You don't have to endorse anyone, you can just vote (and other thoughts on the election)

1. T'was the election of endorsements. 2. Polls and prediction markets have sucked. 3. Voting as virtue ethics

Art for The Intrinsic Perspective is by Alexander Naughton

One only needs to check the texts we’re all getting spammed with here in America to know the election is tomorrow. So here are three thoughts as we finally finish off this strange, entertaining, horrifying, wonderfully insane cavalcade we all march in every four years.

1. T'was the election of endorsements

I can't recall an election in my lifetime where public figures staked out endorsements to this degree. Obviously, this has been building for a while. On the Democratic side, this year doesn't look too different than, say, the celebrity push behind Hillary Clinton in 2016. As The Guardian reported:

During the final weeks of the campaign, Harris was joined on the trail by Beyoncé, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder, Maggie Rogers, Willie Nelson, Jennifer Lopez and Oprah, among others.

But Elon Musk, who in addition to everything else is inarguably one of the biggest social media stars on the planet (he has 203 million followers on X), jumped in to support Trump. On social media, in outlets, in blogs, people have squared off in 2024 like never before. Even Nature just jumped in, with their second endorsement after Biden (their first) in 2020.

This much politicization has triggered pushback. Recently, Jeff Bezos overruled the editors of The Washington Post, refusing to let the newspaper issue an endorsement this election cycle. As Bezos himself explained it:

No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence. Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.

Some, especially Post subscribers, were quite mad at this (interestingly, neither MSNBC, CNN, nor Fox News catch any flak for not issuing official endorsements—one of the problems with political endorsements is that it's a lot easier to start than stop).

Of course, to try not appearing too biased, one could take the “I am a centrist creature of pure nuance” approach (with the center just happening to be whatever politics the then-sensible, then-sane, adult world had when they were 15). Alternatively on offer is the “I am making this choice via Spock-like logic” approach, but I think this is a category error given the deep psychological resonances behind why we like a certain politics, or find certain figures trustworthy or untrustworthy. Neither are great options.

Certainly, I’m sympathetic to the criticism that principled non-endorsement is a form of cowardice for anyone with a platform. But a mere perception of bias is not the only reason to have concerns over (what’s felt like) nearly everyone and every outlet “officially” endorsing. In general, knowing too much about the politics of writers and thinkers usually makes me lose some degree of respect for them—their opinions are never exactly what you want, and exactly what you want is, well, what you want when it comes to politics.