DS: Well, above all I favor building people's understanding that change is going to come from a popular movement, as it almost always has before, not from sitting back and watching electotainment and voting for the best person.
Second, I favor reforming the U.S. system so that we can have fair elections. That means: no gerrymandering, no electoral college, free media for candidates qualifying by signature gathering, no private spending, no bribery, public financing, hand-counted paper ballots at each polling place, no internet or mail voting, fair ballot access, fair debates not run by two parties, shortened election season, election-day holiday, and democratization of parties' nominating systems to end such checks on popular will as super delegates. We won't elect our way to such reforms, but we might compel them through a popular movement that includes some interest in current elections.
The only D or R candidate I can imagine attempting any such reforms or appointing anyone to the Supreme Court who favors them is Sanders. It's funny that the usual Lesser Evilist cries of "Supreme Court!" and "Viability!" actually work against Hillary Clinton even though her crew is making them. Sanders polls better against Trump than Clinton does, but her backers demand that people support her in order to beat Trump.
My concern with Lesser Evilism is usually that the less evil candidate is still more evil than either of the two choices was last time. That wouldn't be the case with Sanders vs. Trump. Sanders is actually better than either Obama or Romney. And Trump is worse than either Obama or Romney. So there would actually be a significant difference. Hillary can't really be less evil than anyone -- she can just put a more liberal gloss on it, bomb people because she cares about them rather than while yelling racist slogans. Now, the dangers of war, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction are all worse each election cycle than the one before, and Sanders is only marginally better than the others when it comes to foreign policy. He wants to protect the environment, but not with the urgency required. He should be willing to shift huge amounts of money from militarism into an all-out effort for green energy that creates full employment.
There are thousands of talented people in the United States who would do that. The only one I know of who is running for president is Jill Stein. I'm expecting to interview her myself, hopefully this week, so watch davidswanson.org for that.
JB: Will do. That's quite a wish list. Readers, can you imagine what a different place this would be with even half of those reforms? Thanks so much for talking with me, David. I always learn so much!
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previous interview with David:
War is So 2014! 1,3,215
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