Kevin Drum wrote a beautiful and brief takedown of Conor Friedersdorf, John Cusack and others who just can't vote for President Obama because of drones, etc, as well as others who are peddling this quadrennial and insufferable "lesser of two evils" meme.
That said, if you're an actual lefty agonizing over whether you can possibly support the lesser of two evils this year, I have nine words for you: How did that work out for you in 2000? Even if you assume that Al Gore would have passed the Patriot Act; and invaded Afghanistan; and given the NSA free rein to engage in wholesale amounts of warrantless surveillance; and approved the torture of enemy combatants — even if you assume all that, do you think we would have invaded Iraq if Al Gore had been president? That didn't just happen, after all. [...]
Libya and the drone strikes don't even come close to comparing to Iraq. So go ahead and vote for Gary Johnson if you must, but do it with your eyes open. Whatever good it accomplishes, it also puts us one vote closer to having Dick Cheney's old foreign policy gang back in the West Wing. I'm not quite sure how the math on that one ever gets above zero.
Ashby and I have written about this extensively. As I've embarrassingly admitted before, I was suckered into the "lesser of two evils" meme in 2000 as well. I voted for Ralph Nader like thousands of others -- votes that would've tipped the election to Al Gore. Answering Drum's hypothetical question: it worked out horribly.