Captain Jack, this post got the needle of my moral compass spinning round and
round, making it hard to find out the correct direction.
The questions for me are: Is it evil to vote against the party you believe in?
Is it evil to vote for a candidate you believe is evil?
Let me be clear right away that this is not a party question for me, neither a
condemnation of only Republicans (like you) or Democrats. I am not completely
naive, so I am quite aware that some Democrats have proposed just sort of an
action, sometimes suggesting that they cross party lines to vote for the most
extreme Republican in hopes that he/she would lose, sometimes voting for a less
extreme opponent in hopes that they might help get the Republicans a more
reasonable candidate. Just as you suggest here and just as other Republican
previously encouraged voting for Antone Melton-Meaux in hopes of removing Rep.
Omar.
I am not even certain about the morality of voting for a candidate from a party
that you lack general agreement. I have done this myself. I have been a
Democrat since 1964, active in college and as an adult during nearly every year
I lived in the U.S. But there were some Democrats I found so wrong-headed that
I simply could not vote for them, either voting for a candidate from another
party or not voting for that office at all.
There have also been times I have been absolutely against the candidate of my
party, but kept my mouth shut and voted for them, feeling that the alternative
was much, much worse. One case of that was the candidacy of Hillary Clinton. In
my view, she was a horrible war-monger as Secretary of State, causing untold
human suffering by pimping completely optional wars. But after it became clear
that the Democratic Party would nominate her, I did not utter a single word
against her beyond my immediate family. Because it was completely clear that
Donald Trump would be a raging disaster for our country. (He was, but he was
also much worse than even I imagined.)
So should a person vote against their own party, in my opinion? Perhaps, if
their party's candidate is bad and another party's is better. Should a person
vote for a candidate who is at least marginally evil? Maybe, if the
alternative possibility is totally and completely evil? (Not as a person
necessarily. They may not kick their dog, but their policies will probably
result in evil outcomes.)
Where we make a horrible mistake, I believe, is in misjudging that "the end
justifies the means." in other words, should we do something non-good in order
to stop something much worse?
In this particular case, I would suggest that if you are a Republican and if
you believe that Cicely Davis was a worthy candidate, you should not be urging
fellow Republicans to vote for a Democrat. Even if it lowered your own chances
for office. That would be the moral and selfless thing to do. If you found her
worthy, then you betrayed your own Republican loyalty. You made a cynical
decision.
I have a somewhat similar few of the Democratic primary for CD-05. If a person
was a Democrat and believed in the actions and positions of Ilhan Omar but
voted for Don Samuels in the primary, thinking that he had a better chance of
winning, they they have similar to the hollow cynicism of anyone else voting
against their interests and beliefs in order to wrest a pyric win.
This is entirely the point I have been making on this forum all along, that we
only betray ourselves when we merely support the easy win, the compromising
candidate. It is precisely how the Democratic Party has moved so far right over
the decades: by making collaborationist deals with those they disagree with. It
is a policy which fails us. It is, to use a Biblical metaphor, a "Judas kiss."
None of this is designed to malign Don Samuels as a person. I do not take back
the praise I have given him. It was sincere and not designed merely to win an
election for the candidate I favored. He is a good person. I wish he had not
brought so many local issues into a national race because it sort of took the
air out of most of the worthy campaign issues. I really wish he and I agreed
more about police accountability over the years, though this may be a question
of perspective. But that is neither here nor there.
The questions I ask myself, the questions I ask you Captain Jack, and the
questions I would each ask ourselves is this: What is your greatest loyalty?
How far will you go to compromise? At what point would your support something
you find mostly wrong in order to prevent greater suffering?
I have made many of these decisions for myself, as each of us must do. I am a
complete pacifist and I would not kill another human for any religion, any
country, any cause. But I guess I did compromise in the minor case of silence
about Hillary Clinton the war-monger; but then Trump was so very much worse!
