Letters to the Editor
achilleselbow
Published Letters: 294 Editor's Choice: 17
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Here we go again
[Read the article: Time magazine uncritically prints Nancy Pelosi's "justifications" for the FISA "compromise"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I am not saying I will vote for a rightwing Republican – that is true anathema. I am just not willing to hold my nose when I enter the polling booth and pick someone who disrespects and abuses his constituents. This may cost the Democrats some elections – but so be it. I fear for the future of the country. Things will not get better until we get a better class of politician and the Democratic party is not currently providing it.
I am going to continue to make this argument in the hopes that it seeps into someone's thick head. Doing what is described above is just as good as staying home at best, and almost as good as voting for McCain, at worst.
Almost all reasoning like this conflates desire with results. If Ross Perot's 18% didn't break the two-party system, what makes you think Nader's 3% will? And once again, the response to the question "what did this accomplish in 2000 and 2004?" is met with utter silence. So whatever the intent of your little voting protest is, that intent matters only to you. On a national level, it will lead to a McCain presidency and nothing more.
In fact, the language of "hold my nose" is telling of the fallacy being made here, which is that your vote is an individual action that pertains only to you. It's not. The only way your vote has meaning is as part of a concerted collective action. To treat it as merely some sort of personal statement for the sake of feeling better about yourself is childish in the extreme. An adult makes decisions by considering the possible realistic results, and working to achieve the most preferable one. A child just follows his impulses without considering the consequences, or thinks that his desire and stubbornness is somehow sufficient in itself.
Then of course there are the people who try to convince us all that they are okay with a McCain presidency. On the last post's comments, I saw people going to ridiculous lengths to justify this view, going so far as to claim that it will all be alright because the Democratic Congress will keep him in check and not allow him to do much harm. Just to be clear this refers to the same Democrats who just caved to the Republicans and not some alternate reality version. Others claimed that they 'don't know what Obama and McCain actually believe' so either choice is just as good. Uh huh. Right. I'm sure McCain is really a secret liberal.
In their rush to make grand pronouncements people miss the nuance of the situation. We can afford to lose single Congressional seats by punishing the individual Democrats responsible for this as Glenn is doing, and that may actually be effective. But extending this attitude to the presidential race is something that we simply cannot afford, and will change absolutely nothing. By 'we' I mean the whole country, so please spare me the pronouncements about how you personally can 'survive' a McCain presidency, because all they show is your own selfishness.
The other nuance that's lost is that, contrary to the black-and-white attitude most of you take, voting for the 'lesser of two evils' AND working to change the corrupt system are not by any means mutually exclusive. There are PAC's, there are AD campaigns, there are petitions - all of these are far more effective than the futile gesture of throwing your vote away.
Going back to my previous point about collective action, most of you seem to be living in some fantasy land where a large percentage of the electorate is ultra-progressive, and all they need is to be offered a better choice. But for every one of you, there are about 10 people who actually believe the president must be invested with dictatorial powers in order to protect us from terrorists. Are they wrong? Have they been manipulated? Sure. But the way to change this and to push the discourse back towards the left is through media awareness and the ways I mentioned above. I don't see how wasting your vote will change other people's minds. If you're relying on the media to ask "Did the Democrats' being too far center cost them those 3% of votes," don't hold your breath.
If you live in a solid blue state like NY or CA, by all means make your symbolic gesture (though I still think it will have little to no effect compared to non-electoral means). But if you live in a swing state and choose to follow this path, the McCain presidency will be on your head.
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@Paul
[Read the article: Time magazine uncritically prints Nancy Pelosi's "justifications" for the FISA "compromise"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Then again, I also don't take tha "manichean" view that a McCain presidency represents pure evil. IMHO, McCain, like Clinton, is first and foremost a pragmatist, and will recognize that the cleaning up the mess left by Bush will be his number one job.
The internal contradictions in your thought continue to astound me. Why are you willing to compromise your supposedly progressive ideals in the name of 'pragmatism' when it comes to Clinton (and McCain!), but not when it comes to Obama? The 'pragmatism' argument is exactly the one Glenn was cautioning against.
I really don't know who you expect to convince that McCain is somehow progressive. If he was really just a pragmatist, he would have started reversing his rightward shift as soon as he won the primary. The best that I can tell about McCain is that while he may not personally fully embrace the Republican platform, he for the most part has no major qualms about enabling it, and he certainly doesn't share progressive ideals. Then there's the whole little thing called the war, which he wants to continue and expand, and which somehow doesn't factor into your definition of "the mess left by Bush".