See, that kind of calculation strikes me very much as not what we think of as a conscience vote. It’s a tactical vote - I don’t like Trump, but I’ll vote for him despite the harm that he does to the country in the (I have to say, rather far-fetched) hope that my voting for him will (a) do more damage to the Republican party than it does to the country, and (b) somehow reinvigorate the Democratic party.
I don’t think that’s what Hillary is calling for. I think she’s probably appealiing to the people who don’t like her but feel they can’t, in conscience, vote for Trump. They might be tempted to stay at home but she’s urging them no, listen to your conscience, you have to vote against Trump, and that means voting for me.
Obviously, people who don’t like Trump but can’t in conscience vote Hillary are going to react the other way, but she is banking on the fact that they are probably a smaller group. I would have thought that if your conscientious standards don’t allow you to vote for Hillary, then Trump must be utterly beyond the pale. There is no criticism you can make of Hillary that you cannot make with more force of Trump.
Hillary’s meaning was unambiguous in context. She was echoing Ted Cruz, whose point was that if you think Trump is worse than Clinton, or you’re not sure, you don’t need to vote for Trump just because you’re a member of the GOP. So, by analogy, if you think Clinton is worse than Trump, you shouldn’t feel compelled to vote for Clinton out of party loyalty. Since you’re not insane, you don’t think that. Therefore, I don’t think Cruz’s logic applies to you.
The result of Republican electoral success is Bill Clinton. The result of Democratic electoral success is Bernie Sanders. You’ve got it backwards, believing that a Democratic loss will somehow compel them to move left. In reality, if the Green Party wins more votes than the margin between the Dems and GOP, then the next generation of voters considering voting for a lefty third party will be far less inclined to do so. The Green Party will have to wait another generation before people forget why they shouldn’t vote Green, just like last time. And so the Democrats can reliably ignore them, which is just what you fear is happening now. And instead of the Democrats suddenly courting the far left vote, they will correctly conclude that the far left is too fickle and will redouble their efforts to court the middle.
You may disagree with those calculations and wish that people conceptualized things differently. But that’s how it will go in the real world.
Johnson and Sanders both oppose the War on Drugs and prison-industrial complex, both opposed the Patriot Act, both opposed the Iraq war, both want a major overhaul in campaign finance, and this is far from an exhaustive list. They come from extremely different philosophical backgrounds, and certainly do disagree on plenty of issues, but there are quite a few major issues that the Ds or Rs are perfectly happy with that neither of these candidates are.
If “the lesser evil” is a metaphorical, not literal, phrase, then there is no excluded middle. As a metaphor, it quite explicitly means “choosing between things that aren’t ideal.”
Why does this matter? Am I just nitpicking because of the nature of this particular message board? Because you’re applying the same equivocation to the “vote your conscience” phrase. You’re taking it literally, when as has been pointed out several times, the context of the phrase makes it clear that it is just an anti-Trump slogan aimed at making conservative voters either vote for candidates other than Trump. It is not a literal call to engage in election-year soul searching to determine the true nature of evil and the proper relationship between the state and the electorate, while applying the philosophical norms of blah blah blah.
I’d argue staying home is very, very good. That will affect not just the Presidential election, but also the down-ballot elections. Flipping one or more houses of Congress is important as well.
I get what you’re saying, but I think that’s a rather generous and specific interpretation of her three words. A more direct interpretation would simply be “vote whoever you feel good voting for, regardless of party affiliation or other factors”, which is generally what people mean by “vote your conscience”, in which case she’s possibly unwittingly telling people who feel forced to vote for her to go ahead and vote third party.
If this election is 40 rep, 37 dem, and 5 green, and they move to the center and completely cast off the left wing, what if the next election is 40 rep, 33 dem, 8 green? Do they still keep moving to the center?
So long as a party can count on a constituency to vote for them no matter what - no matter if they actually enact policies that constituency wants - what motivation do they have to actually spend time and political capital on those people’s wishes? If democrats can ignore the left wing entirely and still count on their vote, because hey, you have to vote for us, lesser of two evils, then you get, well, what we have now - third way corporatist democrats who aren’t left at all. The only thing that will make them reconsider their position is to show them the left vote is not guaranteed, that they have to actually try to enact some leftist policies if they want that support.
Take your two favorite presidents. Let’s just generically say that George Washington vs Abraham Lincoln were your choices for the election. (Ignoring the fact that their views would be antiquated and blah blah - substitute FDR and LBJ or whoever you want here). You really think both of them would make a great president, and you can feel good throwing your full support behind one of them who you think is just a little bit better.
Next election is Hitler vs Stalin. Now you feel absolutely terrible about both and feel like they will be horrible rulers. But you feel one is slightly worse than the other, so you decide to vote for the lesser of two evils.
Do you see the difference between these two scenarios? Only one of those scenarios requires voting for the lesser of two evils.
And obviously we’re talking about something closer to the latter, because people aren’t saying “vote for Hillary, she’s great”, they’re saying “yes, we know you hate Hillary, but what are you going to do, let Trump be president? You have to vote for Hillary”
I’m not being argumentative here, but you lost me here. Who are these “people” and “they” in this context? The Democratic people who are saying “vote your conscience?”
If so, I disagree. The Dems who are saying “vote your conscience” are NOT saying or implying that Hillary is a bad choice. They are saying Trump is a bad choice, and people should listen to their conscience and not vote for him.
There are Dems who feel that Hillary is a bad choice but that people should vote for her anyway. This is NOT the same as “vote your conscience.” These are more of the former Sanders supporters – obviously not the same message as Clinton’s own campaign saying “vote your conscience.”
If you meant “people” or the mysterious “they” as referring to someone else other than the Hillary Clinton campaign’s use of the term “vote your conscience,” I’d appreciate that clarification.
ETA: and your first scenario of a Lincoln vs FDR election clearly fits under no definition of “lesser of two evils.” If you want to make a point about a colloquialism, I think you need you make examples that fit. You’re reminding me of the movie “Anchorman” where Ron Burgandy uses the phrase “when in Rome” in clearly inappropriate situations.
No, the “standard advice” has always been “vote for your party, good or bad”.
Perhaps you’ve been fortunate enough not to be getting that message, but it is what the big parties have always been pushing. See the Republicans this year, who are managing to “endorse” Trump, even though he is nowhere close to the typical Republican messaging. And note how Ted Cruz was lambasted for saying “vote your conscience”–it’s the opposite of the party-first paradigm.
Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the good. The greater good in the long term is a worthy goal, but useless if the short-term damage is too much.
Also, I’d suggest recalibrating your detect evil if you think that Hillary is evil.
There are a lot of people who really don’t like Hillary. People who supported Bernie because he was very little like Hillary are treated like retarded children around here. “Ok kids, you had your fun, now it’s time to get serious and be forced to vote for Clinton”
When people state their misgivings about Hillary, they’re told over and over again that they hae to vote for her, obviously - what are you going to do, let Trump win?
That’s the very essence of a “lesser of two evils” situation. We’re being badgered into voting for someone who we don’t feel would be a good president strictly on the basis that she would be less bad than her opponent.
It cuts both ways. If Republicans shouldn’t vote for Trump out of party loyalty because they think he’d be a bad president, then Democrats should do the same.
Still, my point is clear, right? I just referred to the generic Myth of America greatest presidents. My point is that not every vote is always “The lesser of two evils”, sometimes you actually feel like the person you’re voting for would be a capable president who you can vote for in good conscience. And sometimes you’re given two shit sandwiches and told you have to vote for the first one because the second one is slightly shittier.
I don’t know. Currently I’m leaning towards “none of the above”, which is an actual ballot choice in Nevada. The events leading up to the election may change my mind. I’m certainly not staying home - they’s just cowardly and lazy. It’s much better to go to the voting booth and say to them that you came all this way to tell them they can go fuck themselves. I’ll also evaluate third party candidates as we go.
If I do vote for Hillary, it will almost certainly be with disgust and feelings of coercion, dreading how many people I’m fractionally responsible for murdering when she decides to engage in military adventurism.
My reaction in the OP wasn’t rhetorical - her “vote your conscience” tweet actually makes me feel free from the pressure to vote for her. She’s pretty much telling me not to.
No, it doesn’t cut both ways, because you’re removing the slogan from its context (as others have pointed out).
Let me try this a different way: have you ever heard the sentiment that all art depends on context? (It’s phrased in many different ways, of course.) It generally means that to understand the point of art, you have to consider not only the content, but the environment in which it is produced, in order to understand the meaning. Otherwise, you could look at pictures of Campbell’s soup cans and just think, “Gee, Warhol could have made sharper edges on these prints if he tried a little harder, clearly this isn’t good art.”
I’m not saying “vote your conscience” is a work of fine art, but removing the phrase from the context – that it is a rallying cry of conservatives who can’t stand Trump – renders it as meaningless as looking at a Warhol painting and judging it on how much it accurately represents soup cans. You’re looking at the phrase so literally that the context is obliterated, which leads you to a fundamentally incorrect interpretation of the message.
Hey, I’m a “people,” and I love Hillary. No, I’m not just some fanboy. SenorBeef, you’ve fallen for the BS that goes back to Ken Starr, if not earlier.
The only coercion involved is the impetus of one’s conscience dictating that one votes responsibly. That is, it’s entirely internal.
If Trump is elected and we see persecution of immigrants, people of color, non-Christians, non-straights, etc, and the dismantling of the social safety net, plus a couple Supreme Court nominations that will block future progressive reforms, will your conscience be untroubled because of your vote?
If Clinton is elected and we see maintenance of the status quo (that is, slow steady progress on social and economic reforms), plus a couple Supreme Court nominations that will block reactionary attacks, will your conscience be troubled by your vote?
Voting your conscience means realizing your vote has an impact. Is the impact in the direction you want?
By all means “vote your conscience” if your conscience tells you we’d be better off under Trump than Hillary.
But I still wonder where in tarnation all this “murdering … military adventurism” comes from. :smack: Her vote, along with most Senators, on the 2002 Resolution (in response to Bush lies) which was intended to put pressure on Saddam? Her complicity in the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi?? Supporting Obama when he caused the death of Osama bin Laden??? The mind boggles. Absolutely boggles.
Would it be rude to ask you what cable TV news channel you watch?
Am I the only one who sees Clinton’s, "Vote Your Conscience, " as nothing more than making fun of Trump? She’s just throwing Cruz back at him and laughing.
I don’t really criticize those who don’t like Hillary Clinton. I’ve been one of her more vocal supporters here but she’s really run a pretty piss poor campaign. She deliberately chose a candidate that was precisely the sort of candidate that Bernie supporters said they didn’t want – which is her right. But it reinforces their biases against her, and it was a deliberate choice.
What I think is the strongest appeal that can be made to Sanders supporters is not so much that Trump is a worse candidate, but that complete republican control of the government is really, really bad for the country at a time when we absolutely need more level-handed and responsible administration. Voting out of protest is your right, but what do you really get in return? A republican government, probably. And you’ll get a good 4 years of it, if not more.
If this were the republican party of Bob Dole, that would be one thing. But this is the republican party that sees demographics staring them in the face and they are mounting a counter-revolution against these trends. They want to bar immigrants. They want to prevent those who are here from becoming citizens and send them home. They want to keep blacks out of the voting booths with fake controversies like ‘voter fraud.’ We’re seeing a rise of white christian nationalism at a time when national security threatens to push people toward an irrational sense of fear and a suicidal demand for authoritarian style security. This extremism is not an American trend, but a global one. We may not be able to stop it everywhere, but it would be nice if Americans could say it won’t happen here. I hope that for these reasons people will hold their noses and vote for the democratic party. The added benefit is that if you / we continue to vote in 2018, we might give the democratic party reason to listen to progressives, and they might fear losing this base.
