The Worst Arguments For Voting Trump

Yeah these don't work.

In the wake of one of Donald Trump’s former White House Chief of Staff (and also a second four-star general) saying that Trump is basically a fascist and unfit for the job he’s seeking, I’m seeing a bunch of really bad reasons for voting for Trump among people who should know better.

Are there good reasons to support a man who was terrible at the job, a convicted felon, a court-certified rapist, and who is running as a bigot and an authoritarian?¹ I mean, beyond the obvious one if you in fact support bigotry and/or are an opponent of democracy? 

Well, not really. He’s that bad.

But I do think that if you strongly support the normal Republican Party agenda, you have a legitimately difficult choice even if  you fully accept the reality of Trump. Similarly, if you are a staunch Republican or the group you identify with politically mostly aligns with the GOP, you’re going to be tempted to think that the risks of Trump in the White House aren’t worth betraying your attachments.

Ninety-nine percent of the time the best choice is to vote the party, not the candidate. There’s good reason to believe that this is the one-in-a-hundred case where voting against one’s own party’s candidate is the best choice, but I won’t pretend that conservative Republicans are doing something hard should they do it.²

I have sympathy for those making that choice. Must less so far those justifying a vote for Trump with any of these arguments. Perhaps there’s nothing new here, but I’m still hearing all of these, and so perhaps it’s worth going through it. After all, there’s an election coming.

Trump just says crazy/awful/provocative things. Uh…no. Presidents don’t get everything they want, but we know Trump had a long record of ugly actions in office. It wasn’t just bad tweets.

We should blow it all up. This is an old communist idea: Things are terrible the way they are, and we’re so far from getting to a good place that the only sensible thing to do is support things getting even worse so that people will finally have to build a better alternative. Trump may not improve things, but he’ll be a massive disruption, and that’s what’s needed.

Unfortunately, it’s nonsense. If things get worse, they just get worse. That’s it. There’s no magic point where people suddenly agree with whatever you think is needed; it’s quite possible, and in fact likely, that the next step after things getting worse is that they just get worse than that. It was a bad idea when communists used it, and it’s still a bad idea now.

The Democrats must be punished. The idea here is that it’s important to send a message that you’re unhappy with how they handled some important question, or perhaps that they haven’t sufficiently respected you or your group, or just that you find them unlikable. Sure, people with this reasoning will admit, Trump would be a worse president from their perspective, but it’s even more important to send a message.

Sorry. Voting just doesn’t work like that. You can’t actually send messages that way. The vote totals will put either Harris or Trump in office, and that’s what actually matters. Meanwhile how the winner and others in the political system will interpret the vote is important…but they won’t be constrained at all by any message you intended. 

Nor will proving that your vote can’t be taken for granted make it more powerful in the future. The way to get influence within a party begins by supporting its candidates, warts and all, not by walking away in a huff. Want more influence? Get more involved, especially during nomination time.

Bottom line is pretty simple. Voting is a blunt tool, but it’s the tool you have, and my advice is to vote for the candidate you think will be a better president.

1. Is he a fascist? Basically, I’ve never thought it mattered very much which type of authoritarian Trump is. He’s no supporter of democracy and the rule of law. That’s what matters. I’m also skeptical that “fascist” is more of an effective scare word. That said, it’s entirely fair to say that he admires dictators, apparently including Hitler.

2. It’s no surprise that the Republicans who have most easily turned against Trump are those most involved in foreign policy and national security, where Trump’s positions are farthest from what had been the GOP agenda. If what you care about are traditional Republican positions and taxes, or abortion, or severeal other policy areas, abandoning Trump has huge policy costs.