Gheorghe Endorses

I've long held that a third-party candidate with a legitimate platform of social tolerance and fiscal competence would have a chance at winning national office in this country. I've held that, in full knowledge that the political machines of our major parties make such a thing impossible. But I'm an aggressively optimistic and/or naive motherfucker. And, as Muhammad Ali told us, "impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it."

But, nah, it's impossible.

That won't stop us, though. Quixotic quests and contrarian dipshittery are our stock in trade.

At this point, our political analysis bona fides are well established. We won't belabor it. But seriously, people are waiting anxiously for our endorsement. It'll move markets.

Let's dispense with the obvious right away. There's no chance in this world or the next that this blog would ever support the most dangerously inept and unqualified major party candidate in the history of our republic. The Republican Party, such as it is at this point, has committed malpractice bordering on treason. We're solidly #NeverTrump.

Which leaves us no choice, I guess. A reluctant Clinton endorsement, then.

Unless...is that...it's...that's Gary Johnson's music.

Only twice, in 1980 and 2012, has the Libertarian Party garnered more than 1% of the popular vote in a Presidential election. Despite that daunting math, the party has developed an infrastructure that enables it to get on the ballot in all 50 states, and is a credibly organized political movement. This year, in what is by any measure, the most unusual national political climate in our lifetimes, the party's gone one better in nominating two well-known, generally well-regarded professional politicians as its standard-bearers.

"I'm high, probably." "Cool, I'm mostly drunk!"

As Governor of New Mexico, Gary Johnson gained some measure of notoriety from his support for marijuana legalization. Bill Weld, the former Governor of Massachusetts, was elected as a Republican in Massachusetts, only slightly less unusual than a gold-shitting unicorn. The Johnson/Weld Libertarian ticket is unarguably better qualified to run the country than the GOP slate, and capable of going toe to resume toe with the Democrats.

More importantly, from the perspective of our editorial endorsement committee, Johnson/Weld espouse many of the very same ideas we hold in the first paragraph of this piece as attractive to broad swaths of the American populace. As Johnson told Stephen Colbert last week, he supports, “A woman’s right to choose, marriage equality, legalizing marijuana. Come on—let people make choices in their own lives that only people should be making.”

If that's the party platform, we don't really need to hear anything more. There are certainly elements of libertarianism that strike us as unrealistic, and lacking grounding in acknowledgement of real-world governing requirements. But there's no perfect in this election, and Johnson and Weld temper that historical criticism with actual governing experience. Even as we might be temperamentally inclined to support Mrs. Clinton from a policy perspective, we have a nearly-visceral disdain for the notion of 24 years in 32 of Clinton/Bush oligarchy.

And so for us*, after much debate, the choice is clear: Johnson/Weld '16, and a bong in every pot.

(Note that throughout this post, 'us' should be construed as the specific and unwavering opinion of every member of Team G:TB, all of our family members, and most sentient humans. We asked a lot of people about this issue.)