THIS WHITE, GUN-OWNING, SOUTHERN DEBUTANTE’S HAD JUST ABOUT ENOUGH OF THIS NONSENSE
I thought I was done with this political malarky, and that the only things I’d be posting on social media would be puppies and babies and flowers and whatnot. I can’t leave you people alone for a minute, can I?
I posted my first of these little screeds back in 2020, telling you all my reasons to vote against Donald Trump, and you cooperated nicely, electing that nice Joe Biden fellow.
Then, two years later, I had to do it all over again for the midterm elections of 2022, because of all those butt-faced miscreants, led and goaded on by Trump, who perpetrated the January 6, 2021 terror attack on our Capitol, not to mention on our free and fair elections and democracy itself. Again, you cooperated nicely and the Democrats had a much better than expected showing, especially in states where reproductive rights were on the ballot.
Now here we are again, in another fine mess, forcing me to type these old fingers to the bone to save democracy. In the words of a popular song, “Look what you made me do.” (I LOVE TAYLOR SWIFT!)
HOW IS THIS RACE EVEN CLOSE?!
In my first two pieces, I addressed my friends who were planning to vote for Trump and (in the case of 2022) his supporters and sycophants. I said that it “hurts my heart and troubles my soul” to know that they would vote for such people. It still hurts, but now there’s a good bit of resignation mixed in, along with a touch of anger.
I might have cut you some slack for supporting Trump in 2020, under the assumption that you just didn’t know any better. But now you’ve watched the attempted coup in January of 2021; you’ve heard the firehose of lies and venom that spew daily from his puckered mouth; you know that he and his minions are laying the groundwork for another stab at it in this election. You know that he’s been convicted of 34 felonies by a jury of ordinary citizens. You know that another jury found him liable of sexual assault (which the judge clarified was, indeed, “rape”), and ordered him to pay $83.3 million to his victim, the brave E. Jean Carroll. You know there are three more criminal cases pending against him, with a total of 54 more counts.
In 2020, you might have said you were going to vote for Trump because you were “voting your pocketbook.” Under the Biden-Harris administration, we’ve seen record job growth, record low unemployment, record high stock market, record oil production, and the best post-COVID-19 economic recovery of all the G-7 countries. Kamala Harris has laid out an economic plan that would add less debt to the federal budget than Trump’s, and a group of over 400 economists and former White House economic advisors (including some Republicans) have come out with a letter endorsing Harris and saying that her economic policies would be better for the economy. Eighty-eight top executives of major companies endorsed Harris last month, and Goldman-Sachs analysts said the U.S. economy would be better under Harris than Trump. So I call bullshit on the “pocketbook” argument this year.
I’m older, and trying to be wiser. Now I know that if you are going to vote for Trump, I cannot persuade you otherwise. We already know about Trump and who and what he is. Sadly, if you’re planning to vote for him, it tells me more than I need to know about you.
With that said, I turn my attention to my wonderful, enthusiastic progressive friends and especially to my lukewarm progressive friends, to implore you — in the words of Michelle Obama — to “do something” so that Vice President Kamala Harris wins this election!
A REMINDER OF WHAT’S AT STAKE: Some Information To Fire You Up
Reproductive Rights
Abortion is decidedly on the ballot. Since Trump’s Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, women’s rights have been upended. As women’s right’s advocates have always said, when you outlaw abortion, women will die. And so they are. Abortion is now banned or severely restricted in 19 states. For example, in Texas, which has one of the most draconian bans, from 2019 through 2022, the maternal mortality rate rose by 56%.
Kamala Harris noted in the debate on September 10th, instances of women bleeding out and having serious health issues because they could not receive proper health care, due to their states’ restrictive abortion bans. John McEntee, a Trump White House aide and an architect of the hideous “Project 2025,” went online to scoff at this, doubting the existence of any one woman who’d had such an experience as Harris described. The last I saw, he had been inundated with posts from over 11,000 women telling their stories in detail, corroborating Harris’s point.
In Tennessee (which has a total ban in place, with no exceptions for rape or incest) in the past year, 10,500 women have had to travel to other states for abortions. OB-GYNs are leaving the state, and medical residency applications are down. Tennessee has the third-highest maternal mortality rate in the nation.
And don’t give me that “let the states decide” humbug. In Tennessee, citizen-initiated petitions for amendments to the state constitution are not allowed. The only way an amendment on abortion could be brought to the public for a vote is through our gerrymandered, bright-red state legislature, and its Republican supermajority has determined that a statewide vote will not happen. So, NO, our state is NOT allowed “to decide.”
If you don’t think that birth control, IVF, and other personal and private issues like same-sex marriage are on the Trump/Far Right agenda, you’re sadly mistaken — just read “Project 2025.”
I recently came across an email intended for a group of Trumpy old guys lamenting the thought that Kamala actually could win the presidency. “If she wins,” he wrote, “you can thank idiotic women, youngsters, students, unions, and some of the Black population. So be glad you don’t have that much longer to live.” Speaking as an “idiotic woman” who’s the mother of three more “idiotic women” and grandmother to yet another “idiotic woman” I say, “Bless your heart, but I’m looking forward to living much longer under a Kamala Harris administration!”
Foreign Policy and The Military
Remember those innocent, halcyon days when the Republicans were united against Russia and its dictatorship? Ah, good times.
Whether it’s because Putin’s got dirt on him or that he simply adores autocratic strongmen (he’s a major fanboy of Putin, plus Hungary’s Viktor Orban and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un — murderous dictators, all), Trump would hand Ukraine to Russia on a silver platter. We now know that the short-fingered vulgarian sent Putin a lovely gift of COVID-19 testing machines in 2020, when that hospital-grade equipment was in short supply and badly needed in the U.S., while our citizens were dying by the thousands every day. Also, he’s had at least seven private chats with Putin since he’s been out of office. Wonder what those could be about? Sharing a little light reading from the boxes in his Mar-A-Lago bathroom, perhaps?
Trump has disdain for the military, and disrespectfully used a restricted area of Arlington National Cemetery for a campaign photo op, allowing his staffer to shove aside an Arlington employee who was trying to stop it.
Under Biden, NATO has strengthened and expanded, and our allies have confidence in the resolve of the United States to honor its alliances. Trump got laughed off the stage at the United Nations.
Gun Violence
Huge majorities of Americans want common-sense gun restrictions. The U.S. is the only first-world nation that has the incidence of gun deaths we do — especially the mass shootings and the use of military-grade, AR-15-style guns. Trump cozies up to the NRA and would void the minor gun restrictions the Biden-Harris administration did manage to pass.
On a recent trip to Barcelona, our guide was warning Bill and me about staying away from a “bad” area of town. When we asked him to elaborate, he said there were pickpockets there. “Violence?” we asked. “Oh, no,” he said, “because we don’t have guns, like you do.”
Democracy and Truth
If the mere mention of “Project 2025” doesn’t give you the heebie-jeebies, it should. This diabolical plan for what would take place if Trump is re-elected would dismantle our democracy at every level. Its authors are mostly former Trump administration toadies, and it would put the U.S. on a glide path into autocracy. Even scarier, J.D. Vance and his biggest supporters have their greasy fingerprints all over this thing, and Vance is even more terrifying than Trump — he’s smarter and smoother, and young, and he would be just a couple of Big Macs away from the Oval Office.
As for truth, which seems more and more like a quaint construct, Trump is a master of “The Big Lie,” popularized and perfected by Adolph Hitler in Nazi Germany. It’s the idea that people are more apt to believe a huge lie rather than a small one, especially if you repeat it over and over — and loudly. Trump advisor and current guest of the federal prison system Steve Bannon called this “flooding the zone with sh*t,” which is what Trump and his campaign do without ceasing. If you keep spewing lies — HUGE lies — your opponent is caught flat-footed and too occupied with trying to debunk them all and set the record straight. Think: Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs (100% not true, and dangerous for the Haitian community); “post-birth abortion” (not a thing); teachers giving students sex-change operations at school (I can’t even), and “the 2020 election was rigged” (debunked at every turn, through 60+ court cases and by Trump’s own Attorney General).
The Washington Post fact checking team found that Trump had made 30,573 false or misleading statements in his 4 years of presidency — that’s an average of 21 a day, and he continues lying at a breakneck speed. I saw a quote saying Trump had “an unusual relationship with the truth.” That’s the most “unusual” euphemism for “liar” I’ve ever seen. He backs out of debates and interviews if he knows he’s going to be fact-checked.
If your friends try to fact-check you with information they got from Fox News, be sure to remind them that Fox had to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems for spreading lies about the 2020 election, which the network had to admit were lies. As a defense, they tried to assert that they were not a “news” channel at all but, rather, an “entertainment” one.
ONWARD AND UPWARD
Make no mistake, I believe we’re in a DEFCON 2 situation, with the possibility of sliding into DEFCON 1 territory, but I do feel optimistic on several counts.
Cause For Optimism
* A group called “Reagan, Bush, McCain & Romney Alumni For Harris” released a letter from 111 former officials from those administrations, as well as some ex-Trump staffers, endorsing Harris and warning against Trump.
* Olivia Troye, an aide to former Vice President Pence, hosted a “Republicans for Harris” online rally that was attended virtually by 73,000 people, with over 100,000 people joining their group.
* General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the Trump administration, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, told journalist Bob Woodward this about Trump: “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country. . . a fascist to the core.”
* 18 of Trump’s 42 cabinet members do not endorse him, as of August 5th.
* The Atlantic magazine has only endorsed candidates in 5 presidential races since its founding in 1857. Three of those have been Donald Trump’s three opponents, because The Atlantic considers Trump to be an existential threat to democracy and our nation. Therefore, they endorsed Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race.
*The New York Times endorsed Harris in this election, in an editorial entitled “The Only Patriotic Choice For President.”
*We can’t forget Taylor Swift’s endorsement, and the fact that after she came out for Harris, over 405,000 people followed the link Swift provided to register to vote. CBS says that 80% of people who register this close to an election tend to follow through and vote.
* Nor can we forget the endorsements of prominent Republicans — former Representative Liz Cheney; her father, former Vice-President Dick Cheney; former Representative Adam Kinzinger.
*A record number of early votes were cast in Georgia on Tuesday, October 15th, the first day of early voting there, with over 328,000 votes cast, beating the previous first-day record of 136,000 in 2020.
What Can I Do???
1.VOTE, and ask all your friends and family to vote, too. This is an all-hands-on-deck situation. Even if you’re in a red-drenched state, there likely will be down-ballot races where you might make a difference.
2. Write/call/contact your friends in important swing states and make sure they will be voting.
3. Donate money — as much as you can — to the Harris campaign and to Senate and Congressional campaigns in critical battleground states — they’ll need it for last-minute ad blitzes.
4. Do not be timid about expressing your support for Harris. My former-Republican-voting husband told me about an exchange on the golf course last weekend with two friends, in which he condemned Trump in no uncertain terms — expletives not deleted — and told them he was voting for Harris. I don’t think I’ve ever loved him more!
5. It might not be too late to volunteer with your local Democrat party in some capacity. In the past, I have driven elderly folks to the polls, and it’s always a delightful and satisfying experience.
My Final Plea (God Willin’ and the Creek Don’t Rise)
If you care about your daughters’ futures, and the futures of all American women, you must vote for Kamala Harris.
If you care about your personal freedoms, and the freedoms of ALL Americans, you must vote for Kamala Harris.
If you care about democracy and your country, you must vote for Kamala Harris.
Democracy’s not going to save itself, people!
All gas, no brakes!
