Joe Biden was not my first choice as the Democratic Presidential Nominee. He wasn’t even on the list to be honest. But I will vote for him and Kamala Harris on or before November 3rd with my last breath if necessary. Anyone who is a registered voter in the US who does otherwise is a fool.
There have been a lot of people writing think pieces both before and now after the DNC about how Joe is reaching the “middle of the party” and Kamala is reaching out to the “Black vote” and how that “will heal the party”. I’m also personally seeing a LOT of folks on twitter and elsewhere who are angry. They’re angry that out of a field of Democratic candidates that included LGBTQ and BIPOC candidates for the top of the ticket we ended up with yet another old white guy.
I get that. And yet I’m still going to do whatever I have to in order to make sure that my vote for Biden/Harris is counted for November 3rd. This isn’t quite a hold my nose a vote situation, but it isn’t far off.
Here’s the thing, our country is literally and figuratively on fire right now. We’ve got nearly 200,000 dead of COVID-19, a number that could have been So. Much. Smaller. had we a competent administration in office. And that number, which is likely wildly low thanks to intentional failures of reporting in lots of states, doesn’t including “unrelated” but absolutely caused by COVID deaths such as suicides, domestic violence, overdoses, and the like.
Millions are out of work, the rights of humans all across this country are being stripped away in myriad ways, people are marching in the streets to try and, as I saw someone say the other day, “Legalize Blackness” and yet actual Nazis walk free in this land that fought to bring down the Third Reich. We have white supremacists and Nazis in our highest offices in the government and they’re enriching themselves and their billionaire friends at unprecedented rates all at the cost of the rest of us.
And yet I hear people saying that they won’t vote for Biden/Harris because, “she’s a cop” “he’s a white man” “he wasn’t my top choice” “I would have preferred X” “I can’t vote for someone who put black people in jail” etc, etc.
Here’s the thing. Biden/Harris are not gonna save us, they’re not gonna fix it all. No administration in the history of ever has done that. Not in one term, not in two, not in three.
But another term with Trump will kill us. That’s a fact.
And sitting in a position where you put your personal distaste of Biden or Harris over the good of this nation is a position of extreme privilege. If we expect the Republicans to put country over party then we should expect the same of ourselves, especially right now.
I want ranked choice voting. I want more than 2 parties. I wish it wasn’t this way. But right now, this is how it is. Right now, is not the time to try and make those things happen. Right now we’re voting for our very survival. We’re voting for our lives.
People are dying. If you don’t know someone who has died of or been ill with COVID, just wait. You will. And another 4 years of looting the American public, deaths en mass, and a destroyed government infrastructure is going to be the least of our worries if Trump isn’t beaten in a landslide.
Trump and his cabal are the greatest danger to our country, to each of us individually, and to the world any of us has seen in our lifetime. Every vote for anyone other than Biden/Harris is a vote for Trump. Hold your nose and and do your job as a citizen of this Republic and vote to save it.
Then, let’s get to work on fixing it.
Kelly
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