Saturday Reading - "Lesser-Evilism We Can Believe In"

Michael Tomasky writes on why it's vitally important that progressives support the Democratic Party nominee, whoever she is:

... With the Republican Party controlled by the radical right, a Republican presidency doesn't mean merely that you're going to have to see that distasteful reactionary with the cracker-ish accent on your TV screen for the next few years. It means that thousands of people are going to be making many thousands of deeply reactionary decisions, across all federal agencies and departments. This stuff doesn't make the front pages. It rarely makes the news at all. But it goes on, and it affects all of us every day: decisions about civil-rights and environmental enforcement, about the protection of public lands, about the ethical questions raised in scientific research, about the safety of consumer products (and now financial instruments, thanks to Elizabeth Warren), about which polluting or swindling corporations to investigate and with how much zeal… You get the picture.

When you think of the presidency in these terms, Hillary Clinton's various and real ideological impurities become less central, and the idea that the executive branch will be staffed either by people who think they ought to carry out the mission of the agency they work for, or by people who are scheming to subvert that mission, becomes pivotal. And this is why I say that no matter who the candidate is—no matter how deeply in hock to Wall Street, no matter how tepid her (ahem) inequality platform—the responsible person of the left must vote for the Democrat. Not strategically, but on principle. And not sometimes, or only in the states where it might truly matter. Everywhere, and every time.  (our emphasis)

After presenting examples of reactionary Republican "governance" and what it means when you have the Executive Branch salted with people who subscribe to anti-tax monomaniac Grover Norquist's philosophy of dismembering government to the point where you can "drown it in the bathtub," he addresses the Naderite purists on the left and the consequences of a "protest vote:"

This is what you're helping unleash on this country with your "protest vote." And something else I've noticed over the years: protest votes tend to be cast by people who don't have much skin in the game when it comes to the direct delivery of government services. That is, their own day-to-day lives won't really be affected much by which party controls the White House. But most people who are direct beneficiaries of government programs and services can't afford the luxury of being protest voters. Yes, millions of them vote Republican, because their guns (or whatever) are more important to them than their pay packet. But most poorer people still vote Democratic, and I can't imagine that you could have gone to, say, the corner of 145th Street and Lenox Avenue in early November of 2000 and found many Ralph Nader voters.  (our emphasis)

At this point in American politics, we would have to agree with Tomasky that it's not a question of a potential choice being between "the lesser of two evils";  the question is, which party will bring people into government who will enforce laws and regulations that protect and benefit average Americans, versus which party will bring people in to actively subvert those protections.