Libertarians Jorgensen and the Green Hawkins

Are there other candidates besides Trump and Biden?

GRAMAry Johnson and Jill Stein were better known after the 2016 election than before. The Libertarian and Green presidential candidates were blamed by Democratic supporters for the defeat of their candidate Hillary Clinton and for the entry of New York real estate mogul Donald Trump into the White House.

Election results in the battlefield states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan seem to confirm this thesis. The libertarian Johnson received more than 172,000 votes in Michigan and Stein a good 51,000. Trump won the state by less than 11,000 votes. The numbers in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania tell a similar story. Trump’s markup was each less than the number of votes Johnson or Stein received. The conclusion that Clinton would have won if Johnson and Stein had not run, but could be misleading. After all, some voters may have crossed their mark with Republicans or stayed home.

This time too, the Libertarians and the Greens ran their own presidential candidates. Jo Jorgensen of the Libertarians is a 63-year-old psychologist from Illinois. She and her party defend the demand for a narrow state. The United States must become “a great Switzerland,” “armed and neutral,” he said in a video. He wants to bring US troops home and cut development aid for other countries. She is also demanding massive tax cuts, because then the United States would be better off, she is convinced.

Howie Hawkins is Green’s 67-year-old candidate. At the same time he advocates for the Legal Marihuana Now parties; Alternative Socialist, Socialist Party of the United States and Solidarity. Hawkins also wants to end the US Army’s foreign missions, but he also wants to cut the defense budget by 75 percent and use the money saved in this way for a “Green New Deal.”

In business, he would like the opposite of Jorgensen: banks and companies should be in public hands, he demands. He also advocates for reparations to the African American population for slavery. Hawkins understands that he has no chance of winning the election. His main concern is to ensure that the party has access to future elections at the local level.