Steve Graham, Betty Capehart and Richard Paulis would have us believe we would “serve the greater good” were we to vote for Jill Stein (“Make your vote count: Choose the greater good, not the lesser evil,” Sept.21). I supported Bernie Sanders, and I consider myself, like them, an activist for peace and justice. Yet, I cannot understand how it “serves the greater good” to vote for a candidate as unqualified and incompetent to perform the duties of president as Stein is, or exactly what “message” it would send, especially when the authors admit that Stein has no chance to win.

But Stein is on the ballot, so the Washington Post editorial board invited her in to talk. Read for yourself the unedited transcript of this interview, right here: http://tinyurl.com/guzo3vh.

Read it through, and it will be clear to any unbiased reader that she has no clue how the federal government works and is no more qualified to be president than I am. She is just a glorified platform committee. Her party does not deserve to get 5 percent, or even 1 percent. There is only one qualified candidate on the ballot, and her name is Hillary Clinton. She, and only she, stands between us and the odious, deplorable Donald Trump and the descent into hell for our nation that he represents.

A vote for Clinton, and a Clinton victory, will not necessarily get us world peace, clean air or water, racial and economic justice or anything else. That’s up to us, and would be up to us no matter who the president was.

But a vote for Clinton will send one overriding, thoroughgoing message that a vote for Stein could never, ever send. If you agree with the Sept. 21 commentary in The Beachcomber, this is one message you want to send.

In every city or town in the USA, in every workplace, every school, every online comment thread, we find bullies. They might be your boss, a coworker, a neighbor, some jerk on the highway, some kid in your classroom in the “cool” clique, or worst of all, a family member. They have to be the top dog, the “alpha male” or “queen bee.” They have to be first. They have to dominate, and they have to show you, every chance they get, that they dominate you. Authority, and authoritarianism, validate their need to dominate.

If you’re non-white, female, an immigrant, or LGBT, if you have health problems or are disabled, or if you’re just poor and can’t get ahead, you’re just dirt to them. Why else, even on Vashon, would we need anti-bullying campaigns and the DoVE project? Why would police officers, sworn to protect the public, shoot black people at the slightest pretext, and imagine that it was justified?

These are the Trump supporters, make no mistake. Everything Trump says and does is a message to them that if he is elected, they will rule. Some might think these are trivial concerns, compared to the need for single-payer health care, or dealing with climate change. I assure you, these are not trivial concerns. They are part of our daily lives, far more so, and at a deeper, more personal level, with more profound, life-changing effects, than anything the president, or any member of Congress, might do on any given day in Washington D.C.

They go right to the heart of the physical, mental and emotional well-being of our communities, and to our desire, and our very real need, for a more just society. Look at Clinton’s new “Mirrors” ad, and tell me this isn’t a vital, meaningful issue.

Every bit as much as we need a political and economic revolution in this country, we need a social, societal and interpersonal revolution. But to get it, first we have to deal the bully mentality, and the bully world view, the long overdue defeat that will cripple and demoralize it, and send it into a tailspin.

I submit that a Clinton victory, by the biggest margin we can muster, accelerates that process, and that a vote for Stein retards it. They have spent the last 25 years trying to bring Clinton down, and we should all help her bring them down instead. We can work on all the other stuff after the election. All of us should have been working on it all along anyway.

— Ivan Weiss, a 40-year Vashon resident, is the former two-term chairman of the 34th District Democrats. He caucused and campaigned for Bernie Sanders.