When You Have to Vote for a Democrat (Or Not)
[guest post by JVW]
Today in the race for California State Senate District 26, I marked my ballot for Ben Allen, a Santa Monica Democrat with impeccable lefty credentials. A tour of his website demonstrates that Allen is all-too-familiar with silly progressive talking points, especially my perennial favorite, the notion that government spending is really an “investment.” Here is a partial list of all the things that Ben Allen believes California’s government should be “investing” in:
Our children
Early education programs
Public college and university system
Our workforce
High-tech jobs
Rainwater diversion, drip irrigation, covering the aqueducts, and water recycling
Renewal alternative energies
Mass transportation*
Drunk-driving prevention**
It is worth noting here that nowhere on his website does Ben Allen promise not to raise taxes; in fact, there is ample reason to believe that Allen would seek to raise taxes by repealing the parts of California’s Proposition 13 which apply to business properties. This while he promises to “work with local businesses to create a friendlier atmosphere for job growth” because who after all expects a Democrat to have a consistent message on taxing and regulating businesses?
And naturally, Allen has all of the requisite progressive beliefs in forcing employers to pay for their employees abortions and birth control, ensuring that LBGTQ students never hear a dissenting word uttered in college, publicly funding campaigns, and jumping aboard every trendy environmental fad as soon as it rears its head.
Still, I voted for him. Why? Because his opponent was none other than Sandra Fluke, whose puerile campaign website not only matches Allen’s hyper-leftism, but takes it a step beyond where even Allen dares to go. Just look at Fluke’s list of endorsements to see the absolute dregs of the modern Democrat Party.
I filled-in my little ballot oval for Allen with passion but certainly no sense of satisfaction or joy. What do you think? Should I have not voted for either candidate and run the risk that Fluke somehow managed to squeak through? Is the lesser of two evils still too much of an evil to garner your support? Leave comments below.
– JVW
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*Actually Allen doesn’t directly call for “investment” in mass transportation, but he criticizes what he terms the past “disinvestment” in mass transport, leading one to conclude that he wants to “reinvest” in mass transport.
**While he doesn’t use the word “invest” in that regard, here is the exact language from his website: “Ben will reduce the terrible tragedies that DUIs are causing each year by providing the resources necessary to hire additional officers to protect our roads and support education campaigns that help discourage people from driving under the influence.” That sounds like “investing” to me.
***Sorry to shamelessly steal the whole Mickey Kaus footnoting thing.
(- JVW)
I want you to know that I just spent the last 45 minutes or so reading both candidates’ websites, and I really, really need a drink right now. Oh, the trials and tribulations of the blogger!
JVW (60ca93) — 11/4/2014 @ 3:26 pmMy mother would have made me vote for Sandra Fluke and all the other women. Any reason why you vote for somebody is a good reason, JVW.
nk (dbc370) — 11/4/2014 @ 3:31 pmnk, are you sure your mother would not have made an exception for Ms. Fluke, once her bright son explained it to her?
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 11/4/2014 @ 3:38 pmOh you poor man, what a terrible choice. I think I might have voted for Fluke, as much as that would hurt, because she is higher on the moronometer and would thus be less successful and more likely to turn off voters long term.
patricia (5fc097) — 11/4/2014 @ 3:43 pmShe refused to hear a bad word about “another mother’s daughter”, MD, so I don’t know. And I would not make my mother unhappy over which politician or another gets a government paycheck.
nk (dbc370) — 11/4/2014 @ 3:48 pmIf you want to have an effect, you must vote for the least worst candidate.
It is exactly that simple.
Beldar (fa637a) — 11/4/2014 @ 3:49 pmHow is that even controversial? I’ve never been persuaded — my needle isn’t even swayed — by “I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face” arguments.
Beldar (fa637a) — 11/4/2014 @ 3:50 pmMD, it helps to understand her attitude that she grew up in a place and time where a girl’s “reputation” was her fate.
nk (dbc370) — 11/4/2014 @ 3:55 pmBush 43 appeared to believe that the situation was salvageable with little or no discomfort. Unfunded liabilities would be taken care of by growing the economy at 4% for a few decades, the war could be fought with no sacrifices to the civilian side of the country, etc. To his credit he did show concern for our casualties, something that the lefties can’t be bothered with today … after all our soldiers are the dregs of society, correct? We now see that Bush’s hopeful presumptions were false. Given that what we are currently doing can’t go on forever, it is my belief that the sooner we stop digging the hole, the less our grand children will have to back fill. So if California goes down the toilet, right after New York and New Jersey, the misery this generates might serve as a much needed learning experience for the rest of the country. The fools who lead the left seem to assume that there will always be an adult in the house to fix things if everything goes sideways. But the required characteristics of said “adult” are growing into heroic proportions, and it is unlikely that such a figure, say a modern day Lincoln, will arise. So I would say that your vote for Allen is based on a Bush-like optimism that we can still work things out without a cataclysm. A vote for Fluke could be rationalized by saying this would bring the day of reckoning that much closer, thereby reducing the ultimate cost. Of course, my belief that our fellow citizens can learn from their mistakes is nothing more than an optimistic assumption. Certainly Detroit suggests that it will take more than your ordinary 2×4 to get their attention.
bobathome (5ccbd8) — 11/4/2014 @ 3:57 pmwhen faced with that sort of choice, vote for the worst candidate…
until they hit a wall and it hurts, the public will never stop being stupid.
or, you could do what i did for my Stupervisor office, and black in both circles, since they’re six/five & picke’em between Shriver & the other Demonrat.
i did the same thing for Governor, since #CashAndCarry is just as bad as Moonbeam, IMHO.
redc1c4 (589173) — 11/4/2014 @ 4:08 pmThis is what the change in the California primary formulation has resulted in. Two unqualified candidates of the same party getting the most votes and leaving the other party off the ballot for the final vote. Here is an extreme case of ugly and uglier candidates. If I were in that district, I would have to vote NOT for Fluke. Having her and Maxine Waters in the House at one time is to bad to imagine.
Dave (e1f266) — 11/4/2014 @ 4:11 pmThis is what the change in the California primary formulation has resulted in. Two unqualified candidates of the same party getting the most votes and leaving the other party off the ballot for the final vote. Here is an extreme case of ugly and uglier candidates. If I were in that district, I would have to vote NOT for Fluke. Having her and Maxine Waters in the House at one time is to bad to imagine.
Well, to be fair, the dammed GOP didn’t even field a candidate in that primary. Now on the one hand, I have no room to complain, since I am a registered Republican and I didn’t bother to run. On the other hand, this is just another data point in the ongoing argument as to how awful the California GOP is. Again, I shouldn’t complain too much unless I am willing to run for the executive committee or chairman of the LA County and try to do something about it, but maybe our side has just decided that local politics aren’t worth our while.
JVW (60ca93) — 11/4/2014 @ 4:19 pmI would have gone with Flukes
papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/4/2014 @ 4:30 pmShe’d be trying to achieve all the same things as Allen while handicapped by industrial grade incompetence, where as Allen would presumable be semicompetent at making our nightmares come true.
Look, I grew up in a one-party state. My father and grandfather were very lonely Texas Republicans going back to the beginning of the 20th Century, and it was indeed the very rare state or local race in which the GOP even fielded a candidate. Obviously this was frustrating. My grandfather and father and I might all have felt justified in concluding that we ought to vote for the worst candidates until the system hit the wall and it hurt enough for the public to stop being stupid.
But I’d rather win elections than wait to pick up the pieces of a post-apocalyptic civilization. In my lifetime Texas has become a one-party Republican state. In my lifetime I’ve seen the GOP retake the national government after more than one declaration of the “death of the modern Republican party” and “a permanent Democratic majority.”
You have to cast a vote to have an effect. I suppose some people choose to have a pernicious effect, so they pick the worst of multiple alternatives. That make no sense to me, and I wish I could persuade them otherwise.
Beldar (fa637a) — 11/4/2014 @ 4:32 pmI’m counting on Fluke, being she can’t find the birth control section at Walgreens without help from the government, that she’s not having the wherewithal to start, participate or even cheer at a discreet distance, for the apocalypse.
She’ll have to have someone sent down to the office to tell her what apocalypse means
papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/4/2014 @ 4:40 pmIt is not doing Fluke any favors to inhibit her from garnering an ordinary workaday job, so, no, you do not want her in the legislature.
The irony about Fluke is that she came from a good family. She grew up in a small town in the Altoona, Pa. sphere of influence, her father has had a mix of blue collar and white collar employments (including time as a clergyman), and her parents remain married. She has a sister who, like Fluke, left the area and has some prestige schooling; IIRC, she’s a lawyer working in New York.
Art Deco (ee8de5) — 11/4/2014 @ 4:45 pmAnd here we see exactly why so many on the left are for open primaries. You can result in having a “choice” between 2 people in the same party.
Miguelitosd (d13001) — 11/4/2014 @ 4:46 pmIf all else fails, write in “Дарт Вейдер” or “Степан Чубакка”. At least you’ll puzzle or amuse a ballot-counter or two, and gum up the works.
Eric Wilner (3936fd) — 11/4/2014 @ 4:48 pmI still think there should be a “dead skunk” option. With actual dead skunks.
you can follow results nation wide here, courtesy of AoSHQ
redc1c4 (269d8e) — 11/4/2014 @ 4:58 pmVoted for Allen too. Not much to say.
Kevin M (b7c54e) — 11/4/2014 @ 4:59 pmI’d have done the same. Calif politics is a Byzantine 3d chess game. Recall Lagomarsino vs Huffington; and the Moscone death that led to Feinstein
Angelo (8982ad) — 11/4/2014 @ 5:26 pmDoes Fluke have a real chance to win?
JD (e0c05e) — 11/4/2014 @ 5:26 pmJD #22 – someone has to say it …
It’ll be a Fluke, if Sandra wins …
Alastor (e7cb73) — 11/4/2014 @ 5:33 pmThe only Fluke I will bother with is the multimeter I use.
Bill H (f9e4cd) — 11/4/2014 @ 5:45 pmOn the sunny side, you know a Democrat is going to lose in that race.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/4/2014 @ 5:53 pmDoes Fluke have a real chance to win?
Nobody seems interested in pre-polling the local races. Fluke apparently released an internal poll right after Labor Day suggesting that she would win, but I doubt if anyone outside of her own camp took it seriously.
JVW (60ca93) — 11/4/2014 @ 6:48 pmReelection of Stewart Smalley (who stole the election from Norm Coleman the first time with an unsourced box of absentee ballots that by some sort of miracle all were cast for the D) is forcing a reevaluation of the “Go with the Fluke” answer from before.
You might get stuck with her forever if she wins.
papertiger (c2d6da) — 11/4/2014 @ 6:53 pm#27
EXACTLY!
Angelo (8982ad) — 11/4/2014 @ 6:55 pmThere’s a threshold below which I would rather abstain than vote for the lesser evil. In the race for governor, neither candidate crossed it.
Other than that, there were good candidates up here, so I voted a straight ticket.
Ibidem (d600ff) — 11/4/2014 @ 6:57 pm(Brian Dahle and Doug LaMalfa being two of the good candidates.)
California politics. Sigh. I’ll say it again, at least we have awesome beaches.
Dana (8e74ce) — 11/4/2014 @ 6:57 pmI voted for Allen.
Actually, I voted against Fluke.
Patterico (9c670f) — 11/4/2014 @ 9:03 pmI shamelessly stole the “Always trust content from …” thing from him. Stealing from Mickey is a tradition here.
Patterico (9c670f) — 11/4/2014 @ 9:05 pmThere is a typo on Fluke’s website: Eqauity/Equality. Note to website owners: check for grammar and spelling if you want to be believable.
Denver Todd (fe903f) — 11/5/2014 @ 9:08 amFor those in other areas, Flukes ballot-line profession was “Social Justice Attorney.” This doesn’t even work in West LA.
She lost bad.
Kevin M (d91a9f) — 11/5/2014 @ 9:41 amJVW–
I actually like urban* rail transit. Every person using rail is not on my road. The only issue I have is with the incredible obstruction the laws allow to any transit project.
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*as opposed to long-distance bullet train rail, which will do nothing but sink money.
Kevin M (d91a9f) — 11/5/2014 @ 9:45 amI did the same thing. Voted for Ben Allen and Bobby Shriver. I thought they were the least bad of my choices.
Michelle Evans (05a43d) — 11/5/2014 @ 1:29 pmWhat Beldar said.
carlitos (c24ed5) — 11/6/2014 @ 6:17 amMo live in chicago and regularly vote for the least worst Democratic candidate. My Alderman is one of the few that wants to allow Wal Marts in the city, just as an example.
Target has poor quality merchandise you have to be really careful
happyfeet (09ace0) — 11/6/2014 @ 6:22 amcarlitos… what Mo do for a livin’?
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 11/6/2014 @ 6:33 amLOL. Somehow “I” or “we” became “Mo.” I blame Bush.
Largely at my request, my Alderman rolled back the times and days for metered parking on my side of the street. That’s governance. 🙂
carlitos (c24ed5) — 11/6/2014 @ 7:28 amHey carlitos,
Since we have you here: can you check out this comment and respond?
Patterico (9c670f) — 11/6/2014 @ 7:38 am