Voters who refuse to consider supporting a third-party candidate often feel that to do so would be to waste their vote. Following that reasoning to its logical extreme, we should all vote for the candidate who is at the top of the polls at any given time (assuming the polls are reliable).
Assuming You Believe the Polls
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The Final Countdown" talk show on Radio Sputnik. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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I’ve referenced this clip from “Yes, Minister” before.
I have great trouble accepting the polls as a neutral reflection of unbiased research. When I consider the blatant manner in which so many “journalists” have discarded any pretense of being nonpartisan and when I couple that to my suspicion that the Trump supporters are self-hiding in the polls, I think the Harris team is running test cases for what to do next.
As the biggest “next” right now is whether Israel’s going to start a full-scale war, I suspect that kicking Biden to the curb (at the veep debate, even the moderators didn’t correct “the Harris administration”) will be next. If there is a war, Harris’ only hope is to get into the Oval Office fast, keep quiet, pray Israel has another six-day war, and then take credit for how she was “instrumental” in reestablishing peace quickly. If it’s a long war, she’s sunk either way, so might as well get those HR boxes checked for her 90-day presidency.
As a Green Party voter, I have had this discussion with quite a few people who don’t care for the Blinken administration’s Israel policies, but who are more afraid of Trump than they are concerned about the plight of the Palestinians. My two major points: 1) If everybody who likes Jill Stein’s positions but won’t vote for her because “she can’t win,” voted for her, she could win. 2) The point of an election isn’t whether you vote for the winner, but whether you vote for the candidate whose positions align with yours. An election isn’t a horse race–though the Trump-Harris part of the contest could arguably be termed “a whores’ race.”
The big difference being that there ARE some things whores won’t do for money.
LOL!!!
What is MORE of a wasted vote than one for either of the two Empire-vetted, obsequious puppets?
They will do NOTHING for their voters except gas light them, rob them and marinate them in propaganda explaining how immoral it would be for them to harbor any rancor toward their cosmically avaricious liege lords.
If their voters get uppity they will say: “we got your mandate with your vote now go home and shut-the-eff’-up until we call you for the next voting ritual, when you can re-elect us … or maybe some others even worse”
The two leading candidates completely agree about Israel: “From the River to the Sea, Israel must be free.” The River is the Euphrates, and the Sea is Red, and they will give Israel everything they ask for to achieve that goal.
But on the Ukraine there is sharp disagreement, with one candidate promising the complete and total destruction of Russia, and one saying the US must try to find a peaceful resolution. So how can anyone vote against the candidate who promises to utterly defeat Russia, giving the Ukraine nukes if necessary, knowing Russia cannot retaliate, they are just a paper tiger that needs to be removed from the map ASAP.
Funny how Machiavellian Theodore unceasingly fails to address the other end of the spectrum for third parties such as the cozy, new marriage of Netanyahu and the nutters that somehow are right of him. Ted is the idealist tripping over his own untied shoes.
Ted is the idealist tripping over his untied shoes.
The discussion about voting “strategically” is being kept superficially rational. Alas the arguments don’t hold water on cursory inspection – as laid out in Ted’s companion essay The Strategic Voting Fallacy.
Clearly people perform the cultural practice of voting for a variety of reasons, quite beyond what can easily be captured by appealing to rational argument.
Similarly, people who buy coca cola will give all kinds of superficially rational reasons “I like the taste, etc.”. Seldom will someone say “I’d like to be part of the in-group so I buy a popular beverage” even though some version of this is basically the number one selling point if one reverse-engineers the marketing strategy. (People will be loath to admit to this partly because they fully understand on a rational level that drinking coke will not actually facilitate upward social mobility).
Perhaps rather than “I will vote for the one I most agree with”, panel 3 should read: “I will vote for the party that is most agreeable to be seen voting for”. Then the arguments exchanged in the cartoon actually make perfect sense.
Alas, this not only sounds convoluted but is also especially weird – seeing that it is an election by secret ballot precisely to allow people to vote their conscience. In this case each one of us is not only the star of our own movie but also its only viewer. Still, I doubt that does much to reduce the pressures of finding one’s identity within societal expectations – it only makes it harder to talk about the actual impulses behind going to the trouble of casting a vote in the first place.
In this view it would merely take more people in one’s circle to come out in favor of the Green Party to make it an respectable candidate: one has to get on the bestseller lists to “gain momentum” and hence rise further in the lists. Nothing sells like success, people don’t like losers, the market will decide, etc. Bernie Sanders managed to achieve this within the democratic party primary process – as did Donald Trump on the republican side. They both have achieved a level of respectability that, try as they might, the media cannot take away from them.
This is especially true in North America where “individualism” and a generally neo-liberal world view are the most popular cultural values people are conforming to (leading to all kinds of fascinating contradictions).
All ranting about 1 aspect of limited party systems but leaving out discussion about the other less pleasant parts makes Ted a dull boy. All ranting about 1 aspect of limited party systems but leaving out discussion about the other less pleasant parts makes Ted a dull boy. All ranting about 1 aspect of limited party systems but leaving out discussion about the other less pleasant parts makes Ted a dull boy. All ranting about 1 aspect of limited party systems but leaving out discussion about the other less pleasant parts makes Ted a dull boy. All ranting about 1 aspect of limited party systems but leaving out discussion about the other less pleasant parts makes Ted a dull boy. All ranting about 1 aspect of limited party systems but leaving out discussion about the other less pleasant parts makes Ted a dull boy.