Jo Jorgensen the Libertarian Party presidential nominee
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| Jo Jorgensen // photo from the Jorgensen campaign |
It was a tough choice. There were fantastic candidates to choose from. In the four rounds of presidential voting, I voted for Hornberger twice in the first rounds then Jorgensen in the last two rounds. Early on, I thought I would be a full on Hornberger supporter due to his political stances and his ability to communicate libertarian philosophy. However, in the debates leading up to the convention, Jo appeared to be able to articulate the philosophy just as well and has an excellent grasp of the philosophy as well though she seemed to have a bit less fire than Hornberger.
Perhaps the two biggest things that swayed me to her over Hornberger was that her stance of gradualism (and not too gradual to the point of near meaninglessness like Judge Jim Gray's proposals) makes more sense and that she was able to articulate the position of the COVID issue much more effectively than Hornberger, who seemed to retreat to generalities. Jorgensen was able to explain that companies that created test kits domestically were not approved by the FDA so we sold our own stock of testing kits to foreign countries. Hornberger, on the other hand, spoke generally of the free market being better without pointing to specific examples.
The social security issue spoke the most to Hornberger's and Jorgensen's approaches. Hornberger prefers to cut social security immediately, leaving seniors high and dry. Jorgensen proposes to liquidate federal assets purchased with social security money with the "lockbox" lie to pay for the money seniors have been promised and allow people to opt out. I'd rather she say end the program instead of opt out since this implies the social security scheme would continue but in a lesser format.
I never did like Hornberger's social security approach since you can view it as breaking a contract between the government and the recipient. In its current state, it's going to break the contract in disastrous form anyway, and it's not really a valid contract since it was forced on people. But people have and will be harmed by social security and they must be compensated for it. Jorgensen's approach would do this.
In the end, I would have supported any finalist candidate except Kokesh. I love the guy, but his localization platform would resonate with exactly zero people outside of anarchists, and even some anarchists wouldn't be thrilled with it. But I'd take any one of them over Biden or Trump, and it's not even close.
I've got my Jorgensen lawnsigns ordered and I'm ready to go to battle. While social distancing, of course.
