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Saturday, September 24, 2016

Clinton's crisis: 25% of millennials want Johnson

Dear Democrats: No One Owes You Their Vote - Hit & Run : Reason.com - Elizabeth Nolan Brown:

September 19, 2016 -"In the latest Quinnipiac national poll, just 31 percent of 18- to 34-year-old voters favored Clinton, with 29 percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson.... Another recent poll, this one from New York Times/CBS News, found 26 percent of 18- to 29-year-old respondents saying they would vote for Johnson....

"'A month ago Democrats were amused to see Johnson leading Trump along millennials,' noted Dave Weigel at The Washington Post Monday. 'Now, Johnson's support is being tackled like a crisis.'

"The anti-third-party message has been coming from Clinton herself ... and from new YouTube and TV commercials put out by Clinton SuperPAC Priorities USA. It's coming from Clinton surrogates like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, speaking on Facebook and at swing-state college campuses; and from pro-establishment voices in the media, such as The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and Mother Jones executive editor Clara Jeffery.

"On Thursday, Jeffery tweeted the results of a new poll showing high support for third-party candidates among young voters with the comment: 'I have never hated millennials more'....

"Meanwhile, Krugman weighed in today on whether any sane person could vote for Gary Johnson, concluding sure — if they think it makes no difference whether Trump or Clinton gets elected and they agree with every policy position Johnson takes.... In Krugman's column logic, voting for Clinton while opposing much of what she stands for is righteous and normal while voting for Johnson because you support much of what he stands for is absurd unless you also agree with him 100 percent....

"There are many people for whom Clinton's current rhetoric resonates, though. When I was home in Ohio last week, I heard some iteration of it — or its reverse, that voting third-party would tragically throw the election toward Clinton — from all sorts of older relatives and other folks for whom voting either Republican or Democrat is almost always a given....

"But where this shame-based messaging works less well is with the very people that Clinton is courting. Telling people to vote for someone they don't trust or believe in simply to stop someone else they don't believe in from taking power plays right into people's major complaints about Clinton—that she's a sellout for whom power trumps principles; that she'll say anything to get elected; that she's running more on symbolism than substance."

 Read more: http://reason.com/blog/2016/09/19/dear-democrats-no-one-owes-you-votes
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