Federal

The Evils of Lesser Evil Voting

Joel S. Hirschhorn

Condemn progressives for voting enthusiastically for Democrats and the inevitable response is something like “just imagine how much worse voting for Republicans would be.” Similarly, many true conservatives and Libertarians see voting for Republicans as a necessary evil. With many progressives regretting giving Democrats a majority in Congress and many conservatives regretting putting George W. Bush in the White House, it is timely to refute lesser evil logic.

Inevitably, lesser evil voters face personal disappointment and some shame. Politicians that receive lesser evil votes do not perform according to the values and principles that the lesser evil voter holds dear. These voters must accept responsibility for putting ineffective, dishonest and corrupt politicians in office. Though they may be lesser evils, they remain evils.

All too often lesser evil voters avoid shame and regret and prevent painful cognitive dissonance by deluding themselves that the politician they helped put in office is really not so bad after all. Corrosive lesser evil voting erodes one’s principles as pragmatism replaces idealism. This makes the next cycle of lesser evil voting easier.

Lesser evil voting helps stabilize America’s two-party duopoly that greatly restricts true political competition. Third party and independent candidates – and minor Democratic and Republican candidates in primaries – are defeated by massive numbers of lesser evil voters. Despite authentically having the political goals that mesh with many voters on the left or right, these minor “best” candidates fall victim to lesser evil voting. Lesser evil voters are addicted to a self-fulfilling prophesy. They think “If I vote for a minor candidate they will lose anyway.” They ensure this outcome though their lesser evil voting. The truly wasted vote is the unprincipled lesser evil vote.

From Economic Apartheid to Political Revolution

Joel S. Hirschhorn

Americans have always accepted a certain level of economic inequality as the inevitable consequence of an open capitalist society where some people through their own efforts do better than others. The presumption is that there is fairness in the marketplace and economic system. What a quaint, outdated belief.

Do most Americans really believe that the game is not rigged by rich powerful elites to preferentially benefit them? As certain as the law of gravity, the game IS rigged, and more than ever.

We have a plutocratic corporate state that now has taken economic inequality to new levels – in fact to what now is a sick and shameful condition of economic apartheid. To a society that increasingly separates Americans into two classes: the wealthy Upper Class and the Lower Class. The Upper Class has protected and gated mansions, private vacation spots and spas, special access shopping venues, private schools, lavish entertainment options, luxurious hospital accommodations, and private jets and stretch limos. The Upper Class does everything possible to PHYSICALLY separate itself from the poor, repugnant and uncouth members of the Lower Class. This physical separation is the hallmark of economic apartheid. The only contact the wealthy have and want with Lower Class people is when the latter serve, protect and pamper them. And of course they expect the hugely larger Lower Class to keep spending and borrowing their way into economic despair and to keep sustaining the two-party mafia. Voting for Democrats and Republicans is as meaningful as voting for American Idol contestants. Nothing more than a self-destructive distraction.