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To the Editor:
Apparently, a fellow liberal feels compelled to engage in a back and forth and submitted a second letter (“Credit where due, but …,” July 8th) straining to make his point that some Democrats are not worth voting for, just as he did in 2017.
As for his latest letter’s ludicrous assertion that “Clinton was determined to confront Russia militarily” and that a Clinton presidency would “likely have set off World War III, which would have wiped humanity off of this planet,” all I will say is that fringe conspiracy theories circulate on both extremes of the political spectrum.
What I will challenge directly, using simple mathematics, is my critic’s refusal to accept that votes for Jill Stein in 2016 “could have swung any states to Clinton.”
In 2016, Donald Trump won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan (and their combined 49 Electors) by 44,292, 22,748 and 10,704 votes, respectively and Jill Stein received 49,941, 31,072 and 51,463 in those same states. The math doesn’t lie; had Stein voters recognized the very real (and now proven) threat that Donald Trump posed and instead voted for Clinton, she would have been the 45th president of the U.S. with 278 Electoral votes to Trump’s 260.
And all the bad outcomes I listed in my last letter, including the worst Supreme Court in the past 100+ years, would not have happened.
This isn’t speculation or conjecture, it is a fact. For the record, the same was true in 2000 when George Bush beat Al Gore in Florida by a mere 537 votes and Ralph Nader received 97,488 votes in the Sunshine State. As we all know, Florida swung the election to Bush, who named John Roberts Jr. and Samuel Alito Jr. to the court.
I maintain that: 1) in a closely divided country every vote matters, 2) third-party candidates can only serve as “spoilers” and 3) given the current state of the GOP, even the most compromised Democrat is better than any Republican in advancing the cause of liberal policies.
If my critic feels differently, then we should just agree to disagree and call it at that.
Joseph Cannisi
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