Outside the Beltway's James Joyner
offers the usual sort of guilt-tripping the devotees of the major parties engage in during election season, particularly when there's a binary choice of
two particularly evil candidates, or their party manifestoes. "There are two and only two viable candidates for President. To refuse to vote for either of them is to let others decide between them."
I want better choices, and I'd rather vote for a manifesto closest to what I want and not get it than vote for what I know is going to be a crap sandwich.
That's long been my stance.
Mr Will recognized, dimly, what his advocacy brought. Follow the link if you want. It's this message I want to reinforce. "Dear reader, if you're uneasy about that sort of Republican ... and your choice is between a Trumpian showboater and a Squad-adjacent Democrat, reject the false binary, and don't let those irritated rumps on the extreme get your vote. There might be libertarians or socialists or free-soilers elsewhere on the ballot."
He continues, taking to task former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who will vote his conscience this November.
But there are plenty of folks out there like himself—homeless Republicans who think Trump is morally unfit for the office—who might be persuaded to hold their nose and vote for Biden with the nudging of Christie and other likeminded Republican leaders. Given that Christie knows damn well that Biden is better for the country than the alternative, abdicating that role is feckless at best.
What's amusing is that the somewhat more polemical Stephen Kruiser of Pajamas Media
makes the same argument, but with the colors reversed.
A vote for Joe Biden or whichever commie ends up on the ballot in November is a vote for the imminent demise of the United States. That's not hyperbole. ... There is no "principled" reason for any Republican to vote for anyone other than Trump or any other Republican who might replace him should the Democrats' pre-election rigging work. Sitting this election out because of delicate feelings or a misbegotten sense of honor would be unconscionable.
Which means that Chris Christie is simultaneously helping Donald Trump and helping Joe Biden. Sorry, no. He's part of the Coalition of the Unwilling, which
I would like to see get bigger. "The so-called binary choice is only a binary choice if voters vote with the expectation that other voters are treating the choice as a binary choice. In the states and districts that skew strongly one way or the other, if you're going to be disappointed with the outcome anyway, at least vote for the choice you want,
rather than vote the Nash strategy." And in a battleground state, or a close district, should you vote your conscience and someone slag on you for spoiling their preferred candidate's chances, your response ought be, "Offer me a bundle with more policies I want." Governments are supposed to derive their just powers from our consent, and if they don't, they ought to be gridlocked anyway.
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