Voting: The Long View

By Jonah Goldberg

Wednesday, October 30, 2024

 

Contrary to what some newspaper owners think, this is the time for endorsements. Look elsewhere if that’s what you came here for. 

 

Instead, I’ll just focus on how I personally think about the election, starting with my vote.

 

I’m not going to vote for either of them.

 

But that doesn’t mean I’m neutral about the outcome of the election. If I lived in a swing state rather than District of Columbia, I might vote for Kamala Harris. I certainly wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump. But, given that Harris will carry D.C. by at least 30 points, the “it’s a binary choice!” harangues leave me cold.

 

If I were to vote for Harris, it would only be as a way to vote against Donald Trump. I don’t think Harris she’s been a compelling candidate, senator, or vice president. I think she’s exceedingly wrong on a number of issues. But as P.J. O’Rourke said when endorsing Hillary Clinton in 2016, “She’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”

 

I don’t think Harris is wrong about absolutely everything, but the framing is right. Trump is simply unacceptable. The mere fact that he violated the American tradition of the peaceful transfer of power is inherently disqualifying. All of the other reasons—and there are many—amount to shoving another 10 pounds of manure into a 5-pound bag.

 

Moreover, speaking of manure-shoveling, the willingness of most Republicans to spin Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election is a reason to want him to lose. Sen. J.D. Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson have both embraced the embarrassing lie that we had a peaceful transfer of power because Trump ultimately left office on time. That’s like saying a prison riot didn’t happen because eventually everyone went back to their cells and served their sentences.   

 

Breaking this stranglehold Trump has on the party is worth a conventionally bad Democratic president for four years, particularly given the fact that Harris will have a hard time getting much through Congress, never mind anything catastrophic.

 

Of course, Harris could surprise me and be better than I expect. But the mostly likely scenario for that to happen would require her to move to the center. That, too, would be good for conservatism. A more moderate Democratic Party would move the center of gravity of American politics rightward, which is supposed to be the goal of the conservative movement.

 

If Harris is a moderately failed president, that will be good for a post-Trump party (Herbert Hoover was great for Democrats, Jimmy Carter was a boon to Republicans). If she’s a moderately successful president, it will be because she worked with Republicans on her “to-do list.”

 

So, I will vote strategically rather than emotionally. People invest a lot of cosmic significance to voting. Tell me how you voted, and I’ll tell you who you are, seems to be the modern incarnation of Schmittian logic. I think this is pernicious nonsense. Elections are simultaneously job interviews and performance reviews, in which we hire and fire public servants. We’re not anointing kings and queens. So, I will write in some normal decent Republican—Paul Ryan, Ben Sasse, I’m taking suggestions—because I want to send the signal that I was a gettable vote for a sane Republican Party.

 

In short, I’m thinking beyond this election, because politics is a marathon, not a sprint. The Madisonian structure of our system assumes there will always be another election. We have elections constantly in this country, from dogcatchers and insurance commissioners to governors and senators. Before polling, this was how politicians and parties took the temperature of the electorate.

 

None of this makes sense for those who believe that the fate of the world hinges on this election. But such “Flight 93 Election” thinking is a big reason our politics are so broken. It makes political contests about competing policies into religious wars about the nature of reality. A conservative, we are told, is not a conservative if they don’t vote for Trump. Nonsense. I won’t vote for him because I am a conservative, and I think this country needs a healthy and sane conservatism.

 

Given this opinion, many people tell me that I should therefore have the courage of my convictions and not only vote for Harris but shill for her. I earned a lot of strange new respect from the left for refusing to lie for Trump. That’s nice. But I see no reason to lie for Harris either. That’s not my job.