On Voting Third Party, Barroom Drivel, and Single Issues

By now, it's become startling clear that, come this November, one either votes for Harris and Walz or permits some semblance of destruction to a free and democratic America.

This is not over-exaggerated alarmism, doomsday embellishment, or an artificial binary option. Nor does me re-explaining the impact of the opposing candidate's plans for a second term. You can read that in various thinkpieces on this subject.

You can also read the 922-page Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership — something I finished doing last week — which spells out hypothetical replacements for the Respect for Marriage Act (which puts my own marriage in jeopardy), rolling back safeguards and protections for LGBTQ and minority citizens, and really just an overwhelming miasma of bad shit.

Unless you've been in the wilderness for some time, you don't really need the whole play-by-play of what happens if the "other side" wins.

On Having Two Options

This sucks "point blank period," as my Gen Z therapist would say. Having only two options for anything as a consumer is ridiculously anti-consumer. Having two options as a voter is arguably way worse for a plethora of reasons, but mostly because any other choices are merely the illusion of choice. This is how it's been since 1860, 1912, or 1968 — all depending on what you qualify as a successful third-party run.

There are small and sizable ways to fix this issue of only two choices, both on a local, state, and national level. Such efforts should very much be explored and enacted to create a playing field more akin to European elections and less like picking the least worst person for the job. These efforts, however, are only worth exploring when the existential threat of no choice at all may be mere days away. The same goes for various aspects of holding the job of President of the United States, including (but not limited to) accountability for involvement in various wars and conflicts, regressive policies that ruin lives of Americans and those abroad, and a litany of other general bad ideas that, for whatever reason, are perpetuated from administration to administration.

Everything that can be moved forward, brought up, and called into question should be. That is, of course, when we as a people are certain that we will still indeed have the freedoms to call such things into question.

On Voting Third Party or Abstaining

Don't.

Doing such a thing is the illusion of choice or committing a heroic act. Yes, Cornell West wrote some great books and has some great ideas, and Jill Stein says something right every decade or so. And, yes, the current regime is indirectly or directly responsible for some pretty horrible shit around the world (to put it mildly) for complicated reasons your writer and a bunch of Instagram personalities certainly cannot properly articulate in one short burst.

As I've said, the other option to voting for the Democratic ticket is the lack of options. This includes the lack of potential third-party candidates in the future if the act of voting itself is, say, "transitioned away from over time" — an honest-to-goodness possibility should Harris/Walz lose. This is something the opposing candidate has not-so-subtly spoken about, as well as his peers and backers.

Thus, we've found ourselves in the unfortunate position that we more or less need to vote for the option to guarantee our abilities to vote later on. Think of it as voting to extend the national deficit to keep the government open, but more permanent and with the option of repaying debt shortly thereafter. (A bit of a hackneyed comparison, but an apt one.)

Simply put, doing anything committing to the "better" option in this binary choice hastens the removal of choice in the future.

On Not Saying Yes to Genocide, Not Doing Any Favors, Etcetera

I remember spending time in the now-closed Quarter Bar where a bald, bespeckled, and not-so-obviously drunk patron aired his qualms about capitalism and its ills. These qualms were fair and among certain sentiments that I share, and as I knew them from the neighborhood and am generally friendly to pretty much anyone at neighborhood haunts, I sat and listened (sober, mind you).

Yet at the end of this airing of grievances, the patron then made sweeping statements about dismantling capitalism, smashing the state, and a bunch of other slogans that 17-year-old Fugazi-listening me would have enjoyed, but practical 30-year-old me picked up as the barroom ravings of a sad drunk.

The uprooting and/or dismantling of major tenets of society — our current way of politics, capitalism, and the like — are not changed with one swift action, but gradually and with small decisive actions. I, too, would love to live in a world where capitalism is put out to pasture and we have our pick of candidates, many of whom are less focused on corporate interests and more on their constituents. This takes time and effort that I and millions of others have at the ready — ready to organize, go door to door, and have conversations with people of all political ideologies and backgrounds about making small, impactful changes that lead to big ones. It takes compromise and patience, mobility and practicality.

The exception to this is oppression. Should people willingly vote in an oppressive regime — or should people simply not show up and cede the floor to said regime — a unified hive-mind could quickly usher in the eradication of freedoms, choice, rights, and everything we frankly take for granted. This not only makes the future bleak for us as people, but throws a wrench into any potential progress for other non-Americans who may be currently under siege or oppressive rule.

There is no indecision or abstention this election. There is only the choice of indecision or abstention out of spite or some misguided nobility.

Yes, there are thousands of people being unjustly killed in Palestine by an oppressive Israeli far-right government — something our government is partially helping, not hindering. Sure, the risk of nuclear holocaust is rising and no one's really pushing back on that. The planet is burning. And so on.

I get it, and so do you. Yet by not taking one specific action, the aforementioned horrors can and will get way more horrific. The "worst timeline" that everyone claims we live in will get worse. And that public forum where you air your grievances will not only no longer be available to you, but airing said grievances may come at a greater personal cost.

We cannot save others from drowning before saving ourselves. We have the choice to actually have choices going forward, all with just one practical, decisive, and crucial action. Once the smoke clears, we as a people and as a country can get started on the important but decidedly less existential issues going forward.