Thoughtful

[JG55]

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/09/why-i-refuse-to-vote-for-barack-obama/262861/

CONOR FRIEDERSDORF - Conor Friedersdorf is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he focuses on politics and national affairs. He lives in Venice, California, and is the founding editor of The Best of Journalism, a newsletter devoted to exceptional

Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama

31 SEP 26 2012, 7:00 AM ET 1195

The case against casting a ballot for the president -- even if you think he's better than Mitt Romney

Reuters

Tell certain liberals and progressives that you can't bring yourself to vote for a candidate who opposes gay rights, or who doesn't believe in Darwinian evolution, and they'll nod along. Say that you'd never vote for a politician caught using the 'n'-word, even if you agreed with him on more policy issues than his opponent, and the vast majority of left-leaning Americans would understand. But these same people cannot conceive of how anyone can discern Mitt Romney's flaws, which I've chronicled in the course of the campaign, and still not vote for Obama.

Don't they see that Obama's transgressions are worse than any I've mentioned?

I don't see how anyone who confronts Obama's record with clear eyes can enthusiastically support him. I do understand how they might concluded that he is the lesser of two evils, and back him reluctantly, but I'd have thought more people on the left would regard a sustained assault on civil liberties and the ongoing, needless killing of innocent kids as deal-breakers.

Nope.

There are folks on the left who feel that way, of course. Some of them were protesting with the Occupy movement at the DNC. But the vast majority don't just continue supporting Obama. They can't even comprehend how anyone would decide differently. In a recent post, I excoriated the GOP and its conservative base for operating in a fantasy land with insufficient respect for empiricism or honest argument.

I ended the post with a one-line dig at the Democratic Party. "To hell with them both," I fumed.

Said a commenter, echoing an argument I hear all the time:

I mean, how can someone who just finished writing an article on how the Republican Party is too deluded, in the literal sense, to make good decisions about anything not prefer the other party?

Let me explain how.

I am not a purist. There is no such thing as a perfect political party, or a president who governs in accordance with one's every ethical judgment. But some actions are so ruinous to human rights, so destructive of the Constitution, and so contrary to basic morals that they are disqualifying. Most of you will go that far with me. If two candidates favored a return to slavery, or wanted to stone adulterers, you wouldn't cast your ballot for the one with the better position on health care. I am not equating President Obama with a slavery apologist or an Islamic fundamentalist. On one issue, torture, he issued an executive order against an immoral policy undertaken by his predecessor, and while torture opponents hoped for more, that is no small thing.

What I am saying is that Obama has done things that, while not comparable to a historic evil like chattel slavery, go far beyond my moral comfort zone. Everyone must define their own deal-breakers. Doing so is no easy task in this broken world. But this year isn't a close call for me.

I find Obama likable when I see him on TV. He is a caring husband and father, a thoughtful speaker, and possessed of an inspirational biography. On stage, as he smiles into the camera, using words to evoke some of the best sentiments within us, it's hard to believe certain facts about him:

Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn't "precise" or "surgical" as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels. People are always afraid. Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists. It is a cowardly, immoral, and illegal policy, deliberately cloaked in opportunistic secrecy. And Democrats who believe that it is the most moral of all responsible policy alternatives are as misinformed and blinded by partisanship as any conservative ideologue.

Obama established one of the most reckless precedents imaginable: that any president can secretly order and oversee the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. Obama's kill list transgresses against the Constitution as egregiously as anything George W. Bush ever did. It is as radical an invocation of executive power as anything Dick Cheney championed. The fact that the Democrats rebelled against those men before enthusiastically supporting Obama is hackery every bit as blatant and shameful as anything any talk radio host has done.

Contrary to his own previously stated understanding of what the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution demand, President Obama committed U.S. forces to war in Libya without Congressional approval, despite the lack of anything like an imminent threat to national security.

In different ways, each of these transgressions run contrary to candidate Obama's 2008 campaign. (To cite just one more example among many, Obama has done more than any modern executive to wage war on whistleblowers. In fact, under Obama, Bush-era lawbreakers, including literal torturers, have been subject to fewer and less draconian attempts at punishment them than some of the people who conscientiously came forward to report on their misdeeds.) Obama ran in the proud American tradition of reformers taking office when wartime excesses threatened to permanently change the nature of the country. But instead of ending those excesses, protecting civil liberties, rolling back executive power, and reasserting core American values, Obama acted contrary to his mandate. The particulars of his actions are disqualifying in themselves. But taken together, they put us on a course where policies Democrats once viewed as radical post-9/11 excesses are made permanent parts of American life.

There is a candidate on the ballot in at least 47 states, and probably in all 50, who regularly speaks out against that post-9/11 trend, and all the individual policies that compose it. His name is Gary Johnson, and he won't win. I am supporting him because he ought to. Liberals and progressives care so little about having critiques of the aforementioned policies aired that vanishingly few will even urge that he be included in the upcoming presidential debates. If I vote, it will be for Johnson. What about the assertion that Romney will be even worse than Obama has been on these issues? It is quite possible, though not nearly as inevitable as Democrats seem to think. It isn't as though they accurately predicted the abysmal behavior of Obama during his first term, after all. And how do you get worse than having set a precedent for the extrajudicial assassination of American citizens? By actually carrying out such a killing? Obama did that too. Would Romney? I honestly don't know. I can imagine he'd kill more Americans without trial and in secret, or that he wouldn't kill any. I can imagine that he'd kill more innocent Pakistani kids or fewer. His rhetoric suggests he would be worse. I agree with that. Then again, Romney revels in bellicosity; Obama soothes with rhetoric and kills people in secret.

To hell with them both.

Sometimes a policy is so reckless or immoral that supporting its backer as "the lesser of two evils" is unacceptable. If enough people start refusing to support any candidate who needlessly terrorizes innocents, perpetrates radical assaults on civil liberties, goes to war without Congress, or persecutes whistleblowers, among other misdeeds, post-9/11 excesses will be reined in.

If not?

So long as voters let the bipartisan consensus on these questions stand, we keep going farther down this road, America having been successfully provoked by Osama bin Laden into abandoning our values.

We tortured.

We started spying without warrants on our own citizens.

We detain indefinitely without trial or public presentation of evidence.

We continue drone strikes knowing they'll kill innocents, and without knowing that they'll make us safer.

Is anyone looking beyond 2012?

The future I hope for, where these actions are deal-breakers in at least one party (I don't care which), requires some beginning, some small number of voters to say, "These things I cannot support."

Are these issues important enough to justify a stand like that?

I think so.

I can respect the position that the tactical calculus I've laid out is somehow mistaken, though I tire of it being dismissed as if so obviously wrong that no argument need be marshaled against it. I am hardly the first to think that humans should sometimes "act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law." I am hardly the first to recommend being the change you want to see. I can respect counterarguments, especially when advanced by utilitarians who have no deal-breakers of their own. But if you're a Democrat who has affirmed that you'd never vote for an opponent of gay equality, or a torturer, or someone caught using racial slurs, how can you vote for the guy who orders drone strikes that kill hundreds of innocents and terrorizes thousands more -- and who constantly hides the ugliest realities of his policy (while bragging about the terrorists it kills) so that Americans won't even have all the information sufficient to debate the matter for themselves?

How can you vilify Romney as a heartless plutocrat unfit for the presidency, and then enthusiastically recommend a guy who held Bradley Manning in solitary and killed a 16-year-old American kid? If you're a utilitarian who plans to vote for Obama, better to mournfully acknowledge that you regard him as the lesser of two evils, with all that phrase denotes.

But I don't see many Obama supporters feeling as reluctant as the circumstances warrant.

The whole liberal conceit that Obama is a good, enlightened man, while his opponent is a malign, hard-hearted cretin, depends on constructing a reality where the lives of non-Americans -- along with the lives of some American Muslims and whistleblowers -- just aren't valued. Alternatively, the less savory parts of Obama's tenure can just be repeatedly disappeared from the narrative of his first term, as so many left-leaning journalists, uncomfortable confronting the depths of the man's transgressions, have done over and over again.

Keen on Obama's civil-libertarian message and reassertion of basic American values, I supported him in 2008. Today I would feel ashamed to associate myself with his first term or the likely course of his second. I refuse to vote for Barack Obama. Have you any deal-breakers?

How is this not among them?

Edited September 27, 2012 by JG55

[Jonnin]

careful about posting all the text, I think david prefers we use links to avoid any possible copyright aggravations. Good find though, and thanks for sharing I missed this one.

[mikegideon]

Killing terrorists is the one thing I LIKE about Obama. I really hope some libs vote for Gary.

[Steelharp]

Killing terrorists is the one thing I LIKE about Obama. I really hope some libs vote for Gary.

I hate to say this. I really do. But, like it or not, every vote for Gary is a vote for Obama and another four years. That's just the hard facts of how our stinking two party system works.

Unless 70,000,000 wake up on election day and say, "I think I'll vote for that Gary guy."

Not likely.

[mikegideon]

I hate to say this. I really do. But, like it or not, every vote for Gary is a vote for Obama and another four years. That's just the hard facts of how our stinking two party system works.

Well... except when a Libtard votes for Gary because Obama's been doing too much killin'. Let the preaching continue!

[LagerHead]

I hate to say this. I really do. But, like it or not, every vote for Gary is a vote for Obama and another four years. That's just the hard facts of how our stinking two party system works.

Unless 70,000,000 wake up on election day and say, "I think I'll vote for that Gary guy."

Not likely.

Well... except when a Libtard votes for Gary because Obama's been doing too much killin'. Let the preaching continue!

That's the mistake that everyone advocating "the lesser of two weevils" makes. They assume that every single vote for a third party candidate MUST come from their party. Wrong. Libertarians take a lot of philosophy from both the left and the right. They also discard much from both sides. Therefore a vote for a Libertarian candidate is pretty much equally as likely to pull from Democrats as Republicans. If anything it's a wash.

[mikegideon]

I have a narrow focus this time. Mitt is likely to do all I expect. Fix the money.

[Steelharp]

That's the mistake that everyone advocating "the lesser of two weevils" makes. They assume that every single vote for a third party candidate MUST come from their party. Wrong. Libertarians take a lot of philosophy from both the left and the right. They also discard much from both sides. Therefore a vote for a Libertarian candidate is pretty much equally as likely to pull from Democrats as Republicans. If anything it's a wash.

Point well made, taken, and understood.

End result ain't gonna be any different, though.

[JAB]

I hate to say this. I really do. But, like it or not, every vote for Gary is a vote for Obama and another four years. That's just the hard facts of how our stinking two party system works.

Unless 70,000,000 wake up on election day and say, "I think I'll vote for that Gary guy."

Not likely.

The way I see that oft repeated argument:

You are at a function and someone is serving up excrement sandwiches. They tell you that you have the choice between mustard or mayonnaise on your sandwich. Fifty other people in the room have already chosen mustard and an equal number have chosen mayonnaise. Each group has already gone to their respective corners to congratulate each other on making the 'right' choice and some members of each group are even going so far as to try to convince you that the crap they are eating is delicious because of their choice of condiment. Knowing it is a long shot but refusing to simply shut up and eat a crap sandwich, and having seen a pack of deli roast beef sitting on a nearby table you decide to say, "I'd like roast beef instead, please," at which point the mayonnaise crowd ridicules you for not stepping up and choosing mayonnaise while the mustard crowd is aghast that you didn't choose mustard. You figure, however, that the only thing you are really giving up is choice of condiment on a guano sandwich - which is a false choice, really - and if you are going to eat a guano sandwich, anyway, it doesn't really matter if it has mayonnaise or mustard. At that point, you might as well take your chances on getting roast beef if only so that you know, in your own mind, that you didn't just go along with either crowd and quietly (or even enthusiastically, in some cases) eat crap. Sure, it probably means being ostracized from both the mayonnaise and mustard crowds but who really wants to hang out with people who blithely line up to eat crapburgers in the first place?

That is why I won't be voting for mayonnaise (Romney) or mustard (Obama.) I'll ask for roast beef. After all, if I am going to have to eat a crap sandwich, regardless, neither condiment is going to make the excrement go down any easier so it really doesn't matter to me if I end up with mayonnaise or mustard.

Edited September 27, 2012 by JAB

[Steelharp]

JAB, that is so well put. Excellent.

So, what do you consider the odds on 70,000,000 roast beefs that day?

[Guest Razz]

My favorite is when I tell people I'm taking roast beef and they accuse me of secretly taking mustard.

Can we pick different euphemisms next time? I'm starving.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Killing terrorists is the one thing I LIKE about Obama. I really hope some libs vote for Gary.

Not the way Obama is doing it.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

The way I see that oft repeated argument:

You are at a function and someone is serving up excrement sandwiches. They tell you that you have the choice between mustard or mayonnaise on your sandwich. Fifty other people in the room have already chosen mustard and an equal number have chosen mayonnaise. Each group has already gone to their respective corners to congratulate each other on making the 'right' choice and some members of each group are even going so far as to try to convince you that the crap they are eating is delicious because of their choice of condiment. Knowing it is a long shot but refusing to simply shut up and eat a crap sandwich, and having seen a pack of deli roast beef sitting on a nearby table you decide to say, "I'd like roast beef instead, please," at which point the mayonnaise crowd ridicules you for not stepping up and choosing mayonnaise while the mustard crowd is aghast that you didn't choose mustard. You figure, however, that the only thing you are really giving up is choice of condiment on a guano sandwich - which is a false choice, really - and if you are going to eat a guano sandwich, anyway, it doesn't really matter if it has mayonnaise or mustard. At that point, you might as well take your chances on getting roast beef if only so that you know, in your own mind, that you didn't just go along with either crowd and quietly (or even enthusiastically, in some cases) eat crap. Sure, it probably means being ostracized from both the mayonnaise and mustard crowds but who really wants to hang out with people who blithely line up to eat crapburgers in the first place?

That is why I won't be voting for mayonnaise (Romney) or mustard (Obama.) I'll ask for roast beef. After all, if I am going to have to eat a crap sandwich, regardless, neither condiment is going to make the excrement go down any easier so it really doesn't matter to me if I end up with mayonnaise or mustard.

It doesn't change the argument one bit.

[Steelharp]

It doesn't change the argument one bit.

Which is exactly what I said with, "So, what do you consider the odds on 70,000,000 roast beefs that day?"

[mikegideon]

So, what do you consider the odds on 70,000,000 roast beefs that day?

Uhh... when monkeys fly out of my ass. You can vote to make a statement. But, it isn't going to change the outcome the way you want.

Majority is gonna rule. That means 5-10% of the population isn't going to get to choose the president. So, you vote for your guy, and be part of that small crowd. One of the two big guys will win it. I guess it's OK to pretent that fact doesn't exist. If that denial helps get the worst guy elected, so what?

Edited September 27, 2012 by mikegideon

[Steelharp]

Uhh... when monkeys fly out of my ass. You can vote to make a statement. But, it isn't going to change the outcome the way you want.

Majority is gonna rule. That means 5-10% of the population isn't going to get to choose the president. So, you vote for your guy, and be part of that small crowd. One of the two big guys will win it. I guess it's OK to pretent that fact doesn't exist. If that denial helps get the worst guy elected, so what?

Thread winner.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

:rofl:

[Oh Shoot]

Majority is gonna rule.

Al Gore is on line two.

- OS

[Guest pfries]

Uhh... when monkeys fly out of my ass. You can vote to make a statement. But, it isn't going to change the outcome the way you want.

Majority is gonna rule. That means 5-10% of the population isn't going to get to choose the president. So, you vote for your guy, and be part of that small crowd. One of the two big guys will win it. I guess it's OK to pretent that fact doesn't exist. If that denial helps get the worst guy elected, so what?

Love it

but I failed to realize that Christopher Dodd was a contender...

[Guest FIST]

But you can get free cell phones with Mustard!

[Guest ThePunisher]

Some just like the status quo of Obama ruining our country.

[mikegideon]

Al Gore is on line two.

- OS

Just got off the phone. I reminded him that he didn't lose to Kinky Friedman.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

But you can get free cell phones with Mustard!

Plus free gas and a mortgage paid!

[Guest ThePunisher]

Obama has been passing a lot of gas the last 4 years.

[Oh Shoot]

Just got off the phone. I reminded him that he didn't lose to Kinky Friedman.

I really thought ole Kinky had a real shot, too. Sigh.

Everyone talks about how Perot gave the election to Clinton in '92, but in 2000, once it all came down to Florida, Nader really likely did give that one to Dubya. Third parties so far can't even see the area code of the ballpark for winning, but can still determine who does.

2000 Presidential General Election Results - Florida

Bush 2,912,790

Gore 2,912,253

Nader 97,488

- OS

Edited September 28, 2012 by OhShoot