Like many within the “Bernie or Bust” movement, I adhered to the idea of a political revolution with the understanding that if Bernie’s campaign was not successful that a political revolution may at some point require an actual political revolt.

That revolt? Not voting for Hillary Clinton, obviously.

The reasons for doing so are too innumerable and too well known to count. From the stacked deck within the Democratic Party’s infrastructure to the shadiest shade I ever did see in places ranging from the ballot box to the blogosphere, Bernie Sanders’s fighting spirit ran up against the vast, cold Clinton machine and came up short.

All things being equal — and in a pre-Citizens United world like the last Democratic nominating contest — I have no doubt that Bernie would have carried the day; however, things were not equal (disagree? One candidate started the race with hundreds of delegates in her corner before even one vote was cast and the other one didn’t, so don’t kid yourself). Why is it a hard and daunting task to beat someone at their own game in nearly any scenario? Because it’s still their game.

Even before I was able to vote in the Washington State caucus, in March, the first fatal blow was struck to the Sanders campaign during a night when Clinton swept the primary elections in several states. Even my most ardent pro-Sanders friends conceded that after that point, it was likely to be an insurmountable struggle: not hopeless, just not likely.

Many of them, including myself, posted Jill Stein for President memes, banners, and messages and started sporting hashtags like #JillNotHill.

We started talking about the interestingly low national vote percentage threshold that the Green Party needs to earn in November in order to qualify for a lot of built-in systemic advantages afforded to the Democratic and Republican Parties, and how assisting them in doing that will break the two party system — which we rightfully called the biggest priority in the event of a Sanders loss.

A Sanders loss meant then — as it does now — that both parties have agendas underwritten by Wall Street lobbyists, and that at the major-party level, neither the GOP nor the Democrats were going to be true parties of the people after that point. Even heading into the future, the newest crop of PoliSci graduates are going to be vying for gigs in the Clinton Administration or some by-proxy equivalent within the Clinton-led Democratic Party, and when they do, the Democrats’ staffers, committee people, and power brokers from that point forward will have achieved political maturity as acolytes of Hillary Clinton — and her politics and policies.

Indeed, it is hard to imagine a scenario wherein Clinton can magically overturn Citizens United (and she knows it, too), as US Congressional Republicans would certainly block the move, so her pledge to do so was just lip service to the left. Even if the GOP failed to block such a Sisyphean effort, the following step is a ten year ratification process at the state level, currently dominated by the GOP’s state satellite parties.

Obviously, Clinton’s pledge to overturn Citizens United was the same pledge a parent might make to a child that wished for a unicorn for their birthday, which they’d totally give them the very day that unicorns ever birthed themselves into existence.

While Sanders would have faced a similar task in a CU repeal, his campaign ethos of not accepting corporate cash and admonishing SuperPAC involvement would have led by example to a different crop of new administration and party recruits who may have held themselves to that same standard.

And why would a President Hillary Clinton ever want to repeal Citizens United when the system that it created was one that she would have used with horrifying effectiveness to get herself elected in the first place?

“Like many within the “Bernie or Bust” movement, I adhered to the idea of a political revolution with the understanding that if Bernie’s campaign was not successful that a political revolution may at some point require an actual political revolt.”

Yes, I admit, that in the face of all of this, Jill Stein started out as my protest vote: my way of standing by my issues even when the major players abandoned them at Clinton’s decree. The condescending articles and posts from Clinton surrogates and supporters alike cemented my determination to withhold my vote from Hillary in favour of another candidate who shared social democratic beliefs and Bernie’s campaign ethics, and it made me resent the Democratic Party even more.

Stating my intention to vote for the presumptive Green Party nominee illicited some truly wonderful responses (please read that as sarcastically as possible) from friends and peers who stated early on that they were “with her” — “her” of course, meaning Hillary.

The morning of the 10th of June, as Barack Obama and Elizabeth Warren got behind Hillary Clinton, the arrogant and spite-ridden rhetoric of the Hill People had grown in a size and scope that I did not anticipate. They heralded the defeat of Bernie Sanders, not the triumph of Hillary Clinton. They felt no need to reach out to Sanders supporters and give them the same space to cope with the loss that Hillary’s people were afforded in 2008, instead they began sharing terrible memes, including one depicting a bewildered Bernie Sanders asking who “Felicia” was and why he kept getting her texts and calls.

Perhaps they viewed Bernie as a traitor: the one who opposed the Hera of the Democratic pantheon. They are currently relishing in his defeat, and equally so, are making sure that those who have not yet bowed to Clinton’s ascension to the party throne feel as terrible as humanly possible.

Not sure how that strategy is going to convince any of us to vote for Hillary in November; in all of my years in professional politics, the concept of making people less inclined to vote for your candidate — especially in an election wherein it is allegedly imperative that they get every vote they can to “stop Trump” — is not one I have ever heard of before nor would utilize… because it’s horrible politics.

“There is no possibility that Mrs Clinton or her assimilated drones of supporters could ever illicit a surrender from me,” I posted on Facebook this morning. “Perusing my Facebook feed and watching formerly left friends bow down makes me feel sort of like one of the last few remaining progressives left that hasn’t succumbed and been turned into one of the pod people ala “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” … No one ever wrote a book or made a movie about how cool it was to be a pod person. They wrote about those who resisted.”

The past few days have made me discover a whole new respect for Obama’s 2008 supporters: As a Hillary staffer devastated at her primary loss, I resented Obama and his team and his voters to a point, but seeing how Hillary’s people have chosen to comport themselves in victory this time around, it made me see just how classy Obama’s entire effort in 2008 had been in victory and in their interactions with Team Hillary.

“Perhaps they viewed Bernie as a traitor: the one who opposed the Hera of the Democratic pantheon. They are currently relishing in his defeat, and equally so, are making sure that those who have not yet bowed to Clinton’s ascension to the party throne feel as terrible as humanly possible.”

The past few days also held something else for me, located just past the border of the the Bernie/Hillary sphere of “discussion” (if that’s what we’re choosing to call it). Beyond the red/blue paradigm was Jill Stein, my Green Party protest candidate.

I wanted to know more about the woman who I pledged to vote for as a protest vote and so I dug through the internet’s Jill Stein video archive: and to my surprise, I fell in political love.

In a segment with The Young Turks, Jill Stein responded to a question as to whether or not it was sexist for Bernie Sanders to remain in the race with Hillary Clinton; the fallacious logic being that Sanders’ continued presence in the contest was hurting his female opponent (with the last name of Clinton) in the general election with Donald Trump, and therefore, was [somehow, I guess] sexist. The host asked if it was sexist that Jill herself stay in the race — a point he himself said sounded “preposterous”. Jill not only responded appropriately, but she took Hillary Clinton to task on what feminism was actually all about.

“I think it’s an insult to the concept of feminism to say that feminism is [about] ‘the gender you were born with, period’. It’s outrageous to say that it is a question [centering] around what your chromosomes happen to be. Feminism is much more than that. It’s about peace, it’s about justice, it’s about the rights of women both as caretakers and caregivers; and the broader agenda of women needs to be consistent with that, and in Hillary’s case, it’s not. It is an offense to the concept of feminism to say that Hillary Clinton and her advocacy for war, for Wall Street, and for the Wal-Mart economy represents feminism. [It does not], by any means.”

Holy shit.

Jill Stein ran for Governor of Massachusetts as well as President of the United States in past elections. She was arrested at demonstrations standing up for the rights of the marginalized, the “others” of society, the poor, and the planet. She was taken into custody for having the audacity to enter a presidential debate, even though she was a presidential candidate. Her chosen running mate in the 2012 presidential election was Cheri Honkala of Philadelphia, an advocate for the homeless (especially homeless women and children) and low-income families. She travelled around the country voicing her support and lending a hand to the election campaigns of not just Green candidates within her own party, but progressive candidates in communion with her issues, like my City Councilmember, Kshama Sawant, whose political party is Socialist Alternative (I was at the Sawant rally last summer and heard Jill Stein speak about the importance of re-electing Kshama and what it meant for not only the progressive movement, but for the greater movements for social, economic, and climate justice, and for working people everywhere).

Jill Stein didn’t just talk the progressive talk, she walked the walk and put her money where her mouth is.

Another video showed Stein on Democracy Now! (with my favourite journalist, Amy Goodman), having this to say on whether or not Bernie supporters backing her would serve as only a spoiler to Hillary Clinton’s electoral chances:

“We have an electoral system that tells you to vote against what you’re afraid of and not for what you believe,” Stein said. “What we’ve seen over the years is this strategy’s track record: the politics of fear has delivered everything we were afraid of. All of the reasons you were told you had to vote for the ‘lesser evil’ — because you didn’t want the massive Wall Street bailouts, the offshoring of our jobs, the meltdown of the climate, endless war, and attacks on immigrants — all of that we’ve gotten by the droves because [of that strategy]… we’ve allowed ourselves to be silenced. Silence is not what democracy needs. Now, we have an election where even the majority of the supporters of Hillary Clinton don’t actually support Hillary, they just oppose Donald Trump — and the majority of Donald Trump’s supporters don’t support him, they just oppose Hillary — and the majority of Americans are clamouring for an independent candidate from an independent party. [Americans] feel misserved and mistreated by the current body politic, so to further silence our voices is — exactly — the wrong thing to do.”

Again, I say: holy shit.

As I wrote in my article, 2016: A Primary Post-Mortem, and a Comprehensive Voter’s Guide for BernieBros, Socialists, and Sane People, I laid out a few reasons why Stein was at the very least worthy of any Sanders’ supporter’s consideration:

“Jill Stein isn’t going to win, that’s true. You know it, I know it, and she knows it. That’s not the point of voting Green… The Green Party needs to break a certain percentage threshold of the US national popular vote, around 5–6%. Relatively speaking, it’s actually a rather small number of people that they need in order to make that happen. If at most 6% of people that vote in the presidential election in November vote for Jill Stein instead of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, that… means that under US federal election law, the Greens are eligible for the first time ever to receive federal campaign funding and matching funds, as well as automatic ballot access in all 50 states for Green candidates for office at all levels of government… that they’re often blocked from getting, either politically or practically. “Voting Green is arguably the best decision any Bernie supporter that intends to vote in November can make… [You’ll] have the benefit of supporting a party and a candidate that, like Bernie, shuns corporate influence and corporate cash in favour of 100% people-powered political operations. You also break the two party corporate duopoly in one fell swoop and ensure that every future election will have at least one party on the ballot, guaranteed, that is firmly on the side of the people, not Wall Street corporations and their lobbyists.”

All of that remains true, only now, it’s more than just a protest vote: I want to help Jill Stein find as much success in this election as is possible because I want to see her win.

“We have an electoral system that tells you to vote against what you’re afraid of and not for what you believe,” Stein said. “What we’ve seen over the years is this strategy’s track record: the politics of fear has delivered everything we were afraid of.”

I know that — barring a miracle — Jill Stein will not be the 45th President of the United States. I’m not under any illusion that this time next year, President Stein will be addressing the nation on issues like climate change and workers rights from a refreshingly social democratic perspective, having consulted with the world’s leading sociologists and climate scientists, and putting forth plans to address both that leave corporate lobbyists out of the final decision making process (Oh but how I wish).

That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t vote for her anyway. Democrats that may be reading this: do you regret your past votes, perhaps for Gore, or Kerry? Of course you don’t.

Clinton supporters, do you regret your 2008 vote for Hillary, now that she’s the nominee in 2016? I think the answer to that is very obviously “no”.

As such, Bernie supporters, I ask that you give Jill Stein a good and proper look, and ask yourself why you decided to vote for Bernie Sanders in the first place.

As a former Clinton staffer, I was “with her” in the beginning, and remember posting “Good luck Hillary, you’ve got my vote, don’t make me regret it.” She did, later on, make me regret my initial, blind backing of her 2016 campaign, which I did out of loyalty to her and the mistaken impression that I had that she was still the progressive I used to think she was. But that’s not why I switched from her to Bernie Sanders.

I switched to Sanders because he got it.

My former primary care physician and I spoke about the election when I went in for a visit in 2015. “I know I should probably vote for Hillary, and she’s probably going to win,” I recall him saying. “But Bernie is someone I’ve always followed and he’s just right, you know? On campaign finance, on Wall Street, on health care, he’s just right.” I responded that I admitted that I was tempted to switch over to him from Clinton for the same reasons. We agreed: Bernie was absolutely correct in his approach to the issues and Hillary left us wanting.

My friends never believed me when I said I was ready to switch over. They thought that I, Casey Evans, Hillary Clinton’s biggest cheerleader, would never, ever actually vote against one of his longtime political idols. But like my former doctor, I couldn’t deny that Bernie Sanders was right and that Hillary simply wasn’t, on a whole host of issues; I could not resist the chance to put someone into the White House that would enact the changes that I know needed to be enacted — and more importantly, from the right approach and perspective — and that if Bernie lost, the path toward enacting those things (universal, single payer health care, publicly financed elections, the reinstatement of Glass-Stegall, etc) would become very, very difficult to do.

I voted for Bernie because he understood that the battle isn’t against Donald Trump, but the corporate powers that have purchased both the Democratic and Republican parties and their leaders, ensuring that whomever the election victor turned out to be, they’d still be able to exploit people, the environment, resources, and expand these efforts at a terrifying pace at the expense of the middle and working class, and find virtually no resistance to this brave new oligarchical world they planned to build from either one of the major parties in government.

Jill Stein may not be president, that’s true, but that’s not why she gets my vote. She gets my vote because like Bernie, she is right. She is on the side of the people — and voting for one of two pre-approved, big business candidates is not going to further my interests nor the issues I care about. Voting for one or the other under the illusion of “lesser evilism” has not stopped the evil we were trying to prevent from coming to fruition. Voting for Hillary out of fear of Donald Trump’s social platform does not erase the fact that I’d also be voting for Hillary’s economic platform, which is downright horrifying.

I leave you with Jill in her own words:

Jill Stein is absolutely correct: It’s time to reject the lesser evil in favour of the greater good.

We have nothing to lose by trying: so let us try.

Casey Evans is a writer, musician, and activist based in Seattle, WA. Casey reports and offers commentary on politics, culture, and life in the Pacific Northwest.