How many progressives subscribe to this concept?
“Always vote for the lesser evil. That way, we have the best shot of electing less evil in our politicians.”
I would love to see ALL of our progressive leaders and organizations making this principle clear to potential voters that follow their words.
Voting is a declaration of a preference, a choice, between options. It is not an endorsement, or recommendation, or an award of universal approval. Too many democrats of my acquaintance get this confused, while none of the republicans I’ve spoken with have a problem with this concept.
Note that Rusty Bowers can follow up his righteous resistance to T****’s coup attempt with a statement that he would still vote for T**** over Biden in 2024 because it’s the lesser of evils in his eyes. OMFG. I know that he needs to revisit that Bible about what it says about evil, but it’s a recent example of how clearly conservatives have learned the principle that underlies actual political power.
I’m a 60-something veteran of voting strategically: always vote, and always vote for the least bad option on the ballot. I have passionate beliefs in good progressive public policy, but I have had to register as a republican in my R+35 district so that I can vote for a less evil R (think say, Adam Kinsinger) so that truly evil R (think Jim Jordan) doesn’t win the R primary—the winner of which is an automatic winner in the general. It works; we get less evil. I never considered my vote to be an endorsement of ANY of the policies of the least-bad R, merely a means of choosing not-crazy over venal-and-crazy.
We are going to need to make a case to our widest set of voters that they can get less evil if they do whatever it takes to vote for it. To see that there is a less-evil option on the ballot, and not to vote for them, is at least a half-vote for greater evil.