Should Bernie Fans Vote Hillary? | Philosophy Tube

Is it right to go #BernieorBust, or should Bernie fans vote Clinton for President to try and avoid Donald Trump? How does the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill fit into US politics? When nobody on the ballot represents you in a democracy, how should you vote?

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[scifience]

Anyone else watching this after Bernie dropped out ?

[DavidRutten]

It sounds to me as though these philosophies assume that voting is a one-off process, whereas I think it's more 'iterated prisoners dilemma'. There will be other elections in the near future involving the same basic parties and treating elections and not sequential puts one at a significant disadvantage.

Even if you think Hillary would do a lot more good than Trump, and even if you are a utilitarian, you may *still* choose to not vote for her because the long term direction of the Democratic party may be affected by their losses/wins in the near future. Voting for Hillary might be the right thing to do from a 4 year point of view, but a catastrophic thing to do from a 20 year point of view.

[XxKitsuneKagexX]

To quote Rush "If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice", systems inherently have inaction as a choice whether or not that is listed on the ballot in this case. If you accept that then you have to realise you still hold some level of moral responsibility.
As far as Realpolitik goes I would say it's fair to talk about only whats on the table. However, the political system is not tied up in only the presidential election. You have many other options such as campaign and petitioning local government for change .

[Blahidontcare]

There is no such thing as not voting. If you do not vote that is still effectively one less vote that the leading party does not have to beat. Here in Australia we don't have to worry about many of these problems because we vote for all parties in order of preference. Our first vote may not win the election but our second/ third/ fourth/ etc./ vote will be counted to go towards our personal lesser of two evils.

[SpoopySquid]

Thanks to this video, I finally know how to properly pronounce "realpolitik"

[Librariansaysook]

Another element is left folks actually preferring a Trump presidency because it will radicalize people for future political battles-kinda like how George W Bush's presidency awoke a series of left-wing movements in opposition to it. The problem with that to me is that would almost certainly hurt a whole lot of people in real consequential ways, while only theoretically helping others, and it will certainly empower politicians who think similarly to Trump.

[robertsturrock]

This really helped me understand the opposite position in all the debates I've seen friends having on this issue in the last few weeks. Thank you for this--I hope this gets shared more widely.

[danbondarenko]

A problem with utilitarianism which I've encountered in my own thought experiments is the question of time. However one defines maximizing utility, there is still the need to specify the time period in which utility is maximized: the moral action that leads to the maximum amount of utility in a year from now might not be the way to maximize utility in a 100 years from now.

I feel that this is relevant to answering the problem presented in this video. But of course, utilitarianism is highly speculative – the future can unfold in a myriad unexpected ways.

[systempatcher]

As a scientist and Bernie supporter I decided to vote for Hillary. Yes, Bernie is still running but he will not receive a majority vote now that Clinton is the nominee. I really despise everything about both nominees, but I'm much more worried Trump will bring us into a nuclear age and generally halt environmental progress.

[TCt]

Kant wants the murderer to kill my kids?
I _Kant_ even with that level of craziness.

[drkmwinters]

Ralph Nader in 2000. Learn from history. We ended up with Bush, remember.

[Marcus]

The issue with the Kant's argument is that it is truth it would be morally wrong to LIE to this murderer but it wouldn't be morally wrong NOT TO ANSWER as there is no moral duty to answer question you don't want to answer. Not answering (inaction) would then be the most moral action you could take as you would not morally comprimise yourself either by the act of lying or by the act of helping the murderer to achive his objective.

When it comes to voting then you can use the same logic. But in that case: "What does the act of non-action cause?" - because in this case the non-action may be as or even more morally compromising than utilitarian action.
The morally right thing then would be EITHER to find a candidate that you fully agree with and vote for him regardless of his actually winning chances OR if there is not such a person to become such candidate yourself.

[secret]

Okay yeah no, this eventually comes down to the harm argument and I really do believe that allowing harm to happen is just as bad as doing the harm oneself but I truly do believe Trump will do more harm, even when we equate the two... This is not even to mention that if we accept that allowing the harm to happen is just as bad as doing the harm by abstaining you are objectively allowing that harm to happen. So to me the election came down to:

- Abstaining and allowing any such harm to happen no matter who gets elected
- Voting for Hillary and her imperialist policy
- Voting for Trump (god forbid) and causing the oppression of millions globally

But the thing is that, overall, I believe Trump would have and *IS* causing more harm than Hillary would have (which we see now; I doubt Hillary would've launched 2 strikes on Syria, weakened sanctions on Russia and allowed them to get away with more human rights abuses than usual, threatened to strike first against Iran & DPRK, and with the latter threatened to use nuclear force...).

An absentee may take the argument that they don't want to be implicated in Hillary's policy and that allowing such evils to happen is just as bad as committing them yourself... But when the only options on the table are two which will cause such evils to take place anyway then you are inherently allowing those evils to happen merely by refusing to vote. As Desmond Tutu has said: "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.". This is why, arguably, the best course of action, would have been to vote for Hillary AND hold her to account. Now you may argue that you could have abstained and held her to account but... She didn't win... And given how close it was at the time it seemed rather obvious to me that such a thing wasn't worth the risk. And thus you'd have had to have been trying to hold Trump to account... Which, with him, is *JUST NOT* possible... So any which way you are bound to be allowing harm to happen, or committing it yourself, and the most reliable option for keeping the president to account was to vote Hillary unfortunately.

I am by no means a Hillary fan, but this is how it came across to me and there was no other option, the arguments I've listed here even use the ones from the Bernie or Bust camp, so do not tell me I am wrong.

The *ONLY* way I could see the "Bernie or Bust" camp's argument is that one saw a Hillary presidency as causing more harm than a Trump Presidency. In which case I will hold *YOU*, those who abstained on this argument, accountable for the death and destruction of millions of people's lives after this Presidency is over; for now though if you are to gain some ounce of redemption then stand by us and resist.

Edit: Something else did occur to me though just after I wrote this and went to shower but kept forgetting to write it up; I will add though that this does mean you're off the hook if you voted for the likes of Stein or, hell, even Johnson, which I think is fair. I'll be somewhat disappointed in hearing it but you're not to blame, you're clearly angry at the system and want change (whilst actually being anti-nazi *cough* Trump Supporters *cough* ) and I support you in that, so yeah, you do have my support there. <3

[Sam_on_YouTube]

Ana Casparian said "I can't, in good conscience, vote for Hillary Clinton." But here's the thing, you don't have to vote for her in good conscience, but you still need to vote for her. There are great ways to fight the status quo. Primary elections are the obvious example and Bernie came close with that approach. Wolf PAC, which seeks to solve the underlying systemic issues regardless of the President is another. But on the day of the election, there aren't any other options. The utilitarian choice is the only practical one.

[bentoth]

The one I don't get is a friend of mine who literally said "well, Bernie lost the primary so I guess I'm voting Trump." That confused the hell outta me. Your candidate loses the primary so you vote for the remaining candidate whose policies and views are furthest from the ones you supported and were excited about?

[pete]

the way I approach this is, depends on how much you trust the institutions of your country. If you think the president will violate the constitution, or the political climate will make that possible, or that even following the constitution, the president can do irreparable harm, then vote for the "less bad" option, but in reality you have bigger problems than your choice of candidates, it's a systemic problem. If you think the system is safe, then vote for the choice you actually want (write in, 3rd party, no vote, etc), no matter the outcome, chances are they'll still hear you. Just put up with the guy who wins, in 4 years there'll be a new election, and the guy in power gets exactly 1 vote on it. I hate people who vote as if they're playing the roulette.

[CricketStyleJ]

Kant's position is monstrously selfish and myopic. Moreover, it is simply not true that his proposed course of action would absolve him of culpability.

[sinecurve]

You're British! You get to vote in arguably the most important election this year.




Brexit.

Interestingly, 'Brexit' autocorrects to 'need it' on my phone... #conspiracy

[garushnagoth]

That's a very different look. It's fun watching through the old stuff.

[IXPrometheusXI]

Thank you for this video! It's great to see a level-headed presentation of practical ethics on YouTube.

Lately I've been leaning towards a virtue-based account of ethics. It's not as clear, on this account, how you should answer the "lesser-of-two evils" argument. However, I wanted to criticize the deontological (Kantian) approach to the problem. I've rarely heard the story about being honest with the murderer presented in such a way that paints Kant as right - usually it's presented as a reductio to Kant's moral theory, when I hear it at least. In our study of ticking time bomb cases (which discuss the moral justification of interrogational torture) in university, I've noticed that most deontologists, even those willing to make extreme sacrifices from a utilitarian perspective, allow for exceptions to moral principles in "catastrophic" scenarios. While many may dispute this point, I would argue that as far as presidential races go, allowing a Trump presidency would be a catastrophic moral price to pay for sticking to a moral principle. He's supported appointing judges that would overturn marriage equality, he denies climate change, he won't support strong gun control measures, his tax plan is costly and unproductive, he antagonizes our biggest trading partners, he stokes bigotry against Muslims, latinx populations, women, and others, and so on and so on. A Trump presidency threatens society, the economy, and international diplomacy on multiple levels. There hasn't been such a dangerous candidate in my lifetime.

In the Kantian murderer thought experiment, it seems clear, at least on an intuitive level, that Kant is just wrong - regardless of your moral theory, almost no one would be willing to stand on the principle of honesty if it meant their children being murdered. In a similar vein, standing on principle to allow a Trump presidency would instigate a moral catastrophe that undermines our most basic intuitions about right and wrong. It's not always necessary to fit things into a comprehensive moral framework before making a judgment. In fact, establishing these sorts of intuitions can be instrumentally valuable in building a moral framework in the first place. In other words, we can (and I think in this case, should) start by acknowledging the obvious justifiability of a particular moral judgment, and use that to inform our moral theory, rather than the other way around. After all, a moral theory that contradicts our most basic intuitions about right and wrong would be very suspicious, at the very least.