I long ago rejected lesser evil voting. It's just not very inspiring to be every four years trying to choose which candidate will do less evil. And so I'm one of that 5% or so of the electorate that votes 3rd party.
And yet . . .
This year may be different. I have between now and election day to make up my mind once and for all, but lately I've been leaning toward the unthinkable . . . voting for a Democrat for president!
Since I deeply disagree with just about everything the Democratic Party (and Joe Biden) stands for, this may take some explaining. In truth, I am not thinking in terms of political agendas here. I'm asking myself, at this moment in our nation's history, which candidate stands the best chance of tamping down the madness, of exerting a calming and uniting influence on the nation.
Which candidate, we might say, is the more humane, the more decent, the more, well, sane? Because a little sanity may be what we really need just now.
Take, for instance, Trump's campaign against mail-in voting. The man seems intent on no other purpose than to establish some sort of "permission-structure" for his loyal following to refuse to accept a Biden victory. Given that there is absolutely no evidence that voter-fraud is a widespread problem, one is left with the conclusion that the president of the United States wishes to sow the seeds of electoral chaos out of some weird psychological need to not be considered a loser.
Meanwhile, at his CNN town hall a couple of nights ago Biden said that he would be the president of both Red and Blue America. Now I realize that that is simply election-year boilerplate, the kind of thing that candidates have been saying since time immemorial, but it's interesting that only one candidate is actually saying it. Only one is actually running as an uniter, while the other is running quite literally and purposefully as a disuniter.
Meanwhile, this morning, the president shared a disgusting tweet that called Biden a pedophile. His presidency seems to be sinking into its own bile. Soon there will be nothing left of the man but his spite.
I was actually prepared to give him some credit for the recent accords between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain. And yes, he deserves some credit for that. But a day later he turned around and admitted proudly that he had been all in favor of "taking out" Syria's Assad, but that Sec.Def. Mattis talked him out of it.
Well, great. I was going to give the man credit for contributing to Middle East peace, but then he confessed that he was definitely partial to assassinating foreign leaders. That Mattis was such a party pooper!
Eight years of Obama were not an unmitigated disaster, and neither will 4 years of Biden be. My great hope is that the Republicans will hold onto the Senate, and thus retain some ability to stymie the worst impulses of the Dems.
Be that as it may, I think I've decided. I'm voting for Biden. Not because I love him. But because he's sane.
* * *
Of the most recent 5 polls listed at
Real Clear Politics, four of them show a strong Biden lead (9, 9, 9, 7) and one of them (Rasmussen) shows Trump with a 1 point advantage.
How will the death of Justice Ginsburg impact the presidential race? I suspect it may increase fervor on both sides, but have little impact on undecided voters (a small set to begin with).
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