https://newrepublic.com/article/137371/one-message-voters-send-election
I don’t entirely endorse Beutler’s reasoning, I don’t even mostly endorse it, but the central message is an important one. Political actions, including voting, should be purpose-driven. We’re talking about monkeying around with the government here; don’t do it for catharsis or emotional self-indulgence, do it because you want to achieve an outcome. And if one of the outcomes you want to achieve is “send a message,” that’s fine, but then you have to be a Good Clear-Eyed Sage and think about what message you’re actually going to send.
Everyone is frustrated. Everyone hates the system. Everyone wants to say “these choices suck, give us better ones, give us someone who will actually make a positive difference.” This is not some kind of secret, hidden, fringey opinion that the Self-Obsessed Elites won’t know about until you shout it in their ear. They know it already. I promise. We have the choices we have because they are the end products of a hideous toxic network of swirling coalitions and ideologies, not because some naively moronic planner thought they were good.
And, more to the point…regardless of whether Trump or Clinton walks away with the Big Prize…if 10% or 15% or 20% of the voters Register Their Protests by voting for Johnson or Stein, what do you think the system will learn from that?
Nothing, that’s what. We already went through this back in 1992 with Perot, and then again in 2000 with Nader. Didn’t shake the two-party system one bit, either time. Which is not, y’know, surprising. The two parties were not presented with any kind of existential threat; they were presented with the knowledge that certain sectors of the electorate could be disaffected and alienated. In the general sense, they already knew all that. The only take-away lesson was “it might be better to focus less on winning those sectors and go for more-reliable ones instead.”
If you really don’t accept The System, if you really think we need to Throw Off Our Shackles, buy some guns and start a revolution. If you’re not willing to do that – or if you don’t think you can find enough allies to make it anything other than a useless suicide mission – then it’s time to own up to the fact that you’re as much invested in The System as everyone else.
If you really want to Change Things From Within (which is 10000% saner), do things that will actually change relevant incentives for the political big dogs. Y’know, like the Bernie crowd did.
Your protest vote is not even successfully going to protest anything. No one will hear the thing you’re saying.
Your following logic is valid, but “ Political actions, including voting, should be purpose-driven.” is not remotely true for how people actually do act. People do not vote based on a calculation of the greatest good - they vote to express an emotion (often “fear” or “annoyance” or “spite”) or to solidify their identity. Every political campaign accepts this, so their ads or GOTV are based around these sort of emotional touchstones.
A US political system that requires the overwhelming majority of people being rational consequentialist actors, instead of reality… well is what is at fault here, and not the individual moral failings of Johnson/Stein voters.
Edit: “sending a message” is 95% of the time about your own emotional needs, and only rarely about the practical benefits of that message.
True, undeniably, on a macro level.
On a micro level…we must imagine that our interlocutors and readers are reasonable people who respond to argument, at least potentially, else what’s all this argument for?
(One obvious answer is, er, “we make pronouncements online to express emotion or solidify our identity.” Which is also undeniably true on a macro level. But even so.)