Quick take: Liz Cheney and the meaning of integrity

 I have been unsparing in my praise for Liz Cheney since she came to lead the movement to save American democracy.  Will she succeed?  I am less than sanguine, but Cheney just demonstrated what integrity means.  In the face of Donald Trump's threats to the country, the Republicans who do not want to associate with him have done a little dance.  They have either declined to say how they have voted, or would vote, or they have claimed to vote for third parties so as to feel pure and clean and such.  The United States of America uses a plurality rule electoral system.  We complicate it via the electoral college, and various other means, but at the end of the day, we use plurality rules.  Maurice Duverger noted, many decades ago, that electoral systems with a plurality rule tend towards two parties.  (Recall yesterday's post about how Political Science has already basically done the big stuff.)  Proportional representation systems support more than two parties, but with plurality rules?  Two parties.  We call this principle, "Duverger's law."  Cheney recognizes Duverger's law, and if Trump is the 2024 nominee, she is formally leaving the Republican Party, and she will work to elect Democrats.

Liz Cheney will work to elect Democrats.  Liz Cheney will campaign for Democrats.  Does she agree with them on anything?  Yes.  She agrees with them that Donald Trump is an existential threat to the United States of America, and because he is so great a threat, every other issue-- on which she disagrees-- becomes meaningless.  Recognizing as she does, then, Duverger's law, she doesn't pull some cowardly, weaselly bullshit about writing in her father's name.  She'll campaign for Democrats.  Even disagreeing with them about everything else.  That is integrity.

Compare that to Sanders fanatics who didn't want to sully themselves by voting for an imperfect candidate.  Compare that to the shit you hear from "The Squad."  If you want to see what it looks like when someone has true integrity, watch Liz Cheney.  Will I write in her name?

That would defeat the purpose of this laudatory observation, wouldn't it?

But I want to.