You Can’t Get There From Here

The Real Harm in the Lesser-Evil Approach

“You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”  This insight by Albert Einstein reminds us that in life, certain choices and actions can undermine goals we ostensibly hold dear.  But when it comes to elections, such reasoning is suppressed.  Whenever the quadrennial presidential horse race heats up, spokespersons for the liberal left outdo each other rationalizing why “responsible” opponents of the status quo must buck up, be “practical” and, above all, never stray from the narrow, contrived choice allotted to us by those currently pulling the strings.

Each race is different.  Sometimes, progressives will argue that the Democratic candidate is so meritorious that he/she has earned our support outright, based on the balance sheet of the candidate’s actual efforts and accomplishments.  Remarkably, there are those who try to make this case for Barack Obama today—a position that can only be defended if the facts are not known, are ignored, or are considered irrelevant.  David Masciotra, B, Sidney Smith and other Counterpunch contributors have amply debunked the myth of Obama’s virtue and progressivism, so I will say no more about it.

More often, defenders of lesser-evil voting will acknowledge that while both establishment candidates are highly flawed, while neither is deserving of outright support, one of them—usually the Republican—is worse in a way that requires all caring, thinking people to set principle aside, hold one’s nose and vote to prevent the victory of the greater evil.  In the current election cycle, this position has been advocated by many, but most notably, by Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg.  That the argument is couched in terms of different strategies for “solid” and “swing” states is immaterial; the message is the same: the Republican must be defeated at all costs.

This strategy is dangerous and misleading, not less so when it is raised by sincere, respected, and dedicated opponents of empire.  The critical flaw with this approach is that it assumes that an action today—that of voting a particular way, or even more important, of advocating for a particular short-term electoral tactic—does not negatively affect long-term goals for the future.  It assumes that encouraging people to vote for one of the corporate controlled parties, however conditionally, has no impact on educating and organizing people to build toward an alternate future where corporations are not our political and economic masters.  It assumes, in other words and to paraphrase Einstein, that one can work to abolish the current corrupt setup and simultaneously strengthen it by playing by its rules. (And playing the electoral game by the rules does strengthen the current gamekeepers, as we’ll see in a minute.)

Before we can begin to see how this works, I offer the following assertions: 

1) The problems we face today—from endless war; the whittling away of democratic rights and civil liberties; discrimination against women, minorities and immigrants; to unemployment, lower living standards, the push for austerity, the threat of nuclear annihilation, environmental destruction and lower quality of life—are all tied together and chiefly caused by a system of upside down priorities that puts profits ahead of human needs. 

2)  Though we’re not supposed to talk about it, our society is divided in to teams or classes: those that benefit from the current setup and those that are exploited by it.  In the terminology of the Occupy movement: the 1% and the 99%. 

3) The Democratic and Republican parties are owned, controlled and beholden to those that benefit from the current, unjust setup. 

4) Those that benefit from the current setup will never change it.  Getting to the root of the problem, revamping society in a way that puts human needs before profits, is a big job which can only be accomplished if the overwhelming majority of working people—the 99%—makes a conscious decision to undertake the task.  For such a monumental, democratic task to be undertaken, working people must become fully aware of their numeric and economic power, their separate interests vis-à-vis those currently running the show, and most important of all, who’s on their team and what constitutes the opposition.

With the help of the above, we can now see the lesser-evil strategy in its proper light.  If the way forward is to convince the majority that fundamental change is needed, and if becoming convinced requires clarity as to where we are, where we need to go and who’s on which side, each strategy and tactic must be evaluated in these terms.

The essential problem comes down to this:  Urging a vote for one or another corporate candidate, no matter how conditional, is disorienting.  It sacrifices the very clarity we must work to establish regarding how to really fix things, in exchange for (perhaps) a few, small, short-term crumbs. Far from clarifying who’s on which side, what interests are represented by which parties and what steps we must take if we hope to solve the big problems we face, promoting “strategic” lesser-evilism muddles everything.

Lesser evil politics is also demoralizing.  Where we could be educating and inspiring working people as to their collective power and the first steps to take along the long but sure road to societal transformation, we instead direct folks down a detour that doesn’t lead where we need to go.  There’s always the promise that “next time” we’ll abandon the dead ends and start down the real road, but the powers that be are wily, there’s always a lesser evil and “next time” never comes.

Advocating lesser-evil voting is playing defense when we should be playing offense.  In a game of football, it would be like choosing which member of the opposing team to hand the ball off to in order to minimize your losses, rather than running with the ball yourself.  Instead of hoping to limit the damage to ourselves by backing the least objectionable politician of the other team, we should be building a political party loyal to our own team that can begin to challenge the corporate titans for political and economic power.  You can’t suck and blow at the same time; neither in politics can you effectively root for yourselves and your opponents simultaneously.

And accepting the lesser-evil framework does perpetuate and strengthen the current regime.  A minority maintains its rule over the majority by force and illusion.  Illusion is preferred, as it is much less costly and usually more effective.  If, as all evidence indicates, our political and economic system, together with the two main political parties, are controlled by a minority of something like 1%, then justifying the two-party shell game, with whatever reservations , perpetuates and strengthens one of the empire’s most important and cherished illusions.

For those who cling to hope of reforming the Democratic Party, consider this:  Even though you may personally know several sincere, honest, dedicated, progressive-minded Democratic Party activists or officials, what matters is the essential nature of the organization, not the exceptional nature of a few individuals.  A thimble full of clean water will not purify a poisoned well.

To transform the Democratic Party from an organization with a multi-century record of being beholden to the super rich into a party whose first loyalty is to working people would be like trying to change a dog into a cat.  You might think that if you changed enough parts, you’d eventually get there.  But in the end, you’d have to destroy the thing in order to “save it”.

There are other angles from which to critique the lesser-evil approach, such as the argument that accepting a lesser-evil choice, year after year, has the tendency to cause the allowable choices to move toward the right over time.  This and similar arguments are frequently offered and have merit.  However, I would submit that, though it’s rarely discussed, the class disorientation resultant from the lesser evil approach is the strongest argument against it.

So what is the alternative?  The simple answer is to evaluate all ideas in terms of the degree to which they clarify who’s who and what is to be done.  Working people—the overwhelming majority, the producers of all our national wealth, those who benefit the least and are exploited the most by the current setup—need to understand their power, be clear about who their friends and who their enemies are, be confident that a better world is possible and that they are the ones that can make it happen.  Therein lies our only hope for the future.  Any strategy or tactic which contributes to this clarity is good.  Anything—including lesser-evil voting—which muddles the landscape must be discarded if we are to move forward.