So help me out: if I’m hearing you correctly, your solution is not to vote. You don’t state that explicitly but I infer that based on your language that you won’t “support” either candidate, which “support” I equate with your vote. Somehow, this not voting will prevent these undesirable candidates from bubbling to the top.
How exactly does that work? If only 3 people vote for 2 candidates, one will win. Apologies if I missed your point completely.
Regarding your lack of any answers to this conundrum, I’d like to offer a few:
1. Eschew the cliche and quit wasting time wringing your hands about it. Identify your core values and determine the candidate that, even if only barely, most represents you. I’m sorry that your unicorn ideal candidate isn’t on the ballot, but here we are. Who cares if they are the lesser of two evils, Sleepy Joe vs the Grifter in Chief, or one of two extremely privileged old white men; pick a side and VOTE. To informally quote Alexey Navalny, don’t sit it out.
2. Advocate for ranked choice voting. Maybe your unicorn could be on the ballot if we had more positions open.
3. If that doesn’t float your boat, explore third parties.
4. Advocate for the restoration of the Fairness Doctrine. I’m not convinced voters are getting legitimate information on the candidates to begin with. Until we have real campaign reform this would be the next best option.
5. Speaking of campaign reform…
I have made my decision and have not a second thought about which candidate will come closer to shaping a world I want for my grandchildren. I hope you can find a way to do the same.
This entire exchange makes me sad. It is itself the argument for why we should not have two baby boomers running for the worlds most important elected position in 2024.
The planet is on fire! January was the hottest ever recorded in human history, continuing month after month of the same record. We are out of time.
You must vote for your grandchildren and unborn great grandchildren. It is a moral imperative.
And therefore you have to be an adult and vote for Biden. Period.
If someone can't make a decision about how bad W was, I don't think I care who he thinks doesn't deserve his vote. So many Iraqis were killed, so much money was spent, American soldiers were killed and broken. Our chance to undo the Vietnam War. We lost so much. After the war, we saw nothing but the bumbling incompetence to instill a perfect "conservative" nirvana reforms on the Iraqis. For what? I had the unfortunate role of working with returning Iraq War veterans. The Iraq War was like an evil descended on this country stained us all, and we're still feeling the effects. The greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression wasn't a picnic either.
I admire all students of the short form opinion piece because expressing a well-defended, persuasive argument briefly, without relying on vague, overly broad, or implausible implicit premises is not easy to do.
Professor Ryder wants to counter the vote-for-the-lesser-of-two-evils argument to vote for President Biden in November (or presumably, to vote for Donald Trump on the same grounds). His conclusion is that “both candidates are pretty bad, as far as I can tell, and I can see no good reason to endorse one bad choice over another.”
Lesser-of-two-evils arguments are fundamentally utilitarian in nature, so Ryder’s conclusion may be based on (1) an implicit rejection of utilitarian calculations in politics. The other possibility is that (2) Ryder accepts utilitarian political arguments, including the lesser-of-two-evils sort, but that in the case of Biden or Trump in 2024, neither person has a net positive good-over-evil rating over the other (or a net least negative evil-over-good rating).
Unfortunately, Ryder does not give us much direction on which one of those alternative implicit premises he wants his conclusion to rest on. Alternative 2, i.e., that on a utilitarian analysis, two political alternatives have exactly the same net positive/least net negative outcomes is extremely unlikely. So, the principle of charity alone tells us to reject that reconstruction of Ryder’s argument.
That leaves the reader with alternative 1, i.e., that Ryder’s rejection of the lesser-of-two-evils choice between Biden and Trump is based on an implicit rejection of utilitarian political calculations in favor of a political position that is grounded in some other principle. Ryder tells us in the very first paragraph that he has rejected lesser-of-two-evils choices between Presidential candidates since Carter-Ford, but we never learn his preferred alternative principle that has guided his decisions. Some hint would be a help to the reader.
Finally, consider Professor Ryder’s reference to “the laughable American predilection to think that ours is the best of all possible political worlds.” Opposition to de Tocqueville’s characterization of America as “exceptional” has a long history. I’m probably on the side of Richard Hofstadter, Boorstin, and other historians who subscribe to some version or other of American exceptionalism, so I don’t think such a position is “laughable.” That implies that it is obviously false. A more plausible view is that exceptionalism is worthy of debate. One doesn’t have to be a neoconservative to look at America as the best chance for advancing freedom and equality in parts of the world where those necessary grounds of human well-being are so desperately needed.
So help me out: if I’m hearing you correctly, your solution is not to vote. You don’t state that explicitly but I infer that based on your language that you won’t “support” either candidate, which “support” I equate with your vote. Somehow, this not voting will prevent these undesirable candidates from bubbling to the top.
How exactly does that work? If only 3 people vote for 2 candidates, one will win. Apologies if I missed your point completely.
Regarding your lack of any answers to this conundrum, I’d like to offer a few:
1. Eschew the cliche and quit wasting time wringing your hands about it. Identify your core values and determine the candidate that, even if only barely, most represents you. I’m sorry that your unicorn ideal candidate isn’t on the ballot, but here we are. Who cares if they are the lesser of two evils, Sleepy Joe vs the Grifter in Chief, or one of two extremely privileged old white men; pick a side and VOTE. To informally quote Alexey Navalny, don’t sit it out.
2. Advocate for ranked choice voting. Maybe your unicorn could be on the ballot if we had more positions open.
3. If that doesn’t float your boat, explore third parties.
4. Advocate for the restoration of the Fairness Doctrine. I’m not convinced voters are getting legitimate information on the candidates to begin with. Until we have real campaign reform this would be the next best option.
5. Speaking of campaign reform…
I have made my decision and have not a second thought about which candidate will come closer to shaping a world I want for my grandchildren. I hope you can find a way to do the same.
This entire exchange makes me sad. It is itself the argument for why we should not have two baby boomers running for the worlds most important elected position in 2024.
The planet is on fire! January was the hottest ever recorded in human history, continuing month after month of the same record. We are out of time.
You must vote for your grandchildren and unborn great grandchildren. It is a moral imperative.
And therefore you have to be an adult and vote for Biden. Period.
If someone can't make a decision about how bad W was, I don't think I care who he thinks doesn't deserve his vote. So many Iraqis were killed, so much money was spent, American soldiers were killed and broken. Our chance to undo the Vietnam War. We lost so much. After the war, we saw nothing but the bumbling incompetence to instill a perfect "conservative" nirvana reforms on the Iraqis. For what? I had the unfortunate role of working with returning Iraq War veterans. The Iraq War was like an evil descended on this country stained us all, and we're still feeling the effects. The greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression wasn't a picnic either.
I admire all students of the short form opinion piece because expressing a well-defended, persuasive argument briefly, without relying on vague, overly broad, or implausible implicit premises is not easy to do.
Professor Ryder wants to counter the vote-for-the-lesser-of-two-evils argument to vote for President Biden in November (or presumably, to vote for Donald Trump on the same grounds). His conclusion is that “both candidates are pretty bad, as far as I can tell, and I can see no good reason to endorse one bad choice over another.”
Lesser-of-two-evils arguments are fundamentally utilitarian in nature, so Ryder’s conclusion may be based on (1) an implicit rejection of utilitarian calculations in politics. The other possibility is that (2) Ryder accepts utilitarian political arguments, including the lesser-of-two-evils sort, but that in the case of Biden or Trump in 2024, neither person has a net positive good-over-evil rating over the other (or a net least negative evil-over-good rating).
Unfortunately, Ryder does not give us much direction on which one of those alternative implicit premises he wants his conclusion to rest on. Alternative 2, i.e., that on a utilitarian analysis, two political alternatives have exactly the same net positive/least net negative outcomes is extremely unlikely. So, the principle of charity alone tells us to reject that reconstruction of Ryder’s argument.
That leaves the reader with alternative 1, i.e., that Ryder’s rejection of the lesser-of-two-evils choice between Biden and Trump is based on an implicit rejection of utilitarian political calculations in favor of a political position that is grounded in some other principle. Ryder tells us in the very first paragraph that he has rejected lesser-of-two-evils choices between Presidential candidates since Carter-Ford, but we never learn his preferred alternative principle that has guided his decisions. Some hint would be a help to the reader.
Finally, consider Professor Ryder’s reference to “the laughable American predilection to think that ours is the best of all possible political worlds.” Opposition to de Tocqueville’s characterization of America as “exceptional” has a long history. I’m probably on the side of Richard Hofstadter, Boorstin, and other historians who subscribe to some version or other of American exceptionalism, so I don’t think such a position is “laughable.” That implies that it is obviously false. A more plausible view is that exceptionalism is worthy of debate. One doesn’t have to be a neoconservative to look at America as the best chance for advancing freedom and equality in parts of the world where those necessary grounds of human well-being are so desperately needed.