This will be similar to yesterday’s diary talking about Jill Stein, here.
Today, we will go on a journey. We will forget technicalities. We will forget, for a moment, that Gary Johnson has no path to the Presidency (the only state he might actually win appears to be Utah, and the chances of that are slim at best), that there is no conceivable method he can do anything but steal votes from Secretary Clinton and hand the election to Donald J. Trump.
But he’ll mostly take Trump supporters’ votes!
Well, yes, but please remember how we elect our president. If no candidate gets to 270, the House decides, and Trump wins. But this doesn’t matter. For the purposes of this diary, we’re going to ignore this fact. We’re going to pretend he can win. We can call it a universe where it’s instant runoff voting, where it’s approval voting. It doesn’t matter. Gary Johnson should not be your first-choice candidate.
My first choice candidate, even in a head-to-head matchup with Johnson, remains, Hillary Clinton.
Now, let’s be clear here. Johnson is not a racist. By all accounts, he respects women. He is actually qualified to be President, having held high public office as the Governor of New Mexico. Because of this, he is miles better than Donald J. Trump.
Here’s a link to Johnson’s platform. I will be delving into the links on that page, quoting from them, and explaining how blatantly insane these policies are and why you should not vote for Gary Johnson, on his own merits.
Let’s dive right in.
The very first policy on his page is entitled “Wasteful Spending”. It’s as silly as it sounds.
Governor Johnson has pledged that his first major act as President will be to submit to Congress a truly balanced budget. No gimmicks, no imaginary cuts in the distant future. Real reductions to bring spending in line with revenues, without tax increases. No line in the budget will be immune from scrutiny and reduction. And he pledges to veto any legislation that will result in deficit spending, forcing Congress to override his veto in order to spend money we don’t have.
How exactly are you going to submit a balanced budget without tax increases? To be fair, in the bit about "taxes” he mentions closing corporate tax loopholes — but in the same breath he talks about cutting business taxes, so I don’t think any revenue is going to get increased there. So what he means is that he’s going to make draconian cuts to every aspect of our government. We can afford to make some cuts to our military, but probably not as much as it would take to balance the budget, solely on that. Cutting anywhere else, of course, is taking valuable services away from the people. This is probably what he actually means. And of course, the economy needs deficit spending when it is crashing. Actually enacting his plan would mean if the economy crashes, he will do nothing meaningful about it.
On “Taxes”:
[T]he replacement of all income and payroll taxes with a single consumption tax that determines your tax burden by how much you spend, not how much you earn. Such a tax would be structured to ensure that no one’s tax burden for the purchase of basic family necessities would be increased. To the contrary, costs of necessities would likely decrease with the elimination of taxes already included in the price of virtually everything we buy.
Even if the last sentence is true, a regressive tax is still a regressive tax. Poor people spend more. Rich people hoard more. This is a fact. Granted, some of it is on ‘necessities’ but who is deciding these necessities? You, Governor? Sounds awfully hypocritically “Big Government” to me. Plus, taxes don’t have as much impact on prices as you might think. To a point, taxes affect supply curves, but prices require demand and supply. If people will pay the existing price, the price is unlikely to drop substantially, especially for products that are more difficult to enter the market into.
On “Jobs”:
Let’s get rid of the unnecessary laws and taxes that syphon the resources businesses use to create the jobs we need.
Details? What laws do you plan to get rid of? What regulations will be gone? Some are probably worth getting rid of. Some are critical. Care to elaborate?
On “Civil Liberties”:
Whether it’s a Republican who wants the government to tell you who to love, or a Democrat who wants the government to look through your cell phone, the threat to our civil liberties needs to be stopped by a renewed appreciation for what it means to be free.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
No, seriously…
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Democrats want “the government to look through your cell phone”? This is news to me, and news to most of us here on Daily Kos, I think. I would suspect that most of us oppose data snooping, especially mass metadata collection. There are policies enacted by certain individuals in the Democratic Party that seem to support such things, but I do not believe this is the statement of the Party as a whole. (And of course, the Patriot Act originally had mass bipartisan support brought on by the hysteria in the wake of 9/11, and since then has been controversial on both sides of the aisle.) Overall a poor attempt at false equivalence.
His vice presidential running mate, Governor Bill Weld, was not only an early proponent of civil rights for gays and lesbians, he actually appointed the judge who wrote the opinion that established marriage equality as a matter of constitutional right.
So Governor Bill Weld, the Governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997, appointed Justice Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court in 1987? Is there something I'm missing here, or is the campaign just lying? Okay, there was something I was missing. This is apparently actually referring to putting Margaret Marshall on the Massachusetts Supreme Court. This works.
On “Foreign Policy and National Defense”:
As President, Gary Johnson will move quickly and decisively to cut off the funding on which finance violent extremist armies depend.
How are you going to accomplish this, exactly? You will move quickly and decisively… by doing what? This is important. As it is, you’re just saying words.
On “Immigration”:
Governors Johnson and Weld believe that, instead of appealing to emotions and demonizing immigrants, we should focus on creating a more efficient system of providing work visas, conducting background checks, and incentivizing non-citizens to pay their taxes, obtain proof of employment, and otherwise assimilate with our diverse society.
What does this mean, exactly? Is this a path to legal status? A path to citizenship? Is this referring to the 11 million undocumented immigrants currently living in the US right now, or just those who are trying to enter now? Details. I need details. I need to understand what you are actually going to do.
On “Criminal Justice Reform”:
Gary Johnson and Bill Weld are committed to meaningful criminal justice reform.
To be fair, earlier on that page there are implications for two actual policies: legalizing marijuana, and removing mandatory minimum sentencing laws. That’s a start, but it’s not really “meaningful criminal justice reform” by itself. Details, please! For comparison, here’s Hillary Clinton’s plan on criminal justice reform.
On “Environment”:
Is the climate changing? Probably so.
Is man contributing to that change? Probably so.
But the critical question is whether the politicians’ efforts to regulate, tax and manipulate the private sector are cost-effective – or effective at all. The debate should be about how we can protect our resources and environment for future generations. Governors Johnson and Weld strongly believe that the federal government should prevent future harm by focusing on regulations that protect us from real harm, rather than needlessly costing American jobs and freedom in order to pursue a political agenda.
Half credit for not denying climate science. But… what’s your actual plan on climate? Reducing regulation and just hoping that technology develops in such a way that we can resist or mitigate it? That’s not a real plan. Under your administration, our climate situation is going to get worse.
On “Education”:
Knowing full well that the establishment would resist calls for change, he nevertheless advocated a universally available program for school choice. Competition, he believes, will make our public and private educational institutions better.
What this means is that he supports the ability of charter schools to leech off our school system. Granted that some do great work, but overall they make our education system works. If you have 18 minutes, John Oliver dismantles charter schools. If you don’t, in short: They often provide poorer education, simply teaching to the test to get as much money as possible. They also steer the most challenging students to work with away from their schools, leaving them in the public school system and overburdening them by asking them to handle the most challenging students for the least amount of funds. And that’s not even getting into what happens when a school can’t stay afloat. (Really, watch John Oliver, especially for that point.)
Most importantly, Governor Johnson believes that state and local governments should have more control over education policy. Decisions that affect our children should be made closer to home, not by bureaucrats and politicians in Washington, D.C. That is why he believes we should eliminate the federal Department of Education.
You have no idea what the Department of Education actually does, do you? In fact, states and local governments have quite a bit of control over educational policy, the DOE largely just makes sure that things remain sane. They also do things like run the Pell Grant program, helping poor students have access to higher education. I could go on. But this is just asinine.
Common Core and other attempts to impose national standards and requirements on local schools are costly, overly bureaucratic, and actually compromise our ability to provide our children with a good education.
Common Core is not a national standard. It is a standard that many states chose to adopt. The fact that some states have rejected Common Core indicates that it is not even slightly party of federal policy, because states can’t just reject federal requirements. State government is really not much different from federal government, as far as bureaucracy and cost of requirements. And requirements are good things, because some states would likely make their education even worse than it already is if they could get away with it.
That’s just his issues page. I could also talk about how stupid this tweet is — taxation is necessary for a functioning society, and is the price we pay to live in society, not “theft”. Similar statements have been dropped throughout the campaign, both by Johnson and Weld.
As I mentioned at the top, Johnson meets the basic qualifications. He’s held high public office. As such, he is more qualified than Jill Stein or Donald Trump. (Of course, there’s still a wide gap between “meets the basic qualifications” and “arguably the most qualified candidate in recent history”.) Similar to Jill Stein, however, his policies have too many points that are just insane. Even if you dislike Hillary, even if you think we need to somehow break out of the two-party system… I can’t see Gary Johnson being your candidate. I don’t think he has a solid understanding of how to actually accomplish most of his plans, and his ideas on spending are ridiculous on its face.
So even if Gary Johnson had a path to the Presidency, and could be a legitimate candidate, his positions and plans just don’t add up. Yes, he’s better than Donald Trump, but so is a moldy potato. My choice for President of the United States must remain Hillary Clinton.