I caught myself doing something really stupid today. Whilst pursuing the various blogs I frequent, I got into the usual heated conversations about conservatism, the election, and the typical crap many of us always post about. I was having a conversation about Ted Cruz and blindly suggested casting a vote for McMullan as a conservative alternative. I’ve done this frequently over the past few days because he can’t possibly be as bad as the big 4 progressives running currently. Right? Right?
At the time of the writing of this article, It was reported that Mindy Finn has just been selected as McMullan’s running mate. Apparently McMullan had used a fictitious place holder name for his VP slot to get on the ballot in states where he actually appears. So Mindy Finn is now his official Vice Presidential selection. There is some sort of court thing they need to do to work it all out on the off chance he actually wins anything.
“Great! Who the hell is Mindy Finn?” I asked myself, as I fired up her wiki page and started googling her.
She seems to have decent credentials. She is billed as the founder and current president of Empowered Women, a non-profit working to expand and diversify the conversation on feminism and Women’s equality. She has done political commentary on cable news and worked at Twitter. She seems to be considered in closed DC circles, as a new up and coming political rock star. This bothers me a little actually. On a personal side note I’m also triggered by her blatant misuse of the word Democracy when talking about restoring American greatness in a small quote of hers that I read, but that’s a pet peeve of mine.
So OK. Great. I spend all of 6 minutes vetting somebody I’ve never heard of in my entire life. A person who I’m being pushed to vote for in about a month to be the VP of…
That’s when it dawned on me. I haven’t even vetted this McMullan guy yet! Here we are 1 month from the craziest clusterfu*k of an election in our entire lives and I have NO idea who the person is I am most likely to vote for.
McMullan has just done, with one month left, what he should have done months ago in selecting a VP. What’s worse is, nobody even knew he was running until after the primary for both major parties had already ended. I really haven’t heard more then a mutter from his campaign until the last couple of weeks! People in our Military have already cast some early ballot votes for him and he’s barely just entered the race.
I hate to say it but there is no way I can write this guy in or vote for him on election day. It would violate the very principals that keep me from voting for Trump, Hillary, Johnson, and Stein. I don’t know if this guy is some total lunatic who is playing the very same game everyone else is. He could be telling me what I want to hear and jumping on a prime opportunity to cash in huge on a vacant hole in the electorate. I bet he’s received Hundreds of Thousands If not Millions already in donations. And I bet you many of those people who have donated haven’t vet the guy much past his twitter feed or maybe his website, or a wiki link.
“Well, he’s not Trump!” Right?
So I have to apologize to anyone reading this, that I have previously made the suggestion for them to vote for McMullan. I called him a conservative alternative but in all honesty, I don’t know that to be true at all. He says he is. But then so does Trump! Even Jeb Bush calls him self a principled conservative.
The truth is, there is really not enough time to get to know anyone in less then a month and be certain he’s not just like everyone else. I hope he does well. I hope he is what everyone wants him to be. But I’ve learned that my vote is far to valuable to me anymore to just throw it whatever it sticks too. Because I am responsible for potentially electing the people I vote for. Until we all start taking that very seriously we will continue to have shitty candidates, presidents and oppressive power hungry governments.
I’ll probably be not voting for the first time in my adult life.
