This episode will probably drop on the day after Independence Day. What a time to be alive.
There’s been a lot that has happened since we were last together. The ones that really stick out are that farce of a debate and the immunity decision. Either one of those could merit their own discussion, but I want to talk about what those both are leading to: the election.
And the reason the election is an important topic for the week of Independence Day is because there are some people out there who have become single-issue voters for this election. There have always been single issue voters in terms of guns, abortion, and the death penalty. But this year there is a new single issue on the table: democracy.
But what is interesting is that even if you are a single issue voter and your issue is democracy, while it may seem superficially clear who the choice is, for some people it is not that cut and dried.
Let’s consider what we saw at the debate for a second.
It was probably the worst debate I have ever seen. And I have literally been watching these things for decades.
Trump had a good affect – he was confident, and even forceful. Unfortunately, every damned word he said was a lie. I mean, maybe not every word. He got the candidates’ names right. But I just never fail to be shocked at how effortlessly and confidently he can lie SO MUCH. I mean, I just don’t understand HOW. How can you just BE that dishonest that frequently and for so long? I truly don’t understand the mental and emotional gymnastics it takes to get to a point where you can just open your mouth and lie. All the time. I mean, I guess it starts young, or something. I can’t imagine you get to be an adult and just decide, “Hey, I’m gonna be a liar.”
And so much of it is nonsense, too. I mean, you can fact-check a lot of it easily. But some of it is so off the wall I don’t know what to do with it. Remember when he said Mexico was going to pay for the wall? That’s probably my favorite example. Because it was total nonsense. Any thinking person could see that was completely derailed ranting. Of course we couldn’t make Mexico pay for a wall that he said we were going to build. That was absolute bs. But people loved repeating it. And I think it was because there was no way to rebut it. I mean, how do you fact check what is nothing but pure and total bluster?
You can’t really contradict that which is SO nonsensical it has no grounding in reality. I don’t know how much time you spend online, but it is scary out there. The memes about Trump are nothing short of idolatrous. They are comparing him to, if not flat out calling him, the Savior. Trump is the Chosen One to a lot of his followers. And I use the term followers intentionally.
Trump is a felon. And that does not deter most of his voters.
What is more frightening is the prospect of things like Project 2025.
If you’re not familiar with Project 2025, it is an ambitious plan to replace most of the government with Trump loyalists and give the president pretty much unlimited power (not that the President doesn’t have it now already – thanks, SCOTUS!), and refashion America from a democracy into a re-branded theocracy. Some people are using the term Christo-fascist state, but I’ll avoid the temptation to sensationalize.
Honestly, if you haven’t heard of it, please Google it. Look it up. Do some reading. This is probably the biggest threat to face America since at least the McCarthyism/HUAC of the 1950s, and possibly since Alien and Sedition Acts. In fact, if you WILL allow me to sensationalize for just a second, in my mind, this is the greatest peacetime threat that America has ever faced. So, please. Please. Look it up. Tell your friends.
And this can’t be understood outside of the SCOTUS decision of the last week, either. The GOP is looking to replace most of the federal government with agents who are answerable only to the executive office. And now the executive office is above the law.
I swear we fought a war about this back in the 1700s or something.
I say this, because today we’re tackling a really thorny set of issues – on the one hand, there is the protection of democracy. But tied in with that is, obviously, voting. Democracy runs on the vote. Supposedly. That’s for another episode. So, who you vote for should be a big deal. I dunno. See my episode on the electoral college. But cynicism aside, we should all want to vote for the best candidate possible. But that’s a more complicated question than it really ought to be. So, I guess our question for today is, if your goal is to protect democracy, which candidate should you vote for?
In the immediate, the answer seems pretty obvious, right? Trump is the Project 2025 candidate, and that is about as undemocratic as you can get. He spent all four years of his presidency doing everything he could to erode the functions of democracy. He is a blatant authoritarian and tyrant. He has done everything he can to put himself above the law. He has literally SAID he would like to be a dictator for a day. George Washington was supposed to be the ideal leader. And George Washington (and many of the Founding Fathers) based their role model for the best possible leader on the story of Cincinnatus. Cincinnatus was a farmer who was given complete control of the state in a time of emergency and then relinquished that control to return to his farm for the greater good of the community. He is often held up as the standard of good leadership. He is the exact opposite of Trump. Whereas Cincinnatus gave up power once the crisis had passed, Trump created crisis and did everything he could cling to power. And Trump never showed any interest in acting for the good of the republic. He acted, always, for the good of himself.
Okay, that’s a lot of Trump bashing. What about Biden?
You could see from the debate performance he is in no shape to be leading the country.
I have always been one to extend a bit of grace to Biden as a public speaker because I know how hard it is to overcome a stutter. I do not know this from experience, but years of teaching public speaking and even working in public schools has taught me that some of these kids that we ask to speak in front of their peers are dealing with monumental obstacles. And stuttering is one of them. I always talk about this in my political rhetoric classes. I’ve always argued that in many ways we should consider Biden a BETTER speaker than a lot of people because he has found ways to overcome things that most people will never deal with and has found ways to do so so that his personality and character can still shine through. That’s actually a real feat.
But on Thursday night my generosity ran out.
Biden was halting, he didn’t seem to know what he wanted to say, he couldn’t get his words out, he seemed confused at some points, and he really just seemed like an old man thrown into a situation he was not at all prepared for. If you tuned in to that debate hoping Biden would show he is a capable leader and that he would dispel fears about his age, you were sorely disappointed.
Calls for him to step aside have been coming from all corners of the media and the party.
And on the afternoon of the 4th papers were running stories that the Biden camp was saying he just needed to get more sleep and avoid doing a lot past 8pm.
Really?
You think Russia and Iran are going to keep to that timeframe?
You think the whole world is just going to start running on Eastern Standard time?
Biden and his aides and recently said that they concede he need to demonstrate fitness quickly, or step aside. But with his little announcement on the 5th that he won’t be working past 8, that tells me there is a problem with fitness.
However, I also know Trump didn’t start work until 10 or 11am and he finishes early as well, so he could get online watch Fox late into the night. So…it’s not like that’s a huge step up.
So, this leads to a pretty big question about the nature of democracy: if there are no good candidates, what do you do?
Now, I have a vested interest in this.
I have loved ones who are members of marginalized communities. And members of the Queer community, or even disabled people or People of Color may see this election differently than their white, cis-gendered counterparts.
For some people, there ISN’T a choice.
Trump has pretty much promised to strip trans people of as many rights as he can. He’s threatened to take funding away from schools that support diversity efforts, gender equality, and don’t teach “patriotic” education.
If you aren’t good at textual analysis let me spell that out for you – he is threatening to strip funding from any school that supports People of Color, Queer students, women, and doesn’t teach White, conservative history. It’s propaganda, pure and simple. And it is an attempt to further marginalize children who are already struggling.
For some people it doesn’t get any more serious than this. Where Biden has worked to support DEI initiatives and sees the fight for trans rights as the civil rights fight of our time, Trump would do what he can to take as many rights away from women, Queer people, and People of Color. This is the guy who said he would like to see migrants forced into gladiator-style fight clubs and the winners would have to fight MMA champions, so we are not talking about a guy with any real ethical or cultural standards. He literally wants to see marginalized people suffer for his entertainment. If that doesn’t turn your stomach, YOU ARE A BAD PERSON.
This is not negotiable for some people. Biden can’t be so bad that they would risk stripping all Queer people or women of their rights. And, they argue, it is an INCREDIBLY privileged position to say, “Well, I am safe enough that I won’t be touched by Trump’s policies that I can afford to not vote for Biden.”
Biden has also made sure to surround himself with smart, inclusive people who he can depend on to help him if he is struggling. Where Trump values loyalty, Biden appears to value inclusivity and competency. Those make for very different administrations. One is full of lackeys, and the other is full of good, fresh ideas.
However, some people, and I include plenty of Queer people, People of Color, and women in this group, see Biden’s ever-growing list of flaws as too insurmountable for even all of these issues.
The big one facing Biden today is the situation in Gaza. For a lot of progressives and leftists, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Now, this is a really divisive issue. Let me be very clear – the Hamas attack on Israel was horrific. I don’t know anyone who denies that. There’s nobody in my circles, anyway, who deny that Hamas is a terrorist organization. However, the problem isn’t Biden’s response to Hamas, it is Israel.
If there are generational divides in politics, the most prominent ones must be healthcare and Israel. Whereas older generations cling desperately to privatized health care and support for Israel young voters are just not as convinced. And the Israel situation is really hurting Biden right now.
The thing is, for generations, America has supported Israel NO MATTER WHAT. The problem with that, is that Israel hasn’t always behaved in a spectacular manner. There is embedded in America’s DNA the narrative that not supporting Israel is anti-Semitic. There is a break in that thinking happening right now. I will also be the first to say there is also a rise in anti-Semitism on both the left and the right going on right now, as well.
Israel’s response to the Hamas attack has been…outsized, if you will. The world outside of America seems to be in agreement about that. So, there are many in America who see Biden’s support, including weapons, of Israel as not just a political problem, but as tacit support of genocide. And for many voters that is a bridge too far.
And all of this has me wondering – what are we doing when we vote? Because it clearly isn’t an opinion poll. I say that because if it were an opinion poll then I’m not sure that these two yahoos would be the ones representing us. HOWEVER. I also understand that is the nature of things like primaries, in which only the most invested, or sometimes extremes, of the base show up, and we end up with folks like Trump. And Biden was the safest bet in 2020 so institutional leadership put a lot of weight behind him, and then incumbency ushered him on in this time, regardless of how the base or even the larger voting party felt about him.
So, when I say it’s not an opinion poll, it really isn’t. Voting at the presidential level so often DOESN’T represent people’s opinions. And even if it does represent a large swath of the voting population’s opinions, it certainly doesn’t mean it’s going to represent YOUR opinion.
That’s the thing about voting, especially in a two-party system. It is very likely that the candidates do not represent what you think would be best.
So, what are you voting for?
A lot of people frame it in very negative terms – you’re voting for the least evil.
But I’m a rhetoric professor. I spend a lot of my time teaching my students that in life it’s not about what the RIGHT answer is, but what is the BEST answer.
And that is what voting is.
What is the best possible option. It’s like making an argument. Given the available means of persuasion, what is the best possible job you can do? That’s what you’re doing when you walk into the voting booth. Choosing the best of what you have been offered.
I remember when Gore was running against Bush and things weren’t QUITE as politicized as they are now but were headed that way. I didn’t quite understand that all Baptists were probably going to vote for Bush because…just because, and one day I asked my mom who she thought she would vote for. She told me it was a tough call, because she thought Bush wasn’t very smart, but Gore was a liar. But ultimately, she thought Bush was smart enough to surround himself with people who could help him make decisions, and she was going to vote on that hope.
Okay, we can argue about my mom’s decision all day long, but the point is, she was doing exactly what I’m talking about right now – she was weighing her options not in terms of “me me me” but “what is best.” And in a two-party system that’s about as best as we can do.
Of course, this may lead you to ask, if the options are so bad, what is the point of democracy?
And that, my friend, is a question I do not have an answer for readily.
One of the things we are seeing here is just how committed America is to NOT electing women, anyone from the Queer community, a disabled person, or another Person of Color. Because seriously – we would take these two old white dudes over any of those? Come on, America.
I can lay out any number of reasons why you should not vote for a third party. A third party vote IS a vote for Trump. It absolutely is and there is no way around it. And it is a privileged position to even think about it.
That being said, I completely understand the inclination because at this point, I am pretty sure we can say democracy is broken. It’s one thing to have candidates that we kind of don’t like. But at this point we are looking at two completely unacceptable candidates and being told to just hold our noses and swallow because anything else would be catastrophic. And let’s not kid ourselves, that narrative is coming from both sides of the aisle.
If the arguments on the street for your party’s candidate are, “I know he’s terrible and incompetent, but if you don’t vote for him the world will end,” then there are larger problems than this election.
If democracy has led us to a point where all you can choose is the least bad of two terrible options, what are we even doing here? Is this even a democracy?
I know who I’m voting for. And I know who I want you to vote for. And I really do think it is a matter of life and death.
But if I were to say I’m voting on whether democracy will survive? We may be beyond that point.
Music in this episode is “Fearless First” by Kevin MacLeod at https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3742-fearless-first.
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