I met you in July at the Democratic National Convention.
You wore a Cinderella-esque ball gown.
You told me you were dressing for the event you wish you were attending, i.e. Sen. Bernie Sanders’s presidential inauguration in January 2017, not the event you were currently attending, i.e. the last night of the convention, during which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted the party’s presidential nomination and gave a rousing speech. You weren’t even paying attention to Khizr Khan’s speech.
You said you’d be voting for Jill Stein, tipping-the-scales-for-Trump be damned.
“We survived Bush, didn’t we?” you said.
Well, technically, yeah.
But I can’t say that I don’t often wonder how different it all would have been had Al Gore been in the Oval Office; whether fewer of our siblings and friends would have been subjected to physical and emotional trauma (death, in many cases) while shipped overseas to fight an unjustified war (as war often is). Sure, Clinton is hawkish and she voted to authorize that war as a U.S. Senator. That is an extremely fair point — and an ugly blemish for her. But it would not have come to that if, in 2000, hordes of people like me in swing states (like this one) hadn’t thought of the greater good instead of vanity-voting.
The Great Recession might still have happened, but probably not to the degree it did. And we might not have such a loosening of environmental regulations — like culling the list of the types of waterways that deserve protection under the Clean Water Act (a law, mind you, signed by none other than Richard Nixon).
In 2000, as an 18-year-old college freshman living in New Mexico (a swing state), I was among the first to say George W. Bush vs. Al Gore is tantamount to Coke vs. Pepsi. What difference does it make? They’re both corporate shills.
But even if there were a grain of truth to that in 2000 (and not much of one), what we’re dealing with at present isn’t Coke vs. Pepsi.
What we’re dealing with is Coke vs. a rusty bucket of mystery grease.
You don’t have to listen to me on this. Check out the words of celebrated leftist writer Arun Gupta, who founded the Occupy Wall Street Journal, of all things. Gupta, whom I had the pleasure of meeting at the conventions this summer, is absolutely no fan of Clinton.
But you know what he thinks is worse?
A climate in which white nationalists feel emboldened.
In a September piece exploring how a Trump presidency could not just set back, but destroy, all that the left has built in the last decade, he says it’s a shame how the Democratic establishment has cried wolf — treating each election as dire and each center-right Democrat as a savior from the evils that would befall us should the Republican be elected — but this time the wolf is at the door and no one believes them.
“As president, Trump would launch an all-out war on social progress,” Gupta writes. “Those who think the ruling class will restrain him ignore that it has been unable to stop him thus far. Trump’s own party couldn’t do it.”
What we have seen so far bears that out, and the same with the following:
“Trump has bundled together many branches of racism into a proto-fascist movement hell-bent on the ethnic cleansing of America by eliminating Muslims and many immigrants through walls, bans, barriers and deportations,” Gupta continues.
Plus, there’s the likelihood, if Democrats take the Senate, that Bernie Sanders might chair either the Senate Budget Committee or the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. But in order for his proposals to become reality, there has to be a president in office willing to put a signature on them.
Meanwhile, despite the possibility that a Stein presidency would be wonderful for everyone, and the fact that the two-party system is a barrier to many of the changes you want to implement, Stein is not going to win, and there’s no denying that.
To shrug this off as if the stakes weren’t incredibly high, and cast your ballot for the person with whom you agree 99 percent who has zero chances instead of the person with whom you agree 89 percent who has a 50-50 chance is, frankly, vanity voting. And it’s selfish.
It’s better to focus on local issues, like getting plastic bags banned in your city or fighting fracking in your state.
Clinton may not be everything you dreamed of, but That’s. Fucking. Life.
Your idealism will reward you and the rest of us in the long run, I’m sure, but only if infused in said idealism is a little thing called “pragmatism.”
Love, Kate 🙂
This article appears in Nov 3-10, 2016.