You Do What You Can. Or On Voting.

Or: the one in which KC loses a bunch of subscribers.

This is going to be about politics and the process of politics. I suspect that anyone who has paid attention to pretty much anything I have written here knows I am voting for Harris and would have happily voted for Biden. The Growth Gurus (the name of the band I am going to form the minute I learn how to play, well, anything) would warn me away from having this conversation. This little space is for railing against tech bullshit, the terrible state of the Blackhawks (how, how, how do you lose to San Jose???), and whining about not being a published author. My brand, such as it is, does not involve talking to people about why they should vote.

Never did like branding, though. I am a person, not a logo. And as a person, I really think you should vote for Harris.

If you are a conservative, you might genuinely wonder why you should support someone who will advance a bunch of polices that you dislike. In normal times, that is a great question and in normal times, you probably shouldn’t. But we have the misfortune to live in interesting times. Trump reeks of strongman. My mom and her family escaped the Iron Curtain, and I spent a lifetime listening to them describe in detail how authoritarianism works. They were, even if they did not know it, talking about Trump. Normal politicians do not suggest that their political enemies need to be shot. Normal politicians do not have a plan for turning the military on protestors. Normal politicians do not claim that immigrants are poisoning the blood of the country. Normal politicians do not say that they will be a dictator for one day. If he gets in a second time, there will be precious little holding him back from implementing his warped version of America. Harris has no such baggage. Her home health care program may not be a good idea, but anyone who calls it tyranny can’t see reality with the Hubble.

I like democracy. It is not perfect, of course, but nothing created by human hands ever is. It can be slow; it can be frustrating. But it is the only system that allows average people to work out their differences with a minimum of violence. If you know you can win the next election, you have no real reason to go to war with your neighbors, unless you are just an ass. And the people who read this little newsletter are not asses. I suspect that you value democracy as much as I do. If you do, then it is important to keep people who do not away from the levers of power. A vote for Harris preserves your ability to win the next election. A vote for Trump ensures a cycle of repression and counter reaction that our democracy cannot survive.

For my friends on the left, Gaza looms large. And you are right — the Democrat position, the Harris position, is terrible. And I won’t waste your time telling you that Trump won’t be better because you know that. I know that the people who push that in your face come across as annoying twits, asking you to save them when it doesn’t appear that they are willing to lift a finger to save the people that you care about. I feel much of that same frustration. But I would ask you to consider two points.

First, Harris losing will not drive the democrats to the left on Gaza or any other issue. Our system is wired for Republican control. Any loss will be interpreted by Democratic power brokers, donors, and the press as an argument to move to the right. Heck, people like Johnathon Chait are already wringing their hands over the disgusting anti-trans adds that run on every single sporting event in America despite anti-trans campaigns being consistent losers in the last half decade or so. The party did not move to left after Nadar cost them 2000. It dd not move to the left after the shellacking in 2010. It did not move to the left after 2016 — remember, Biden was the moderate choice. Democrats are trained to not care about people who do not vote and thus to chase the people on the right who do. It is stupid, but it is very real. Not voting for Harris won’t convince anyone in power in the Democratic Party to move toward a humane Gaza position.

Second, having Harris in the White House means that we have a chance to move the Democratic Party in the right direction. Biden, I remind you, was the moderate choice. But he has been as consequentially liberal president as any in my lifetime. His support for unions, his IRA bill which is the largest climate change bill ever, his support for anti-trust, his support for LGBTQA+, his record number of non-prosecutors and non-corporate lawyers appointed to the bench — Biden has been a clear win for progressives. And that happened largely because the left came out to vote for Biden and the progressive members of Congress were better allies than the moderate members of Congress.

Harris, like any normal politician, can be pressured. Don’t fool yourself — realigning the Democratic party away from reflexive anti-Palestinian positions is not going to happen overnight, and likely won’t completely happen even in lifetime of a Harris administration. But the process can continue under a Harris administration. If Trump wins, all that the left can face is repression and violence.

Things are better today than they were when I was younger. They are not perfect, not by any stretch of the imagination, but they are better. LGBTQA+ rights are more solidified, even if they backlash still has to be fought. The government is no longer reflexively anti-worker. Anti-trust is no longer a dead letter. Climate change is being addressed with something like urgency for the first time. All of these changes took a long time. They were a slog, where most of the time people who fought for them were getting our asses kicked (sometimes literally). But we did manage to make things better. Voting was not enough, of course. It took all kinds of pressure and organizing and far, far too long. But we have made the world better, in part because we voted in imperfect people that we could help be more perfect once in office.

It can be tempting to look at the state of American democracy as a creaking, cracking, crumbling house on fire. Lord knows, the foundation it was built is really ugly, and none of the plumbing or electricity works the way it ought to. It can be tempting to let it burn, thinking you can build something better on top of the ashes. For my conservative friends, I ask you to consider that building a home, a democracy, is harder than preserving one. For my friends on my left, I would ask you to remember that the house, the democracy, no matter how imperfect, still has people living it who will burn if we don’t put out the flames.

The world is never as just of fair or decent as it should be. In the face of that, all we can do is what we can do. And what we can do tomorrow is vote for Harris and thus vote to preserve our chance to do more the day after.