I saw a post on Facebook last week where a friend was expressing some thinly veiled frustration regarding a particular candidate for President. I’m confident you’ve seen plenty of posts on your own social media feed expressing this same type of sentiment. Maybe you’ve made some of these posts yourself. I’m not here to judge. I actually think political discussions are good for us to have as long as they steer clear of personal attacks and willful mischaracterizations. I personally don’t believe that simply because something is controversial or might spark disagreement we should avoid talking about it.
Back to my friend’s post. She was having a hard time understanding how anyone—especially a Christian—could vote for [candidate X]. She genuinely wanted someone who supported this candidate to justify their vote. It’s not important that you know which candidate she was talking about because it doesn’t really matter for the purposes of this post. I didn’t respond to my friend’s question on Facebook, but I decided it would be worth a response in this space. Here’s what I would have said to her.
Voting for Virtue & Symbolism
A vote is an act of communication, even if it is a private act. In other words, a vote says something. It sends a message, but voters aren’t all trying to send the same message with their vote. For some people, their vote is about virtue. They vote for the best person, or at least the person who best reflects their virtues. This is the person who wants to send a message about “goodness” with her vote.
For years, it was assumed by most Americans that the President should be a role model and someone who embodied the best of us. The President was a symbol as much as he (and it was always he) was a person. That shifted with the Clinton presidency. Clinton was no model of virtue, but he did possess the ability to seem like an everyday guy who could “feel your pain.” No longer was the President a symbol of unique virtue. Now we expected a President who identified with us, someone “we could have a beer with?” George W. Bush embodied this better than Al Gore and John Kerry. Barack Obama was a symbolic President but for other reasons. He embodied a new era, first a post-race era in 2008 and then a hyper-racial era starting in 2012. I know many who voted for him in 2008 not because of policies but because of what he represented and how he made them feel.
“They vote for the best person, or at least the person who best reflects their virtues.”
There are people in this election who will vote for Trump and for Harris for the exact same reasons. They see in Trump or in Harris the type of person that they admire or at least the type of person that we need. Policies don’t really matter. To them, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are more symbols than they are people. You may disagree and say that one of them or neither of them embodies civic virtues. You could argue that one of them or neither of them embodies Christian virtues. And honestly, you’d have a really good argument. But if you are just interested in understanding someone’s vote, recognize that some people see their vote as sending a message about the virtues they want to see represented in the most powerful person in the world.
Voting for Consequence
For other people, their vote is not about virtue or symbolism. These people would tell you that they aren’t voting for their pastor. They aren’t voting for their kid’s teacher. They aren’t voting for their future son or daughter-in-law. They aren’t voting for someone that they’d like to live next to or work alongside of. No, they are voting for a presider-in-chief and a commander-in-chief. As such, what is most important is not the person, but the policies.
This kind of person is a consequentialist with their vote. Voting is not symbolic, but strategic. If a candidate is more likely to enact policies that make my job more difficult, I won’t vote for them. If a candidate is more likely to make America and her friends safe and our enemies afraid, I’m more likely to vote for them. The consequentialist cares about issues like the border, abortion, the Supreme Court, LGBT rights, the federal deficit, or taxes. He is more likely to vote in off-year elections, primaries, and local elections.
In this current election, consequentialists are making their arguments for and against both candidates. The consequentialist is much more likely to engage in party-line voting, but not always. One fascinating trend in this election is the number of people making consequentialist arguments against their historical party of choice.
“One fascinating trend in this election is the number of people making consequentialist arguments against their historical party of choice.”
David French, a person with a very long track record of being anti-abortion, is voting for the most pro-abortion candidate in history for strategic reasons. He believes that conservatism can only be saved by a Trump defeat (although living in very red Tennessee, he admits that his vote is mostly a symbolic act of rebellion against Trump). RFK Jr. and Elon Musk—both with very liberal histories—have thrown their weight behind Trump for consequentialist reasons. They believe that Kamala Harris shares the blame for the mess at our southern border and that she will enact regressive policies that put First Amendment rights at risk. Whatever you think of these arguments, my point is that your indignity about the character of Trump or Harris doesn’t matter to people who see the purpose of their vote in a very different way.
Toward Fruitful Conversation
I trust that my friend had the right heart in asking her question. She really wanted to know how people could vote for candidate X. Well, this is where the answer starts. We’ve got to first understand how people see their vote. We’ve also got to think about the way we understand our own vote. Once we’ve understood that, we can have a better, more fruitful conversation about our political differences.
From chadragsdale.wordpress.com. Used with permission.
