Do you think that people who vote democrat in a state that goes republican every year, or vice versa, are throwing away their votes? After all, the guy they’re voting for isn’t going to win, why bother?
The “lesser of two evils” thing is an effective trick that our government has conned us with. They give us two choices - both of which differ only minorly - both who fundamentally have the goal of increasing government size and power and lessening protection of our rights.
And they’ve managed to work people up into such a rabid “us vs them” mentality that they pick a side and blindly consider everything their party does and says to be right and defend it and consider everything the opposing side does is wrong and attack it.
And the affiliations run so strong that the parties can screw their constituencies and completely violate their principles and people keep supporting them because WE HAVE TO SUPPORT OUR SIDE NO MATTER WHAT BECAUSE THE OTHER SIDE IS ALWAYS WRONG AND EVIL! So Republicans (for example) can expand the government more than any democrat in recent history has ever dreamed of, totally contrary to the wishes of most of their constituency, and yet most of their constituency still supports them because of the blind loyalty/lesser of two evils thing. Most of the people are accepting of being forsaken and mistreated as long as they perceive it as being done as one of their own.
On a fundamental level, votes for Nader didn’t result in Bush becoming president. I’m guessing relatively few people actually liked Bush as an individual and wanted him to be president. But he was the guy that their side chose. And a lot of people viewed democrats, the opposite side, as the greater evil. And so our mentality that any vote other than for the two major parties is wasted, combined with the illogical and rabid attachments and hatred we form on political issues, resulted in people voting for Bush who, at the time, felt he was the lesser of two evils. If it weren’t for that mentality in American politics, and people were more thoughtful and less rabid in deciding where to put their loyalties then someone like Bush couldn’t be elected.
The only ethical and responsible choice in my view is to vote for someone who you feel comes close to your views for what is best for the country. That may be a democrat or republican - in which case go ahead and vote for them in good conscience, but it may not be. And if it’s not, and you still vote for the lesser of two evils, you’re buying into this system that hurts all of us. You’re complicit in the same sort of mentality that got Bush elected even if you’re a die-hard liberal.
Practically, even if the person you vote for doesn’t win, it still has an effect. For me, since I will almost certainly not feel good about either candidate running from the major parties, if I didn’t vote a third party or write in, I’d stay home. I refuse to be complicit in this horrible system. But staying home is pretty much totally unproductive… it suggests apathy or laziness more than a protest of the system.
What would happen if the loyalties weren’t so rabid and illogical? What if people actually started questioning their loyalty to the major parties when those parties completely went against their principles and the principles of their constituency?
What if all of the people who came to the Republican party because they once advocated small government now abandoned the party because the republicans obviously don’t practice that, instead of either staying home or voting for them anyway?
Let’s say this resulted in a libertarian candidate receiving a significant minority of the popular vote. The republicans would lose massively. Would the libertarian win? No. But does that mean all their votes were wasted? No. The republican party would have to change meaningfully to try to recover those votes, or they’d never win again. They’d actually have to start living up to their supposed advocacy of small government. Or the political landscape could be changed enough so that the next election might actually see a viable third party candidate with a chance to win, or even a change in which two parties were represented in our two-party system.
When you buy into the system of blind loyalty of one side, and blind hatred of another… when you buy into the system of always trying to vote for the lesser of two evils… you create this situation where each side can totally ignore and screw over their constituents and persue their own goals. The only winner is the government at the expense of the people. When you browbeat people for “throwing away their vote” and demand that they conform to the current system, you help to create this horrible political mess that we’re in.
If more people realized this and were willing to buck the system, it would cause change. But everyone is too scared that alone, their gesture will be meaningless, so no one does it. Essentially, no one does it because they’re afraid no one else will join them in doing it.
That’s how he became famous.