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by Greengunner
A few points I'd like to make here. My wife grew up in France, so I'll use France as an example. They have a multi party system with two main rounds of voting. During the first round, people vote for whoever they want, regardless of party. The top two vote getters advance to the second round of voting. Because the votes are spread across so many candidates, the two who advance often have very low overall support. Sometimes, during the first round, the left will spread their votes between the far left, left, and center left candidates. The right, on the other hand, is often better at concentrating their votes, so the top two overall vote getters might be the right and far right candidates, even though the majority of the electorate is left of center. This puts the left in an uncomfortable position we in America are all too familiar with. The position of having to choose between the lesser of two evils. So far, when the far right candidate has been too extreme, the left in France has been willing to hold their noses and vote for a right wing candidate in order to stop an even further right wing candidate. We all know that the left in America, with its purity tests and aversion to strategic voting, can not be relied on to do the same. We seem to take it as an article of faith that things would be better with a multi party system, but that's not necessarily true.
I keep hearing it said that choosing the lesser of two evils is illogical. I simply can not disagree more. Choosing the lesser of two evils is inherently logical. How could it be otherwise? We all do it every single day. For example, the other day I forgot to bring my lunch to work. I was faced with a choice between buying lunch from the cafeteria, which is over priced and general lousy, or skipping lunch and eating when I got home. Neither choice was ideal. Both choices contained significant negatives. So, I picked the one I thought was the least bad. A person who can't master the skill of choosing the least bad of several bad options, is a person who will be constantly confounded by life.
I voted for Sanders in the primary and Clinton in the general. I dislike Clinton, yet I voted for her without the slightest trace of guilt. Why? Because I decided that while Clinton would likely do harm, Trump would likely do more harm, so in the absence of a viable option for wellness increase, I chose harm reduction. In other words, I voted strategically.
There is no excuse for not voting.
Whatever I said above, just pretend I included the obligatory “both sides,” especially if I said something mean about Trump (don’t want to hurt any feelings).
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