Life is not a binary choice

In the comic books of the 1960's, villains openly describe themselves as "evil." Real life is not nearly that simple.

Elections, generally, are a binary choice, but life is not. There are many factors that go into how someone chooses to vote. Not voting for one candidate is not always an endorsement of his opponent - especially if you have criticized that opponent and have said he or she would be a bad choice for that office. In a primary, you can support almost everyone running and still be limited to only voting for one of them, so you must choose.

This brings us to the U.S. Senate race in Georgia. David French is opposed to Raphael Warnock, a so-called "pastor" who is radically pro-abortion. But French also said he could not vote for Hershel Walker, while saying he understands why people of good faith would vote for Walker. (French also said the same about people who voted for Donald Trump, only to issue blanket condemnation after blanket condemnation of those voters. We shall see how gracious French is if Walker wins.)

This does not mean that French supports Warnock. He does not. He also did not support Hillary Clinton, and neither did many others who were "Never Trump" in 2016. There were voters who could not bring themselves to vote for Trump in 2020, but they did not support Biden either. Refusing to vote for the candidate of your party - regardless of the reason - is not necessarily an endorsement of the other candidate, no matter how the voting system works. Claiming otherwise is an oversimplification at best, and an outright lie at worst.

A similar thing can be said about Walker supporters. Faced with someone who will work against your interests on one side and a deeply morally flawed person on the other side, many people may vote for Walker after weighing the two options. For many of them, this is not "hypocrisy," nor is it a tribal desire to "win" at all costs. It is not that simple. When you are faced with a binary choice on the ballot, there are many things that go into that choice that cannot be discerned by what button you push or what circle you fill in with your pen.

Not everything fits into a simple good vs. evil mentality. It may work that way in poorly-written fiction, but the real world does not work that way, never has and never will. So maybe what we should do is be a lot more gracious on both sides. That, sadly, is a radical proposal in a polarized age.