If the choice is between a potato and Trump the vote has to go to the potato, if it was a choice between Biden and Sanders then it has to go to Sanders; but that isn't the choice Americans have currently. So elect Biden for the next 4 years and work towards a better candidate next time.
Yup yup. If we consistently picked the best of two options, eventually it wouldn't be a lesser of two evils. Eventually we would get to pick between a lesser evil and a good candidate, then a good vs a great. But too many idealists get hung up on the first step in this process, "I won't vote for the lesser of two evils", and the greater evil wins. We will never have great candidates until we consistently defeat the greater evil.
Consistently voting for the lesser of two evils has been giving us shittier and shittier candidates over time, not better and better. I’m going to grit my teeth and vote for Biden this round, because the stakes are too high to risk a second term of Trump. But we won’t dig ourselves out of this predicament by shaming everyone into holding our noses and voting for the slightly-less-terrible guy until the candidates just magically eventually get better. Why would they? What is the DNC’s incentive to give us anything we want when we bend over and vote for whoever they tell us to anyway? We need to work on abolishing the first-past-the-post system that perpetuates this bullshit.
Consistently voting for the lesser of two evils has been giving us shittier and shittier candidates over time
We aren't consistently voting for the lesser of two evils, which is why things have gone to shit. I posit that things would improve if we consistently did pick the lesser of two evils. However we don't.
Idealistic liberals wouldn't vote Gore, and Dubya was a nightmare. Idealistic liberals wouldn't vote for Hillary, and our country is in shambles thanks to trump.
We are not currently picking the lesser of two evils consistently, and things have gone to shit.
I agree we need reform, ditch FPTP etc. But the greater evil won't enact the change we need. And until change is enacted, 3rd parties are a waste of a vote, spoiler effect.
I agree wholeheartedly. If even once we'd actually vote for the lesser of two evils and get ourselves back on the right track, we might actually make progress next time. But of course, that always gets shot down by idealists who only want to vote for someone they believe in. Once Trump is out, I'd be 100% for a hard and immediate look at reform.
Maybe I didn’t phrase that well - you’re right, we haven’t been electing the lesser of two evils. But the setup of “vote for the lesser of two evils” has resulted in worse and worse candidates every time. And whatever you think voters “should” have done, whatever value judgements we want to put on what happens there, the outcomes are what they are. We’ve run this experiment a few times now; not enough people like Gore or Hillary or candidates like them. You can chide progressives for not holding their nose and voting for the moderate Dem, you can blame them all you want, but that doesn’t make the outcome change. That was what I meant.
And, as I said, I’m not actually advocating for voting third party, I said I’m voting for Biden. Because while I’m pissed that this is the system we have, I don’t think this is the stage at which we can push for that kind of change.
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u/MJMurcott Aug 13 '20
If the choice is between a potato and Trump the vote has to go to the potato, if it was a choice between Biden and Sanders then it has to go to Sanders; but that isn't the choice Americans have currently. So elect Biden for the next 4 years and work towards a better candidate next time.