Should You Vote with Your Head or Your Heart?

Voting is the core foundation of our democracy, but do fears about electability get in the way? Many voters vote for the candidate they think will be most electable to a Republican or more moderate Democrat. Because in an increasingly polarized society, the fear that the other side will win is somehow greater than voting for who you are passionate about. For months, Democratic candidates tried tirelessly to prove that they could beat Donald Trump in 2020. Pete Buttigeg went as far as to say “I think that’s increasingly what’s on voters’ minds, they want the person most likely to beat Donald Trump”. 

While this idea makes sense, it is indisputably flawed; voters should vote for the candidate they think is fit to lead the country, and aligns with their personal beliefs, not for the candidate they think is most electable. Sure, many believe that “anything is better than Donald Trump”, and the frustration that Democrats as well as Republicans across the country are feeling during this election period has become increasingly pressing. Moderate Republicans are appalled by the behavior of the president, and Democrats are horrified by what could happen if he were re-elected. But is a moderate democrat like Joe Biden, who recently became the Democratic frontrunner, really more electable than a democratic socialist such as Bernie Sanders or Elizebeth Warren? The assumption that Biden would do better than Sanders or Warren is structurally flawed. 

Bernie Sanders and Elizebeth Warren were candidates that had the most energy, enthusiasm and fire behind them. They were, and still are, ready to make the radical structural changes that our seriously flawed democracy needs, and they fight for the lives of everyday Americans. Those are the qualities that could win a national election. Many believe it is why Donald Trump, the seemingly unelectable candidate, won in 2016. 

In a video discussing the likelihood of a Warren, Sanders victory (filmed before Biden became the frontrunner) Robert Reich, the former Secretary of Labor and a liberal Professor of Economics at University of California, Berkeley, said, “presidential elections are determined by turn out. Over a third of eligible voters don't vote. They go to the polls if they are motivated, and in modern America, what motivates people most is a candidate who stands for average people and against power or privilege”. Our idea of electability is shaped by the media we mindlessly ingest, so the notion of electability is nothing more than what the media would like us to believe. This is becoming a common theme in the current political climate, and it is incredibly dangerous. In a fivethirtyeight article titled“You'll Never Know Which Candidate is Electable”, Maggie Koerth says “electability isn’t a thing you can measure. It’s subjective, not objective — which is why Sanders isn’t the only candidate whose persona can be twisted one way to fit a narrative of unelectability, and another to tell a story of certain success. (Sen. Elizabeth Warren can attest to that.)”.  

In order to truly create a fair democracy we should abandon this idea of electability in future elections, and instead think critically about each candidate as well as the journalism we consume on an everyday basis. Focus not on what makes the candidate electable, but on how they will improve the lives of everyday American politics. 

Sources:

• https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/

• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/22/business/media/alternative-facts-trump-brand.html

• https://robertreich.org/ 

• https://theintercept.com/2020/02/24/bernie-sanders-electability/