JUNE 3, 2024 – Voter dissatisfaction with each of the two major candidates in a presidential election has long been a feature of the American political landscape. This phenomenon persists in the current round, but not voting or voting for a third-party candidate is no more likely to produce a “happy result” than these maverick approaches have succeeded historically. What can be said, however, and what must be emphasized and understood is that by not voting in November or voting for a third-party candidate, you could well be influencing which of the two major candidates will prevail.
Just as in real estate valuation, this gets down to “location, location, location.” Recent polling suggests that November’s contest between Mr. Sun Tan and Mr. Sun Glasses will be decided by the electoral votes of only half a dozen “battleground states,” in which the popular vote margins are likely to be paper thin. The six could expand to 10 or more, and the margins could grow even thinner. In these circumstances, by treating Sun Tan and Sun Glasses as “Tweedle Dumb” and “Tweedle Dimwit,” if you don’t vote for one or the other, you could nonetheless be deciding which of the two Tweedles wins.
If you vote for a third-party candidate, you’re doing nothing more than making a point by voting for someone who is making a statement; not for someone who could actually win (let alone govern effectively). The candidate has every right to make the statement, just as you have every right to make the point, but both of you are ignoring the central, inescapable elements of American democracy: its size and diversity of interests.
In a small homogenous, well-educated, well-informed society, well-bonded by common interests, and living on an island, much of which is uninhabitable—Iceland, for example—all sorts of democratic and independent ideals are possible. In a country of 330 million people occupying the breadth of a continent and the full range of social, cultural, economic, educational, and aptitudinal spectra, democracy only works if infused with compromise among competing interests and perspectives. If you expect democratic perfection, disappointment will be your destiny. If too many disgruntled voters allow perfection to guide their voting (or non-voting) in November, they will ensure that perfection becomes the enemy of good.
I entreat people who find themselves in the “No Sun” camp to consider the following allegorical setting:
You wake up inside a nightmare: a crowded, rudderless lifeboat with a diverse bunch of other largely hapless, helpless souls. You can’t tell which end is the bow and which, the stern, but you notice that at one end rages a character who is the spittin’ image of the Disney version of a pirate whose name rhymes with “crook.” At the other end of the lifeboat is a second pirate, except, he looks like the real thing. His face is weather-worn, his clothes are faded, and you detect a lot of rust on his full-length scabbard, and dare you think some dried blood on the blade of his sword? You’ve seen him before, somewhere—but where? You think hard, then . . . YES! You’ve seen him on bottles of rum! Captain Morgan!
You and your fellow travelers have been adrift at sea for more days than anyone can count. You’ve eaten the last of the chocolate bars, and rain needs to fall soon or you’ll all die of thirst. The worst of it is that as you survey the horizon—360 degrees of it—it all looks the same, water meeting the sky; sky meeting the water. An argument erupts over who should take command of the boat, the guy in the stern (or is it the bow?) or the man in the bow (or is it the stern?).
Man Whose Name Rhymes with Hook points with certitude in the direction his end of the boat faces. “I have a chart and a compass!” he shouts. “Make me your captain, and I’ll row you to land.”
But you catch a glimpse of his map and see that it’s nothing more than a facsimile of a Monopoly game board, and the compass needle points in only one direction: “ME.” All you see in the direction he points is open ocean and no sight of land except in the mirage he describes.
You turn to consider Captain Morgan. He points in the opposite direction from his contender’s desired course, but again, all you see is open . . . sea. He looks like the Ancient Mariner, but you’re not sure which is the more operative word—“ancient” or “mariner.” You notice that he has two oars, one in each hand and not one in a hand and one in a hook. Yet, he’s been rowing for four days in the same direction and so far, no land, no birds. How are you going to know good ol’ Captain Morgan isn’t going to row the boat off the edge of the world?
You don’t like the idea of a pirate—fake or real—directing the course of your lifeboat.
Just then, four of your fellow passengers stand up and . . . rock the boat, each purporting to be a savior. The first says he is the law. The second says he is the way, and whose name is “Savior,” after all. The third guy says he is the prophet, and the fourth . . . says nothing at all, in keeping with his T-shirt, one side of which says, “Nothing is Everything,” and the other bearing the words, “Beware! At Least Three of Us, Maybe All Four, are Imposters.”
You now take a closer look at the four alternatives. The first is laden with heavy stones—good for ballast but not for speed. The second is said to have walked on water and loaded his nets with fish, but those purported miracles occurred well within the sight of land. Your lifeboat could be a 1,000 miles from the closest atoll. The prophet, so-called, talks with confidence, but he’s a desert guy. What does he know about maritime matters? And the T-shirt guy who thinks “nothing” is “everything”? What does he know about anything? None of these four would-be contenders, you notice, holds a set of oars, a map, or a compass. None will ascend to the helm, despite their divinity, claimed or inherent.
What do you do? Conclude that it matters not whether the boat is rowed in one direction or the exact opposite way? Withhold your participation in the selection of a captain? Vote for one of the four alternatives who could be an imposter but in no event will be chosen?
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Don’t throw your vote overboard. By doing so you might well be tossing irretrievably into the deep, the fate of the lifeboat and everyone in it.
Subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.
© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
