Do you think that voters have no say in primaries? Stating that the DNC and the RNC put forth candidates is completely at odds with how primaries work. Why do we bother with Iowa, New Hampshire, Super Tuesday and all that if the DNC and RNC are just appointing candidates.
Your blame assignment makes zero sense. It’s justification and poor justification at that. Your party’s voters nominated Trump, and elected him. Stop trying to blame Democrats for what your party did. The “look what you made us do” defense doesn’t work for 5 year olds, it shouldn’t work for adults either.
I keep seeing that line in this thread — and in others — and I don’t get why you think it’s not a valid response. Since you find Trump reprehensible, flip it around for a moment: imagine someone who finds Trump reprehensible, and loudly declares that she’ll probably vote for the Democrat who runs against Trump in 2020. Imagine, too, that she elaborates at the drop of a hat: explaining that, in past elections, she’s often found herself voting for the lesser of two evils.
So that’s her plan, for 2020, as announced in 2019: even if the Democrats put up someone she sees as, well, evil, she’ll vote for the lesser of two evils.
Say the Democrats then put up someone she sees as evil. She was telling the truth; she thinks lesser of two evils, lesser of two evils, and looks at the Democrat, and looks at Trump, and looks back at the Democrat, and back at Trump, and says, “well, gosh, I’d have voted for the Republican if they’d put up a candidate who was the lesser of two evils; but they didn’t, and you could even say that’s why I’m voting for the Democrat: just like I’d said I would, a year ago.”
She’s incorrect if she blames someone else for her choice, yes. Especially when she is blaming those that voted against her choice that turned out to be bad. The Democrats are not at fault for Trump getting elected. This is not how cause and effect work.
Say someone chooses B over A — in any context — while announcing that it’s, y’know, “the lesser of two evils”. They then get asked: why did you choose B? Don’t you realize that B is evil?
And the reply is: yes, I realize that; but I chose “the lesser of two evils”. I’d decided, ahead of time, that I’d choose “the lesser of two evils”; and then I was given a choice between A and B, which is why I chose B as “the lesser of two evils”. If they’d offered me something better than A or B, well, then, I’d have gladly taken that; but I took B, since it was that or — ugh — A. Why? Why did they offer me A? The only reason I chose B, as “the lesser of two evils”, is because the only other thing I got offered was A; if they’d offered me something less bad, why, then I wouldn’t have chosen B.
The blame lies with those who take immoral action, as always. Not the ones who fight against immorality imperfectly. Supporting and enabling Trump is morally wrong for a variety of reasons. No one else can be blamed but those who do these immoral things.
It doesn’t mean the Democrats shouldn’t be criticized, but the only ones to blame for Trump are his supporters and enablers.
We are now 3 years after the election and option B is an unmitigated disaster. For B voters to then blame A voters for B getting elected is ludicrous. It’s attempting to escape responsibility and justify bad choices retroactively. It’s about not wanting to feel bad about one’s choices and pointing fingers everywhere else. It’s what children do until they are taught why that is wrong and why it doesn’t take away one’s responsibility for one’s own choices.
The times I have seen anything close to “We fucked up royally by voting for this creep, but a small part of the blame belongs to you guys” posted by conservatives can be counted on the fingers of one foot.
It would be more honest if they would just admit they didn’t have the mental fortitude to break free of 25 years of Pavlovian conditioning about the Evilz Of Hillary.
I don’t get why you’re throwing the word “retroactively” in there. If someone said, before voting for Trump — and then, while voting for Trump — that they were only doing this because they figured he was The Lesser Of Two Evils, then I don’t see that it’d be ‘retroactive’ for them to keep on saying it two or three years later.
Isn’t that always the case for a Lesser Of Two Evils choice? I mean, granted, you’re saying that, in this case, they got it wrong; but if the day comes when someone does make the right Lesser Of Two Evils Choice, all they can say beforehand, and during, and in all the years to come, is, well, “Lesser Of Two Evils”.
Yes, you can say that and be wrong; but can’t you say it and be right?
Lesser of two evils is an assertion, not a point of fact. That both choices were evil is not something that can be proven. We do know that one was, the one we ended up with. That people want to not feel responsible for. This is basic psychology really.
But that’s always the case, isn’t it? If you ask me how I voted in ‘00 or ‘04 or ‘08 or ‘12, my answer is the same as it is for ‘16: “I voted for the one I thought would do a less bad job.” That’s always an assertion; I only ever get to see what happened with the one we ended up getting, and I never actually get to see what the alternative would’ve done.
That’s been true when the candidate I voted for won; it’s also been true when the candidate I voted for lost; but, in the end, it’s all I’ve ever been able to point at, when people ask me why I voted the way I did: “compared to the alternative,” I say, even though I of course have to admit that, well, no, when you get right down to it I don’t really know how the alternative would’ve spent those four years.
But how is that relevant? I still have to decide between the alternatives, and I still choose the one I believe will be The Lesser Of Two Evils, and even though I only ever get to find out how bad one of them turns out to be, that doesn’t necessarily make me wrong. (It doesn’t necessarily make me right, either; it’s got nothing to do with whether I happened to be right or wrong.)
Framing things as lesser of two evils does one psychologically powerful thing, it allows us to divorce ourselves from responsibility from our choices. If we can just assume the other choice would have been worse, then why do we need to expend any thought into how we can do better in the future. I guess I’m saying letting that be an excuse is part of why we are where we are, and why we seem to not be able to get ourselves out of this cycle. That’s why it’s relevant. We all are responsible for doing our best to ensure that our society and civilization not only continue after we are gone, but continue to improve and grow to the benefit of our descendants. This constant “both sides are evil, so I’ll take the one that is evil in the way that I want” is detrimental to those ends. I don’t claim to know how we get out of this mess, but I can control my choices and how I choose to view things, and at least not be part of the problem.
But isn’t it still the same thing if you phrase it the other way around? If I say I voted for one candidate because I thought she’d do a better job than the alternative, does it really matter that I could’ve said “a less bad job” than the alternative? It seems to me that, either way, I wind right back up where you say we are now: where I only get to see one of the two outcomes, and where I can always assume the alternative would turn out to be worse than the one I voted for.
Do you think it’d change things — psychologically or otherwise — if I take care to phrase that in terms of The Greater Good instead of The Lesser Of Two Evils?
I think it would change things if we voted for what our preferred candidate is for, rather than voting against all of the horrible things the other candidate is supposed to be, when you are hearing all of those horrible things from the person who is asking you to vote for them instead. If we reject this politics of character assassination and instead ask candidates why should we vote for you rather than buying into how badly the opponent wants to destroy America and all the reasons we should vote against the other candidate. And yes I understand this is pie in the sky, rainbows and unicorns talk, but it’s either hope or despair, and I choose hope.