Panicking after Hillary Clinton’s large drop in millennial support this month, Democrats are increasing their attacks against Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, the latest of which came from President Obama yesterday.
“If you don’t vote, that’s a vote for Trump,” Obama said on the Steve Harvey Morning Show. “If you vote for a third-party candidate who’s got no chance to win, that’s a vote for Trump.”
In addition, liberal groups, such as NextGen Climate and ShareBlue, are circulating embarrassing videos of Johnson and pouring millions of dollars into anti-Johnson ads, worried that the third-party candidate is drawing too many young voters away from Clinton.
“Democrats still vividly remember the 2000 election and blame Ralph Nader for costing Al Gore the presidency in the closest election in history,” Jonathan Easley and Ben Kamisar reported for The Hill. “They’re worried history could repeat itself in 2016, as third-party candidates are attracting more interest than they have in decades.”
The Clinton campaign lagged behind Bernie Sanders throughout the Democratic primary and is hoping that the runner-up’s endorsement will help close the millennial gap. However, young voters who were passionate about Sanders’ “political outsider” campaign seem to be taking more interest in Johnson and the Green Party’s Jill Stein than they are in the former Secretary of State.
“I think there’s a great deal of dissatisfaction among … young people, in particular with status quo establishment politics, and the two third-party candidates are coming across as not being part of the establishment,” Sanders himself admitted on MSNBC on Monday.
The fact that Clinton’s allies are pouring time and money into discrediting Johnson is a sign that they view him as a viable threat — and they should because millennials are the largest voting age group, and they dislike both major party candidates.
Although he hasn’t reached the 15 percent debate threshold nationally, Johnson is polling at 15 percent or higher in several individual states. His support among young voters is even breaking 20 percent in some states, particularly in a few battleground states like Colorado and Virginia.
In response, Clinton’s running mate has even resorted to lying about Johnson’s platform, implying that he would push us towards more war by saying that the war in Iraq never would have happened if Nader hadn’t cost Gore the presidency.
“Casting a vote, a protest vote, for a third-party candidate that’s going to lose may well affect the outcome,” Kaine warned. “It may well lead to a consequence that is deeply, deeply troubling. That’s not a speculation — we’ve seen it in our country’s history.”
The notion that Libertarians are pro-war is the exact opposite of the noninterventionist foreign policy Johnson has been proposing. This blatant misleading comes in addition to claims that Johnson is a climate change denier — despite his repeatedly saying that global warming is man-caused — and other clumsy attacks on his stances to make him appear less attractive to millennials.
While he’s pulling votes from both Trump and Clinton, the Libertarian nominee is actually taking more votes away from Clinton, which is why her advocates feel threatened. If the left’s efforts to discredit Johnson are ultimately unsuccessful, Clinton’s chances of winning key swing states and, more importantly the White House, are at risk.
