About Last Night

Trump is unstable, venal, cruel, and a fraud: something like that should be the first line in every election comment. Was he more confident in his presentation at the debate last night? Sure — he’s a showman. And Biden was disastrous, especially at first.

But the real question for anyone undecided shouldn’t be “who won the debate?”, but “who will govern in a way that benefits what I care about, or that hurts it less?” And the answer to that is clear, if you’re not a bigot or a billionaire. (Or even if you are a billionaire, and you don’t care only about your own balance sheet…surely there are some of those?)

So isn’t the question for organizers not “how can I possibly persuade people to vote for this guy?” but rather “how can I persuade people to vote for the party that will govern in a way that benefits what we care about, or that hurts it less?” Our job in the next four months is simply to talk to people, in every way we can, about how disastrous Trump would be for democracy, the economy, civil rights, the environment, public health, international stability, and pretty much everything else that basically decent folks care about — including Gaza, despite the outrage the current administration has rightly earned.

This is a showdown between possibility and chaos. As long as the Democrat wins, there’s the chance of a stable future. If the Republican wins, there isn’t. No matter last night, the battlegrounds have not changed.

I personally don’t give a flying fuck who the nominee is. I could get inspired by a new nominee (though it would scare me), and I can live with this one (that scares me too). Either way, I suspect my job is to spend the next four months persuading anyone I can (on the angry left and among the uncertain) that their futures, and their kids’ futures, hang in the balance. I’m not sure how to do that, but it seems clear that’s my job.