Thankful for the choosing, regardless of the choices

By Steve Brawner, © 2024 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

The 2024 election season can produce many feelings, including dread, despair and disappointment. What if we tried gratitude?

In the coming months, average Americans will again act as the nation’s board of directors. A billionaire/former president and the vice president of the United States will ask voters to hire one of them as the executive branch’s CEO. Other candidates likewise will ask to hold other offices. 

The winners will serve a set number of years. Then, they will have to come before the voters again if they want to be re-elected.

It is an imperfect system to be sure. Voters decide based on wrong and limited information and often elect the wrong people. The nation is divided, and Congress has become so partisan and dysfunctional that it can’t even debate the nation’s challenges, much less meaningfully address them. Traditions like accepting the voters’ will and the peaceful transition of power are less treasured than they once were.

But the American system has helped produce a standard of living and human freedom that people across the world envy, aspire to, and try to copy or escape to. If we need a wall along the southern border, it’s to channel the flood of people desperate to come here, not lock our own people in. That is not the case in some places. Continue reading →

Trump will win Arkansas anyway, so vote how you want

By Steve Brawner, © 2024 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

I guess one of the Electoral College’s upsides is that if you live in a solidly red state like Arkansas or in a blue state, you don’t have to stress too much about your vote.

The corresponding downside is, neither will the campaigns. 

Arkansas’ six Electoral College votes aren’t in play because they will certainly go to former President Donald Trump. A  September poll by Talk Business & Politics and Hendrix College confirmed what everyone already knew. Trump was leading Vice President Kamala Harris, 55%-40%, while 3% favored other candidates and only 2% were undecided. 

The survey was conducted Sept. 5-6, two months before the election. Trump elicits such strong emotions that it’s unlikely his or Harris’ numbers will move much. If they do, it would probably be in Trump’s favor. No Democrat has polled above 40% in a statewide race in Arkansas since 2014. The Biden-Harris ticket four years ago only received 35%. Maybe she’ll gain a few points from some voters’ “Trump fatigue.” 

The Electoral College combined with the country’s division into red and blue states means we no longer really have national presidential elections. Arkansas being a solidly red state makes it politically irrelevant. Trump will take the state for granted while Harris will write it off. In fact, the entire election will come down to seven states: Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada and Arizona. Continue reading →

Green Party’s Stein: End corporate control, ‘endless war’

By Steve Brawner, © 2024 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Arkansans’ ballots will have four independent presidential candidates who are still in the race. Today, let’s meet the Green Party’s Dr. Jill Stein, the one Democrats don’t want to be there.

They fear Stein, the most liberal candidate on Arkansans’ ballots, will siphon votes from Vice President Kamala Harris. Some people believe her 1.4 million votes in 2016 cost Hillary Clinton the election.

Stein doesn’t see it that way. 

“That’s the nature of democracy,” she told me by phone from her home outside Boston. “I’m sorry. Do we say that Republicans are stealing votes from Democrats? No, they have different agendas and different points of view.”

Indeed, Stein’s agenda is very different than those of Democrats and Republicans, both of which she described as beholden to corporations. Continue reading →

Family losses from alcohol led Wood to Prohibition Party

By Steve Brawner, © 2024 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Why would Michael Wood, 66, a former head of an e-commerce company and married father of two, run for president as the nominee of the anti-alcohol Prohibition Party?

It’s partly because when he was a young man, one cousin drank himself to death at a college fraternity party, while another family member was injured by a drunk driver.

The Prohibition Party has existed since 1869, making it the nation’s oldest third party. It has fielded a presidential candidate in every election since 1872. It is best known historically for supporting a national ban on alcohol sales, a stance it does not take today. 

Wood will be one of five non-major party presidential candidates on the Arkansas ballot, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has dropped out of the race. The others are Chase Oliver with the Libertarian Party, Peter Sonski with the American Solidarity Party, and Jill Stein with the Green Party. Wood’s vice presidential running mate is John Pietrowski. Continue reading →

Sonski running on life, solidarity

By Steve Brawner, © 2024 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Arkansans who don’t want to vote for former President Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris will have four other candidates to choose from, not including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has left the race but will remain on the ballot. Today, let’s meet Peter Sonski with the American Solidarity Party.

The ASP was incorporated in 2016 and largely bases its platform on a Christian worldview and Catholic social teaching, Sonski said. Its website says its presidential candidate received 42,305 votes nationwide in 2020. That included 1,713 in Arkansas, or .14% of the vote statewide.

The party believes in the sanctity of human life and that all public policies should benefit human beings. 

“We start with that foundation, and we are pro-life from womb to tomb, as we like to say,” he told me.  Continue reading →