Our mission is unchanged

I don’t know why, but I hardly ever talk about politics of any sort on this blog. Time was, a large percentage of my most-viewed posts were about politics, US politics in particular. It’s not that I stopped caring, and I certainly never ran out of topics, it’s just that I wasn’t in to it, for a lot of reasons. I suppose. Maybe it’s time I changed that a bit.

Today, the bigger picture has grabbed my attention.

I should say, first, that I admire and respect President Joe Biden for his decision to wityhdraw from the race. It can’t have been an easy thing to do, but he was definitely putting the country first. All of which is something I cannot imagine the Republican nominee ever doing.

Amid all the breathless news stories today, though, what strikes me is the one thing that political pundits and journalists have never been able to grasp: For most Americans in both 2020 and 2024, the issue was never who the Democratic nominee for president was, even if they supported them all along. Instead, it was only ever about who the other party’s nominee was. To be clear, President Biden had firm supporters in 2020 and 2024, and Vice President Kamala Harris will this year, too, but after the disaster of 2016, American voters understand one thing clearly: In November, the person who wins the presidential election will be either the Democrat or the Republican, and the choice this year could not possibly be more stark, serious, or consequential.

I will absolutely vote for the Democratic nominee—guaranteed—and there was never any doubt about that: I’ve never voted for a Republican nominee for president, and there was no way in this universe or any other that I would’ve voted for this year’s Republican nominee, either. Absolutely NOTHING has changed except the name at the top of the ticket. I fully expect Democrats to rally around Vice President Harris, and I’ll absolutely vote for her.

As so many others have pointed out, elections aren’t a marriage, they’re a bus. I’m not looking for “The One”, I’m looking for how to get closest to where I want to go, and then board the bus that will do that. If the bus isn’t going close enough, I don’t just hmph and stomp off into the driving rain and hail, I do what I must: I take the bus that will get us all closest to the destination—and then keep pushing for better bus service.

This year in particular I will make absolutely sure my vote for the Democratic presidential nominee, whoever that ends up being, is counted, and even if it ends up being that the only reason I do so is to help keep the Republican candidate out of the White House. Democracy, the US Constitution, personal freedom, and liberty, are all on the ballot this year, and the only way to preserve, protect, and defend them is vote Democratic in numbers too big to rig, and too real to steal. Let’s win this!

This began life as a post I made on my personal Facebook earlier this afternoon—which is kind of ironic, since I talk about politics there far, FAR less than I do here. I guess I had to start some place. This version is somewhat revised from the original.