Don’t be an idiot, says Alex Pareene. Pick a candidate who shares more of your policy preferences not someone who shares almost none of them:
Self-declared centrists [and liberals] never seem to understand that the logical choice, if you have decided to pick between two candidates, and not to sit the election out, is to support the candidate who supports more of your policy preferences. In fact they quite often think the more noble and wise choice is to pick the man with whom they share almost no priorities.
Like it or not, we have two-party system. You have to choose a Democrat or a Republican. Before you decide, please note:
The Democratic Party, currently, is a moderate liberal party. The Republican Party is a conservative party, with a few (often aging and endangered) exceptions. It would certainly be a noble (albeit probably doomed) goal to announce that you intend to shift the Republican Party to the center (demographics and time are the only things that will actually succeed in shifting the party to the center), with huge piles of money or something, but it does not make sense to reward the current, extant Republican Party and its candidates with your vote and public support unless you actively support conservative policy goals.
And what if there’s one deal-breaker issue (drones, say) that means you can’t vote for your otherwise preferred candidate?
If you simply cannot hold your nose and vote for the guy (or girl) who is, when compared to the other person, more closely aligned with your pristine political ideology…
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, UNTIL WE HAVE AN INSTANT RUNOFF SYSTEM OR SOMETHING, JUST DON’T VOTE.
(See also: Bush v. Gore)