42% of the electorate opted to not vote at all.

Why does Dan Savage care so much about a few thousand Greens who voted Green instead of the hundreds of thousands of Democrats who didn't vote Democrat?

If Democrats think every thing this dinky little third party does is so wrong, why don't Democrats stand up and show us what the right thing to do is? Don't like Sawant shaming you into coughing up $29 million for housing or Jill Stein and her crystals making the recount all about her instead of Hillary Clinton? Get off your ass, then!

Greens only get press in contrast to the big fat nothing that is the Democratic response to to an election that anyone would of course want to see checked and double checked.

9% of Democrats voted for Trump. Exit polls from the New York Times here.

@2 because Greens ostensibly care about environmental policy, increasing the minimum wage, paid sick and family leave, protecting and expanding Medicare/Medicaid/etc., protecting voting rights for all people, etc. They needed to be convinced merely that voting for Hillary Clinton was the right strategy for their policy goals. They're lower hanging fruit than the fools out there who are convinced that Donald Trump is right when he calls climate change a hoax, or agree with him that Muslims should be banned and desperate refugees are one of the biggest threats to the country. They ought to have allied themselves with those Americans (and non-Americans) who are threatened by a Trump presidency, but they chose not to, while portraying themselves as more righteous than those who did.

I've seen Dan spend plenty of time on issues advocacy (obviously with the most emphasis on LGBT rights), which would fall under trying to convince Republican voters and swing voters to join our side.

(Also w/re to the recount, it's almost certainly not going to change the result. Democrats aren't wasting money on false hope. Maybe you think it would be valuable for her to make a show of it, despite not expecting the outcome to change. But know that this would be a show based on misleading people about the likelihood of a favorable outcome.)

Fuck you, Dan. Shut up and get out of the way. You snarky, smug, self-absorbed centrist Hillary shitheels lost this election. You're why Donald Trump won far more than the tiny fraction of the electorate that voted Green.

You know who else shares the Democrats' goals of health care and minimum wage raises and all that groovy goodness? DEMOCRATS. Y'all ought to be asking them why they didn't vote for you.

Aren't you the same know-it-alls who said that asshole "almost certainly" wouldn't make it past the Iowa caucuses? And you thought Hillary "almost certainly" was going to win in November 8. You know it alls have no fucking idea what is going to happen.

You wasted at least $300 million losing to that asshole. And NOW you're going to lecture the Greens on what to spend their fucking money on?

Look you Democrats are obviously busy people. You all got important shit to do. Don't let loopy Jill Stein keep you from your important agenda and whatnot.

Hey @6...by your language it's clear you're not a Democrat. So thanks for the advice, but we'll figure this out on our own. And unless you backed Trump, you likely didn't win either. So on what pedestal are you elevating your theories of political strategy?

@8 How's that going so far?

...and that was directed @7.

And this is why we can't have nice things. Frankly, I am a hillbot and I support fucking Jill stein on this. She has garnered millions of dollars of backing for a reason. Look at the case out of Wisconsin where the judges just slammed the republicans for egregious unconstitutional redictricting. Look at what is happening right now in Nc where that shit hole republican governor is trying to contest the election due to alleged voter fraud. This is AFTER his shitty party was nailed in federal court for disenfranchising African Americans with surgical precision. This is after the federal court in New Jersey fired a warning shot at trump and the GOP over intimidation techniques and a decades old consent injunction. There has been a systematic malicious targeted disenfranchisement of democratic voting people, exacerbated by the 2010 debacle.

If Jill Stein uncovers out and out fraud by the GOP establishment.... well god damn you Greens, high five.

@ 10:

Jill Stein can't tell Columbus from Cincinnati. She isn't going to uncover any fraud by anybody. The only way she might find any fraud is if she looks in her mirror.

Yeah my sister is all in but now I've done a bit of research and there seems an issue of whether the money actually is going to the recount.

What the hell happened to my country. I am no doe eyed polyanna, but what happened to my country.

Okay I am a little embaracha and damn maudlin. Wtf happened to my damn country? I believed in the Stars and Stripes. I thought we were better than this shit.

You realize Jill Stein herself does not actually recount all the ballots, right? She does not head up any audit, nor organize any recount. The state does all that, and they send Jill the bill. She doesn't need to be all that smart.

See, what's sad is that it falls to the likes of the kooky Green candidate to do this shit at all. Hillary just can't. She caaaaaaaan't. Really. Because what would that do to her image? Why, Republicans might say bad things about her! Can't have that. Gotta have a smooth transition at all costs, so history will write nice things about Hillary.

Jill Stein is not a fraud. The money is going to the recount. Here are the FAQ's from the Jill Stein 2016 FB page in regards to the recount:
http://www.jill2016.com/recountfaq

Look it up.

If every single Stein voter had voted for Clinton, she would still have lost the election. She might have taken Wisconsin and Michigan but would still have lost Pennsylvania. EC count would be 280-258.

It does seem strange to blame the Greens for Trump winning, instead of, say, the six million plus Obama voters who stayed home and didn't vote; or the GOP legislatures who killed most of the weekend voting days in minority districts, so people had to stand in line all day just to get inside the polling place; or the media who gave Trump all the free adverts; or the pollsters who were woefully wrong in giving Clinton 85+ percent chance of winning, so people who might have turned out to vote - had they thought it was a close race - hadn't gotten lazy and stayed home; or that vile FBI dude who threw the Abedin-emails-bomb at Clinton; OR THE IDIOTS AND BIGOTS WHO VOTED FOR TRUMP!

How many votes did Gary Johnson get? How many people wrote in names of people not on the ballot?

We ALL fucked up! Stop the blame game and fight to minimize the Trumpian scourge!

Maybe it's all that snow you guys get.
In Australia, on the Sunshine Coast, Qld, our summer is just about to start. Not like we have had a spring. Hot and humid days forever.

@5&6, and the rest. Enough, ok. If you old enough to vote you old enough to think for yourselves. So cut the bull.
Trump showed himself pretty clearly to the whole planet as one mad motherfucker.
Those who didn't vote Clinton because whatever, need to look in the mirror and see who also helped bring this about.
And bickering will get you where. It's good Jill has done this, as I see it. Good on her. This is good news. And continuing to point out to the Electors what clause in the constitution trump is violating.
Americans. You guys are a special breed. You just got to stop infighting, work together with those collective exceptionally intelligent minds of yours, and transform your country. Lots of allies around the world are with you.

This situation is pure American politics at its best (or worst, depending on how you look at it). The fundraising came through the Green Party, so the Dems and their banker/corporate buddies don't have to foot the bill. Jill Stein gets to play the flunky if it fails, HRC can act like she's the princess being rescued. The Greens get something they've never had before, *access* to high-level political maneuvering, as well as gaining allies and benefits if it actually succeeds. And the Dems get to act like they're still a part of the American Political Establishment while it's all those crazy Greens doing the dirty work.

Dan, you have always worked on the assumption that Green voters would have voted for Clinton if they had no other option. Given that Democrats stayed home in disastrous numbers (Trump won with fewer votes than Romney lost with) why don't you blame Democrats WHO STAYED HOME. Because if Stein wasn't in the race, her supporters would have joined them, and then you'd have no visible target.

As for Stein's instigation of the recount, it has nothing to do with the fact that some states swung to Trump than is does with her desire to see the democratic process work properly. If America voted like other functioning democracies, voters would use paper-n'-pencil ballots and votes would ALL be counted by hand. No hacking, no hanging chads. And the process would be uniform in every polling station across the country.

I supported Hillary, by the way. But I'd rather win voters back rather than demonize them. Some of their concerns are legitimate.

I really wish the Democrats would have run someone who wouldn't have done such a good job of getting out the extreme right wing base of the Republican party.

Clinton lost the election because Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin stack the deck - no early voting without specific reason for the first two, greatly reduced early voting for the first.

Yes, restrictive voting laws do stop people from voting, and in this election, it worked.

Is she the Hippiegrifter to Palin's Hillbillygrift?

@20: "who wouldn't have done such a good job of getting out the extreme right wing base of the Republican party"

Agreed, but a Socialist would have also done such a good job getting out the extreme right wing base.

As there are many whose votes count more than others, then perhaps they should be paying more tax seeing as they have more representation.
@21: I do not get your voting system. When we turn 18 yrs old here, we register to vote and that's it. We in the system.
Each state, federal and senate elections, the latter two usually held at the same time, we turn up at our local school, hall, wherever.. line up for a few minutes, our name is on the roll, and we vote. The cities they may have to wait in line longer. We never have to wait for hours though. It's only if we change addresses do we inform them.

The thing is, trump had hours long rallies. What else did he promise? He's already backtracked on the wall, on going after Hillary. His voters are not going to be happy when they finally face trump's monumental betrayal. Hopefully the democrats will get their act together, away from the corporates and towards the working class. Because once they realise what Liars trump and his mob really are, if reached out too, they may then be ready for Bernie or others with similar messages.

Condescending posts like this make me wish I could have written in Sanders a hundred more times to rub it in your smug face a hundred more times why you lost. If the Democrats refuse to learn their lesson and ignore poor people like they always do, I'll be doing it again in 2020.

Dan,

Throughout this election, you (and not just you-Clint supporters in general) have lectured, ranted, and insulted anyone who disagrees with you. You've reserved your most biting attacks for your opponents on the Left, strangely. Your opponents on the Right want to kill us (I'm gay too, btw). Your opponents on the Left supported our rights long before Clinton or the centrist DLC ever did, but you have a special brand of bile you save for the Left and never use on the Right.

Instead of coaxing Bernie-or-Bust voters into the Clinton fold, you either coldly ignored us at best, or consistently demonized us/ Then, you went for Jill Stein's throat.

the irony is, the only thing that stands a chance of reanimating the now-dead Clinton campaign is Jill Stein's recount and Bernie's outreach efforts. We're saving your whiny ass, and yet you can't think of one good thing to say about us.

You ungrateful little shit.

Do you know what the difference between a socialist and a centrist Democrat is? A centrist will give up, like Clinton or Gore. A socialist is never out of the fight. Even now, almost one month after this shitshow of an election was declared over, the socialists are doing all the hard work while you centrist jackoffs whine about how fucked we are. Liberals will pat you on the had and cloyingly condescend you about your "plight", while a socialist gets into the ring and changes the system itself so you won't have a plight any longer. Liberals can only offer you pity and shrugging "what can you do?" dismissals. Socialists offer you a revolution that means you won't need a liberal's pity to console you any longer.

So, if you can'y say anything nice about Jill (an eco-socialist), Bernie (a democratic socialist) or Kshama (a revolutionary socialist), then could you str least get out of our fucking way and let us do the damn work?

https://jillstein.nationbuilder.com/reco…

I wish the stranger would STFU with their silly game of blaming non Hillary voters for hillary not being elected. She is a crummy corporate owned candidate and doesn't represent my interests. I don't care who else is running, I'm not going to vote for a garbage candidate.

I'm betting Jill Stein is hoping to become secretary of the environment should Hillary end up winning. That's why she's doing all the hard work. And if it works, she'll be made into a saint of sorts by all those in the U.S. and abroad who were afraid a Trump presidency.

Bonus: Hillary can then say she wasn't a sore loser, as she herself didn't ask for the recount. It's a win-win for them both.

@ 32,

Stein has nothing to lose here. The money is coming entirely from donors, so not doesn't cost her a thing. The only people bashing her are people who'd never vote for her anyway.

Stein has everything to gain. In 2020, her campaign ads will read: "Democrats just gave up without a fight, just like they did in 2000. Look at President'"Peaceful Transition to Fascism' Obama and Secretary 'I Give Up' Clinton. Wouldn't you rather have someone who will fight to the bitter end for you? " Regardless of how it turns out, the Greens now look courageous. They're the only party willing to fight Trump left on the field.

This isn't about Hillary. Sadly, the Clinton supporters think everything is about Hillary, so for you, yeah, it looks like Stein's got buyer's remorse, or she's gaming for a cabinet post, which just shows you never heard a word the Greens were saying all along.

What it is about is showing America what the difference between a socialist and a liberal is. A liberal is a showman. liberal practices condescending looks in front of the mirror, and loves the sound of their own pitying voice. A liberal needs the poor to stay poor, because liberals get donations by playing the role of the friend of the poor. They make millions of dollars on speaking tours talking about the plight of the poor. So fi the poor stopped being poor, the liberal could;dnt make any more money.

A socialist wants to end poverty itself, so nobody is poor anymore. Socialism is about changing the system itself, not about lining the pockets of the candidate. Liberals will take decades to 'evolve' on social issues, and never fully get around to full equality for anyone, because they need you to be unequal enough to need them as your champion. A socialist fights for your full equality from the very start and doesn't want to keep you in a dependent position.

Jill Stein is a socialist. A socialist is never out of the fight. That's why Jill Stein never stopped fighting Trump. Clinton and Obama just gave up after Election Day, just like Al Gore did.

@ 33 - First, you seem to think I'm American. I'm not. I'm an outside observer.

Second, philosophically, I most closely associate with the economical/historical Marxist viewpoint (i.e. the Capital, not the Manifesto), and I have never seen any sign of anything that even remotely resembles Socialism in the U.S. Stop fooling yourself. What Americans call "extreme left" is what everyone else calls "center". It seems you took up the Socialist cause without actually knowing what it means. Here's a bit of truth: the fact that people say they're Socialists doesn't mean that they are. Do you know where Jill Stein invests her money? She most definitely is not a Socialist.

Third, your enthusiasm for your cause is touching, but you are clearly way too naive to actually understand how politics work. They have very little to do with causes to defend or with actually changing things. They're about power: obtaining it and keeping it. You'll find very few examples to the contrary in the history of the world.

Get off your high horse now, read The Prince (still relevant after all those years) and stop sounding like a 17 year-old intent on sermoning anyone into agreeing with his/her newfound "wisdom".

And to anything else you might have to say (since you already sound like a broken vinyl record), here's my answer: blah blah blah. You just can't be taken seriously.

@16 LavaGirl: You're absolutely right, Lava. Right now, knowing that my vote was for Hillary Clinton, and that my state and county predominantly voted to elect Hillary Clinton, re-elected our incumbent Democratic governor, the state senator and representatives in my district, are among the only comforts I have from this otherwise disastrous election.

Oops!---make that @17 LavaGirl, although I agree, too, with a number of points iseult @16 makes. Just one thing, though, to iseult @16: I voted for Hillary, and am glad I did. How did I fuck up?

@28: "A centrist will give up, like Clinton or Gore. A socialist is never out of the fight."
Socialists aren't generally in the fight to begin with. But yeah, they keep shouting even when things go badly, whereas centrists quietly get to work for the next battle.