Last week, I did the dirty deed. I voted for Barack Obama.
Begrudgingly wouldn’t begin to describe the manner in which I exercised the franchise. A recent Iowa transplant, I’d received my absentee ballot in the mail several weeks earlier, only to cast it aside as flotsam. After a couple weeks, I took the ballot off my dresser and blackened the bubbles next to my preferred ballot initiatives, judges, and candidates. Except for one race: All eight presidential ticket ovals remained devoid of darkening.
I didn’t intend to opt out of the presidential election. But vote for a president who never wanted to break up the big banks, who possesses a secret “kill list,” who champions anti-union education reform? I couldn’t countenance it.
The major party alternative, Mitt Romney, was even worse. Obama’s Wall Street boosterism was at least tempered by the tepid Dodd-Frank financial reform law; Romney viewed even that measly piece of legislation as onerous. Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, was good on civil liberties, the drug war, and foreign policy. But if I chose Green Party presidential aspirant Jill Stein, I could have all of that without Johnson’s austerity, privatization, and welfare state strangling.
The obvious downside was Stein’s third-party status. If I’d learned anything as a political science major, it was this: institutions matter. The United States, with its first-past-the-post system, effectively prevents third parties from accruing power. Their candidates are relegated to the role of spoilers; at best, a major party will appropriate their pet position. I was also voting in a swing state, those hotly contested, consequential territories.
I understood the institutional realities, but it didn’t send me rushing to Obama, the less-bad major party candidate.
Casting one’s vote is both a moral and strategic act, an expression of one’s values and a pragmatic weighing of the attendant consequences. In my case: Should I withhold my vote from Obama because he reneged on his vow to scale back the executive presidency and because many of his policies enrich the rich and powerful? And if I did, would there be enough like-minded, discontented lefties to chasten Obama? How close would the race in Iowa have to be for me to fill in the oval next to his name?
I continued to oscillate between Stein and Obama, between the moral and the strategic.
Cut from the same cloth as Bill Clinton, Obama was a corporatist, a civil liberties-abridging militarist. I abhorred his disregard for due process; his flouting of the War Powers Act during the Libyan intervention; his expansion of the war in Afghanistan; his expansion of drone attacks and killing of innocent civilians; his willingness to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid; and his unwillingness to fundamentally restructure Wall Street. In short, for this leftist, his general inability to stake out even liberal positions was disqualifying.
I granted Obama a few things: The much-derided stimulus weakened the severity of a recession that, unalleviated, would have caused even more human misery. The death of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki was heinous. But what of the billions who will suffer from a warmer planet? If there is to be any meaningful action on climate change over the next four years, Obama’s reelection is a necessary, if not sufficient, condition. Obamacare was a giveaway to pharmaceutical companies and provided private insurance companies with millions of new customers. I’m convinced it also established a state-guaranteed right to health insurance, an enormous victory that lefty critics often overlook. His high-profile support for gay marriage and opposition to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell has been matched by an admirable record on other, less ballyhooed LGBT issues. Finally, the welfare state would be in marginally safer hands under Obama than Romney, Paul Ryan at his side.
That’s the most I could muster in the way of an endorsement. But it was enough. As I filled in the bubble next to the Obama-Biden ticket, I was disturbed by some of the policies I was implicitly endorsing. Still, I sealed the envelope and deposited it in the faded blue mailbox outside the corner liquor store, at once relieved and perturbed.
I recount my own conundrum because I’m not an aberration: Every four years, American leftists find themselves in the same terrible spot. The state—their state— dispenses indispensable social services at the same time it kills innocent civilians abroad and surveils at home. It simultaneously expands freedom and stymies, squashes, and suppresses it.
The two political parties have, for reasons both pecuniary and public opinion-related, adopted views that put them on the side of plutocratic bankers and jingoistic fear-mongers. This is the institutional framework and political environment in which Obama is operating. Politicians aren’t all craven opportunists, but contrarianism doesn’t generally engender longevity. So they calculate. They assess risk. They equivocate or stand firm, depending on the situation and incentives. Obama is no different.
This is the central point, then: The president in office is only as good as the social movement(s) in the streets. It’s what we on the left do after Election Day, in between the campaigns, that really matters.
While I am at best a left-leaning moderate, I agree completely with your ending point.Report
If I was an American and lived in Iowa, I’d probably have made the same decision, with the same conflicted feelings about it.Report
An excellent bit of writing. My kudos and my consolation.Report
Hey, I’m all for changing the system to some sort of instant-run off or preference voting. And changing Congress to a Parliament system.
But that isn’t gonna happen anytime soon. Heck, electoral college stuff reform alone is having to be done through a tricky set of state amendments, rather than handled in a sane fashion.Report
Shawn, I congratulate you on not throwing away your vote. Although I’d have preferred you did.
😉Report
I think the main candidates have to adopt views which make them attractive to those who can afford to make campaign contributions. Those like yourself who lean towards policies that might benefit the poor and downtrodden more directly at the expense of those who already have the wealth aren’t going to get a look in as long elections are bought and sold in this way.
The poor are effectively disenfranchised. (Without getting into an argument about this possibly being a good thing when we see how socialists have screwed up economies in other parts of the world).
For instance, you’d have thought that GOP primaries would be a no-brainer. Select a straight down the middle protestant whose made his money contributing to one of the great industries America has created in the last 30 years. But no, they choose a Mormon who made his money in the leveraged buy out, little better than a carpetbagger or an asset stripper. Nevertheless, because of money, he’s in with a real chance.Report
if money were the only thing, Romney would have been the nominee in 2008 when he first ran.Report
The man with deeper pockets does not always win. However, the man with no pockets at all has no chance, and that would be the position of a true left winger.Report
However, the man with no pockets at all has no chance, and that would be the position of a true left winger.
You mean this guy?
Shawn,
As a political scientist I’m delighted that your profs hammered institutionalism into you. I am a little bothered, though, that you seem to have been taught that you can cast a meaningful strategic vote in a large-n election. I’m confident that if you examine the vote totals in Iowa post-election you’ll see that you could have voted for Stein without affecting the outcome. I do find this bothersome because it shows a misapplication of the theory of strategic voting.Report
Shawn is right in that the Left can make enough noise to push Obama to follow through with his promises, not that it will take much pushing in his second term. If I were a dedicated Leftist, I’d decide on Obama, then do all in my power to push the full progressive agenda, especially since this is Obama’s second term and he doesn’t have to worry about re-election. Shawn made the right decision.Report
It’s too bad, though, that Romney will win by a large margin. Those who oppose progressivism and modern conservativism are in the same boat — we have to depend on keeping Romney’s feet to the free market fire, while also introducing a strong push for a peace and prosperity agenda.Report
We’ll see on Wednesday Mike.Report
“It’s too bad, though, that Romney will win by a large margin.”
Yeah. It really is too bad.Report
It’s too bad, though, that Romney will win by a large margin.
I just hope that at least one of the folks predicting this will have the simple decency to say, “I was wrong,” on Wednesday morning.Report
Why would I say I’m wrong when wednesday gets here and Romney is our president with a firm mandate? Peace and prosperity, for real, this time.Report
I think it’s possible Romney could win, but your “large margin” and “firm mandate” just ain’t gonna happen. Truth be told, it’s no longer even remotely amusing to these idiots living in their fantasy worlds.Report
And yet you bridle at people mistaking you for a Republican first and libertarian second Mike.Report
If you want peace, you don’t elect Republicans. Especially not ones who believe that pissing off people we don’t like is a foreign policy objective in and of itself. Do you need a war with Iran, too, to teach you that?Report
“…especially since this is Obama’s second term and he doesn’t have to worry about re-election. ”
No but he will worry about how he is going to become filthy rich after leaving office if he were to pursue anything approaching a progressive agenda in his second term.
Clinton didn’t need to worry about being re-elected after 1996 but he still chose the Commodities Futures Modernization Act and a personal fortune of $100 million over doing the right thing.Report
Did you at least have the wherewithal to go into the corner liquor store after you cast your vote?Report
Great piece of writing–sums up my feelings better than I could, although I don’t live in a swing state and have more freedom to vote my conscience. And contra Prof. Hanley, I think there are plenty of reasons to vote as you did. Check out this article about whether it’s logical to delude yourself into thinking that your vote matters. It’s pretty fascinating.Report
The next president will appoint as many as four supreme court justices. That alone should be enough to convince a reasonable person to vote for Obama.Report
This is a strong part of my reasoning as well. I don’t think he’ll get four (Kennedy and Scalia will probably hang on to prevent him from getting their seats), but the Supreme Court is far too close to let Republicans anywhere near it.Report
“Obamacare was a giveaway to pharmaceutical companies and provided private insurance companies with millions of new customers. I’m convinced it also established a state-guaranteed right to health insurance, an enormous victory that lefty critics often overlook.”
This is what cemented my vote for Obama. The repeal of Obamacare would mean that I, and other members of my family, remain beholden to the good graces of whatever employer for even a chance at health care insurance coverage due to preexisting conditions. The loss of a job for us is even more devastating than for someone without a PEC.
Romney wanted to make it so PEC’s were a death sentence economically. I can’t let that happen.Report