With the Democratic nomination in a perpetual see-saw, no one has had more fun watching Barack and Hillary trade blows than Rush Limbaugh. Perhaps that’s because, in part, he has helped to goad the two democrats. No, not by his usual means of radio rabble-rousing. Unlike almost every other time in his career, Mr. Limbaugh is being taken to task not for his words, but for the actions which they have inspired.
Limbaugh, the bane of Democrats around the nation, has launched a Karl Rove-esque campaign. “Operation Chaos” is Mr. Limbaugh’s attempt to detrimentally prolong the Democratic nomination process by urging Republicans to change their registration to the Democratic party. After doing so, Mr. Limbaugh exhorts these crossovers to vote for Hillary Clinton, once in danger of being mathematically bounced out of the race. Thanks to Operation Chaos, or so Limbaugh claims, the two Democrats are now locked in mortal combat while simultaneously “bloodying” themselves to the decided advantage, in the national election, of John McCain.
Now, whether this is legal or not, I cannot answer. But I want to think about the ethics of the actual vote, particularly from the perspective of a voter changing parties to subvert another one, simply because it is another party. I do this so that I take no political position, right or left, in order to justify the ends of political exediency.
It is commonly thought that the domain of politics is the domain of compromise. The result is that many vote for a candidate, particularly at the Presidential level, whom they view not as legitimately representative, but as the saying goes, the lesser of two evils. The background for many of those disaffected is that there was in fact, a candidate that at one point satisfied their political beliefs, but that the candidate is no longer viable. Meaning, if they did not drop out, that they polled so poorly as to be thought a “wasted vote”. e.g. Ralph Nader I think these disaffected voters are displaying the same phenomenon as the practitioners of Operation Chaos.
Both groups of people do not really believe in their vote. They do not believe in voting. They have made the political leap from individual right to the predetermination of the many.* A necessary belief for a democracy is a belief in the sanctity of the voter’s individual choice. This, contrary to most opinion, also unfortunately includes the choice to not vote.
A person ought to vote in that way which best portends the greatest benefit to the country, regardless of any other factor. The private nature of the vote safeguards the voter against intimidation, coercion, and any other manipulation. But when voters refrain from their heartfelt conviction in favor of an outside influence, whether to side with the expected “inevitable” candidate or to subvert a candidate as in Operation Chaos, that privacy is fundamentally destroyed. Their vote has been fundamentally transformed from an individual vote of conscience into one piece of a faceless electoral sham. These people have shamefully diluted the intimate connection of the single voter pledging a single vote. By partaking of other considerations outside their own conscience they have forfeited their individual rights and replaced it with the expediency of a group, or worse yet, fear.
I could, I think legitimately complain about the evils of polling during election cycles in a democratic society. But instead I will condemn those who seek to value political possibility over the certainty of their assuaged conscience. Since so many have apparently already pulled the lever in Operation Chaos, perhaps we can be satisfied enough to know that they will be conscience haunted by the image of Hillary Clinton for as long as they continue to vote.
*(Beside which, there are examples both good and bad of seemingly marginal parties or candidates eschewing conventional projections by doing the unthinkable, winning the vote. Jesse Ventura and Adolf Hitler come to mind. But this is besides the point.)
Philosophiae Agonistes: 