Our voting choices this year are many or few depending on who you ask. For those who’ve already decided, there’s really only one choice — their candidate. Some will vote Trump. Some will vote Biden. But for the unlucky few who haven’t sorted out their vote yet, it’s not that simple.
As a non-Republican voter, voting for Donald Trump is out of the question. He doesn’t represent my views, and with his active courting of the extreme right, he’s pretty much beyond the pale. Moreover, as a friend said to me recently, if Trump wins again people’s heads will explode. This is true, although it’s also true that if Biden wins a different group of heads will explode. Either way, we’re going to have a mess on our hands.
I could overlook my lifelong antipathy and vote for Joe Biden which I’m being encouraged to do. I did something similar back in 2004, when John Kerry ran against George W. Bush. Kerry was one of those “hold your nose” candidates and I had been resisting, but given my hatred of Bush/Cheney and Kerry’s general innocuousness, I was able to get myself to vote for him.
I could vote Green as I did in 2016. This year, it’s Howie Hawkins, champion of “eco-socialism,” whose platform hits most of my bullet points despite its provocative label.
Or I could go all the way and vote Socialist but unfortunately I can’t remember their candidate’s name. Ok, I just looked it up and it is Joseph Kishore running with Norissa Santa Cruz. Clearly the Socialist Equality Party has no truck with name recognition.
Finally, I could simply not vote as I did in 2012, when in protest of the weak tea coming from the Obama administration, I declined to vote at all. In fact, I was so annoyed, I actually felt defiantly good about failing to do my civic duty.
This year, it is once again a moral battle to decide how to vote. Biden and Harris, the obvious people to replace Trump and Pence, are not only unappealing, they seem generally opposed to all the policies I think are important that we do — actually do, not water down, sideline, waitlist, wishlist, and disappear. Medicare for All, Green New Deal, climate action — these are not high priorities for the Democratic candidates this year if they’re priorities at all. Meanwhile, on the domestically-pressing issues of racial justice and police reform, Biden and Harris seem perfect only if your goal is to quietly shut down Black Lives Matter. Otherwise, I find nothing here for the Left to trust or build on.
Moreover, I fear the policies Biden would enact, particularly economic and foreign policy. His pro-corporate track record is solid — we know where he stands economically. As for foreign policy, it is a sad fact that foreign wars, even ones our country starts itself, are unifying even if they’re very far away. American presidents of the past have found that a foreign war is often the best way to distract people from domestic policy concerns and get them off the streets. In a time with domestic policy issues galore, it will no doubt be tempting to make them go away by any means necessary.
Finally, there’s the issue of baggage. Biden and Harris are the hand chosen candidates of the Democratic Party, selected precisely because they are Centrists and not “radical socialists” like Bernie Sanders. To get them nominated, the DNC had to destroy Sanders’ candidacy which they did in brutal fashion. This bit of unpleasantness will be papered over with pretty speeches but not everyone will forget.
In the end, it doesn’t really matter how I vote. I live in Vermont. But for undecideds around the country, especially those in swing states, this must be a nerve-wracking time. As a voter, you know it’s important to get this right, but what is right?
In his 1967 hit “Mrs. Robinson,” Paul Simon wrote , “laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose — any way you look at it, you lose.” Sadly, it’s still true in 2020. For my part, I probably won’t know how I’m voting until the ballot is in my hands. But suffice to say, it won’t be for Donald Trump.
