Democracy, Mob Rule

Question for the day, and one which I think deserves special consideration in these coming months:

Is it really possible to vote for someone and not have it considered supportive?

Since a vote is an affirmative action, how can someone interpret votes as being anything other than supportive of a measure or candidate since it is impossible to descern the motives of every single voter?

I've not decided this question one way or the other just yet, so please share your thoughts!

There would have to be a vocal and acknowledged-by-the-media group of people who is saying they hate both candidates but hate one of them more. Hilary Clinton was known to bring out people who would vote "against" her.

Whether such an animal exists or will exist is another matter...

I think such a campaign would only work (or work better) if it were a sizable group of abstainers. Furthermore, the media it must be acknowledged more or less works for one of the camps (no points for guessing which).

Its possible to strong-arm the media into covering unfavorable news, but one would have to have widespread acknowledgement from sources exterior to the media, so that they would fear missing the story.

It would have to be a large, well funded group of people who pool their resources for the purpose of drawing attention to their intention of not voting, and there would have to be an agreed upon explaination as to why.

The only other alternative would be to vote for the person who you believe would be the most absolultely disasterous so as to bring discredit and disfavor to their ideas.

This plan could also backfire.

If an Obama presidency was a failure, they might attribute the blame to something other than his ideas, especially if his ideas are not widely accepted as having failed. Such as congress's failure to adopt his legislation. This would be especially problematic because it would lead to calls for more executive authority. Obama's rhetoric already anticipates this with talk of "unity" and an end to "partisan distractions". The thing that frightens me the most about Obama, is this talk of "post-partisan[ism]".

Another lesser danger would be that it isn't the ideas but the man. In other words, communism wasn't the problem with the Soviet Union, but rather the way it was implimented and by who.

This is the lesser danger because with Obama, the platform is the man. If he does fail, he might become the symbol for those ideas, and their subsequent failure. This is the ideal outcome.

Oh I was talking about voting "against" one candidate without it being seen as a vote "for" the other.

But yeah even with abstention you benefit from the media.

Still, with abstention if you vote but leave the presidency blank that shows as what it is regardless of what people want to think. If enough people do it it will have to be reported as being at the very least strange.

Not that I'm endorsing it - I haven't made up my mind yet.

Interesting point. Note how collectivists have always claimed Soviet Russia or China "didn't try real Communism" even as the blood flowing from their borders could fill a small lake. To them, the idea is infallible and anyone who fails will be declared a phony even if previously supported.

Kind of like spinning the roulette wheel over and over as the debts growth ever larger. Except there is no, and can never be a winning number.

As for blank voting, I'm not sure what kind of impact that could have without, as you describe, an organized effort to publicly emphasize it.

This post has been edited by Inspector on Jul 22 2008, 02:12 AM

I think this discussion is about mandates. When a president is elected, he has a mandate to the extent that he explicitly campaigned on a policy. If he campaigns relentlessly every day on a platform of dismantling the welfare state (this example is a fantasy), then if he was elected in a landslide he would have a mandate to begin downsizing the government.

When politicians campaign on vague bromides such as "change you can believe in," then when elected they have little mandate for anything but business as usual. With either Obama or McCain, we will get the same thing we got with Bush: continued expansion of the welfare state and a gradual march toward fascism.

That's a good point, which I hadn't considered. Now of course you still have all the other things - that the president has a large role in military policy, the appointment of the judiciary, and that he is the "face" for whatever policies are enacted.

That last bit is to my mind the most imporitant. Either way we get the same policies - but do we want those policies associated with Obama and what people see him as standing for, or do we want them associated with McCain and what people see him standing for?

Also, one of the few times Republicans have been known to stand against the creep of statism is when they are in the minority as opposition. If they don't have the presidency, they may be more inclined.

Remember that the president often plays the role of "brokering deals" in congress to get things done. They will be more apt to "deal" with McCain and thus will oppose him less.

Just my thoughts for now.