Former Massachusetts Governor and Libertarian Vice Presidential candidate William Weld has now made it clear that for the rest of the campaign his focus will be attacking Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump. This has come amid reports which had claimed he was thinking of dropping off the ticket because he didn’t want to hurt Democratic Presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

The whole story of the Libertarian ticket this year is fascinating.

Many thought it’d mostly, if not overwhelmingly, hurt Trump. But Clinton has not been doing as well with millennials as expected, particularly those who had been supporters of unsuccessful Democratic Presidential nomination candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Sanders had been criticized by some Democrats during the campaign of making the work easier for Trump and by branding Clinton part of the corrupt establishment and suggesting the Democratic primaries were rigged hurting the prospect of party unity later.

And, it turns out, a chunk of younger voters would rather vote against Clinton (due to her campaign against Sanders and the efficacy of his assertions about her and the Democratic Party) and not for Trump — so they may vote third party.

Additionally, the man at the top of the Libertarian ticket has put his foot in his mouth several times, providing great material for cartoonists, and comedians (and probably generating shoe sales for the number of times his shoe has gotten drenched stuck in his mouth).

Clearly, Weld does not want to hurt Clinton and — like many thoughtful Americans, including a chunk of GOPers — feels a Trump candidacy would be disastrous for the United States. The result?

The Libertarian vice presidential candidate, William F. Weld, said Tuesday that he plans to focus exclusively on blasting Donald Trump over the next five weeks, a strategic pivot aimed at denying Trump the White House and giving himself a key role in helping to rebuild the GOP.

Weld’s comments in a Globe interview mark a major shift in his mission since he pledged at the Libertarian convention in May that he would remain a Libertarian for life and would do all he could to help elect his running mate, Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico.

But things have changed. Johnson has committed several high-profile gaffes in recent weeks that revealed apparent weak spots in his foreign-policy knowledge. Meanwhile, Trump had seemed to be surging back into contention after he fell well behind in the polls in early August.

While Weld insisted he still supports Johnson, he said he is now interested primarily in blocking Trump from winning the presidency and then potentially working with longtime Republican leaders such as Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour to create a new path for the party after the election.

“Maybe somebody is going to come up with a new playbook, and I don’t know who it’s going to be, but it would be fun to participate,” Weld said in a telephone interview from Atlanta, where he was holding a fund-raiser and rally and planned to watch and tweet about Tuesday night’s vice-presidential debate featuring his major-party rivals, Democrat Tim Kaine and Republican Mike Pence.

Weld, a former Republican governor of Massachusetts, said he is focusing on Trump because, while he disagrees with Hillary Clinton on fiscal and military issues, Trump’s agenda is so objectionable it’s “in a class by itself.”

“I think Mr. Trump’s proposals in the foreign policy area, including nuclear proliferation, tariffs, and free trade, would be so hurtful, domestically and in the world, that he has my full attention,” Weld said.

Weld insists that he is in no way, shape or form ditching Johnson. However, it’s now seems clear that when Weld decided to run it was to offer an alternative to the MANY GOPers who before and immediately after the convention were grief stricken, suggesting there was nowhere to go.

But then something happened: much of the GOP (talk radio types who seemed anti Trump, the Republican establishment, even people whose careers are at odds with Trumps comments on Syrian and Mexican immigrants, comments about women, and his foreign policy) decided to come together, either out of hatred of Clinton or (the biggest chunk) because of their thirst for partisan power.

The way Trump has gotten so many once-considered-to-be-thoughtful Republicans to fall in line, and gain followers who would jettison their previous values on a dime if he asked them to, explains how authoritarian regimes come to power.

And so we have former Gov. Johnson — an East Coast style, more moderate Republican — trying to ensure that his focus is on Trump and not on Clinton.

This is all amid the question: will millennials make the Johnson-Weld ticket the 2016 version of the 2000 Ralph Nader ticket, which helped propel George W. Bush to the White House?

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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