Why This Election Is Different
When I was 21 — still the legal voting age back then — I cast my first ballot in the presidential election between Republican Richard Nixon and Democrat George McGovern.
November will mark my 14th presidential vote. And it is monumentally different from all the rest that preceded it, in my time or before.
Past presidential adversaries have differed in being hawks versus doves, protectionists versus globalists, focused on austerity versus investment and growth, for lower taxes verses higher taxes, for fewer social entitlements versus more, tougher on immigration versus more open to it.
It seems that many American voters today see this year’s presidential election the same way. And I agree. Up to a point.
If You’re for Donald Trump
If you like Donald Trump’s policies such as closing the boarder and limiting the influx of undocumented immigrants to reduce crime and lessen the strain on existing services and resources; if you like that he helped to overturn Roe versus Wade and leaves abortion policy to the states; if you like his tough talk on what he’d do to shop-lifters; if you support his economic policies of lowering taxes, and his campaign against bureaucracy, red tape and over-regulation; if you agree with him that demonstrations that cross the line into violence should be shut down by the military; if you’re fed up with the over-emphasis on gender and identity and race and want to see America focus on other more traditional values and concerns, I get it. I get all that.
If You’re Committed to or Thinking About Kamala
If you’re certain about, or leaning toward, Kamala Harris, because you’d like to see her become the first Black and Asian woman president of the United States, I get that as well. If you’re inspired by her joyful campaign and steadfast optimism and agree with her plans for economic opportunity and curbing the unequal distribution of wealth, if you want abortion to be a nationwide right again, I can see that.
Just as I can understand if you haven’t heard enough detail on Harris’s policies to persuade you to vote for her yet; if you’re skeptical of her reasons for changing her positions on various issues; if you were not impressed with her campaign four years ago, or her tenure as Joe Biden’s vice president; if you have concerns about her policy with respect to Israel and Palestine; or whether transgender women should be allowed to participate in women’s sports, I get all that, too. There are always question marks about every presidential candidate who’s not held the position before.
This Time Is Different
If the aforementioned policy choices reflected some of the differences between two “normal” presidential candidates, then the dead heat that the latest poles show would be understandable. What does “normal” mean”? It means abiding by the norms endorsed, upheld and adhered to by every president since George Washington: belief in and conformance with the rule of law, and the commitment to uphold the Constitution of the United States, including and especially assuring free and fair elections and the peaceful transfer of power.
People have told me that they don’t care for Donald Trump’s unconventional personality, language and divisiveness, but that in the end, they have to “put all that aside and vote on policy.” And that’s where they lose me.
Trump is not normal, and his deviation from the fundamental norms and commitments of a U.S. president make him unfit for office. If you’re a normal citizen, you saw and felt that most acutely on Jan. 6, 2020, when rioters Trump had instigated stormed the U.S. Capitol, disrupting a joint session of Congress counting the Electoral College vote, leaving five people dead. You heard it on the phone call when Trump pressed Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “to find, uh, 11,780 votes” — one more than Biden had received.
Who’s to Blame?
I don’t blame anyone who voted for Donald Trump before we knew what we know now. I blame the U.S. justice system for failing to prosecute Trump after that in a timely manner for the egregious crimes he committed, only an abbreviated list of which appears here. For his pursuit of a seven-pronged strategy to cheat in the 2020 election and overturn its results, he is guilty as charged in my book and rendered unfit to run for public office. Words can’t describe my disappointment in Attorney General Merrick Garland for his timidity and glacial pace in going after Trump in time to keep him out of this election. He had time enough. This and other failures to bring Trump to justice have shaken my faith in the U.S. legal system.
As far as this election goes, though, my blaming the legal system is useless. So, what to do?
To paraphrase the Godfather, let me put it this way: If fellow citizens should overlook Donald Trump’s crimes and let the country I was born in and love fall into his catastrophically devisive, destructive hands, I will blame those people, because they now know who Trump is and voted for him anyway. Those people will have thrown American democracy under the bus. And that I will not forgive.
