hillary-trump

An oft-heard excuse given by Christians who intend to vote for Donald Trump, and would have others do so too, is the assertion: “One of them is going to win.”

The truth of this statement is uncontroversial. It’s about as certain as any future event can be among humans (apart from divine revelation) that when the votes are counted late on the evening of November 8 or, more likely, early the next morning, either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump will have been elected president of the United States. We can always hope that the Republican National Committee will, before that day, experience a fit of decency and replace Trump with a candidate around whom the good people of this country can unite, but that, I fear, is an extremely long shot. No, the odds are strongly in favor of the proposition that one them–Trump or Clinton–will win the election.

What is not so clear is why that should influence us to vote for either one–because the next incontrovertible fact is that neither of them is fit to be president. In fact, it’s doubtful either one is fit to be running around loose as a menace to society. I don’t want either one of them to be president, so why should I vote for one just because “one of them is going to win”?

Maybe it’s because it’s important to have voted for the winner. One of them will win, so vote for one of them, and you might pick a winner! Winning feels good, and besides, if you don’t vote for the winning candidate, then you’ve wasted your vote, right? Wrong. Actually you waste your vote by casting it for a candidate who does not represent your values. Neither Trump nor Clinton represents Christian values, so we’d be wasting our votes on either of them whether he or she won or not. Picking a winner can’t be a good reason to vote for Trump or for Clinton.

Of course, the reason generally given is that we should vote to keep someone out of the presidency rather than to put someone in. Specifically, many of our friends want us to vote for Trump in order to keep Clinton out. The problem with that is that if you vote Trump into the presidency in order to keep Clinton out . . . then Trump is in, and that’s just as bad. Seriously, if you don’t think Trump is just as bad as Clinton, you haven’t been paying attention and soberly considering his words and actions. The fact is that if Clinton wins, Christians lose, and if Trump wins, Christians lose. So the statement that “one of them is going to win” turns out to be merely the recognition of a dismal truth.

All right then, if it’s true, what does that mean for our votes? Here’s the important part: It means exactly the opposite of what people are using it to mean. Why? Well, consider another incontrovertible truth, another one of those things that is just as certain as any future event can be for us humans. Here it is: On January 20, 2017, the United States is going to inaugurate the worst president it has had so far–worse than Bill Clinton, worse than Barack Obama, worse than any of the others–regardless of whether it’s Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. Do you want the distinction of having helped to elect the worst president so far in America’s history? Will you be able to find satisfaction in saying, “Yep, he’s the worst. He’s wrecking the country, and my vote helped put him in the White House”?

I wouldn’t. No, since either one of those candidates would be our worst president, my chief concern in the election is to make sure I don’t vote for either one. I’m planning to vote for Darrel Castle, the nominee of the Constitution Party. Whatever may happen, when the election is over I will at least be able to say I did all I could to keep both of those wicked candidates out of the White House.