By now, Victoria Thompson has heard it many times. She’s crazy. She throws her voice away.

Worse, those who hate Donald Trump say she is helping the unscrupulous ex-president win back the White House even though she never voted for him and never will by denying Joe Biden’s re-election to support.

Thompson is unabashed.

“I have no responsibility to vote for the Democratic Party [nominee]” said the 63-year-old retiree, who was a Democrat most of her life. “Their responsibility lies with the citizens. They have to put forward a candidate that we want to vote for.”

People like Thompson, who can’t stand Trump or Biden, are known as “double-haters.” They are all the rage this election. They will most likely make the decision

presidential contest, with most turning out in November to support one of the party’s two major nominees, even if it means holding their noses.

But millions like Thompson will not vote for Trump or Biden under any circumstances. Her choice is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whom she considers the most electable of the alternatives

,

giving him a 30% chance of winning the White House.

“He has the name recognition … and because people are so unhappy with the choices, there is an opportunity,” Thompson said over lunch this week in Roseville, the Sacramento suburb where she worked as a mail carrier for three decades.

Actually, most election handicaps give Kennedy a near 100% chance of losing, but it doesn’t matter. Thompson will support the political scion, even if it means helping Trump defeat Biden.

With a deep laugh, she describes the four years that the Republican has been in power as ‘as a show’.

But she doesn’t see things going any better for the elderly Biden. “I think he’s just as corrupt as Trump,” Thompson said. “I think he’s just as selfish.”

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Things changed for Thompson one night in December 2015 as she sat in bed watching “The Tonight Show.”

Jimmy Fallon’s guest was

independent

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who attempted to wrest the Democratic nomination from Hillary Clinton, the favorite of the party establishment.

Thompson had supported Democrats for president all her life, sparing her a vote for independent Ross Perot in 1992. She was mostly fine with the results. “My 401(k) went crazy” while Clinton’s husband, Bill, was in office, Thompson said with a deep laugh, “so I was happy.”

But disillusionment began to set in under President Obama, who promised all kinds of hope and change, including the creation of a universal health care system that would cover every American. “And then,” Thompson said, “he didn’t give us any of it.”

As Thompson watched Sanders on television late that night, he felt something stir inside him. He talked about income inequality and a “corrupt campaign finance system” and the way it favored special interests and the extremely wealthy at the expense of average workers.

Thompson said she had never heard anything like that from Hillary Clinton.

She became a volunteer for Sanders’ campaign, working long hours manning phone banks in the Sacramento area. She won election as California’s delegate to the Democratic National Convention, arriving in Philadelphia with a brightly decorated banner she had made. “President Bernie

Sanders,” it declared boldly among the flowers and vines.

She raised the banner in protest against Clinton supporters, including representatives of the Republicans. Nancy Pelosi and Barbara Lee appeared at a raucous delegation breakfast. She shouted along with those who ridiculed Pelosi and others with cries of “Election Fraud!”

Thompson’s political views are an amalgamation of far-left beliefs and conspiratorial beliefs, which she explained at a pizzeria in Old Town Roseville.

She is certain that Sanders would have defeated Clinton in the 2016 California primaries if corrupt party officials had not intervened. In fact, Thompson is convinced that the entire nomination battle was rigged in Clinton’s favor and that Sanders only conceded because he and his wife Jane were threatened.

(When Trump reiterated that the election was in Clinton’s favor and called for an investigation, Sanders told him to back off.)

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The senator gave a conciliatory speech the night Clinton was nominated and appeared before the California delegation, calling on Democrats to rally behind her. But Thompson remained unmoved.

“The way they cheated… there was no way she was going to ‘just turn around’ and vote for Clinton, Thompson said. Instead, she cast her vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.”

Biden’s 2020 nomination was the result of further Democratic chicanery, Thompson insists. She said, among other things, that the party had sent “as many people as possible” to more than 20 presidential candidates “to spread the vote” and deny Sanders the nomination again.

(However, that vastly overestimates the power of the party and vastly underestimates the power of individual ambitions.

)

Thompson voted for the Green Party nominee again in 2020, although she does not remember his name. It was Howie Hawkins.

Thompson’s claims may be far-fetched, but she speaks for many when she laments the choice the country must make in November.

“I’m shocked that Trump can even run for office at this point,” she said of the all-but-certain Republican Party nominee, a view shared by many Democrats. “I mean, he’s got all these legal problems… so how is it even possible? It shows how broken the system is.”

As for Biden, she, like many Republicans, is convinced that he

is well past its sell-by date and lacks the mental capacity to be president.

Moreover, tapping a turquoise fingernail for emphasis, she said, “Grocery prices are higher than ever before. Gasoline is high. People can barely survive month after month.’

Some may think Thompson is crazy for believing in the things she does. Or saying it’s foolish to vote for Kennedy or some other candidate who has no chance of winning, instead of settling for the least bad alternative and trying to prevent something worse.

But none of that bothers her.

At least when she lays her head on her pillow at night, she sleeps with a clear conscience, Thompson admitted.