Electoral politics is a messy business at best. We are seeing too much of the if candidate A loses the nomination will you vote for candidate B in the general kind of divisive nonsense too early in this election season. There is another approach and I suggest it is far more productive.
Why not list the things you want our next president to work toward. Also list the things you would not like them to do. That should make your primary vote clear.
You can revisit your lists after the primary and that should make your vote in the general clear.
What about not voting or voting for a write in or something equally contradictory? If you are going to support our system as it exists you are given few choices. However it does require that you vote and chose among the plutocrats they offer you. I vote even though I know that I am stabilizing a bad system by doing so. I'll tell you why beneath the break.
I have been a radical activist since I came home from my postdoc in Israel in 1965. I have had so many disappointments since then I can not begin to tell you about them.
From my experience organizing, leading, demonstrating, working in electoral politics, and writing I have come to believe that there is no one way to get where we need to go. I also firmly believe that we are rather ineffective. Our ineffectiveness comes from our readiness to participate in factionalism.
It is so easy to be critical. We criticize candidates we criticize protesters we criticize writers and speakers. It is so easy.
Meanwhile the oligarchy is laughing all the way to the bank. They have us and they know it. This is not new. They have managed to keep control since the earliest days of our country and did it elsewhere long before that.
You can spend you time and resources worrying about future supreme court appointments and issues that are your pets. Do you really think this long chain of control by the rich and powerful will be broken by that use of your energy?
There is a poem by R. D. Liang called "Knots" that has always been meaningful to me in this context.
They are playing a game. They are playing at not
playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I
shall break the rules and they will punish me.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.
Elections in this country are theater...and a kind of game. We will spend the next many months playing that game. The results will have consequences. They also will have no effect on most of our largest problems. Actually in a very circular sense I am wrong. They will have an effect on those problems. They will allow or even cause them to get worse. No matter what the outcome is the majority of our problems will be made worse by the outcome of the election if you interpret "outcome" in the broadest sense. That is no matter if candidate A or B or C or... is elected, we will have spend all that time and energy playing the game rather than working on solutions to the problems.
This is a hard message to swallow if you're into elections as your "contribution" to the survival of the species and the ecosphere. If your way of achieving economic and other forms of justice is by electing the right people, you do not like what I am saying.
There is a message out there right now that I am merely echoing with slightly different words. That message is that we can only come to grips with these massive problems we face by engaging all the people in their solution. Rather than pointing fingers at those who control us we must simply take control.
The fact that that message is being put forth in the context of the 2016 Presidential election is next to irrelevant. It has great relevance in that it is so new a way to get it heard. It is an old, old message and for many reasons the time is right for it to be put out in the context of a Presidential election.
There is a bottom line that makes all else of rather small consequence by comparison. Either we succeed in taking control or it is all over. It really does not matter who wins if we fail to do what we must do.
5:40 PM PT: thank you for putting this on the rec list....I hope it gets heard