election-year dilemma

[cellio]

I'm feeling conflicted about November's election. I can just hear the majority of my readers now: "You doofus! You live in a swing state! It's a no-brainer; you have to vote for Kerry!"

Well, except, I don't support Kerry. I don't support Bush either, and he'd be the worse choice of those two. I support Michael Badnarik, who comes closest among those running to my beliefs about government.

There are those who say that voting for a minor-party candidate is throwing my vote away. Actually, though, a vote for a minor-party candidate does more than a vote for a candidate you don't believe in. Every vote for a minor-party candidate helps that minor party get closer to the spotlight, which could (eventually) help break the stranglehold the Republicans and Democrats have on the American public's attention. By voting for the person I believe in, I (1) express what I really believe, which is supposed to be the point, (2) help keep the Libertarians on the ballot and voter-registration cards in PA, and, if enough others do the same thing, (3) get at least a few other people saying "so just what are Libertarians, anyway?". Not voting for a minor-party candidate because he can't win creates a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The alternative is to abandon those principles because "this year really matters" and vote for the least-bad viable candidate, which is Kerry. I disagree with Kerry (and his party) on many things, which is why I can't give him my first-tier support, but the thought of Bush appointing any more judges to further savage our civil liberties is frightening. Am I obligated to compromise my principles to try to prevent that outcome? But if I do, am I not just responding to scare tactics? So far as I know no one has recently won Pennyslvania by even a four-digit number of votes, let alone the few hundred that led to the Florida fiasco or the single vote that I represent. By voting for Kerry, am I not saying that minor parties are interesting as parlor games but not when it really matters? Where are those principles now? As the old joke goes, we've already established what I'd be; now we're just haggling over price. [1]

I've considered looking for a voting partner in a non-swing state. That doesn't help minor parties in PA, but it at least lets me help my candidate at the national level. I didn't support Nader, so I'm unfamiliar with how the vote-sharing scheme worked last time. How do you establish trust? Mind, I'm not convinced that this would be appropriate, but it's an option I'm open to.

With Nader in the race, I am not assuming that any other minor-party candidate will get any attention. But again, there's that self-fulfilling prophecy thing; if no one votes for them because of that, they certainly won't get any attention.

So I welcome further thoughts on the matter. What factors am I failing to consider? I ask that you take as given that I don't support Kerry; let's not do that debate here. This is about the proper application of principles in a messy world.

[1] A man in a bar asks a beautiful woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars. She says ok, in that case she would. He then offers her $20 and she says "what do you think I am?!" He responds: "we've already established that; now we're just haggling over price".

Comments

[jducoeur]

Hmm. I agree with a lot of what has been said before, particularly siderea's analysis. But one more point needs to be emphasized. In this particular case, we're not just talking about a quantitative difference between the big-party candidates, we're talking about a *qualitative* one.

I mean, there are a lot of people who disagree with Kerry on a policy level, and I don't have a problem with that -- I like the man, but I certainly disagree with his economics. But it's hard to disagree that he is sane, intelligent, and (at least by political standards) reasonably honest, and is basically a representative of the status quo ante.

Now look at the other side. Bush is clearly obsessive, to be kind. He hasn't just lied the way we expect of politicians -- he's lied pathologically, since before he took office. He's shown a disregard for the American political system that is downright terrifying -- the degree of cynicism about America as a political institution that emanates from the White House today is breathtaking. They're not even hiding their agenda: they are trying to create a police state as quickly as possible, and are basically hacking around anything that stands in their way, with an explicit contempt for the notion of civil rights. The current Republican party is about *power*; any claims to the contrary are basically a whitewash.

(And if you think I'm scared -- you're damned right I am. But it's not a fear that comes from the empty rhetoric being parrotted on TV; rather, it comes from paying close attentions to the trends of the past couple of years, and pretty coolly examining where they are heading. We're teetering on an edge that, historically, has often led from Republic to Empire.)

The choice here isn't between bad and worse. It's between mediocre and horrifying. This is *not* business as usual -- we are in the most literal sense talking about saving the country from its own worst instincts here, from a very real chance of the whole ball of twine unraveling. Getting Bush out of office has to be the highest priority for the moment; after that, we'll have the freedom to deal with the rest.

And bear in mind, I'm speaking as a William Weld Republican. It's strategically critical to hit back at the hyperconservatives where it counts, because it's the only way that the libertarian wing of the Republican party is ever going to get a chance again. And realistically, that's the only likely avenue for sane libertarians to take.

Politics is entirely about strategy. Principles are a fine thing, but they have to be applied correctly: not in futile statements, but as a guideline, choosing political paths most likely to produce the results closest to those principles. And from that viewpoint, the only sane path at the moment is to not only support Kerry, but to do so loudly and enthusiastically, to help convince others of the same. Even if you don't like his policies, he is at least the right opponent, likely to return the political debate to a rational playing field...

[cellio]

The choice here isn't between bad and worse. It's between mediocre and horrifying.

Will you grant me "between bad and horrifying"? Bush's potential police state is horrifying; Kerry won't destroy the country that way, but he'll bring a lot of economic ruin and government bloat if he has his way (so it's best if the Democrats don't take Congress if Kerry wins). I agree that this is the lesser evil, because we preserve the republic, but some of the hyperbole from the far left (and I'm not talking about anything that's been said here, which has all been rational and above-board) also scares me. Both sides are misrepresenting things to sway a (they hope) gullible America; they're just doing it with different issues.

I think you're right that voting for Kerry is the strategically-correct move. I just wish I didn't feel so dirty doing it.

On the other hand, a single Kerry term focused on cleaning up the damage that's been done under Bush might not leave a lot of time to do new and different damage. So as long as we keep it to one term...

[jducoeur]

Well, I suspect that economic ruin is overstated. He'd introduce a fair amount of inefficiency, but his room for maneuver is limited. And it's unlikely that he would do as much damage as the record-breaking deficits that Bush is running. (I never thought anyone would come along to make Reagan look *responsible* economically.)

Kerry's only made one really irresponsible economic claim, with the offshoring thing. I'm annoyed by that one, since it's hyperbolic nonsense and doesn't fit the facts. OTOH, I don't think he's likely to *do* much about it -- his record isn't terribly protectionist. (This is why I desperately didn't want Gephardt to win the nomination: he's a confirmed protectionist, with the proven inclination to do major economic damage.)

Like I said, I care mostly about results, and that leans me towards paying more attention to records than to rhetoric. Kerry's record has tended to be fairly classic liberal, but not in the most dangerous ways: a tendency towards statist expansionism, but not too far towards the irrational left. And frankly, even in terms of statism he's better than Bush, who seems entirely comfortable claiming to be a conservative while overseeing an expansion of the state that overshadows that of most liberals' dreams.

That said, I agree that the split Congress/White House seems to be useful for reining in the worst instincts of each. If I could be *certain* that Bush would lose the White House, I'd be fairly sanguine about leaving them in charge of at least one side of Congress. And I don't much care about whether he's in office for one term or two, so long as it breaks the back of the extremist right and gives the moderates a chance to bring things back to sanity...