This whole debate misses the point entirely. You only vote “for Biden” in the symbolic sense. On a rational level, it’s a binary choice: Biden or Trump, and having to check a box next to one of them is just a procedure.
For example, if the ballot just said "Trump: yes[ ] don’t care[ ] no[ ] ", that’s for all practical purposes the exact same thing as “Trump[ ] 3rd Party[ ] Biden[ ]”. The boxes have exactly the same effect in both cases. The more to the left you check, the more likely Trump will be president again.*
Yet I gotta imagine, many if not most of these “won’t vote Biden” people would have a much easier time picking the rightmost box on the first ballot than the second, because they refuse to vote “for Biden” on some sort of moral grounds. But that’s purely theatrical and immaterial to the task at hand. It’s like refusing to sacrifice a pawn in chess to obtain a checkmate. While it’s admirable that your moral principles wouldn’t permit ordering a lowly pawn to sacrifice itself, that’s not actually what’s happening: you’re just taking an action that increases your odds of winning a game.
Likewise, when you check the box next to Biden, you’re not actually voting for Biden. You’re voting for not Trump, which (because of a different election - the primaries that that Biden already won) happens to result in Biden serving a second term. If you want someone other than Biden to be the non-Trump candidate, that was a whole different election.
*The only difference is that in the second example, it would raise the odds of the 3rd party candidate winning in a hypothetical universe where a 3rd party has a chance, but that’s clearly not the universe we live in. If you wanna live in that universe, election reform such as runoff voting is a prerequisite. But that’s a whole other topic, to put it mildly.
This whole debate misses the point entirely. You only vote “for Biden” in the symbolic sense. On a rational level, it’s a binary choice: Biden or Trump, and having to check a box next to one of them is just a procedure.
For example, if the ballot just said "Trump: yes[ ] don’t care[ ] no[ ] ", that’s for all practical purposes the exact same thing as “Trump[ ] 3rd Party[ ] Biden[ ]”. The boxes have exactly the same effect in both cases. The more to the left you check, the more likely Trump will be president again.*
Yet I gotta imagine, many if not most of these “won’t vote Biden” people would have a much easier time picking the rightmost box on the first ballot than the second, because they refuse to vote “for Biden” on some sort of moral grounds. But that’s purely theatrical and immaterial to the task at hand. It’s like refusing to sacrifice a pawn in chess to obtain a checkmate. While it’s admirable that your moral principles wouldn’t permit ordering a lowly pawn to sacrifice itself, that’s not actually what’s happening: you’re just taking an action that increases your odds of winning a game.
Likewise, when you check the box next to Biden, you’re not actually voting for Biden. You’re voting for not Trump, which (because of a different election - the primaries that that Biden already won) happens to result in Biden serving a second term. If you want someone other than Biden to be the non-Trump candidate, that was a whole different election.
*The only difference is that in the second example, it would raise the odds of the 3rd party candidate winning in a hypothetical universe where a 3rd party has a chance, but that’s clearly not the universe we live in. If you wanna live in that universe, election reform such as runoff voting is a prerequisite. But that’s a whole other topic, to put it mildly.