Digging through correspondence with a recalcitrant Green, I have found drafts of emails never sent that nevertheless seem as close I ever get to expressing my feelings about third party voting in general elections. The subject is the exact nature of what sucks about Democrats, and the reason they should be voted for in general elections anyway (and implicitly, a case for participating in Democratic primaries).
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In my view, the GOP fundamentally suck. They are malformed humans—they are broken in very similar ways which is why they are now acting as one in spite of their fetish about the individual. The demoncraps in question—the culprits—an actual pointable toable finite collection of miscreants have deep character flaws. So it’s deficient humans on the GOP side “versus” “democrats” of poor character. In the world they both agree on—the neoliberal hellscape of individual responsibility, entitlement on the GOP side, meritocracy on the dem side, “free” market supremacy—the GOP are the alphas. They have the courage of their convictions. They are true believers. The dems are betas. They see the GOP’s success since Nixon and they want it for themselves. They were not born malformed so their GOP-Light version is experienced by them as a cool “smart”-fad. A fad of smartness because it cops from the Alpha playbook. The notion they are pushing is, Hey the GOP may be onto something but they’re the GOP. We’re now onto the same thing but we are the Democrats! Don’t drink Coke! Drink Pepsi! And the novelty of it and their ersatz entitlement born of their merit imbuing their zeal with an irresistible (in the moment) confidence took over the party. And because they’re meritocrats and “liberals” (though be careful not to say that out loud because daddy Bush turned it into a dirty word) gives their brand of neoliberals a hep, savvy in the moment made for TV “sex” appeal (but not more than the FCC will allow).
In short I think in reality these character flawed people had a bad idea that created a fad that had actual consequences in the world. And one of those consequences is that people started to hate them. Yet they never learned--- the fiction that they were offering a cool, improved brand of the juice that the GOP had in their bones that people would choose because it was cool and improved—I mean everyone who is everyone was on board with it. Every elite person who looks down through their ray bans at the tacky GOP version, was a Democrat now. Corporate C-Suites, Hollywood boardrooms, Cultural figures, Journalists. The small thin "mainstream" that employs us, that we are allowed to see on tv, was democrat. Meanwhile, the GOP became masters of the conversation that was only allowed on Fox pointing out the obvious. Do you want to schedule an intercourse session with the cheap plastic perfectly made and more expensive ersatz version that the democrats are offering, or do you want to fuck the real thing? The people want to fuck the real thing. The democrats are fucking annoying. But to get back to my point, the people responsible for this, who are stuck in 1992, trying to put on their ray bans and play sax on Arsenio as though anyone is still interested in that—they are aging out. Many of them will be pushed out by attrition. The young ambitious meritocrats trying to take over the party will be outnumbered by people whose eyes have opened. I am sort of afraid that we’re too late in a way to fix things the easy way. I think I’m grieving a bit for the dream of socialism by consensus, but Zohran and the new genuine breed of Dems do give some hope that the contrast between the lizard people of the GOP and the actual small d democrats is going to cause seismic cognitive dissonance.
I’ve gone a little out of scope with my reply—I keep wanting to say that my feelings about the political system we have are 1) it’s got to go; 2) until the momentum for that builds, we are stuck with a winner take all duopoly and one of those 2 parties is less harmful than the other—it even sometimes does the right thing though we like to focus on all the wrong that it does. (the wrong I think is mostly attributable to the finite group of bourgeois professional managerial Beta absconders with character flaws-- stuck in their behavior loop a la Ezra Klein who thinks we need to run anti-choice candidates-- who we must work to see relegated to the dustbin of history) 3) Given the winner take all nature of elections, it matters very much who the winners are. 4) 3rd parties are not winners. They are where votes go to die.
Only people who vote in elections materially impact the outcome. Most people who vote in general elections understand the choice: More fascism or Less fascism. Those are the people it is the job of the Less Fascist party to win over. To the extent that not enough people who understood the choice voted for More Fascism over Less Fascism, that is on the Less Fascist party/candidate. This should not be controversial.
There is another group of general election voters however. These are voters who do not understand the choice. They believe the choice is between voting that makes you feel bad and voting that makes you feel good. If voting for either More Fascism or Less Fascism does not make them feel good enough, they have to find someone else to vote for. Far too often these are people who self-identify as ideologues of the left or right. It's the ones on the left that I have the most issue with, even if their assorted blocs turn out to be too small to impact the outcome of the election. These are leftists who are generally reacting to punish or teach the Less Fascist actual choice a lesson-- their desire to oppose Less Fascism is why they vote at all. The really twisted ones will vote for More Fascism to spite Less Fascism. But the bulk are ballot spoilers who vote merely to register their unhappiness with the Less Fascist choice. In effect, when the Less Fascist candidate/party loses, these voters share in the victory of the More Fascist party. And the beauty of their victory is that while they would love to take credit for the Least Fascist party's loss, they do not feel they have to own the More Fascist victory. No wonder they vote like they do. When they win they feel wonderful about themselves. And even though their victory is the equivalent of More Fascism, they can feel themselves absolved from voting for More Fascism.
The feel good nature of their vote will persist, even in the face of More Fascism due to this neat trick. It's why I obsess about them so much. Why do most voters understand the choice, but the often otherwise very intelligent self-pleasuring ideologues do not? What are they missing? For one thing they are missing that the general election is not and can never be the sum of dissident politics. The general election is one day, a day on which only 2 choices-- two flavors of fascism: more or less-- are on the ballot. It's too late to do anything about the choice, and most of these folks missed their chance in the primary anyway, preferring to reserve their Unlike for the general election. Their duty if they are serious about anti fascism is to do merely the bare minimum that is their part in forestalling More Fascism. They are shirkers because shirking pleasures them. Moreover they have a self-righteous disdain for voters who understand the choice and behave responsibly, regardless of the lack of pleasure in that task. This is why I find the choice-missers so odious.
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