“How many more of these stinking double-downer sideshows will we have to go through before we can get ourselves straight enough to put together some kind of national election that will give me and the at least 20 million people I tend to agree with a chance to vote for something, instead of always being faced with the that old familiar choice between the lesser of two evils?” - Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: on the Campaign Trail ‘72
It is an argument as old as modern American politics and perhaps older. Every election, the Democrats put forward someone a large portion of voters dislike and then tell the American people they have to vote for them anyway because the other guy is worse.
The proponents of so-called “strategic voting” have become so dogmatic in their devotion to the lesser-of-two-evils strategy that they have found themselves arguing for a visibly diminished candidate who is funding what more than half of his party describes as genocide.
According to the polls, it does not appear to be working. Biden is trailing Trump in virtually every national poll and battleground state. Some states that were solid blue just a few years ago, including Virginia, New Jersey and New Hampshire, are now toss-ups. Even Democratic stronghold New York is narrowing, with Biden’s lead under nine points. In 2020, Biden won New York by nearly 27 points.
The idea behind the lesser-of-two-evils argument is that voters should pick the candidate most likely to defeat the candidate from the other main party. But with Biden on track for a historic loss, perhaps leftists should vote for who they would actually like to see in the White House.