Guest post: Voting isn’t like picking a restaurant for your small group of friends
Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on Hey, how about interviewing the people at Ma’s Pie Shop?
I just wish for someone who I feel good about voting for
Honestly, that’s not a realistic wish, unless your bar for “feel good about” is fairly low. (And maybe it is for you, in which case the rest of this post will seem like I’m jumping on you. I’m really just using your post to take aim at a commonly-expressed sentiment that I think is a problem in general, even if it isn’t a problem in your specific case.)
Even if all of politics came down to a simplified one-dimensional ideological spectrum, you would have to be one of the relatively few lucky ones who happens to occupy a point on that spectrum that is at or close to a viable candidate.
Add in another dimension, such as personal qualities of the candidate, and it gets even harder. Allow for one or more other political dimensions (e.g. social and fiscal), and… your odds of finding a viable candidate close to you in political space are pretty slim.
Voting isn’t like picking a restaurant for your small group of friends, where it really ought to be the case that you can find a place that all of you feel good about; it’s like trying to select a single dish that your entire town will eat. There just isn’t likely to be any way to satisfy all those disparate diets and allergies, let alone mere preferences. The best you can hope for is something that will keep you nourished; tasty and exciting is not a realistic expectation.
I have been a single issue voter for many years. In that sense, I have found it easier to pick which candidate I “like better.” For once, though, this primary, I have a choice of several candidates I could like on more than one issue. I don’t like all their positions on all issues, but there’s more to like than progressives have had in a very long time.
maddog,
You’re not alone. Polling indicates that the percentage of Democrats who are satisfied (or very satisfied) with the options available to them is higher than it has been at comparable points in previous election cycles. The notion that a huge number of Democrats have been craving the entry of another candidate (whether that’s Bloomberg or Deval Patrick or whoever) is a creation of bored pundits.
I’d certainly prefer a candidate with Obama’s “It” factor, but that’s just because he’d turn what I think is slight advantage into a sure thing.
A option You can feel good about may be too much to ask for, but that’s no reason to artificially make the options worse than they have to be. As flawed as the European model may be, I would never trade proportional representation for a Winner Takes All model ever. How f**ked up is it that Trump can in theory win the next election by getting one more vote than his main opponent in all the “red” states in addition to a few “swing states”, and it won’t matter if his opponent gets 100% of the votes in all the “blue” states.
The ridiculous and undemocratic Winner Takes All principle also makes America a de facto two party system since only the two largest parties have a real chance of winning in a sufficient number of states. You can’t give people just two options to chose from and claim that the result in any way represents the “will of the people”. If You had proportional representation, at least You wouldn’t be at the mercy of a few votes in a few “swing states”, and You would have more than two real options to choose from.
Of course there is plenty of dissatisfaction with the political system over here as well, so there’s obviously more to it than just proportional representation vs. Winner Takes All. But as we all know, no amount of wrongs make a right.
The main quality to me is someone who will acknowledge that Trump is not just an aberration, but is actually the culmination of years of GOP policies (and Democratic complicity or cowardice, but they are not likely to take it that far). Far too many Democrats (among those running and also people I speak to about this) seem to think that getting rid of Trump is all that is needed. But it’s not. So I think a good, progressive program aimed at helping the most people is the best way to attract needed voters. And they should definitely spend way less time trying to attract mythical Republican anti-Trumpers because, when push comes to shove, those people will just hold their noses and vote for him again because it is all tribal at this point.
Biden seems delusional that the GOP operates in good faith. Not a one of them ever does. So it also important that the candidate have coattails. And spend some effort in getting people to vote for Democrats up and down the ticket. Biden has (even as recently as 2018) campaigned for or endorsed Republicans which is a non-starter to me. The two billionaires are wasting their time and money when they should be putting it into down-ballot races and voter turnout, as well as maybe spending on issue ads.
Finally, the DNC/DCCC needs to keep their thumbs off the scales when it comes to nominees. Let the people decide. We saw what happened in NJ when the gate-keepers ensured a near-Republican got the nomination and then turned traitor and sucked up to Trump. And they also have propped up Lipinski in Illinois for ages, keeping out decent candidates who would better represent the district. And Henry Cuellar in Texas, another DINO who needs to go. So, yeah, I’ve had it with these gate-keepers and the Democratic establishment in general.
So, for me, the issue not “feeling good” about a candidate (though there is something to that), but rather the idea that we nominate something more than the “same old, same old”. Obama was charismatic and a good guy but also a disappointment in many respects. So I’m wary of the same thing happening again in a country that so desperately need changes on many levels.
True. For one thing, it won’t change the terrible flaws in the electoral system that made it possible for him to be elected even after losing the popular vote by 3 millon votes, and – even accounting for the flaws in the system – the fact that enough people voted for him is outright terrifying in itself.
But to me perhaps the scariest part is that every future despot wannabe will know that the apocryphal checks and balances are a fiction, that You can commit the most obvious crimes in plane sight a thousand times every day, and apparently there’s nothing anybody can do about it.