Ballots go out today in Colorado. So, here’s a friendly Public Service Announcement, in the all-caps parlance of the ‘roid-raging superspreader-in-chief:
ONLY YOU CAN PREVENT FOUR MORE YEARS! VOTE! (FOR JOE!)
Some of you see Biden as the “lesser evil.” I disagree, but I get it; I’ve felt that way in past elections. However, relying on other people to vote for an imperfect candidate who we all know, whatever his flaws, has to win (or the Republic is doomed) isn’t principled. It’s selfish. It’s wrong.
If you know, in your heart of hearts, that even a bad Biden presidency would (obviously) be preferable to the disaster of a second Trump term… and yet, you feel that your “conscience” won’t “allow you” to vote for Biden and Harris… respectfully, you’re wrong.
I don’t just mean your planned vote is wrong. I mean you’re wrong about your own conscience. Because, if you agree that Biden is (by a mile) the “lesser evil,” and yet your conscience is saying don’t vote for him over Trump, that’s because you’re asking your conscience the wrong question.
Listen to your conscience, yes. But only after you frame the issue correctly. To wit:
Voting is NOT some lonely, abstract, purely individual choice about who would be the ideal president in a perfect world. Nor is it a process-of-elimination quest, in which you are somehow morally required to cross out every candidate who disagrees with your personal beliefs about any fundamental issue, and are only permitted to choose among whoever’s left. That’s not what a vote is. That’s not what voting is for. At least not in an election this important, when the stakes are so fucking high, for the future of America and of the entire world.
So yes, your vote is individual and personal, to be sure. But it’s not just about you, as an atomistic individual. Your right to vote is an opportunity to participate in a collective societal choice. And this year, that choice, whether you like it or not, is between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. No one else.
And listen, I didn’t vote for Biden in the primaries either, okay? He wasn’t even in my top three. But the primaries are over. There are two candidates remaining who can win. Don’t overcomplicate this. From 2021 through early 2025, for essentially the remainder of my eldest daughter’s childhood, the President of the United States will be one of those two men (barring death or disability). It’s Biden or Trump.
Do I wish we had other choices meaningfully available? Sure. I wish we had a system, like Ranked Choice Voting, that would allow for more choice. But we don’t. Not yet. And in the present, crappy system, voting for someone who can’t win is NOT a meaningful “protest.” A third-party vote will do nothing to bring about a better system. If you want a better system, then work toward a better system. Donate your time and/or money to support RCV for Colorado and similar efforts. But in mean time, be honest with yourself — practice some Radical Acceptance, as they say in DBT therapy — and acknowledge that under this system, this year, in this election, it is a binary choice. You can hate that. I hate it, too. But it’s the truth.
So, please, I beg you: ask your conscience whether it has a preference between the two candidates who we, as a society, are collectively deciding between. That’s the right question. And if your first impulse is to answer “no,” please think deeply about that, and again, please be honest with yourself. Do you really have no preference? Will you truly wake up on November 4 (or 5 or 10 or Dec. 14 or Jan. 6 or whenever we learn the winner), literally not caring who won, genuinely believing things would be equally bad either way? Not just “bad either way,” but equally bad?
If you recognize that they wouldn’t — and they clearly wouldn’t; no matter how much you dislike Biden, things would obviously be far, far worse with a terrifyingly unleashed, no-adults-left-in-the-room, second-term Trump — then please, don’t leave this choice to others. Don’t abdicate your role in this collective decision. Do your part. Save America. Vote for Joe.