I’ve always hated this idea that your vote is “sacred” and that you should “vote your conscience.”
Nonsense. It’s only ever been transactional and strategic. Nobody cares about your lofty ideals; only 1 of 2 candidates will be elected, and abstaining is also making a choice. Sitting out an election is your right—but there’s nothing valorous about not being able to make up your mind in a simple binary.
In most elections the only options are bad and worse. When worse is much worse, writing in your ideal candidate is especially foolish. Nobody will get your point and you make it more likely that worse gets elected.
Public life would be better if fewer people thought about politics and elections as battles between good and evil and more people thought in terms of making incremental improvements by choosing less-bad alternatives. This is unlikely to happen unless the stakes are lowered by reducing the size and power of government.
Very true. As Ackman said, ‘Unlike a marriage or a business partnership where there are effectively unlimited alternatives, in this election, we have only two viable choices.’
And this is true of most American elections.
David beat me to the Ackman’s quote.
If you want to exercise the full-range of your values in politics then get involved either early in the electoral process when the nominees are selected, say by getting a favored candidate int eh race to begin with, or by developing a pressure/lobbying group.
By the time, you get to the actual election, in the way our winner-take-all politics elections happen, it’s either one or the other. (Note in proportional electoral systems where you have many more and therefore smaller parties, the bargaining takes place after the election.)
That’s why I find the sincere Never Trumpers disheartening (as opposed to grifters like Bill Kristol). I can understand their reasons for not liking Trump, but liking is different than supporting. You take your shot with someone different in the primary and then you make the least-worse alternative.
However I think what they do is think strategically in that a Trump loss ultimately benefits them because it discredits his populism and allows a return of their own favorite brand of conservatism. See The National Review.
To make things clear: I don’t much care for Trump. Dislike him personally. But he has done good work.
The Harris group, however, is totally unacceptable. It’s strange how much this election is like 2016, ie Trump vs “It’s MY TURN.”
The Democrats seem to have a gift for nominating unlikable persons with no actual accomplishments.
Elections in the US are always a binary choice, and you have to choose who you dislike more.
Seems to me voting for the least-bad choice is voting your conscience. After all, offered two bad choices picking the worse of the two – or simply not deciding seems, well, unconscionable.
I live in California. My vote is purely symbolic no matter who I vote for, and in good conscience I can’t vote for any candidate on the ballot.
I do, however, have some ballot initiatives to vote against.
Public life would be better if fewer people thought about politics and elections as battles between good and evil and more people thought in terms of making incremental improvements by choosing less-bad alternatives.
Least-bad has long been my MO for politics. I find it difficult to think of yellow dog Democrat relatives as evil. Misinformed, poor thinking, etc. yes.
I live in Minnesota, where Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Duluth pretty much cancel out the bright red outstate voters. I thought in 2020 the Iron Range, a historic Democrat redoubt, would shift. Many did, but it still wasn’t enough.
Minnesota isn’t really purple; using Crayola terms, it’s blue-violet. But, on the crazy off-chance that this state actually is in play, with the migration of blacks and Hispanics to Trump, my one vote might just count. I know the Democrats will engage in chicanery, but my one vote could still be a monkey wrench in their nefarious plans.
All Republicans. Trump first, then everyone with an R behind their name, all the way down to dogcatcher. At least I know I have a chance with them. Democrats, I know they want me gone.
When I was in Romania in the decade after the revolution, there was a national election between a literal fascist and a literal communist. There was a third-party Hungarian rights party that took 11% of the vote. I asked friends what they could possibly do in such a situation. They all voted, as they did not want only the extremists to be voting, praying that some day their votes would be meaningful. Staying out seemed even worse to them, much as they understood it.
I recall some purist conservatives who would not vote for McCain and Romney. I get it, but “thanks for Obamacare, dude, and a bunch of other stuff we will never be rid of.”
A couple of months ago I said I would be not voting in the presidential for the first time since 1972, but I have switched back to voting for Trump. I say I have always chosen the lesser of two evils, but this is not always so. I am pleased that later events have ratified even my uncertain choices.