An Open Letter to the #NeverBiden folks...

An open letter to the NeverBiden folks:

I like Bernie. I like Bernie supporters. If he won the nomination, I'd vote for him. But if he doesn't win, and it's looking like he won't, I'm voting for Joe Biden.

I fundamentally don't understand third party voting. I don't understand when "perfection" becomes the enemy of "the good." I don't get identity politics, or why someone would allow personal privilege to hurt the disenfranchised. Because that's what another four years of President Trump will do: it will hurt those who lack power. It's not going to hurt most white guys like me.

Third party voters are quick to say it's not their fault Hillary lost.

"Hillary lost because of her flaws."

"Trump won on his own merits."

I think they're largely right. But even if I concede that, their argument is moot.

Just because a third party vote didn't impact the result in the last election doesn't mean it could sway the vote in the next. There's precedent for this. I still remember how third party voters cost Al Gore Florida (he lost Florida by 534 votes, while Nader got 97K votes).

Like it or not (and I don't), we live in a two-party system, and Duverger's Law holds true, especially when the electoral college promotes "winner take all" in 48 states. Any third party vote is a vote thrown away. Remember when Ross Perot got 19% of the vote in 1992? Guess how many electoral votes he received for that. Zero.

And for some crazy reason, every four years we elevate Jill Stein and the Green Party to the national stage. Why? They're not even a competitive party on the national level. Of 520,000 recent local and national elections in the U.S., they ran candidates in just 117 of them. One-hundred-seventeen. That's .02%, or statistically, zero. Voting for Stein or any third party candidate isn't viable. Third party votes are, at best, meaningless. At worst, third party voters can sway an election to Trump. But no matter the impact, the third party voter is always selfish.