I will vote in the 2012 election. I take my civic duty seriously, and I have seen what happens when progressives do not vote in state and local elections. However, I am not yet sure that I will be able to vote for President Obama's reelection. Since writing often helps me gain clarity, I am going to begin the process of looking at both sides of the question of whether to support him. I acknowledge at the outset that there are compelling arguments both for and against.

Vote for Obama

The argument to cast my vote for President Obama is fairly simple. Doing so is the most effective thing I can do to prevent whichever Republican candidate wins the nomination from taking the presidency. It has nothing to do with how I personally feel about President Obama; it is simply about keeping the Republican out of office.

I have been extremely disappointed with President Obama. I knew as soon as he prevented Dick Cheney from standing trial for war crimes that it was unlikely I would be able to support him, and he has done little to change my mind.

When I most hoped I'd see Obama shine, he hasn't. He continues to oppose same-sex marriage, he's still running Gitmo, he's started yet another war - hell, there have been too many examples of this to list. Sure, he's done some good things too. Healthcare reform will likely prove to be somewhat better than the status quo even though it falls far short of the single-payer system we need.

Despite all of this, there is a clear argument in favor of voting for him. I am convinced that he is at least marginally better than any of the names I'm hearing about on the Republican side. And because of that, voting for him may indeed be the lesser of two evils.

Do Not Vote for Obama

For me, not voting for President Obama would mean either voting for a third party candidate (if I have that option) or skipping that question on the ballot. The argument in favor of this course of action is somewhat more complicated than voting for him.

Sure, it would be psychologically pleasing to withhold my support in the sense that I would feel that I was being true to myself by not supporting a candidate who did not represent my progressive values in the slightest and was unwilling to have the law applied consistently to U.S. war crimes. But that is not enough of a reason for me. The compelling reason is that withholding support from President Obama might also be the only way to send a message to the Democratic Party that they had better stop alienating their progressive base if they wanted to remain politically viable.

The Obama administration has not only ignored the pleas of their progressive base, they have actually attacked us. If they are defeated, this must be the narrative: they lost because they alienated their base. This is what the mainstream media has not seemed to grasp. We are sick and tired of being ignored by an administration we helped to elect. We can only be pushed so far before we will go elsewhere.

But the problem with this course of action is quite clear: in the short term, it makes it more likely that the Republican candidate wins. When I reflect on the damage George W. Bush did to our country, particularly with his Supreme Court appointees, this becomes a bitter pill indeed.

What's the Answer

I really don't know yet. I'm not interested in turning the White House over to a Republican. I see what happened in Wisconsin. But I am also having real trouble figuring out how we progressives can move the Democratic Party significantly to the left without doing so. And if they do not move significantly to the left, I'm having an increasingly difficult time believing that they are worth our support.

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