September 19, 2024

This article by Hamilton Nolan has one of the best passages about voting for candidates I’ve ever read, and really makes a lot of sense:

For the most part, it is wrong to think of elections as contests between “good” and “bad” candidates. With few exceptions, it is more accurate to divide most politicians into two broad categories: Enemies, and Cowards. The enemies are those politicians who are legitimately opposed to your policy goals. The cowards are those politicians who may agree with your policy goals, but will sell you out if they must in order to protect their own interests. Embrace the idea that we are simply pushing to elect the cowards, rather than the enemies. Why? Because the true work of political action is not to identify idealized superheroes to run for office. It is, instead, to create the conditions in the world that make it safe for the cowards to vote the right way.

We’ll probably never find a candidate that agree 100% with us, but the best thing we can do is vote for the one that creates the conditions in the word that we want (and thus gives them permission to vote the way we want on issues related to those conditions).