Gary Johnson Courts Bernie Supporters and Reaps Rewards

Gary Johnson

Johnson Wants the Never Hillary Vote

By: Elias J. Atienza

Governor Gary Johnson, the Libertarian presidential candidate, has been courting Bernie Sanders supporters disillusioned with the Democratic Party. Ever since the senator endorsed Hillary Clinton, his supporters have been searching for new homes, many coming to support Johnson, the Green Party’s Jill Stein, or even Donald Trump.

A new poll from the Washington Post and ABC shows that 10% of Sanders supporters would back Johnson, 11% would back Stein, and 9% would back Trump. One would expect Stein to garner much of Bernie’s support, as the two are ideologically similar. However, the Green Party is facing ballot restrictions and won’t be on the ballot in all fifty states.

The Libertarian Party will.

In addition to this, 13% of non-Trump Republicans are supporting Gary Johnson, as opposed to 4% for Stein. It remains to be seen on how many votes third party candidates will get, but Johnson is currently polling at 7.2% in a four-way match-up between him, Trump, Clinton, and Stein. Johnson is polling at 8.6% when it is just him, Trump, and Clinton.

In order to make the presidential debates, a candidate must average 15% in polls selected by the Presidential Debates Commission. In order to cover the distance, Johnson is directly attempting to court Sanders supporters.

Johnson wrote an op-ed on Medium where he went after the unfairness of the Democratic Party’s nomination process.

“From a built-in cushion of immovable, unelected “Super Delegates” to debates scheduled when no one was watching to the now clearly-documented collusion between the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, the system was rigged to squash any rebellion against the Democratic Establishment.”

Johnson called Bernie Sanders a “disrupter” and asserted that he “couldn’t be bought…[or] rented.” Johnson lauded Sanders as a voice for millennials.

“That couldn’t be tolerated by the political machine that sees Hillary Clinton as the ticket to continuing the tax breaks, subsidies, and deals that lie at the heart of the relationship between corporate America and both of the two so-called “major” parties. As for the Democratic National Committee, is it any shock that the party’s leadership has been working hand-in-hand with the Clintons throughout the nomination process?”

The former governor makes it clear he has policy disagreements with Sanders on matters such as economics. However, he concludes that when it comes to “civil liberties, cronyism, mass surveillance, and ill-advised military interventions, Sen. Sanders and I are on the same page.”

“Senator Sanders has tapped into something very real in America — a substantial slice of the electorate who think some spoiling and disrupting is long overdue,” Johnson writes. “The independents, Millennials and disenfranchised who make up that movement cannot be ignored, no matter how much the cronies want them to go away.”

Can Johnson tap into enough of Sanders base to make a difference? Will people who once supported democratic socialism actually pull the lever for a man who advocates economic freedom? Let us know what you think.

 

 

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