Sometimes the gesture is just not worth it.
On Friday, Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) announced that she will not vote for presumable Republican nominee Donald Trump for president, instead choosing to write in former candidate Nikki Haley, despite Haley’s exiting the race and encouraging her delegates to support Trump. This is a futile and stupid gesture, nothing but.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) plans to cast a write-in vote for former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley to become the next president and will not vote for former President Trump, her office confirmed Friday.
Collins revealed her general election plans to a photojournalist for CBS and Fox based in Portland, Maine, on Friday.
Collins had previously indicated that she did not plan to vote for Trump in November, but her statement Friday received fresh attention coming a few days before the start of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
The Maine senator endorsed Haley over Trump in the Republican presidential primary earlier this year. She also voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment trial.
Sen. Collins should know better.
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Symbolic votes are all well and good, and it’s unlikely her vote in Maine is going to make a great deal of difference. The last time Maine sent its Electoral College votes to a Republican was in 1988, when the state’s voters chose George H.W. Bush. But it still doesn’t make sense, tactically or strategically. For example: The next president is likely to have one, two, or even three Supreme Court appointments to make. If that’s Donald Trump, we’ll have some reasonable nominees. If President Kamala Harris – or President Gavin Newsom – is in office, those appointments will look very, very different.
In politics, one has to think not only tactically but strategically. Sometimes the party has to trump (hah) the person, and this 2024 election is one of those cases. It’s beyond the presidential election; control of the House and Senate will largely determine the agenda, as it will involve committee chairmanships, who holds the Speaker’s gavel, who is the Senate Majority Leader, and so on. These things matter, and we need them all if any conservative agenda stands any chance of being realized.
Granted, Susan Collins is the kind of Republican that can win a statewide election in a state like Maine, which Joe Biden carried by 53 percent of the vote in 2020 when Collins was last reelected. But that doesn’t make this action – and her public declaration of it – any less petulant or childish.
Note: The exhortations above apply to Republicans. Any Democrats reading this, I strongly encourage you to explore all your third-party alternatives. Make your protest votes known! Vote for Jill Stein or Cornel West – vote your heart!
