The solution to the problem where Democrats always blame the Ralph Nader Candidate™ for their loss is called “Rank Choice Voting” or sometimes “Instant Runoff Voting”. It’s a type of vote counting that (1) motivates voting in general, b/c the voter can always vote for a candidate that excites them, if one exists. But (2), it also motivates rationality, because the voter still has to compare and contrast beyond whoever puts heart emojies in their eyes.
They have to take the ratio of the matter, compare one candidate to the other, and can calm down emotionally, and be practical about the whole better of two evils puzzle. Saying X is better than Y is emotionally more palatable than “endorsing” X when you think A, B, and C are all superior.
Given that Democratic candidates are usually smart people, read books, and are sometimes more competent than they are exciting, more compromise then they are motivational, and so on… they’re often going to be a lot of people’s solid second choice. You can lecture voters that we must internalize the flawed way we count votes now, turn it into a game plan, but that’ll never work any better than it never has so far.
Don’t get me wrong, I get it, I have internalized it and constructed strategic voting plans, but in general, it’s not a natural way to think. It’ll never make sense to the public, it’s contrary to natural human psychology and preference actions. Even most of the politically involved voters don’t really get it on an emotional level, it remains hard to swallow. It remains hard to pretend your 3’rd choice is really your 1’st b/c you’re playing some kind of prisoner dilemma puzzle in your head with a couple hundred million other people.
In the old days, with old school republicans like Bob Dole, normal republicans were also natural “safe” or “second” choices for some of the very same people, really, and RCV wouldn’t have helped so much. But now with those type of republicans extinct, it would be a huge windfall for Democrats.
It’s really pointless to blame fringe candidate voters for it, any more than we blame Teddy Kennedy for Reagan’s election (ok I do blame him, I like complicated examples). But even if you’re “right”, and those Hillary-primary voters were “bad” to vote for McCain…. that won’t change the fact that it is a political and statistical truism… some Hillary supporters are going to vote McCain rather than vote Obama. Maybe they’re bitter and should just get over whatever primary-hurled insult stuck in their craw, but again, that’s just a political realism. That’s always going to happen. Also, sometimes it’s just the individual a voter really supports and they’re simply not that into anyone else.
With RCV you don’t have to defy the laws of statistics, you just have to let people order their preferences. Now would an angry-at-obama 2008-Hillary supporter have ranked Obama over McCain with RCV? No. Probably not. We already know they prefered McCain to Obama. But a lot of Green voters would have been able rank Hillary over Trump in 2016 if we had RCV.
Even if I don’t vote for Biden first, in Maine, you can be sure my vote will go to him over Trump. No matter how much Biden has pissed me off in the past, or pisses me off now or embarrasses himself, or embarrasses me as “my nominee”… even to the point that I vote for the Whig candidate, or the Transcendental Meditation Party Candidate, Biden will surely rank before Trump with no emotional reservations whatever, and the end result will be he gets my vote.
No matter what Trump will be dead last.
I’m already relieved, being in Maine, having RCV, I’m really really relieved. Biden has worked against my political interest my whole political life (I’m 51). I didn’t like the DLC. That’s an understatement. I didn’t like the way the party ran from Carter rather than support him. I hated how they were embarrassed of solar panels on the whitehouse roof rather than thrilled, supportive, and up-selling. I’ll never forgive anyone involved with the DLC, even though I’ve voted for them since! I’m just saying it’s easy as hell to rank Biden over Trump, but it’s not so easy to be told I’m supposed to actually like him, endorse him after all this bad water under the bridge. It’s hard to be told I’m supposed to pretend he’s my first pick, when really, he’s just my pick before a republican.
It’s also hard to always be telling other people the same thing, every four to eight years. I mean, this diary isn’t really about me… if RCV goes away, decades of experience tells me I’ll be there voting for Biden b/c I’m in a swing district and it’s not like I’m voting for my personal Jesus. It’s about the emotional journey and difficulty involved, a difficulty I surmount like a dedicated hiker going to the top of same peak again and again. That can be done away with rather easily. People like Green Candidates will motivate their supporters to the polls, and rest assured DNC, you will be a highly ranked common choice for decades to come.
You will also have fair warning of popular movements threatening to unseat you, because they will generate candidate that are actually measured in electoral processes, not unlike Nader, but without making W president.
In Maine, b/c of RCV, I don’t have to pretend.
Now, if you asked me, I think my message is for the Democratic Party “Centrists” and “establishment” and “moderates” even… or for the sort of Democrats that will be slightly (or very) offended that I even consider not putting a Democrat first on my RCV ballot. Don’t miss the point. I’m telling you how you can be sure of all our left wing votes forever and ever.