THROWING AWAY YOUR VOTE? Consider using it instead!

I called in to The Majority Report because the host Sam Seder had the same view as Diane Ravitch — that we MUST vote for Hillary because Trump would be a nightmare. I took issue with this, because I think it’s unstrategic.

If teachers want to fight privatization, charter schools and bad corporate policies, how do we best get there? Cheerlead for Hillary and hope she throws us a bone out of the kindness of her heart. No, the only thing “transactional” politicians respect is hardball, so we must make Hillary earn every teacher vote by tying them to action.

Professional campaign staff will admit they never waste time with anyone already supporting. The voters they are concerned about are the undecided, feverishly studying polling data to locate and court them.

Then we see things happen out on the campaign trail like this week — Hillary is booed for praising charters — within hours it’s in eight articles, all issues-based “bad press”. If you compare Hillary’s language on testing today to years past, you’ll see she changed, but not because of her education allies, because of the parents who protested by opting out.

A strategic voter mulling a “lesser evil” in this age of technology can very clearly send a message back to the campaign.

Education is only one issue affected by the biggest issue of our time, money-in-politics. All our problems stem from that decisive weapon of class war. Nothing changes until campaign finance is fixed. Do we act now or try again in four years?

Act now — you can call a radio show, sign a petition, tell a pollster or talk directly to the campaign (if you are undecided, they’ll find you — I’ve been called multiple times). You can make your vote contingent on something, exercise democracy.

Hillary can get my vote by rejecting corporate/PAC money because this changes the nature of our elections. We know the small-donor model works (within the Democratic Party too) because Bernie shattered the record for donations by more than double.

Sam Seder concedes this point, although he ultimately surmises Hillary is a corporate creature who can never change her ways and would never leave those Wall Street millions on the table.

But not even to win the White House? If it was put to her as an either/or, it could work. I think Sam’s cohost was intimating that Hillary didn’t have faith in grassroots, limited by her own untrustworthy image.

I hold out hope that Hillary will yet change, I know Bernie said this to her over and over, withholding his endorsement until she did something big.

But it will take many more people, perhaps millions or tens of millions pounding the message home because Hillary’s already in mutually beneficial arrangements with the billionaire class and corporate establishment. She wants to keep unpopular federal testing, charter schools and Common Core. So do her big donors.

We know that Center for American Progress, her de facto campaign apparatus employs the “revolving door” to recycle government officials into rewarding private sector consulting and astroturfing positions, but Hillary herself has vowed to end the revolving door, opening her to charges of hypocrisy should voters discover how her campaign machine actually operates.

We are at a pivotal moment now, different from previous elections because this year we actually discussed the cash orgies (thanks, George Clooney) and influence-peddling as a major campaign issue. The billionaire class controls our daily lives, from the energy we use to the way our kids are taught — elections test us every four years to see if we know we can take control.

So we need some kind of national registry, like a web page or petition entitled “I’M NOT THERE YET” and it shows in concrete, aggregate numbers (not just a representative sampling) how many votes Hillary can get by changing the way she funds her campaign. Not just in the DNC platform, but action now. The ultimate Sophie’s Choice.

Hillary is keenly aware of the difference and ironically, race-baiting Donald Trump will be staking out the high ground on this issue. Yes, a self-funding billionaire will be winning over undecided voters by highlighting the Clinton’s deep Wall Street ties and long history of taking money from banks, lobbies and foreign entities.

STRENGTH IN NUMBERS: Progressives, independents and the young could band together to draw a line in the sand asking who is the decider in an election, a corporate advisor like John Podesta or the 2016 voter. It’s a game of chicken, but demographics make obvious that a Bernie type could beat her in 2020. She could avoid that right now by doing the right thing, the moral thing, the democratic thing — and earning our votes.