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The voters have spoken, at least here

Brian Leiter

MOVING TO FRONT FROM JULY 20–A LIVELY DISCUSSION IN THE COMMENTS!

So with nearly 1,000 votes since late yesterday afternoon, here's whom readers are voting for

Who will you vote for for President of the United States this fall?
Hillary Clinton (Democrat)
   62%
Gary Johnson (Libertarian)
   6%
Jill Stein (Green)
   11%
Donald Trump (Republican)
   6%
None of the above
   2%
I will not vote
   14%
 

I'm inclined to think the Trump voters are unlikely to be academics (or even adults), but who knows?  (They're probably the same people whose IP addresses are in the comment section spam filter!)

I'm curious to hear from those who participated in the poll about their thinking.  I hope those voting for Jill Stein are doing so in safe states for Democrats!  Any folks who usually vote libertarian or Republican voting for Clinton this time around?  Who are "none of the above" voters going to vote for?  For those who aren't voting, why not?  (And anyone voting for Trump with a sincere explanation, that's also welcome!)

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50 responses to “The voters have spoken, at least here”

  1. Clement

    In some circles, Alasdair MacIntyre's 2004 article about not voting is circulating again. Perhaps it accounts for the "Will not vote" category among some philosophers.

    http://brandon.multics.org/library/Alasdair%20MacIntyre/macintyre2004vote.html

    Reply
  2. anon2

    Future Clinton voter here. I often vote Green or, I confess, not at all. I just can't get excited about voting for the neo-liberal Dems the party has put forward since I've been of age to vote. I also live in a solidly blue state where it's a foregone conclusion that a Dem will win the electoral votes, so voting for a more progressive candidate is a harmless act of symbolism.

    By this logic, I should vote for Jill Stein, but IMO she's an idiot, a whack-a-doodle conspiracy theorist of near Trumpian proportions, and almost as close to fascism as Herr Trumpf, even if from the left. And, I fear a Trump presidency far more than I feared, say, a Romney presidency. So, Clinton it is. Without much enthusiasm.

    Reply
  3. Jon

    Not mine (or Michelle Obama's), but it aptly sums up my feelings:

    "I'll be voting Clinton because I'm a single issue voter and that issue is not breaking the seventh seal and ushering in the apocalypse."

    Reply
  4. Phil

    I'm not voting because I'm not an American citizen, but dear Lord, I don't envy you the choice. I suspect I'd be with Jon, and hope that the concessions Sanders fought for will turn out to be substantial.

    Reply
  5. Melody

    I'm with Jon. Not the biggest fan of Clinton, but these Bernie or Bust folks will divide the Democratic vote, which is not good.

    Reply
  6. J

    I think it basically impossible that my vote could affect the outcome: the US is either unable or unwilling to count votes that accurately, and if the election did somehow nonetheless come down to a single vote (or hundreds, or thousands, or…), the outcome would almost certainly be decided by other factors (the courts); and this isn't even going into "safe states." So, given the realities of national elections in the US, I believe that my vote is merely symbolic. And as a symbolic gesture I prefer not to support this system. Further, being a symbolic gesture, I couldn't bring myself to vote for somebody I didn't *positively* like as a candidate, so I'm not moved by considerations of the lesser evil. And while Clinton looks rosy in many respects when compared to Trump, that is extremely faint praise, and I find her quite unappealing when considered on her own. Stein is tougher, but ultimately while I don't think "she's an idiot, a whack-a-doodle conspiracy theorist of near Trumpian proportions, and almost as close to fascism as Herr Trumpf" (maybe I haven't looked closely enough?), I honestly can't get past the pro-homeopathy stance of the Green Party. (If I thought a vote for Stein was anything more than symbolic, though, I would manage to ignore that.)

    Reply
  7. kurt

    As Jon said: voting for the only only candidate who can prevent the Trumpocalypse. Clinton. Nose held.

    Reply
  8. Ines

    Trump voter here. Hoping that the chaos that will ensue following Trump's election will lead to a true political revolution which is much needed in this country.

    Reply
  9. Eddy Nahmias

    Not a perfect analogy, but doing anything other than casting a vote for Clinton seems as morally problematic as refusing to switch the trolley to avoid killing 5, just because one does not want to act to kill 1. Even if you think voting for Clinton is as bad as pushing the person off the footbridge (it's not), we're talking about stopping a Trump train that will be way more than five times as harmful for America and the world.

    Reply
  10. GS

    I'm pretty disappointed/surprised about the lack of libertarian support here – I expected there to be more. Seems to me to be the obvious best choice, even if I'm not a pure libertarian (Though, I think I slightly prefer Austin Petersen to Johnson.). And even if one isn't a libertarian, they are more likely to hit the 15% mark and get a spot in the presidential debates which would be good for everybody.

    Reply
  11. Socratease

    My first choice was Bernie, and between Trump and Hillary I would vote for Hillary. But I plan to support Johnson in hopes of getting him into the debates (he needs 15% and is now up to 13%). Perhaps this is only true of philosopher millennials, but like many of my colleagues my political views are a weird hybrid of Marxism and libertarianism, which of course yields some awkward tensions. But when I look at my political priorities, ending this culture of war mongering is at the top, and Johnson is the candidate who agrees with me. Clinton doesn't seem to be interested in making peace a priority.

    Reply
  12. Non citizen

    Though I live and work in the USA, I am not a citizen, and thus not allowed to vote. I assume others who selected that option are in the same boat.

    BL COMMENT: I meant that option only for those eligible, but I see it wasn't clear.

    Reply
  13. Karl Young

    Yeah what he said…

    Though in addition I gave up on the Greens a while back anyway (I was even registered Green for a while – yikes !). After all the talk about building from the ground up, there was a fairly recently elected state legislator who turned Dem in a tantrum, immediately after she was elected, when she realized that she would be shut out of committee assignments. Then there was a mayoral candidate in a big city (being vague am I ?) not too long ago who surprised everyone by coming very close to being elected, and had built up some serious political capital. He then decided he was bored and quit politics. It seems like the one party, two arm system (i.e. they stand for one thing but one group are just out and out assholes and the other feels bad about screwing a majority of the population) has neutered any 3rd party attempts to the extent that they only attract ultra flakes.

    Reply
  14. Education Grad Student

    I will very likely vote for Jill Stein, and indicated such in the poll. I live in a red state, where I can afford that luxury. As a minority twice over, I find a lot of Hillary's past statements problematic. I recognize that she is almost uniformly superior to Trump. However, I think she should be punished for her disgusting comments on 'superpredators' and Reagan's supposed pioneering AIDS advocacy, among others. She will almost certainly win in November, but even 3% for the Greens overall will make her victory seem more like a 'lesser evil' result than an active endorsement from the electorate.

    Reply
  15. J

    "doing anything other than casting a vote for Clinton seems as morally problematic as refusing to switch the trolley to avoid killing 5"

    Seems to me that there are two key features to the switch case:
    (a) Acting will change the outcome.
    (b) There are no other options that will change the outcome.

    This does not seem to be the case with regard to my voting for Clinton:
    (a) My voting for Clinton is astronomically unlikely to change the outcome
    (b) If we pretend that my vote could change the outcome, then why not pretend that I get to decide? Why pretend that my vote *only* counts if it goes to one of the major parties? But if we pretend that my action will decide the outcome in this case, then it will be clear that there are other options, including options that seem more akin to nobody getting killed than one person getting killed.

    Reply
  16. PhiloScience

    I consider myself a kind of a Classical Liberal, which these days would I guess typically be aligned with "conservatism" here in the US. I'm voting for Clinton. I would have voted for Johnson/Weld, but I'm about to be moving to a battleground state, and I take it that all moderately rational beings have a moral responsibility to prevent a Trump Presidency insofar as they can. I've voted for democrats before (voted for Obama twice), but I've probably voted for conservatives about 75 percent of the time, if we include local, state, and national elections. Though it seems that most of the instances that make up my ~25% democratic votes have been within the last few political cycles. Ever since "social conservatives" and the Tea Baggers started taking over "conservative" politics, really.

    Reply
  17. V. Alan White

    I just have two words: Supreme Court. There could be as many as four appointments during the next President's term. Say what you will about Hillary–and there is a lot of non-optimal things to say–she will nominate good people. Though I could riotously see the Republicans trying to stall for four years, reducing the SCOTUS to being more apt for a basketball court than one of law!

    Reply
  18. Bland Liberal

    I am voting for Hillary Clinton because I rather like her. Am I the only philosopher who feels this way?

    I hope that Clinton takes up Bernie Sanders's eminently reasonable suggestion that the Federal government greatly increase infrastructure spending. Sanders's proposed $1 trillion over five years is a fraction of the $3.6 trillion the American Society of Civil Engineers says we really need (http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/). Doing repairs and improvements now would avert future crises and increase demand for blue-collar labor.

    Reply
  19. A foreigner

    I also indicated that I would not vote, for the rather reason given in my name. Frankly, I just wanted to see the results – apologies for screwing with your data.

    Reply
  20. Another foreigner

    I too voted that I would not vote – I didn't realize that the poll was only intended for those eligible to vote. I'm a permanent resident, not a citizen. I can't vote in the election, but I will still be significantly affected by its outcome (as will many other long-term non-citizen residents).

    Reply
  21. Neil C

    I'm surprised that there aren't more considerations particular to local party politics and machinery in this thread.

    I'm a liberal Sanders supporter and extremely critical of Clinton, but I intend to vote for her in the general. For context, I live in Kentucky. By the numbers she has no hope of winning here (she barely squeaked out half-a-percent over Sanders). But this state has moved considerably right in a few elections recently; Democrats managed to spoil the gubernatorial recently through poor campaigning and polling, and allowed an insurgent Republican (Matt Bevin) in, an asinine populist. On the flip side, his bumbling helped turn part of state congress blue and he may very well be a one-term governor.

    I am interested in even the most slightly more liberal Kentucky. National Democratic strategy has been to hinge all races on turnout for the POTUS election (this is stupid and handicaps Democrats, but be that as it may), and the strongest possible turnout for Hillary and local offices can signal renewed strength — important given lower-than-average liberal turnout during the lost gubernatorial (this probably would have been easier with Sanders, alas). Perhaps in another universe where the Green party was a useful and competent coalition of leftists with real leadership, a vote for Stein might raise discourse in some way. As it stands even the Libertarians are better positioned to effect change, as Johnson could very well spoil a place like Utah for Trump.

    All the same, there is the very real chance of a recession in the next 3 or so years. If a Democrat is in the office at that time, we can expect complete and utter clobbering of liberals in the next general. I know a couple of people who've expressed their wish to see Trump in the office at that time.

    Reply
  22. Daniel Kaufman

    Love the presumed Utilitarianism. What if we don't buy it? As far as I'm concerned, it's the worst moral theory amongst a bad lot.

    I would not push a person in front of a train to save 5. Are you saying you would?

    Reply
  23. Nora Carrington

    I'm voting for Clinton because I'm a Democrat. When I was an academic (1980-1996) I was still a Democrat because I identified as a working class white woman more than I identified as an intellectual. I wanted to be both; turned out not to be possible so I quit academia. I've flirted with non-partisan political affiliations off and on over the last 40 years but they're all ultimately scams. John Cole, Desert Storm vet and Balloon Juice MC, had a great rant about how utterly stupid the special snowflake anti-2-party voters are, but I can't find it. Here's a poor substitute:

    https://www.balloon-juice.com/2016/06/10/about-hard-choices/

    The longer away I am from academia the more convinced I am that no one there has a fucking clue what the rest of the world is like.

    Reply
  24. Ian

    I think it's eminently clear that MacIntyre was dead wrong here.

    To abstain from voting in 2004 was to claim a moral position out of one side of the mouth while simply ignoring the moral consequences of abstention. Is it likely that the US would have gone so far into torture, into neocon clash of civilization rhetoric if GWB and his cohort had been removed? How many thousands of people died across the world from 2004-2008 as a more or less direct result of the Bush doctrine? Do we really think that the number would not have been substantially lower without the presence of Wolfowitz, Cheney, and so forth?

    This is precisely the hypocrisy of the anti-HRC camp at present. Hillary Clinton is, despite her many faults, far from even being the "worst" presidential candidate of the past 50 years (Nixon anyone? Gerald Ford? "Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" Reagan, who arguably is the fulcrum upon which this country turned away from basic decency? Both Bushes? Hell, even JFK sidled up with Kissinger and the like.) So it seems to me that to vote "not Hillary" is to embrace the rather absurd view that the lesser of evils has no place in politics when in fact it is precisely the fact that politics is–and we ought to remember nearly always has been–corrupt. The question is not whether a given politician is corrupt, or even how corrupt or morally bankrupt he or she is. The question is, or ought to be, how many people are likely to suffer as a result of his or her election. Assuming that the election of Trump would not only sink the US economy and use military force for petty reasons but would also cause major realignments in trade and diplomacy that would unilaterally have primarily negative effects in the West, we can assume that Trump's election represents a real and serious existential threat.

    To abstain from voting for his only real rival for moral reasons is not to stand against injustice or corruption but to fail to stand against what would by all accounts be a horrorshow resulting in deaths, mayhem, and misery the world over. If you think that your symbolic vote is one of principle–a symbol that serves approximately the same purpose as those old "Kill Your TV" bumper stickers–I think that said principle seems to be A) you don't understand politics, and B) you care more about your self-righteous indignation than you do actually minimizing death and suffering.

    (Please note that the use of "you" here is intended to refer to what I perceive as the basis of the "Never Clinton" rhetoric, some of which we have seen here. It is not meant to–and does not–refer to Clement)

    Reply
  25. Ian

    In response to myself, if my comment makes the cut, I'd just say that while I'm no Nietzsche scholar it seems to me that the kind of moralistic posturing on display in the "Never Hillary" arguments is precisely the kind of thing Nietzsche finds so deplorable in traditional–read Judeo-Christian–moralism and that not coincidentally Marx finds so deplorable in what he calls the German ideology. The hermeneutics of skepticism indeed.

    Reply
  26. ES

    "She will almost certainly win in November"
    Careful. A lot of us (i.e. the naive subset of young voters) felt this way about Bremain.

    Reply
  27. Julien Murzi

    Trump's divisive and offensive rhetoric will lead at most to a more divided country and will be conducive to more hate crimes etc. That is bad enough already. But POTUS has access to nuclear codes. Would you trust Trump – an unpredictable narcissistic character – with the power to destroy mankind? Trump elected would set the nuclear clock a few seconds before, or past, midnight.

    Reply
  28. Eddy Nahmias

    Nope, I'm not a utilitarian and I don't think it's right to push a person in front of a train to save 5 (not for Kantian reasons though). But I certainly think any viable moral theory should take into consideration plausible predictions about the relative harm caused by competing options for (in)action. The imperfect Trump train analogy was meant to suggest that, even if one thinks of this election roughly as a Sophie's choice or trolley dilemma–of having to choose between two bad options–one should act to prevent the (much) worse outcome. As J said, it's probably not the case that one person failing to vote for Clinton will cause Trump to be President, but lots of people making that choice (esp in some states) will cause that dangerous outcome, and the standard responses to the 'my vote doesn't matter' view apply here.

    FWIW, I don't think Clinton is a bad option and I'll be voting for her without holding my nose.

    Reply
  29. Pendaran Roberts

    I find it really interesting that some people think Trump is more likely to cause WW3 (or something like it) than Hillary. Really shows the power of propaganda!

    BL COMMENT: No, it shows the power of actually knowing something about the man! Hillary Clinton is a threat to humanity at large, but she's not going to launch a nuclear war because someone hurt her feelings.

    Reply
  30. Gualtiero Piccinini

    The two main reasons against voting for Clinton are:

    1. Clinton is bad (for whatever reason). Reply: Trump is so much worse, and would be so much worse for the world, that any decent person should vote for Clinton no matter how bad they think Clinton is.

    2. My single vote doesn't make a difference anyway. Reply: by that argument, all potential Clinton voters should abstain. So Trump wins. Any decent person is not only obligated to vote for Clinton; they should do what they can to persuade others to vote for Clinton too.

    Remember what happened in 2000. The same two arguments above were used against voting for Gore. Then Bush II won. Is anyone decent willing to argue that we would have been equally bad off if Gore had won?

    Caveat: if you live in a massively blue or red state, there is a faint case to be made that your vote makes little difference. But you should still do what you can to persuade others to vote for Clinton.

    FWIW, I gave money to Sanders and voted for him in the primary.

    Reply
  31. Pendaran Roberts

    I don't like Trump. But Hillary is a warmonger. Trump actually isn't if you listen to what he says. He's a lot of things but that isn't one of them. He's about reducing our interferences abroad.

    I won't be voting in the election. I would have voted for Sanders but there is no one worth voting for now in my opinion. No I don't think Trump is worse than Hillary. So, for me it's not a matter of voting for the lesser of two evils. It's a matter of not voting for evil and not pretending I have a choice with the other candidates.

    Reply
  32. Derek Bowman

    You're certainly right that Hillary is no worse – and sometimes better – than the litany of morally corrupt leaders our country has elected over the years. But at what point does that litany come to support MacIntyre's argument (at least in form) rather than oppose it? Is there no policy orientation so morally corrupt and bankrupt that you would think it unacceptable to willingly endorse, even as the lesser of two evils?

    I agree that there is a lot of moral posturing and self-image maintenance at play in these political discussion, especially among those who think they had/have another candidate who's morally pure, or who think that Clinton is somehow a unique moral evil. But what about those of us who oppose Clinton precisely because she represents the very ordinary evil and corruption which is par for the course in American politics?

    Reply
  33. Brian Leiter

    I agree with you that Hillary is a warmonger. I agree that what comes out of Trump's mouth suggests he is not, but since he's a pathological liar, who knows? Hillary Clinton will listen to military advice. Trump listens to no one. Add to that his severe level of psychological disturbance, and it's a potent brew for disaster.

    Reply
  34. Pendaran Roberts

    I agree that Trump's narcissism is worrying. I just don't understand people who see Trump as somehow the hawk and Hillary as not.

    They're both horrible. I can't imagine being excited about voting for either of them. Many people will play the lesser of two evils game and vote for Hillary, but l refuse to play that game. I think playing it just prolongs evil. It's like supporting the mobster who kills people less often. You're still supporting a horrible person. We need to stand for something better entirely.

    It's really amazing to me that the best we can come up with in America is Trump and Hillary. I can't imagine what that means other than that the country is in its final death throes.

    Reply
  35. Charles Wolverton

    Perhaps you should include in addition to the candidates an additional check box: "But only strategically".

    Like others responding to your poll, I chose Jill Stein merely to register dissatisfaction with Clinton. But if polls in Nov suggest it'll be close here in VA, I'll actually vote for Clinton.

    BL COMMENT: I did ask who you would vote for, not who you'd like to see win!

    Reply
  36. J

    "2. My single vote doesn't make a difference anyway. Reply: by that argument, all potential Clinton voters should abstain. So Trump wins."
    ==> My single vote doesn't make a difference anyway. Reply: by that argument, all potential VOTERS should abstain. So revolution?

    "Caveat: if you live in a massively blue or red state, there is a faint case to be made that your vote makes little difference."

    There is far more than a faint case to be made that a single vote makes little difference in a US national election regardless of state — the system is not capable of counting the votes with anywhere near that degree of accuracy.

    But, sure, convince others not to vote for Trump. Perhaps if you're really, really good you can convince a sufficient large group of people to select some third option.

    Reply
  37. ez

    im not voting because There's no point

    Reply
  38. Brian B

    "I can't imagine what that means other than that the country is in its final death throes. "

    (Cynical perspective coming)

    Yes. And many people may see a vote for Trump as an act of pushing the reset button on a corrupt system that can perhaps only be corrected by collapsing it from the inside and then rebuilding from the ashes. There are enough angry and resentful people in this country right now to make the "nuclear option" politically possible.

    "Every nation gets the government it deserves." …

    Look at US society; would we really be surprised by the election of President Trump? The ongoing worship of ego, consumption, and excess (while life for the average working man continues to collapse around him) is hubris at a level normally reserved for the parts of myth that are immediately prior to the gods' wrath coming down on man. Trump may be the fitting horseman to lead us all charging into our just Apocalypse. He is like the embodiment of a scarily spot-on caricature of the worst of modern US society; a sputtering, incoherent, red-faced talking head shell of a personality that has given up all values, principles, and identity outside of the acts of short-term satisfaction and self-aggrandizement. If our absurd reality is scripted and the writers are looking to soon invoke Shiva's cosmic judgment on Man, Trump is the perfect character for initiating the sequence.

    Reply
  39. Ian

    Derek–The point I'm trying to make is that at the time of a US Presidential election such arguments are more or less irrelevant. The time to make or ensure meaningful change could be said to be prior to such elections, or even on every other day of the year.

    Put another way, deontological moral gestures don't have force when they are explicitly overshadowed by consequentialistic concerns. Perhaps an example would be the US entrance into WWs I & II. To be a pacifist is a good thing. To be a pacifist on principle when people are dying by the thousands in a war that can be won is–in my view–just as morally bankrupt as declaring a war for anything other than pressing existential danger.

    Reply
  40. Brian Leiter

    I guess I don't think an "acopalypse," real or metaphorical, is a joke. Tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions, of real people will be harmed.

    Reply
  41. Roger Albin

    This is a simple decision analysis.
    If Trump is elected, the modest chance we have of keeping global temperature increases below a reasonable threshold evaporates. While this may not be the Apocalypse, this is a real threat to our civilization and the worst consequences would be borne not by us, but by future generations, particularly in the Third World.
    Clinton is a safe bet to continue the (somewhat belated) environmental policies of the Obama administration, and may go farther. This offers some hope.
    Even if Trump doesn't have a great chance of winning (and I believe he doesn't), the stakes are very, very high and its irresponsible to do anything other than vote for someone who has a realistic chance of beating him.
    I'm no great fan of either Clinton but the consequences of a Trump victory are very clear.
    So – vote for Clinton, give money to Clinton, and if you're in a swing state, work for Clinton.

    Reply
  42. anon phd

    I am disturbed by those who claim that we need the current system to collapse before we can truly fix it. Suppose Trump is elected and brings the United States (and perhaps much of the world) to ruin. Which is more likely to follow: some sort of egalitarian, or Marxist, or whatever, global system fundamentally better than the (quite bad) one we are faced with currently? Or just a lot more needless chaos, suffering, and bloodshed? Given that we have no assurance that the former outcome is more likely than the latter, why even take this risk?

    Another observation: I'm no political scientist, but when it comes to revolutions and state collapse, I generally put my money on those groups with, roughly speaking, the most guns, money, and populist appeal. Who in the United States does this describe?

    Reply
  43. Rusty Shackleford

    I voted in the poll for Stein but I'm only leaning that way and really not sure what to do. I think Trump would be a disaster but I have no idea how he would be a disaster since it isn't clear to me what he would actually do as President, which policies he would actually support, etc. I think Clinton would be a disaster in predictable ways: more war, more global instability, more damage to the environment, more undermining democracy here and abroad, more power funneled to global elites all while tricking the naive into thinking that she's a progressive hero (setting back real progressive policy change just like her husband).

    I understand the lesser evil argument but it isn't clear to me that one of the two is clearly worse than the other and I think there's got to be some threshold of terribleness where the lesser evil argument starts to look absurd. If our two options were Idi Amin and Pol Pot, I think most people would find discussion of which one is less terrible tasteless. Trump and Clinton might not be as obviously bad as Idi Amin and Pol Pot but I think we've reached the threshold where lesser evil arguments strike me as absurd.

    I'm really at a loss because I recognize that Trump and Clinton are the only realistic options but I also think that they're the only realistic options because everybody repeats those words, not because they genuinely want that to be the case. If everyone supported who they actually wanted, I don't think we'd see Trump vs Clinton. Maybe I'm being too optimistic about that though. I feel like we're doomed either way and that's why I'm leaning Stein or no vote. Someone tell me why I'm crazy. I want to see the light.

    Reply
  44. Daniel Kaufman

    A few more things:

    1. I don't buy the idea that Trump is more dangerous, internationally than Hillary. This whole "finger on the button" thing is nonsense. That's not how it works. And it seems to me that Hillary is much more likely to get us into Iraq-like wars than Trump.

    2. Hillary actually reminds me a lot, personality-wise, of Nixon. She is secretive, reflexively dishonest, and quite vicious in how she operates behind the scenes. Trump is all bluster and noise and obnoxious crookery. Don't know which is worse, but its not obvious that the latter is.

    3. They are both horrible.

    4. One of the biggest scourges we suffer perennially is the War on Drugs. It is at the heart of gun violence in the US, militarized and militant policing, and more. I would argue it is a top 3 issue. And the ticket most likely to put an end to it is Johnson-Weld.

    5. Johnson-Weld are also the least likely to continue this bipartisan process of neverending small scale warfare overseas. (Well, except for Jill Stein, whom I could never vote for on economics grounds.)

    6. This notion that we are terrible people if we vote for whom we think is the best, rather than for the lesser evil of who is likely to win is a kind of moral blackmail which is nothing more than moral posturing of the cheapest sort. My vote is my prerogative and none of your bloody business. And don't tell me that I have to accept whatever human detritus is sent my way, because he or she belongs to one of the major parties and thus is the only one "with a chance to win." If we all keep thinking like that, we'll never break the monopoly that these miserable parties have over who our candidates are.

    7. For all of these and many other reasons, I picked Johnson/Weld for the poll. That said, I could change my mind, in response to the way the election develops between now and the Fall. If I did change my mind, I would vote for Hillary, albeit very reluctantly.

    Reply
  45. Grad Student No. 3903

    What about Darrell Castle of the Constitution Party? He will be in many state ballots this election year.

    Reply
  46. prh

    I was in law school in 1968. I vividly recall many people saying that rather than vote for Humphrey they would not vote at all. We know how that worked out.

    Reply
  47. anon grad student coward

    I'll be voting for Hillary. I think sane and decent people have an ethical obligation to do so. I also happen to be a fan. She's a fine candidate. Not great, but fine. The hate that she gets, especially on the left, is really disproportional to her flaws, imho. I've got two explanations for this discrepancy.

    I suspect a large portion of it is made of people who are just bitter that their "outsider" candidate didn't make it while the Republican outsider candidate did. Clinton is hardly any more "establishment" than Bush was. She's got half a century of political experience and a diverse and dedicated following. Sure, she's hawkish and has political baggage, but recent historical events and military disasters in the Middle East I don't think will allow her to make the same mistakes Bush did. Also, she's not a climate change denier and presumably her policies would speak to climate change, as Obama's have attempted to. This is *very* good for the human race, compared to Trump, who believes (who really knows what he believes?) that climate change is a hoax fabricated by the Chinese in order to suppress the American manufacturing sector (Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-china-created-climate-change-2016-1).

    I think another major reason that Hillary's baggage looks so bad to so many people is because of how cult-ish the followers of her opponents are. Neither Trump nor Sanders can do any wrong to their supporters, in spite of the ridiculousness both of them have exhibited. Sanders' conspiratorial "the game is rigged" rhetoric about delegates should be seen as an embarrassment to anybody who ever supported him. The charge that the system is "undemocratic" is patently absurd where the only places he truly excelled—caucuses—are the least democratic part of primaries. Trump's problems are seen as totally irrelevant, since it has nothing at all to do with his politics (whatever they are) or are just part of his caricature.

    Finally I think lots of Hillary hate even on the left is just misogyny. The prospect of having a female president should excite people. It would be a major step forward, and the prospect of it happening is real. Obviously don't vote for her *because* she's a woman, but really ask yourself, in all your indignant self-righteous skepticism of the "political elite," do you *really* hate her because of her political past? Is there *really* even a question of who is more fit to be president, Trump or Hillary? Come on.

    I'm not saying *everybody* who dislikes Hillary falls into these categories, but I'm pretty confident that a sizeable portion of "Hillary hate" can be explained by Bernie bitterness and misogyny. Sure some people like Sanders and his supporters take Marxist theorizing more seriously than Hillary does, but the prospect of a Trump presidency is absolutely terrifying and no sane or decent person would act in such a way so as not to resist it (by e.g., voting for a hopeless third party candidate or abstaining).

    I just wonder: Were people making these same vicious "A Hillary Clinton presidency would be bad for the human race" arguments against her when she was running against Obama in the '08 primaries? I'd be curious to know, but I really doubt it.

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  48. V. Alan White

    I'm shocked that no one besides me–not one person–has acknowledged that one of the three branches of government, and the one that determines what constitutes the final law of the land–is up for grabs in this election. And, in practice what determines the law of the land probably near two generations. Doesn't anyone yet get the significance of the death and replacement of Scalia? And that the next Prez will not just replace him but probably more? C'mon! All this wringing of hands about single-voter significance and high-minded principle–while the Constituted rights of people and speech and the political process itself is in the balance this November? That one might vote for Trump or even not vote in a way that effectively helps defeat Trump, who will do what he's told or, more scarily, just appoint capitalist-friendly people to further the trends of Citizens United? Jeez people. Since Reagan the politicized appointments to the SCOTUS has been one very big rudder on where this country is going. Straining at motes with beams in one's eyes.

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  49. anon2

    #1 seems perilously close to, "Trump will be OK because even though he's completely ignorant of world affairs and a 'narcissistic sociopath' with the attention span of a gnat, he'll have good people to advise him." All evidence, both from his business life and his political life, points to the contrary: he's a terrible manager who chooses his people based on how much they are willing to feed his ego and cater to his whims, not on their competence. And the Trump offspring are clearly looking for cabinet jobs…

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  50. Eddy Nahmias

    Right, Alan! Plus, if Trump were elected there would be no veto of the Republican congress, who would take the lead in trying to overturn Obamacare and god knows what else (if Trump wins, no way the Dems take back either House or Senate). Anyone who watched his speech last night should recognize that this is a very dangerous time and voting for Clinton is the only realistic way to prevent Trump's ascension into power. We are not yet, and need not become, the dark, dangerous, and depressing place Trump's awful (and awfully long) speech portrayed.

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