Hal Draper: Who's going to be the lesser-evil in 1968? (1967)

Hal Draper: Who's going to be the lesser-evil in 1968? (1967):



Voting for the lesser evil ALWAYS ends up creating the greater evil.  Voting for Clinton to stop Trump brought to today where Democrats now join with Republicans AND Trump.  This essay was written in 1968.  The election of Trump in 2016 is the culmination of 45 years of the "lesser evil" voting strategy.  It's time to stop voting for the lesser evil.



"The lib-labs would then swoon, crying “The fascists are coming!” and vote for the Lesser Evil. In these last two decades, the Democrats have learned well that they have the lib-lab vote in their back pocket, and that therefore the forces to be appeased are those forces to the right. The lib-labs were kept happy enough if Hubert Humphrey showed up at a banquet to make his liberal speeches; or, before that, by the Kennedy myth which bemused them even while the first leader on this planet poised his finger over the nuclear-war button and said “Or else!” With the lib-lab votes in a pocket, politics in this country had to move steadily right-right-right-until even a Lyndon Johnson could look like a Lesser Evil. This is essentially why – even when there really is a Lesser Evil – making the Lesser Evil choice undercuts any possibility of really fighting the Right.



But now notice this: when the Lesser Evil named Johnson was elected in 1964, he did not call in the Greater Evil to power, as did Hindenburg. He did not merely act in so flabby a manner that the Right wing alternative was thereby strengthened – another classic pattern. These patterns would have been old stuff, the historic Lesser Evil pattern in full form.



What was bewildering about Johnson was that the Lesser Evil turned out to be the Greater Evil, if not worse."