We keep being told we must debase ourselves further every election cycle. We must embrace the groypers, who are white nationalists, racists and antisemites. We must embrace the racial grievance mongers and the Christian nationalists who never talk about Christ but always talk about politics. We must be okay with crooks, frauds, charlatans and those who would attack the victim of molestation. We need a big tent, just not one big enough for basic decency.

We must hold our noses, close our eyes and pull the lever. If we do not, it is the end of America. I have heard that every two years for 20 years. I used to say it myself. America is still here. The candidates, however, keep getting worse.

Pastor Josh Howerton recently argued that voting is not a sacrament. I agree. He also argued that voting is not sending a message, and on that, I fundamentally disagree. Voting is always a message, and so is not voting. I say that as someone who has run campaigns and won elected office.

In 2000, George W. Bush won Florida by 537 votes. His team concluded that millions of evangelicals had stayed home and it reordered both its governing agenda and its 2004 strategy to win them back. Adoption reform, PEPFAR, education reform and government access for Christian social services all became priorities. The evangelicals who sat it out sent a message and the campaign that barely survived them heard it.

Now pastors, pundits, politicians and activists insist we must keep voting for terrible candidates, or else. In Texas, we are told we must vote for Ken Paxton because the alternative is James Talarico. I have no use for Talarico, but a vote for Paxton is a vote for a serial adulterer whose own staff reported him to the authorities for corruption. In Ohio, we are told to rally behind Vivek Ramaswamy, who closed his campaign by attacking his opponent with the mother who allegedly abandoned her after siding with the stepfather accused of molesting her. Rather than disown the ad, Ramaswamy justified it.

We have to ask what it does to our souls to keep convincing ourselves we must support objectively awful people because the other side is awful too. Jesus asked what it profits a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul. We are not even gaining the whole world. We are trading our souls for a few political seats.

The worst candidates are not an accident. Both parties have wrongly decided they can win by driving their base to the polls and ignoring everyone else. They keep serving us rotten sandwiches and telling us they are delicious because they have convinced us the alternative is the end of America. We clean our plates, ask for seconds and then lament that the country is in decline.

The voters who decide elections do not see the world as Republican versus Democrat. They see candidate X and candidate Y and they often choose the one they like. When a party nominates a moral cretin, it loses those independents and then blames the voters who would not fall in line.

Every restaurant owner understands this. When new dishes flop, the owner does not stand in the kitchen insisting the customers are wrong. He looks at the empty tables, the half-eaten plates and the receipts. He pays attention because the alternative is going out of business. The dishes nobody ordered come off the menu and the owner works to win back the customers he lost.

The parties are no different. They keep putting rotten sandwiches on the menu because we keep eating them. If enough of us push the plate back, by showing up to vote but refusing to cast a vote in some races, the people in the political kitchen will notice, because their jobs depend on it. Campaigns study the undervote. They will change what they serve only when they realize the customers will otherwise walk out.

We do not make America great again by descending into the sewer to find candidates. We have to stop lamenting the nation's decline and admit we are complicit in it every time we eat what the parties serve without demanding better.

To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Eaters Collective at Unsplash