Polls and sound bites have turned campaigning into a contest of ratings and empty posturing, to which we are required to respond in kind. Every time we pick up a newspaper or flick on the television, we are reminded not of our status as effective citizens but as homogenized consumers, and therefore we are systematically shut out of the gritty construction of political reality. And so we cling to the abstract ideal of democracy while at the same time feeling that we must somehow protect ourselves against it. Our votes are cast not in the spirit of representation, but with the anxiety of prevention. On the surface of things, a tactical vote may seek to pluck political relevance from the jaws of this democratic despair, but what it accomplishes, in reality, is the exact opposite.
Tactical voting is just the kind of compromise needed to keep the game going as is, ad nauseam.
In attempting to win the battle, those who vote tactically all but surrender the war. You are also tacitly agreeing that the establishment of a viable third party is all but impossible. The Orwellian aspect of this self-inflicted cycle of defeat is no less ironic for being obvious. The establishment of a viable third party rests solely in people's willingness to break, vote by solitary vote, the chokehold of the two-party system. This will never, ever be accomplished as long as vast numbers continue to vote on a sheerly defensive and reactionary basis.