes @realDonaldTrump
Trump tells his '2nd Amendment people election will be stolen to prepare for insurrection
Trump didn't threaten Hillary, he threatened violent insurrection
Meet Green Party's Jill Stein, Putin sock-puppet & Assad apologist

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!
Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria

Thursday, October 27, 2016

Trump/Stein -- Stronger Together ||| @DrJillStein 4 @realDonaldTrump

Although Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein claims to represent the Left in this election, and Republican Donald Trump is the candidate of the Atl-Right white nationalists, they show surprising unity across the political spectrum.

They both are claiming that the election is rigged:
She uses the logic of "If people can barely see their options on TV [distorted media], then the election is rigged" to agree with Trump without appearing to do so. Clearly she thinks she should have gotten more TV time, even if she did slide in the polls [from 4% to 2%] with each exposure.
Naturally, Trump brings his racism into his reasons he thinks this is a rigged election. That why he speaks of "many polling places." Stein may not subscribe to this aspect of the "rigged election" meme, but her tweets don't reflect that.

They both parrot Putin's line that electing Clinton will start WWIII.

They both do Putin's saber-rattling for him:
Both support Putin's preference for Donald Trump as the next president of the United States:
Both Putin and Assad say the US is behind ISIS, Trump and Stein are more specific. They both blame Clinton:
They are both big users of the stolen emails distributed by WikiLeaks:

17 October, they both say Wikileaks has proven that Hillary Clinton should be in prison:

You can also hear her shouting "Lock her up" with the rest of the pro-Trump mob.

They are both more than happy to use the hacked emails just the way Putin and Assange would want, as a partisan tool to get Donald Trump elected:

Donald Trump and Jill Stein have been together for years, for example after Bashar al Assad killed over 1400 Syrians with sarin, and it looked like Barack Obama might actually carry out this red-line promise, they both came to Assad's defense:

Don't attack Syria


Since Dr. Jill Stein protested in front of Assad's flag in September 2013, hundreds of thousands of Syrians have been murdered by those marching behind it. Those deaths she has not protested.

As you can see, Jill Stein has had a lot in common with Donald Trump for a long time. This year she has become the Green Party presidential candidate so she can protect his left flank, that is draw progressive votes that might otherwise count towards keeping the Atl-Right gang out of the White House. Since she got only 0.38% of the vote in 2012 after showing 4% in the pre-election polls she knows she won't even get to the 5% necessary to get gov't money let alone win the presidency. Only thing she is going this year is driving voters away from the Left and helping to elect Donald Trump president.


My other recent posts relating to this unique election cycle:
Will Wikileaks "salt" the Clinton-Podesta emails before the election?
Trump Super Predator behavior is Workplace Sexual Harassment writ large
Is US Green Party's Jill Stein a holocaust denier?
Jill Stein now claiming Donald Trump is less of two evils
Did Dishonest Jill Stein change her Syria statement on the sly?
Republican support for Green Party @DrJillStein is emerging
Why "Jill not Hill" is a pro-Trump slogan
Donald Trump can only win if Jill Stein stays in

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

Click here for a list of my other blogs on Syria