Here's my process for having chosen who I will vote for.
Point 1: Religion
I am an atheist, and this country is agnostic (as it should be). The country does not and should not favor any religion over any other, and no laws should be based on religious doctrine. My freedom and well-being should be represented in government as much as anyone who is religious. That's how government stays fair in the context of religion.
So when the entire Republican line-up of candidates, except Trump, professes that religion is their guiding light, and that they will overturn things like marriage equality on a religious basis, I already cross out all their names as options. If a government representative is willing to take away the rights of a subset of the citizenry based on their own religious view points, they don't deserve the power they were given. It's appalling to me that people try to rationalize it.
Marriage is a legal relationship recognized by the government and which alters what rights the two people have with respect to each other (primarily in taxation, but also in power of attorney, and ability to make medical decisions for each other). If your religion has a definition of marriage other than the legal one, that's fine, but you can't impose it on United States citizens. Your religion does not supersede law.
I already can't vote for any republican candidate (except for Trump because his insanity is not the religious kind from what I can tell, but there's no way I'll vote for him either... explained later).
Point 2: Climate Change
If you're reading this and you think human influenced climate change isn't a real thing or isn't a problem for us, then you might as well stop reading. You've chosen to take a stance on the wrong side of reality, and a short blurb about it in this document isn't going to change your mind. I will say: please just think about how much crap we've polluted the world with since the industrial revolution. Billions of people all around the world doing bad things to the world all day every day. You don't think that's a problem? Think it through!
Anyway, you can see where I stand on that one, and again, all the republican candidates are on the wrong side of it. It's not surprising. The people feeding them information are the big oil companies paying them to keep the country dependent on fossil fuel. Sure it would be hard to transition away from fossil fuel with our infrastructure, but does that mean we shouldn't? No. So again... zero of the republican candidates are appealing.
Point 3: Filthy Rich 1% and their bad ideas
I'm furious at the "top 1%" that's frequently talked about. I read an article recently that talked about some of the more benevolent filthy rich people donating to charities and trying to fund some things that the government is failing to do. That's great. Hooray. But the biggest problem our economy is facing in my opinion is the greed of the filthy rich... even the ones mentioned in the article.
When a person helps start a company and works their ass off to make it happen, they do deserve to be rewarded. Higher than normal amounts of money. Great. But then when they start hiring more people to have the company grow, these hard workers that started the company make their mistake. They take too much of the profit and do everything in their power to pay their employees as little as possible. I'm not looking for them to give up making a profit or to do well for themselves. But the last time I checked, the average CEO is making 300 to 350 times the income of their workers. Average! Three hundred or more times! Seriously? If the average income in the United States is a little over $30,000 a year, that puts the average CEO at $9,000,000 a year.
I don't want the government to impose limitations. I don't want the government to step in here. What I want is for the selfish pieces of crap paying themselves that much to stop doing that. I want them to understand that the people making that salary possible are the people working for them. I want them to be nice to the people working for them and pay them better. The CEO could keep a $1,000,000 a year salary (which is still huge), and pay 800 employees 10,000 a year more than they're making now. That money would make a huge difference for those people.
ugh... I'm just giving myself a headache thinking about this.
To bring it back to the presidential election, the only candidate even talking about it is Bernie Sanders. And since the super rich aren't going to do what I want them to do (i.e.: be decent human beings), it seems the only recourse is government intervention. I want at least for the government to find a way to keep those greedy pieces of crap from using loop holes in tax code and with money overseas.
Every other candidate is funded by the wealthy organizations that control their voting (except Trump again, who funds himself). So for Step 3, the only option is Bernie.
Point 4: Trump
I just have to address him on his own. Of the republican candidates, Trump is the scariest. As representative of this country, I think he'd incite rage in our foreign relations, and as a businessman, I think he'd make our financial problems worse. Way worse. But then... all the republican candidates and Clinton are in the pockets of big money organizations, but really I'm trying to point out how bad Trump is. He's seemingly proud of his stances that make him a misogynist, bigot, racist, and financial elitist. He flaunts those stances. And somehow he has followers. People support him. This guy is pure insane evil, and somehow he's the front-runner for the republicans.
Never. I will never vote for him.
Point 5: Clinton
Based on all the republican bashing I'm doing, you might think I'm a democrat. But I consider myself libertarian based on the way I understand it. I'm registered independent. So, no I'm not just going to support the democrat candidate. Clinton scares me in her own ways. She's like the republicans being funded by the filthy rich. So I don't think she represents me or really most of the country. Put this with her putting her anti-gun agenda at the front of her campaigning, and you get someone I can't vote for either.
Point 6: Guns
I am a strong believer in our second amendment rights. I will always do what I can to support those rights. Taking those rights away as some people want us to do is offensive and wrong. Flat out wrong. I do think that the NRA has gone too far in some cases with blocking research into how to prevent violence done with guns. We should be researching the problem of violence and what we can do to stop it. But our federal agencies already fail at keeping illegal firearms out of the hands of criminals. The stuff we want to prevent from happening is already illegal. So legal changes do not seem like a solution to me.
So this is the only place where I want to consider republican candidates. They're the only ones I think will protect our freedom in that way. Clinton is definitely appalling in her pursuit of crushing freedom.
Bernie... he's not been rated well with the NRA... so he worries me some, but in hearing what he has to say about it, I think he might just want more reasonable effort put into figuring out how to keep gun violence from occurring as often. That's something I can support. And I suppose the corruption of the government helps me in this case because the gun-lobby is powerful enough to keep misguided representatives from making mistakes like outlawing handguns.
So this is really the weakest point Bernie has against him. But his intention to go after Wall Street, big banks, and the super rich is probably the biggest topic for me.
Conclusion: I'm voting for Bernie Sanders
That's my logic. If you see a huge hole in the logic, leave a comment, and maybe I'll change my mind. But I really hope Bernie wins the primary because if he doesn't, all we're left with are awful options.
