Why true Bernie Sanders supporters can never, ever vote for Donald Trump

Is a gigantic population of American anarchists going to swing the 2016 election to Donald Trump?!?

This is the premise of a rather vapid piece of clickbait published by The Daily Beast last week. The article put forward a Leninist argument for Bernie Sanders' supporters to back Trump. Hillary Clinton supporters were predictably enraged, Sanders supporters rolled their eyes, and clicks were indeed harvested.

Now it's true, there may be a few Sanders supporters who go to Trump, as there were Hillary Clinton supporters who backed John McCain in 2008. Primary races can get heated, and people sometimes develop an emotional attachment to their candidate and corresponding hatred of the opponent. But the number of actual anarchist voters in America is probably limited to triple digits. (What kind of anarchist votes in the first place, anyway?)

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Also, while it should go without saying, I will say it anyway: On ideological grounds, it is indefensible for truly progressive supporters of Bernie Sanders to vote for a proto-fascist.

However, this article does raise an interesting question for politically engaged Sanders supporters now that he has lost the primary: With the many ideological differences between Clinton and Sanders, what's the best way to push Sanders' social democratic ideas in the general election?

This question would be moot if we had an electoral system that wasn't a ridiculous mess that became outdated 150 years ago. Under a sensible proportional representation system, people could just vote for their favorite party, end of story. But until we can update the jalopy Constitution, the path forward for Sanders supporters remains cloudy.

Allow me to offer some advice.

Here's the first principle for a left-wing voter: Unless you live in a swing state (one that might legitimately go for Trump or Clinton), protest votes are completely fine. Now, you should not vote for Trump, not ever. Any postulated accelerationist gains are not remotely worth the risk. But if any New Yorkers, Californians, Texans and so on would prefer to vote Green, Socialist, Transhumanist, or whatever, go for it.

Obviously such advice is premised on the assumption that most people will not listen to it. But the number of motivated leftists is, frankly, pretty small. You should be watching the polls in any case — the 2016 swing states are liable to be Colorado, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Nevada, New Hampshire, and maybe a couple others — but so long as it looks like one candidate has a comfortable margin of victory, then third-party votes for president are great. (The same does not necessarily hold for congressional races, however.)

Now, some leftists will not like to hear it, but the case for voting for Clinton if you do live in a swing state is very strong. Trump really could do untold damage to the climate, constitutional democracy, and world society. Taking a few minutes to vote against him is worth it. Moreover, the whole point of Sanders running in the primary was to leverage the anti-Trump vote to push the Democrats to the left, should he have won. He lost — but not by that much. Supporting Clinton insofar as it helps her best Trump will be a key card to play when the tables are turned in the future.

That said, if you can't bring yourself to vote Clinton, better third-party than nothing. As I've argued before, continuing to demonstrate that there is a bloc of support for social democracy is critical.

Finally, and most importantly, look closely into state and local elections. Many of the local primaries and so forth are already finished, but not all of them. These are often hard to figure out, and may often feature "lesser of two evils" choices that are considerably harder than Trump versus Clinton. However, such elections are where one's vote weighs the most, so it's worth sorting out. (Local unions and progressive organizations often produce useful recommendations here.)

Ultimately, the near-success of Bernie Sanders shows that the American electoral system is not completely rigged. Someday, a successor will finish what he started — but in the meantime, your voting franchise is still an important right to exercise.