The Evil of Two Lessers: Who You Should Support for Prez to Stop the Duopoly (Helpful Hints)
23 October 2023
It’s just around the corner—well, a bit over a year away to the general election, but much less than that to primaries, etc.—when you personally decide who the US President will be starting in January 2025 (damn, I’m old).
So I’m here to help you decide, just like I know you’re desperate to have me do.
But let me start with an important clarification: this is a Letter about how American electoral politics/counting works, NOT primarily an essay to recommend which candidate you should pick, except within that narrow framework.
If I were recommending whether you should support Biden or Trump, it’d be Biden by a huge margin, even though I have some disagreements with him on some policies. Here’s a major part of why—
But, really, that’s not what I’m on about here. Maybe you’re a leftie/Bernie Bro/democratic socialist like me or maybe you’re an arch conservative or Libertarian or Green Party devotee or just someone who despairs of having prezzes chosen, always, by the two major parties—the Repuglicans and the Dumbocrats, as their more refined enemies call them—the duopoly, as third party champions call them both collectively.
And those third party pushers also insist that if people like me—democratic socialists who want socialized medicine, enhanced workers rights, major improvements in the legal ability of labor unions to organize, big increases in the minimum wage, substantially more progressive income taxes, and the like—if we vote either Democratic or Republican, we’re guilty of perpetuating the duopoly, and of “voting for the lesser of two evils”—or sometimes of, in a burst of sophisticated cleverness, of “voting for the evil of two lessers.”
No.
Reality matters. The two-party “system” has serious flaws and I’m sympathetic to those who wish we had a different approach. Perhaps a parliamentary system, where parties could gain the power to govern by winning a majority of legislative seats—or by coalitions with other parties. (Imagine that right now the Republicans could control the government, based n their “control” of the US House—or not.) Then perhaps a minority third party like the Libertarians or Greens could have some representation in a government. But that is not what we have or what we’ll ever be likely to have—it would require major changes in our Constitution and amendments of any sort are notoriously hard to get passed.
Things change and Biden isn't popular now.
But consider the 158,383,403 votes cast for prez in 2020. (See map, below, for complete Electoral College results.)
Biden got 81 million plus (51.3%). Trump got 74 million plus (46.9%). The Libertarian got 1.2%; the Greens got 0.3%; everyone else, combined, 0.3%. Who do you think will beat Trump (or Biden, if that’s your greatest fear), and who will s/he pull votes from to win? Biden is, at best, not a perfect vessel for passing democratic socialist ideas like medicare for all. But Biden is, at worst, far closer than Trump. (And, conversely, Trump is a grievously imperfect vessel for promoting conservative, small government, pro-life ideas—but Trump is better for that than Biden.) Don't agree? If not Biden (or Trump), then who? (And winner-take-all, electoral college rules make it even more clear that no one but Biden can stop Trump [or vice versa]. Should those rules be changed? hell yes. Will they be? hell no.)
Libertarian? Socialist? Green? Conservative? Liberal? What Should You Do?
To all of my fellow democratic socialists who think we should abandon Joe Biden, I say, and support who or what? Cornel West? How do you suppose he could win?
To all those reasonable conservatives who want to support a conservative with real integrity like Liz Cheney or a conservative who’ll speak bluntly like Chris Christy and abandon Trump, I hate to say it, but how do you think s/he will win?
If you live in California or the District of Columbia, vote in the general election on 5 November 2024 for whoever you think would be the best president—the Dem nominee will very likely get all the electoral college votes from your State no matter how you vote.
If you live in Wyoming or Mississippi, vote in the general election on 5 November 2024 for whoever you think would be the best president—the GOP nominee will very likely get all the electoral college votes from your State no matter how you vote.
But if you live in Georgia or Arizona or Michigan or Wisconsin or Pennsylvania or Nevada or many other States, even Texas or Ohio or Minnesota or Virginia, be careful. Almost certainly, the Dem nominee or the GOP nominee will get all of that State’s electoral votes (see the map above to learn how many), and your vote just might tip it to one or the other. Nebraska and Maine are semi-exceptions—winner-take-all still applies, but at the Congressional District level.
So, what should you do? Vote for the even slightly better one of the two major party nominees. Choosing your ideal candidate instead means depriving the “lesser of two evils” of the vote he might need to be prez.
All elections involve in some sense choosing the “lesser of evils,” by the way. Surely you don’t think anyone is a perfect candidate or a perfect representation of evil, even if you think some may come close.
What if you honestly think supporting the Green Party or the Libertarian Party or the Socialist Party or some fresh new party Liz Cheney is organizing is best for the country? Then support that party—with money, with votes for candidates for other offices, maybe even by running for school board or sheriff on that party’s ticket. Building up such a party to a meaningful political force takes time, education, organization, and money—and you can help. But voting for that party’s nominee for President of the United States in many—maybe even in most—States is throwing away your vote. Sadly.
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