jasonlmorrow.com
A train is hurtling down the tracks. In the distance is a fork in the track, and the train will have to take one of several tracks. On November 2 it's up to you to decide which way the train goes.
There is one button for each possible track. The only two important buttons are the red and the blue. If you hit any other button it's the same as hitting the red button. If you don't hit any button it's the same as hitting the red button. If you publicly criticize the blue button it's the same as hitting the red button. There's even an option to write in your preferred track on a touch-screen but this, too, is the same as hitting the red button. This isn't a bug; this is how the keypad is intentionally set up. If you criticize this design, it's the same as hitting the red button.
This example might seem ludicrous, but that kind of reaction is the same as hitting the red button.
If you hit the red button, the train will shift tracks and run over 5 people that are on the tracks, killing them. If you hit the blue button, the train will not shift tracks, and will run over only 3 people. It doesn't seem to you that any people are tied to the green track, but remember, hitting that button will default to red and kill those 5 people.
The obvious choice seems to hit the blue button. It's still a terrible choice. Red and blue are both terrible choices, and choosing one of the other tracks so as not to kill anyone is not a realistic option. Laying those other tracks was a waste of everyone's time.
But those people tied to the red and blue tracks are just the most immediate next steps for the train. Let's look a little further.
The red track is always going to suck. Four years later you'll have the option to divert the track again. No matter what button you choose now, you can always shift the train back to either the red or blue line. And there will always be more innocent people tied to the red tracks waiting to die than on the blue track. Always. Still the choice seems simple, and the future choices are simple too.
But consider that the next stretches of track are still being built. Your choices now embolden the track-builders. If you choose red, then the next time you have to make this choice, even more people will be tied to the red track, 7. If you choose blue now, then in four years, the next stretch of blue track will have more people tied to it as well, 5. That's not as many as the red track, but more than now. It will continue on this way indefinitely.
However, if you don't select the blue track, the track-builders will reconsider their stances. They'll wonder why they didn't put forth a track that people actually liked, and there will be less people tied to it the next time you have to make a choice, only 2 instead of the current 3.
Choosing the blue track now and again next time will net you 8 deaths. Choosing red now and again next time will net you 12. But if you choose red now, and then blue next time after the blue track-builders get their act together, you'll only have netted 7 deaths. That's actually better than staying hardline blue!
And if instead of hitting red or blue, you hit green, the train may indeed switch to the red track. The builders of the red and blue lines insist this is true. Even the news is quick to insist this as well, because they're owned by the same people who own the red and blue tracks. So you can be sure that this information is trustworthy. But anyway, if you click the green button enough times in a row, both the red and blue tracks will put even less people on their tracks than in any other scenario. They will really be rethinking their strategy of tying innocent people to the tracks. And if you click it enough times, then the green track will actually become an option.
The Democratic Party has been drifting to the right. It's been moving farther and farther into corporatism, authoritarianism, and war mongering. The previous Democratic President, Bill Clinton, spearheaded policies that lead to mass incarceration of black people, and the current likely Democratic nominee helped him do it. At the end of his presidency he oversaw the overturning of Glass-Steagall, an act that prevented banks from gambling with private citizens' money. The current Democratic President took the tax cuts for the rich that George Bush put in place and decided to make them permanent. He decided to bail out the banks even more than Bush did. He has done nothing about warrantless spying on American citizens, and in general has expanded on many of the worst aspects of Bush's presidency. He didn't start a second Iraq War, which is a good thing, but Obama as President, and Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, haven't exactly been doves of peace.
The likely Democratic nominee said we need to think of the Iraq War as a business opportunity. Well, she didn't say that to you. She said that to her rich establishment colleagues. Then she signed her name to the death warrant of hundreds of thousands of people.
My point is not that Hillary is as bad as Trump, or that her presidency in and of itself will be as bad. Though it might be. At least Trump probably won't know how to push his policies through. He didn't even know what a ground campaign was. At least Congress will block him at every turn, sort of like they are doing to Obama now. It won't be because of his race, like it is with Obama, but because he's not a member of the establishment. It's not because he's racist, pro-torture, or a blowhard. Those are all generally selling points if you're trying to sell yourself to the modern Republican Party.
No, my point is that continually rubber-stamping the Democratic Party's choices is worse for our country than one Trump presidency. You don't change a political party by holding your nose and voting for whatever candidate they give you. When they give you a candidate that supports the death penalty and you vote for her, they'll continue to do that. When they give you a candidate that looks at war as a good business move and you vote for her, they'll continue to do that. When they funnel money to the establishment candidate during the primary, when they blatantly rig the election in Nevada by changing the rules without allowing Bernie supporters to be part of the vote and then falsifying voice-votes, when they do all these things and you still vote for them, they'll continue to do that.
Voting for the lesser evil gives it license to get more and more evil with each term of office.
If you're voting for Hillary because Trump is terrifying, what is your strategy for preventing the Democratic Party from becoming more and more terrifying itself? Because it is.
We tried voting for Bernie in the primary. The Democratic Party didn't like that. They funneled money to Hillary's campaign while they and the media did everything possible to shut him out. We tried putting real progressives on the current platform committee. The rest of the establishment Democratic Party mostly disregarded their concerns. Jill Stein campaigned in Massachusetts to change our voting to a ranked choice system. In that system, a citizen gets more than one vote. If your first choice doesn't win the election, then your vote switches to your second choice, and so on. If your first choice for an elected office is a little avante garde or from a third party, no matter. If they don't win, everyone who voted for them has their vote switched to their next favorite candidate. That way you never have to worry about a spoiler in the election. The whole concept of spoilers and lesser evils would go away. The Democratic Party didn't like that.
The fact that they didn't want a ranked voting system tells me that they depend on being the lesser evil. It's their bread and butter. They don't think they can win if third parties become a viable option. They don't think they'll be anyone's first choice in a ranked voting system.
By no means am I suggesting we vote for Trump. That just tells the Republican Party, "I like this, give me more of this." But if enough people vote for a different candidate - say Jill Stein or a write-in for Bernie Sanders, it says to the Democratic Party, "We like them. Give us more candidates like that, or we won't vote for your party next time either." Likewise, a vote for Gary Johnson is likely to send a similar message to the Republican Party. And if enough of us are unafraid to do that, then maybe those candidates will actually win, or get the all-important 12% of the vote that will get them into public financing next time. Whatever we decide to do sends a clear message to the establishment of what we're willing to accept in the next election.
Image this scenario. We have a ranked voting system. Progressives and independents all think the Green Party candidate is best for our country. They don't think she can win, because third parties haven't won in our country since the Democratic and Republican parties were third parties. But it doesn't matter because if the Green candidate doesn't win, it'll switch to your next vote which can be a safe establishment Democratic candidate. So what happens? Everyone feels safe voting Green and that's who becomes president.
This scenario terrifies the Democratic Party, or else they'd support ranked voting. And they wouldn't collude with the Republican Party to block other parties from the ballots and from the presidential debates. Trading the office between Democrats and Republicans seems better to them. Heck, the possibility of a Trump presidency sounded better to them than giving a fair chance to Bernie Sanders, who at the time was doing better against Trump in the polls than Hillary was. A Bernie presidency might have upset crony capitalism and a Trump presidency is much more preferable to them than that.
A party that thinks it needs to have a greater evil to compare itself to is a party which has no other points in its favor. "Yeah but the other guy is more racist than me. He'll start even more wars than I will! You'll have even less rights under him." That's not progressive. That's not liberal.
That's playing the good cop.
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