This Is Why I Am Voting Against My Republican Party
The author outlines well my beliefs and where my vote stands tomorrow.
Thanks,
Steve
Default Democrats
Oct 30, 2026
LINK: https://bleedingheartlibertarian.substack.com/p/default-democrats
[Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by my friend Daniel Shapiro, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at West Virginia University. Daniel was not only one of the original members of the old Bleeding Heart Libertarians blog, he was the one who first suggested the name! He is the author of numerous articles in social and political philosophy and of the excellent book, Is the Welfare State Justified? (Cambridge, 2007).]
Most of my voting life I voted for the Libertarian Party when they advocated classical liberal/libertarian policies. Now those who care about and prioritize liberty and a free society—however they label themselves—should vote Democratic unless the candidate is a Democratic Socialist.
Remembering the MAGA assaults on a free society
There’s been so much criminality and misdeeds in the Trump administration that it’s exhausting to cover it all, but keeping “the land of the free and the home of the brave” means remembering the essentials. I provide links when the points I make are not common knowledge and/or might be controversial.
Violating the norm of peaceful transfer of political power
January 6: Trump is the only presidential candidate in the US who refused to concede that he lost. He told a crowd to “fight like hell,” and the mob then stormed the Capitol to try to overturn the results. The House impeached him for “incitement of insurrection,” and 57 senators, including seven Republicans, voted to convict—short of the two-thirds required. After his campaign of lies and deception and pressuring election officials to falsify the results failed to overturn the election, he later pardoned all the perpetrators of the violence.
Violating the rule of law, shredding due process, torture
ICE: masked secret police who kidnap people and send them to hellholes in El Salvador, where they were subject to constant beatings, sexual abuse, and torture; to the Central African Republic, in the midst of a brutal civil war with severe human rights abuses; to Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” where large numbers of detainees were held in cages the size of phone booths; and to Fort Bliss, Texas, where guards grabbed detainees’ testicles while beating them. There’ve been zero consequences for this; indeed, Trump says they are “immune.”
Not only were the deportations done without any notification to families or lawyers, but ICE has disappeared from databases those they seized so lawyers and families can’t find them.
ICE and CBP have rammed people in their cars, dragged the occupants out, and rammed into houses without warrants. They have murdered, wounded, and assaulted protestors and ICE monitors—Alex Pretti and Renee Good, during the ICE occupation of Minneapolis, being the most publicized—but there have been many others.
There is now “expedited removal” for anyone undocumented, which means no hearing before a judge. (And this is even though immigration judges are—wrongly—a part of, and not independent of, the executive branch.) Indeed, Trump fired any immigration judge who disagreed with him or whom he perceived as not being deportation-friendly enough, and replaced the Board of Immigration Appeals, which has denied appeals for almost all deportation orders.
The administration removed TPS (temporary protected status) for immigrants fleeing violence and is deporting them to the very countries the State Department has declared unsafe—e.g., Haiti.
ICE apprehended immigrant parents after they dropped their kids off at school (see here, here, and here), as well as apprehending children and toddlers and using them as bait (the Liam Conejo Ramos incident).
Dehumanizing rhetoric, blatantly racist policies
Gross violations of due process and the rule of law described above almost always require dehumanization and racism, and that’s what occurred.
Trump calls immigrants “vermin” and “animals.” Kristi Noem, former head of Homeland Security, called Alex Pretti and Renee Good “domestic terrorists.” During his debate with Harris, Trump said that Haitians eat dogs and cats. Trump says Rep. Omar (D-MN) is “garbage” and that “her friends are garbage.”
Immigration policies target people with brown skin (sanctioned by the Supreme Court in Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo), white nationalist rhetoric is used to recruit for ICE (see here and here), and virtually the only people admitted as refugees this year have been white South Africans.
Violating the ban on using the military for policing
Trump sent Marines to LA, and National Guard troops to Chicago and DC. This violates a basic norm since the Founding and violates Posse Comitatus, a statute banning the military from policing.
Assaults on free speech and free assembly
Trump and FCC chairman Carr threatened talk shows and networks for dissenting political opinions.
As mentioned, ICE murdered, assaulted, and wounded protestors and ICE monitors.
The administration targeted people for their political views and for writing op-eds. Rochester resident David Streever sent a critical email to the director of ICE, and five months later, federal officers tracked his movements and staked out his New York City hotel as he returned from an overseas trip. Tufts University doctoral candidate Rümeysa Öztürk co-authored a student newspaper op-ed criticizing university management regarding Gaza, and then plainclothes ICE agents arrested her without criminal charges and transferred her to multiple detention facilities across three states. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and other Democratic legislators made a video urging the military not to follow unlawful orders; the Trump administration attempted to indict them before a grand jury, though the grand jury declined.
The administration has delegitimized the opposition. Trump says Democrats are “Communists,” and Kristi Noem said the Marines were sent to LA to “liberate” CA from socialist leaders. Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) was tackled to the ground and handcuffed for asking questions about ICE during a press conference with Kristi Noem. Representative Omar’s home was recently subject to a search warrant by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the investigative arm of ICE. A week later Trump said she should be arrested and sent back to Somalia. Rep. Omar is a citizen and has lived here since she was a child. Members of Congress are rarely subject to a federal search other than for bribery, and it is unprecedented for this to occur right before an election.
And that is not all…
To spare the reader (and me!), I am not even going to cover in any detail the various other sordid crimes, abuses, and cruelties, such as the administration’s murder of suspected drug smugglers on the high seas, the unconstitutional tariffs, cuts and increases in various budgets not authorized by Congress, the astonishing level of graft, corruption, and cronyism, and the tin-pot dictator tactics of putting Trump’s name on currency, passports, a prescription drug website, and banners on various federal buildings, and his attempt to rename the Kennedy Center.
What Democrats can do
First, stop it. Second, remedy it.
Cessation
The only way to stop this is to vote and elect Democrats so they can take Congress this year and the presidency in 2028. The Republican Party has become MAGA-ized, with a few honorable exceptions on a few issues (e.g., Rand Paul on tariffs). In a democracy, elections are the basic and blunt feedback mechanism. The Republican Party right now is going to sink or swim with Trump—let them sink, face electoral disgrace, and get the message, loud and clear. This does not mean Democrats are sufficient to get us back towards the essentials of a free, democratic system—far from it—but they are necessary.
Justice and accountability
A basic maxim of jurisprudence, going back to Roman times, is ubi jus, ibi remedium, which means “no right without a remedy,” and this idea persisted through Anglo-American jurisprudence. But there have been no remedies, nothing for the massive rights violations, brutality, and injustice committed by ICE, CBP, and the Trump administration. And unfortunately, as things stand now, courts will not provide remedies for these injustices. The Supreme Court has vitiated, if not destroyed, remedies in criminal law by the presidential immunity decision in Trump v. United States, and before that, in Ziglar v. Abbasi (2017) and Egbert v. Boule (2022), it made judicially enacted civil remedies for constitutional rights violations at the federal level virtually impossible. However, the Supreme Court also said in Ziglar v. Abbasi that Congress can create civil statutory remedies. That will only come about if the Democrats control Congress and the presidency—without a Democratic president, a bill creating remedies will be vetoed. (I owe the point about remedies to Radley Balko.) A promising start for these remedies is the Accountability for Federal Law Enforcement Act, introduced by Senator Padilla, which gives individuals a right to sue regardless of citizenship status, and establishes that a federal agency is liable for an officer’s constitutional or statutory violations committed under color of law, regardless of agency policy or individual officer immunity.
Why a massive blue turnout is necessary
We know from Trump’s past actions after he lost in 2020, and from his recent attempts to stop mail-in voting (which, fortunately, were stopped by the Supreme Court), that he is willing to attempt to interfere with elections that he believes do not or will not support him or the Republican Party. He has already said that he does not rule out sending ICE to polling places and declaring a state of emergency before the election. He asked his supporters at the Republican midterm convention to “cheat like hell.” Most recently, he is attempting federal interference with California’s and Alaska’s voting. So it is reasonable to assume that some electoral interference or unconstitutional means will be attempted or used, which means some percentage of the voting may be tampered with. The larger the Blue Wave, as it is sometimes called, the more this interference will be mitigated. Of course, Trump may be bluffing. But given his past and present behavior, betting on bluffing is a bad bet, and so the larger the blue turnout, the better. (I owe this point to Tom Palmer.)
Objections
- The Democrats are and have been bad too
- Of course, but on the essentials for liberty and a free society, not anywhere near as bad.
- No Democrat has ever done or supported anything like January 6.
- No Democratic administration has used ICE and CBP in the brutally authoritarian way they have been used under Trump, substituting terror tactics for the rule of law. The Obama administration did deport more people than Trump did in his first term—though if we add “self-deportations,” to use that terrible phrase, Trump’s second term probably comes out worse—but it’s not the sheer numbers but the level of brutality and assault on human dignity that is at issue.
- No Democratic administration has brazenly violated the basics of due process, sending people to foreign and domestic hellholes the way this administration has, or used the military in policing.
- And while the Democrats certainly have been bad on free speech at several junctures—most recently the Biden administration pressuring Facebook to toe its line on Covid vaccines and the cause of the pandemic—nothing like Trump’s vendetta or threatened vendetta against the networks, political opponents, and the like has occurred.
No doubt there are risks to having a Democratic Congress and president: e.g., pressures to pack the Supreme Court and end the filibuster. But these are the lesser risks, because with a Republican Congress, or a Democratic Congress and Republican president, the horrific policies of the last two years are quite likely to continue largely unabated and without any chance of remedies, whereas, judging from opinion polls, bad Democratic ideas like court packing are not popular.
It might be argued that even if the Democrats have not been as bad as the Republicans on the constitutional essentials, they are worse on economic freedom. However, in light of Trump’s policy of obtaining partial federal ownership of many companies, that is no longer true, and even if it were true, a modest increase in economic freedom is hardly compensation for January 6, violations of due process and the rule of law, torture, and assaults on free speech.
Why not support the Libertarian Party instead?
The LP is irrelevant as a political force, not surprisingly in a country like the US that has strong incentives for only two parties in a first-past-the-post electoral system. In a normal election, and even in a semi-normal political time, it would be OK to vote for the LP, if doing so matched one’s convictions or principles. But this is not a normal election or time. Given the need for a strong blue turnout, and the presumption that some Democratic votes will be tossed out by Trumpian misdeeds, it is presumptively wrong to vote for the LP and dilute a potential blue wave.
My vote doesn’t count, so why should I vote?
Yes, of course, one person’s vote almost always doesn’t matter, but it’s not what you individually do, it’s what we, lovers of liberty, collectively do. If you love liberty, in a moment of crisis like this you are obligated to do something to promote liberty. While there are other, and in other contexts more effective, ways to promote liberty and a free society—e.g., going to demonstrations, attending meetings of those organizing against these horrors, persuading friends, writing or posting about it, recording ICE’s brutality and cruelty, donating to immigrant support groups—right now the best way is to be part of the blue wave. Because without that wave, the other methods will not get the MAGA Republicans out of power.
It may be true that my argument does not apply in solid-red states where even a large increase in blue voters will not change the outcome. But even there, there is a point to participating in an increase, to make it clear the blue increase is nationwide.
What to do about the Democratic Socialists of America?
My view is that the default this November and in 2028 is to vote Democratic. That default does not apply when the Democratic candidate is terrible, and that would be true for the DSA, who are truly awful. The claim that they support democracy is belied by their platform and their organization. The platform gives support to brutal dictatorships in Iran, Venezuela, and even North Korea (!!)—the worst totalitarian country in the world. They want to abolish the Constitution and much of the market economy. Hasan Piker (also known as Hasan Abi), an open admirer of Mao Zedong, the worst mass murderer in history, has collaborated and worked with the DSA. However, few Democrats running for office are DSA supporters or members. And even the most prominent DSA politician, Zohran Mamdani, has not governed as a socialist or communist (which is not to say some of his policies—e.g., rent control—are not quite bad).
You should not vote for any DSA candidate or any communist or communist sympathizer on the ballot. In that case, voting for the LP or abstaining is probably the better option. But almost all Democrats on the ballot are not DSA types.
Conclusion
So go ahead and vote blue, even if you must hold your nose to do so. Trump has several times compared himself to a king (see here and here) and has acted kingly when he could get away with it and/or Congress and the Supreme Court acquiesced. Electing a Democratic Congress raises more obstacles in his path, and passing civil remedies for his trampling of the Constitution and the basics of a free society puts him and his chief accomplices on notice that they may very well pay a price for their brutality and rights violations. And if the Republicans lose the presidency as well in 2028, that price should hopefully be in effect.
