Why I Didn’t Vote for Joe Biden . . . or Donald Trump

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My absentee ballot went into the mail last week. It looked a lot like 2016’s ballot: conservative selections for various state and local positions, write-ins for President and Vice President of the United States.

I didn’t vote for Biden and Harris, because I believe they would be bad for the country. I didn’t vote for Trump and Pence, because I believe they’re also bad for the country. It’s not clear to me which would be worse, all things considered, but it doesn’t matter. Both major party tickets add up to “Absolutely no way do you get my vote”—not “maybe,” not “it’s a close call,” not “this is a tough decision”—just no. Emphatically, no.

I wrote in a couple of individuals who have demonstrated leadership ability, above-average wisdom, key conservative principles, and a sense of responsibility for their public discourse. They’ve also given me reason to believe that—if they were President and Vice President—they would see themselves as the leaders of the entire nation, not just those who already adore them.

They would attempt to persuade detractors rather than merely rouse their faithful and try to compel everyone else through policy.

So why didn’t I back one of the “electable” candidates? Several reasons.

1. I didn’t have to.

Much of the rhetoric on voting ethics assumes that no alternative exists to backing Trump-Pence or backing Biden-Harris. Actual ink on actual paper on the ballot I submitted proves that assumption is false.

Some object that failure to support Option A is defacto support of Option B. But a bit of reflection reveals that we don’t hold anything else in life to that standard, and rightfully so. Elections are not the exception.

I’m referring to the ethics of forced dilemmas—when someone wrongfully presents us with two bad options and insists we’re responsible for the outcome of whichever we choose. The truth is that the ones who created the dilemma are responsible, and no one else.

I had no hand in nominating Donald Trump. People with very different principles from me did that, and the national social cost of leaving voters with no suitable candidate to vote for is on their heads.

There is a third option. I took it. I don’t regret it.

2. It was not a “wasted” vote.

I realize that some are so focused on voting as a transaction (and on the immediate outcome of that transaction) that they can’t even begin to consider other factors. The fact remains, though, that as human beings, our principles, values and intentions play a huge role in the moral weight of our actions. We’re not machines, and our choices are more than mere math.

So a vote is an expression of beliefs and desires, regardless of how the electoral mathematics turns out. And for Christians, beliefs and desires matter—forever. It’s literally impossible to waste a vote, because votes are counted twice: once here below, as humans count, and once more above using a fundamentally different standard—just like everything else we do.

That said, for those who only see tangible, practical outcomes as real (an odd point of view for Christians!), I have arguments as well. Read on.

3. We won’t get a better result if we keep doing the same thing.

If you read the Federalist Papers and the views of many of the founding leaders of the nation, as well as the Constitution itself, it’s evident that there was a design they had in mind, and that design includes—ultimately depends on—the citizens choosing from among their own best and brightest to serve as the executive of the nation.

How did we get so far from that?

The answer is complex, but voting for candidates who fail the “basic leaderly character” test sure hasn’t helped!

I’m mainly talking to the “hold your nose and vote for Trump because he’s not Hillary and not Biden” crowd. Call me an idealist, but you’re going to develop a permanently sore nose if you keep making that compromise.

Moving past chronic rhinitis, consider what we know about political parties. They hate losing. When they lose, they reflect at least a little on why, and sometimes they learn and behave differently in the future. What the GOP needs is a lesson in the school of hard knocks. There’s no guarantee they’ll get the message—or that enough of them will get it to produce a better candidate in 2024, but if large numbers of GOP voters refuse to back Trump there’s at least a chance.

Rubber-stamping their abysmal candidates will never teach them to do better.

4. Government power doesn’t change minds.

Peter Drucker is credited with saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” He wasn’t wrong. While who controls the reins of power is a huge factor in what life is like for us and our families, and a huge factor in shaping the future of the nation, it’s only huge until you compare it to the biggest factor: the reins of persuasion. What matters most is what millions of individual humans actually believe and value and do.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how persuasive is Donald Trump as a voice for conservative ways of thinking?

At a time when virtually everyone recognizes that the nation is “polarized” and not listening to reason, we elected a president who is the quintessential polarizer, who listens to no-one he doesn’t already agree with, and who mischaracterizes opponents’ viewpoints—as well as hard, verifiable facts—almost as often as he exhales.

He is the anti-persuader.

He speaks to the dazzled-and-delusional crowd who view him through near messianic lenses. He speaks to the hold-your-nose and back him because he’s not Hillary and not Biden crowd. To the rest of the nation, the people who are most essential in this culture war, his communications have less than zero persuasive value. He flings verbiage at the center and the left like a middle-schooler throws cow pies and rotten eggs at an enemy’s house.

So what Trump offers to public discourse isn’t merely a zero in the people-won-over column. He pushes undecideds further from the things we believe in and galvanizes the committed left toward increased opposition to much of what we hold dear. (The old adage was never more apt: “With friends like these, who needs …”)

People of the center or left who were once for something (increasing funding for police training and technology, for example) often decide they’re against it as soon as Trump begins vocalizing support.

We may have already lost the culture war. 2016 may have sealed that outcome. Regardless, I’m against the current course of anti-persuasion and voted accordingly.

5. Character is upstream of politics.

The office of President of the United States is one of such high stakes that candidates must be filtered by some character essentials before we even begin to consider their political views and agenda.

  • What if war breaks out (from outside the nation or within it)?
  • What if a far deadlier pandemic than COVID-19 sweeps the world?
  • What if a series of other natural disasters of unusual scale strikes the nation?
  • What if mob violence and riots occur in five or ten times the number of cities we saw in 2020?

In these situations, sober-minded, competent, big-picture, adult leadership matters far more than Democrat or Republican. Political philosophy matters in these situations, but philosophy can’t compensate for basic character and competence.

6. There must be trust.

I can’t trust Donald Trump. He’s not unique in that regard. I can’t find it in my heart to trust anyone who openly admires dictators, who has at any time in his adult life publicly bragged about groping women, who fires employees by Twitter and publicly shames people who have loyally stuck their necks out for him over and over again, who has made disrespect of any and all who differ from him the one enduring principle of his public life.

I also can’t trust people who display a fondness for conspiracy theories and for encouraging others to do same. I’m talking about narratives that are clearly contrary to verifiable facts. If you’re out of touch with reality, I might be your friend; I might be your relative; I might like you personally; I might love you as a fellow Christian or a part of my family. But I can’t trust you.

It’s not that I won’t or don’t want to. I can’t.

“Trust” is always a scoped term: Trust for what? Trust to do what? In this case, demagogs, bullies, narcissists, and fantasy-worlders can’t be trusted to make decisions for the good of the organizations they lead. Whether it’s U.S. President or president of the town glee club, they don’t get my vote.

Discussion

Many conservatives would like to make “populism” a bad word, but the fact of the matter is that a lot of the middle class, including many minorities, started to see President Trump as their ally because he finally took concrete action to reinforce and augment a border wall (illegal immigration came to a standstill in his administration, really), reworked trade agreements in light of known episodes of cheating by our trade partners, and a fair amount more.

Trump did himself no favors with his reputation as a “male bovine scatter”, and his previous life as a bankrupt womanizer did him no favors either, but Republicans would be foolish to ignore how he was able to speak to the middle class and across racial and ethnic barriers.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

It’s not a bad word. It’s just a bad thing.

Trump continues to confuse what he wants to be true with what is true:

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/trump-again-declares-victory-claims…

So the narrative now is going to be that if he doesn’t win, it was fraud…. No matter what the facts or relevant laws are. And Trump’s populist base is going to champion this tale.

… Reminds me of how Al Gore was robbed of his rightful victory in 2000 ;-)

But we might yet be treated to four more years of everything Trump doesn’t like being “fraud,” “fake news,” and “a hoax.” … because officials are still counting, which is great if the numbers favor him…but fraud if they don’t. Just so we’re clear on the rules.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

It’s just true. Populism is simply a response to the fact that the elites too often write up, and selectively apply, the rules to their advantage.

Let’s draw a picture; when I worked for TRW at Space Park, HR made very clear in their onboarding that if I were caught with confidential information (or even in the confidential areas without a clearance), the FBI would have all of my electronic devices that day—and me as well. Now contrast that with the fact that Jim Comey didn’t even convene a grand jury, let alone get a subpoena, in the Hilliary Clinton server case.

But Comey DID indeed move Heaven and Earth to put Martha Stewart in jail for (allegedly) lying to investigators about matters that were not criminal in nature.

In a similar vein, Patrick Fitzgerald investigated the Valerie Plame unmasking for four years after he learned that there was no crime committed—snaring Scooter Libby for the same “crime.” BTW, it’s not a crime for the FBI to lie to those being investigated. (ahem) However, when there were very real crimes committed as Illinois Democrats were bidding for Barack Obama’s Senate seat, Fitzgerald’s office amazingly had a leak that prevented the investigation from naming those other criminals and putting them in jail. Fitzgerald also, in a breathtaking breach of ethics, “cleared” MSU of wrongdoing in the Nassar case without as much as a report.

Or in a different vein, isn’t it amazing how much effort the FBI put into investigating Trump based on a “dossier” that can only be described charitably as horse manure….but when Hunter Biden’s laptop clearly appears to show Joe Biden sold his position for money for his son and himself, the FBI sits on that one for half a year, claiming ludicrously they had no one who knew how to work on a Mac?

Regarding the election, isn’t it amazing that the areas having trouble counting votes are the areas controlled by Democrats…in basically every election? Isn’t it amazing that states leaning Democratic seem to be called way earlier than those leaning Republican?

When the beneficiaries of the “errors” are almost exclusively in one group, I stop believing that the “errors” are random or unintentional. Here’s another point of reference with the vote in Nevada. Oopsie, we just happen to have mailed ballots to thousands and thousands of people who didn’t request them, who might be dead, moved, or whatever. But no chance whatever that this would be a problem in vote accountability, nosirree.

Sorry, we need something like “blockchain” tracing so we can eliminate votes from nonexistent addresses and dead people.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

Michigan did what states should do in 2016 and conducted an audit. It would be interesting to know what the findings were.

I’m with the conservative voices—many of them normally Trump cheerleaders—who are saying unsubstantiated claims of outcome-altering voter fraud are irresponsible, to put it mildly. (But in no way surprising behavior from Donald Trump.) But some of them are also saying where there is evidence, investigate and take legal action. That’s exactly right.

If we don’t have rule of law, we don’t have anything as a republic. That applies to incumbent Presidents as well. “Everybody says so on Twitter and Facebook” ≠ true.

Fortunately, the courts seem to be doing their job so far. I’m pretty sure all the “stolen election” nonsense, alarming as it is, won’t have much impact on how the election turns out.

But it will be the story many believe for years to come regardless of the evidence.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

, in my mind, is to approach polling in a totally different way than we would an ordinary audit. We have poll watchers and election judges for a reason, in the same way that industries have ISO and other audits to make sure they’re going to get the product that they’re hoping to buy. If a factory refuses to admit an auditor (in a non epidemic time of course), the auditor quickly files a report that revokes their accreditation. No ifs, ands, or maybes about it.

Same thing ought to apply with polls. Multiple cities, all run by Democrats, have refused to admit GOP poll watchers and lawyers as is required by law. They are admitting Democrats. They play the same games every election—report way late, kick out poll watchers and such, and amazingly, they seem to get enough votes to make the Democrat win in tight races.

Let’s do the math here.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

There are many allegations of poll watchers being illegally excluded from polls. We’ll slowly find out which allegations can be substantiated. Until then, they’re little more than rumors.

Audit, investigate, prosecute. Due process. It will mostly happen as it should.

On populism…

The trouble with populism is that it’s fantasy. Populism rhetorically privileges lack of experience, lack of knowledge, and lack of expertise—maybe even lack of character—because that makes the candidate “just like us ordinary folks.” In reality, it tends to only result in empowering leaders who are elite in an additional way: elite-level skills in dazzling the glandular masses into thinking they are “ordinary” and “not politicians” and “one of them” when in reality they’re rich and powerful and political just like all the other elites.

Populism gets you one of two things:

  • If it works, you get mediocrity at best
  • When it doesn’t, which is most of the time, you get better panderers and manipulators

I guess I’m a hard core elitist. I believe some people are way better at certain things than other people, and they should do those things and other people should get out of the way and let them. When it comes to power, I believe the more responsibility a position brings with it, the more extraordinary the skills and character should be in those who occupy it. The last thing I want a leader to be is an ordinary guy.

So, populism is not an achievable solution to bad elites. The solution to bad elites is good elites.

Views expressed are always my own and not my employer's, my church's, my family's, my neighbors', or my pets'. The house plants have authorized me to speak for them, however, and they always agree with me.

Aaron, when it’s apparent that the FBI has been sitting on the Hunter Biden laptop in the same way they refused to seriously vet the report that started the Mueller investigation, and in the same way they issued no subpoenas in the investigation of Hilliary Clinton’s server and did very little work regarding the Nassar assaults, let’s just say that mediocrity would be a HUGE improvement vs. a lot of what they’re doing today. Mediocrity would be a huge improvement over the pattern of selective leaks to victimize conservatives, selective enforcement of tax laws by Lois Lerner et al, selective investigation that saw no real need to investigate Fast & Furious, selective enforcement of immigration laws, and the like.

When we’ve got clear evidence (video) of poll watchers being evicted as soon as they spotted and reported problematic ballots and practices, mediocrity (just basically following the law) would be a huge improvement. I’m as much a fan of excellence as anyone, but our choice today is not between excellence currently enjoyed and mediocrity. Our choice is between pathetic excuses for competence and mediocrity.

Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.

I know you always balk at these questions. Name a Republican politician that you know of who could have beat Biden (or even Hillary in 2016) this year, or at least give him a run for his money.

Said another way, name a Republican who could have gotten 70.5 million votes this year.