Should you vote for your party’s candidate even if he is reprehensible?

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Completely illogical. When either lesser evil or greater evil are the only possible outcomes then supporting lesser evil reduces evil compared to the sole alternative, and failing to support the lesser evil inherently supports the greater evil and thus increases evil compared to the sole alternative outcome.

If you vote for someone you admit is the lesser evil, you are voting for someone you admit is evil. You are saying the choice is "get worse faster or get worse slower." If the choice is get worse faster or get worse slower, you are choosing that things get worse either way. If you are choosing to increase evil a little bit or increase evil a lot, you are still choosing to increase evil.

And by essentially abstaining from the process through voting for fringe candidates, you are insuring that "evil" increases.

If you choose evil you are absolutely ensuring that evil increases, even if you call it "lesser". If you call voting third party "abstaining" you are ensuring you will always be stuck with two evils to choose from.

In fact, you are signalling you don't care by how much "evil" increases. Which is either really childish or really petty if you bother to think about it.

That is absurd. But then, because I don't endorse the two party system, I do not endorse Trump the way you do.

 

[laughing dog]

And by essentially abstaining from the process through voting for fringe candidates, you are insuring that "evil" increases.

If you choose evil you are absolutely ensuring that evil increases, even if you call it "lesser". If you call voting third party "abstaining" you are ensuring you will always be stuck with two evils to choose from.

Thank you for your reality-free opinion.

That is absurd. But then, because I don't endorse the two party system, I do not endorse Trump the way you do.

Thank you confirming my observation on two count - 1)your position is childish and petty, and 2) that you did not think about it at all.

ETA, I found this fascinating website
http://independentpoliticalreport.com/2016/04/libertarians-for-trump-launches-website/ that reports on Libertarians for Trump. LOL.

As a libertarian, why are you so upset your preferred candidate between the two mainstream candidates won?

 

[ZiprHead]

I've posted this before. Apparently it's needed again.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law

 

[Jason Harvestdancer]

Thank you for your reality-free opinion.

So according to LD, "reality" is saying "lesser evil isn't evil" and "reality-free" is saying "lesser evil is still evil.

How very childish and petty of you.

 

[laughing dog]

Thank you for your reality-free opinion.

So according to LD, "reality" is saying "lesser evil isn't evil" and "reality-free" is saying "lesser evil is still evil.

Since I did not write that, why do you feel the need to act like a seven year old and make up such ridiculous stories?

 

[Bomb#20]

First, the only reason your action had no effect is that most liberals in CA didn't not act as you did and voted for Hillary, even if they thought she was very far from ideal. IOW, had more people did exactly as you did, then Trump would have won CA, which could easily had made the difference if just 100,000 people in Michigan had not acted as you did. It isn't just the actual but potential consequences of an action that determine its morality. In general, the "what if everyone acted that way?" argument is a valid consideration for how one should act.

Ah, "superrationality". It's an interesting line of argument, but highly dependent on the arguer's arbitrary definition of "exactly as you did"/"acted that way" and his arbitrary definition of "more people"/"everyone". If everyone acted exactly as I did, Trump would not have won California. A third party would have won. On the other hand, if by "everyone" you mean "liberals" and if by "did exactly as I did" you mean "voted for the candidate they thought would make the best president", then you're right that Trump would have won. But that's only because liberals aren't monolithic and have different opinions about who would make the best president, so we'd have split our vote. But that makes your "the only reason your action had no effect is that most liberals in CA didn't not act as you did" argument a case of special pleading. Why are you limiting your analysis to the hypothetical counterfactual doings of other liberals? Trump voters aren't monolithic either. If everyone voted for his preferred candidate Trump's vote would have been split too. You're talking as though the only people who held their noses and voted for the lesser evil were Hillary voters. You know Trump was only the choice of about 30% of Republicans, don't you? He only got nominated because his opponents couldn't agree among themselves on which non-Trump to unite behind.

Imagine some asshole closes his eyes and runs a red light, but no one is hurt because everyone else at that intersection keeps their eyes open and avoids a collision. Now imagine another asshole does the same thing a block away, but 2 other people also did it and a deadly wreck is caused. Is the first guy any less of an immoral asshole than the others?

Um, you know "What if everyone did it?" isn't the same argument as "What if not everyone did the opposite?", don't you? When the bad consequence follows from one individual behaving unpredictably, you have a case for a guy who relies on it not happening being an asshole. Relying on millions of people to behave vaguely in accordance with known statistics, not so much.

Now, a counter to this is that you knew for certain that most other libs in CA wouldn't act like you, so you knew there would be no effect. But you cannot know that. You knew most others did not want Trump and preferred Hillary, but could not know how many would act like you because they assumed, like you, that their action would have no impact. In fact, that is almost certainly how Trump won WI, MI, and PA, and thus the election. His margins there were so small that it is almost certain that the outcome was changed by people just like you who assumed other voters in their State would elect Hillary, so they decided either not to vote, vote 3rd party, or even vote Trump as some sort of protest against the Dems or so they could pretend they are not responsible for anything that happened as a result.

You say that as though it wasn't well known in advance which states were swing states. That makes no sense. By what reasoning do you infer that people who think "Why should I vote for the lesser evil when I'm not in a swing state so it can't help stop the greater evil?" are "just like" people who think "Why should I vote for the lesser evil? Sure, I'm in a swing state, but the election won't turn on one vote."?

Finally, there is the issue of whether your choice even in CA did have an impact. Well, it did impact the popular vote, and if just a fraction of all the left-leaners in Blue states who didn't vote Hillary had done so, she would have won the popular vote by 10 million instead of 2. That could have shifted what happened with the electoral votes, and even if not, might have tempered Trump's actions in office.

Now you've left the realm of moral reasoning and entered the realm of full-blooded fantasy. Neither Trump nor the Electors give a rat's ass how many people would prefer them to change their behavior.

Also, there are the many CA liberals who not only didn't vote Hillary but publicly attacked her during the general and advocated for liberals everywhere not to vote for her in the general. This is true of individual average people advancing that stance on twitter, as well as famous idiots like Colin Kaepernick and Susan Sarandon, and leftist political organizations such as BLM.

Not sure what that has to do with people like me. I not famous. I have precious little influence on other California voters, let alone voters in other states.