One of the most ridiculous parts of our so-called democracy today is that campaigns for elections begin nearly two years before the elections, so it feels like we are in full swing for the Democratic primary for the 2020 election even though it is still far off. This is even more true with Joe Biden recently declaring himself a candidate. Let's put that to the side for now, however, because I want to focus on a statement I've heard a lot from Democrats or anti-Trump folks: We need a viable candidate to beat Trump. Since we do seem to be in full campaign mode already, now is as good a time as any to address that statement and sentiment.
To respond to the supposed need for a viable candidate to beat Trump, we should first ask why we Americans vote at all. Many in my generation do not feel like voting is useful or meaningful. There are good reasons for that, whatever older folk may say. The democratic process has certainly been inundated with outside forces: Russia, oversized corporate influence, politicians' wanting money for re-election campaigns, and on and on. All of these forces have weakened the ideal above other ideals that our country, and the very nature of democracy and republics, was founded on: the right to self-determine. It is the right to self-determine that liberty and freedom describe. Our country was founded on this right to self-determine.
Even Christians, who should have a far more complicated relationship with government and voting than we currently do, hold the right to self-determine as part of God's relationship with us and why God created us in the first place. Adam and Eve were given the right to choose. They chose poorly, of course, but were still given that right. After the Flood God confirmed that self-determination is His intention for His created people. Abraham and Moses argued with God and changed God's mind. 1 Samuel 8, which describes how the Israelites again chose poorly by desiring a king other than God (hence why we should have a far more complicated relationship with government and voting than we do), includes God's affirming that we have the right to self-determine. God didn't want the Israelites to go down the path of forming a government but, in the end, God gave the Israelites what they wanted.
Self-determination is not merely a right. It is foundational to who we have been created to be. Of course, the foundational characteristic of self-determination should mostly be concerned with our faith and relationship to God/Christ, but that faithful relationship should pervade all of our lives, including our involvement (or not) in government. We vote, then, because we have this right, because we are meant to self-determine. Our vote is one of the means by which we self-determine.
If self-determination is the purpose of our individual vote, then we can connect the problem with the sentiment of viability for a party candidate with the history of who we have given the vote to. Most Americans don't give much thought any more to the fact that Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens but do not have electoral college votes nor representation in Congress. Indeed, Puerto Ricans' representation in Congress is exactly the same as the colonists' representation in London's Parliament: someone is elected to be present with a voice but that person has no vote, no actual say, no ability to self-determine. The same is true with our other territories. It's even funny that we portrayed ourselves as a liberating force in World War II when we took over the Philippines from the Japanese when, in fact, we already controlled the Philippines beforehand. Or look at how the media and the Commission on Presidential Debates handled third-party candidates in 2016. The polling number needed to get on the televised debate stage was raised when it was clear that Johnson, of the Libertarian Party, was polling near the old, lower required numbers. Or look at how the media and especially those with political power have handled and portrayed the March for Our Lives campaign. Or look at the fact that Hillary Clinton was not far different from Trump leading up the primary until Bernie Sanders forced her to change her hand, which was all strange considering Bernie was pushed aside. Bernie himself admitted that the reason he didn't run as an independent is because if he did he wouldn't have had as much media exposure or a chance to debate.
The truth is that we don't want to share the right to vote, and therefore the right to self-determine, with anyone that we think might be outside an acceptable range. Hispanics? Asians? So what if they are technically citizens, they can't have the same right to self-determine, even if we have to put them in the same position we Americans we were in when we declared, "No taxation without representation," and launched a revolution on the grounds of liberty and freedom. Kids who want to take our guns away? Radical independents? Third-parties that don't fit into the Republican/Democrat range? No, thank you. Notice, too, that I'm only referring to our very recent history. Despite our ideals and the reason for revolution, we began disenfranchising people from the right to self-determine from our beginning. Apparently the right to self-determine only applies to those who look like us and think like us within an acceptable range. (By the way, the same is true for citizens of other countries, too. Cambodians, Vietnamese, El Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans, etc. shouldn't have the right to self-determine unless they are choosing what we, the powerful United States of America, want them to choose)
Obviously the problem with how we have treated the right to self-determine, and therefore the right to vote, and the entire related process, ignores the basic logic that the right to self-determine is the right to self-determine. If there is going to be an accepted range within which we coerce people to choose, that range should only exclude what is outright evil, as in we should not be able to vote for the extermination of all brown-haired people. Otherwise, by limiting the right to self-determine we thereby become shamefully elitist--only certain people have this right--and hypocritical while proving that we don't actually believe in our founding principles.
More than that, we prove that we don't believe in redemption if we limit the right to self-determine. Australia was peopled almost entirely by criminals (again of course ignoring the natives) and they seem to have turned out fine. Yet many nowadays do not think that criminals should have the right to self-determine, to vote? Yet many nowadays think that it is good and right for us to intervene in other countries' business, as if they'll fail without us? If one group of people are capable of self-determining well, then all are.
Put all of this together and we have reason not to care about the viability of candidates to win an election when we vote. To even talk about viability is to again become shamefully elitist and hypocritical, especially because it is usually the powerful, including the media, who make such determinations of viability. The media have portrayed Biden as the most likely to beat Trump even before Biden announced his campaign. But what if he's not the best candidate? What if Biden only gives us, in policy terms, nearly more of the same except without all of Trump's character flaws? Would that still be good? Both Bernie and Biden both mentioned as reasons for running the fact that, when they looked around the candidate pool, no one seemed as likely to beat Trump than themselves. But such thinking is wrong. If people have the right to self-determine, then they should be able to vote for the candidate that best represents their views and not be coerced into choosing someone merely for the sake of winning.
True, if we give people the right to self-determine, they may choose a candidate or policies that we dislike; they may choose a candidate or policies incapable of winning. But if we return to the Bible and the fact of our foundational character of self-determination, we'll remind ourselves that often we have chosen poorly. And that's okay. Adam and Eve and on down the line faced heavy consequences for choosing poorly but God still did not remove the right to self-determine. So, too, may we continue to face heavy consequences for choosing poorly, but we cannot remove the right to self-determine.
What is strange in all of this is that most of the candidates in the Democratic primary who are most radically different, policy-wise, from Trump are the ones who are most blacked out in the media. If beating Trump is the only goal--which is a faulty goal--then shouldn't a candidate be chosen who is unlike Trump? I think of Tulsi Gabbard and Elizabeth Warren. Regardless, the truth is that if Democrats, or anyone else, concern themselves with viability and winning elections, we are therefore refusing to self-determine or refusing others the right to self-determine. We'd instead simply be narrowing the acceptable range of electability and action. I fear for this country if that's what the Democrats decide to do.
All we should be doing in the political process, as in life generally, is asking ourselves, "What is it that I believe? And what personal actions and who else will make those beliefs a tangible reality in the world around me?" That's it. Self-determine.
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