As we enter the next-to-last weekend before Election Day, the number of people who have already voted has reached 54 million. There are indications that young people are showing up to vote in much larger numbers than usual. I suspect these votes will be heavily tilted toward Biden.
In most elections, my distaste for both major party candidates tends to increase as the election draws near. I begin to suffer from bogosity overload. One of the key refrains I remember my mother saying often, in many situations but no doubt frequently in the run-ups to elections, is: "Alright already!"
I want to assure my family and friends that. no, I have not drank the Democratic Party Kool-Aid. I dislike that particular institution more than just about any other significant institution in America. I feel myself already inwardly pivoting toward critical skepticism about all things that will be emanating from the Biden/Harris administration. I suspect I'm going to dislike the political trends of the next couple of years with a subdued but passionate intensity.
But I did vote for the man. A part of me wanted to go with a 3rd party candidate (I do kind of like the principles of the American Solidarity Party), but in the end I decided that what I really wanted to do with my inconsequential little vote was to simply register my own tiny little NO to the whole Trumpian experiment. One can only do so much with such a small hammer, so I'll just pound this little nail into the coffin marked "The Trump Presidency." Me and about 75 millions other, I'm guessing.
To do that, I needed to vote for Biden, but that vote does not represent an endorsement. I admit to kind of liking him in his old age in a way that was never possible during his years as a blabbermouth Senator in the pocket of Big Unions and the credit card industry. On the other hand, his platform and his rhetoric, including his frequent posing as middle-class Joe from Scranton, do not fill me with rosy visions of the next four years.
[Aside: have you ever noticed how important "place names" loom in presidential campaigns? Trump is from No-Place, USA, but he frequently jets about the landscape, landing at airports here and there and proclaiming his love for that place, Someplace, USA, to the great joy of the locals. Meanwhile, if I had a dime for the number of times Joe Biden mentioned Scranton (just up I-81 from my hometown, btw, and from which JB's family moved when he was just 10 years old), well, I could buy a new house or something, I suppose. Candidates appealing to "place" is a kind of romantic nonsense. They're not from these places, don't know about these places, and even Americans themselves, though they long to be "placed," have diminishingly little to do with the places they actually live, possibly because many will be moving again within five years.]
But so be it. Not caring for the president is something I am quite used to. But I'm taking Biden at his word that he will strive to be president of all the people, and call me naive but I believe he means it. I'm grateful for the overall dignified tone of his campaign, which feels like cool water to a wanderer in Death Valley. Let's have more of that, please. I'm kind of thirsty.
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Read also:
Jonah Goldberg's Let's Do the Time Warp Again
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