3rd Party Voting: Morality and Pragmatism
Posted: August 8th, 2016 | Author: AnObfuscator | Filed under: Politics & Policy | No Comments »Don’t Vote For The Wrong Lizard!
Don’t Waste Your Vote
R: Nationalists, Evangelicals, Business Republicans
D: Socialists, True Progressives, Third Way Democrats
The problem is, in my view, that these alliances are over-strained, and no longer serve strong shared common interests. The Business Republicans and Third Way Democrats, for example, share far more in common than either does with the Nationalists or Socialists they are paired with. The only reason they stay together is because of financial incentives. Cutting off the flow of donations into these coalitions and increasing the fiscal viability of a third party may be exactly the strain we need to bring about new coalitions that more accurately reflect common goals.
But SCOTUS appointments!
This is, perhaps, the most pernicious argument: if the wrong tribe of president is elected, the president will appoint wrong tribe SCOTUS justices, who will make decisions favoring wrong tribe.
This argument is particularly poisonous, because it implicitly advocates for more judicial activism. It suggests the purpose of voting is to select the person who will appoint people to serve as lifetime, unaccountable oligarchs who can create laws and rules for our society at their whim. It is, therefore, advocating the dismantling of our Constitutional republic itself. With apologies to Gerald Ford:
A Supreme Court powerful enough to support all of your causes, is powerful enough to strip you of all your rights.
Fortunately for now, the court has shown much greater unity and restraint than it is often given credit for. As the National Review notes here:
These concerns are not misplaced, but the apocalyptic tone misrepresents the Court’s actual, year-by-year activity. Consider: Between January 2012 and June 2014, the Supreme Court ruled against the Obama administration unanimously 13 times — on everything from recess appointments to abortion-clinic “buffer zones.†This was not an anomaly. Since 1995, almost every year has seen more than 40 percent of cases — that is, a plurality — decided unanimously; in 2013, it was two-thirds. (To be fair, there are different degrees of unanimity.) Meanwhile, only twice since 1995 have more than 30 percent of cases split 5-4.This suggests that the Court’s justices are more likeminded legally than political pundits often recognize.
The only wasted vote is for a vote for a candidate you don’t actually support; the only immoral vote is a vote against your own values.
Vote your conscience. Fight for your values.