The devil we know is former President Donald Trump, a man whose political compass points somewhere between populist and nationalist. The devil we don’t is Vice President Kamala Harris, a progressive Democrat who has recanted nearly every previous policy position since becoming her party’s nominee.

For a handful of disaffected Republicans, the choice is clear: vote for Kamala Harris. She is the lesser of two evils, they say, adding this may be the last chance to wrest the GOP from Trumpism. A vote for Harris is a vote for the GOP and the republic.

What nonsense.

For conservatives, 2024 is merely a competition between an intemperate would-be strongman with no clear set of principles and a sleazy big government-style progressive with no clear set of principles. The former may surround himself with wiser and more responsible conservative statesmen, as he did in his first administration. But who knows? Given his chaotic exit in 2021, he may have trouble attracting decent staff. As for Harris, who is explicitly anti-conservatism, she will undoubtedly govern even further to the left of the current far-left administration.

The actual choice for conservatives seems clear: stay home. Neither of these candidates deserves your vote. Yet, some Republicans have convinced themselves that Harris is less dangerous than Trump and that a vote for her is a vote for conservatism and America’s future. This is confusing.

It’s easy to accept that different consciences arrive at different conclusions. It’s not so easy to accept that a Harris presidency will be less harmful than a second Trump administration. It is equally difficult to accept that another four years of Biden administration-style bureaucratic malfeasance, with all the brute-forcing of progressive ideals and unconstitutional vote-winning schemes that go with it, will return the GOP to its pre-Trump form.

This isn’t to say Trump is fit to be president. We’ve been over this. He treats the office as if it were a game show. Instead, it’s to suggest Harris may be more dangerous than Trump.

A second Trump administration will be at least as Bush League as the first, as the man is not interested in responsible governance. But this is where the dangers of a second Trump term end, contrary to the caterwauling of his too-online “resistance.” The chief risks are incompetence and mismanagement. We are not in any serious threat of a Trump-led putsch. We are not on the cusp of the Fourth Reich.

The non-exciting truth about Trump, the one that doesn’t land TV appearances or book deals, is this: He is a clumsy, would-be autocrat in a country designed explicitly to prevent autocrats from seizing control. For all his bluster and the frantic warnings of his critics, America is safe from Trump’s worst impulses precisely because America is designed to prevent such men from seizing total control. Not during even his worst moments as president, including the shameful Jan. 6 Capitol riot, was the country ever in serious danger of an undemocratic takeover. Biden was always going to be installed as president, Trump was never going to steal the White House, and anyone telling you otherwise is selling you something.

Moreover, if reelected, Trump will again face fierce and unified opposition from the Democratic Party, the “old guard” within the Republican Party, the administrative state, and the Fourth Estate, also known as the legacy media. His White House will again spend most of its time playing defense and answering for a never-ending cascade of scandals, some real and some fake. Trump will be under intense scrutiny and investigation as in his first administration, and it would not be a surprise were he to face additional impeachment hearings.

In other words, Trump will again be reined in, mainly by a system designed to rein in such men, but also by a sprawling network of outside organizations, legal campaigns, and political activists determined to block his every move.

Harris is a different matter. She is the genuinely frightening type of lawmaker. She’s not a chest-thumping tyrant, belting out largely toothless barnburners from villa balconies (the woman can barely get out a coherent sentence). Instead, she is the sort of politician who knows just enough about the law and its back-alleys to abuse it and turn it against her enemies. Where Trump is too bloody-minded to realize he can’t bang down the door with his head, Harris is just clever enough to know she can sneak in through an open window. She’s a lawfare specialist. Just ask pro-life activist David Daleiden.

Further, Harris enjoys a shameful lack of scrutiny from the legacy media. Journalists happily rebrand her flip-flops as “policy evolutions,” and her connections to the failed policies of the Biden administration are being erased in real-time. Major newsrooms even claim she was never the “border czar” (she was). 

The press that would cover a Harris presidency is the same press that tried to convince you that Biden, a dotard, is actually “sharp as a tack.” This is a media that claimed right up until Biden’s disastrous June debate that video evidence of his decline were “cheap fakes.”

Between Biden’s election, the press pretending as if he was an engaged and competent chief executive, and his eventual ouster, we’ve been made to suffer the shameful and fatal Afghanistan withdrawal, including the related droning of an aid worker and his family, soaring inflation, a concerted effort to delegitimize the Supreme Court, a White House playing both sides of the Israel/Hamas war, an estimated 7 million illegal border crossings, high-profile violent crimes committed by some of these same illegal aliens, and the further loss of trust in our most crucial institutions. The Biden administration is not simply an unmitigated disaster — it’s an unmitigated disaster with a body count. The press corps that carried Biden and Harris to the White House bears responsibility for this mess, and it won’t hesitate to do it again, subjecting us once more to deadly bureaucratic corruption, so long as it’s their guy in power.

Lastly, as president, Harris will face a feckless and impotent opposition party. The congressional Republicans of today are the same ones who jettisoned their House Speaker without a clear succession plan. Also, come November, they’ll miss Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who is probably the shrewdest and most talented parliamentarian alive. This GOP will be the chief obstacle between Harris and her legislative agenda (whatever it ends up being).

In other words, as president, the progressive lawfare specialist will be free to pursue whatever lunatic left-wing initiatives she pleases. 

A second Trump presidency may not be a cheery proposition for conservatives. But they at least know what to expect: a fenced-in wannabe overlord. On the other hand, Harris will govern essentially unopposed, unburdened by what has been, one might say, which is hardly an acceptable alternative.

So, for whom should a conservative vote? The illiberal New Yorker who will be checked-and-balanced to death, or the California progressive who doesn’t even need to list her policy positions to enjoy the full support of her party and the press? 

How about neither?

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The disaffected Republicans who support Harris say staying at home is not an option. Hard disagree. Votes are earned, and neither candidate has done much to earn a conservative vote. When the only options are between a man who is poison for conservatism and a woman who’d gladly grind conservatism into dust, abstaining makes the most sense. 

Indeed, in a binary choice between two destructive outcomes, the only winning move is not to play.

Becket Adams is a columnist for the Washington Examiner, National Review, and the Hill. He is also the program director of the National Journalism Center.