If you’re following me on this blog or on any of my social media accounts, you probably already know where I stand politically. I lean to the left. I live in one of the most sapphire-blue regions of the country, and I vote in all of the elections. Not just the presidential ones. I vote blue up and down the ticket, regardless of whether I agree a hundred percent with Democrat policies.
And in fact, a lot of the time, I don’t agree with certain Democrat policies, because a lot of the time they aren’t doing what I feel they ought to be doing in a more just and equitable world. I am long familiar with the feeling of voting for the lesser of two evils.
But here are two things I want to call out about that.
One: Sure, I could vote for a third party that might on paper be closer to me politically than the Dems are. But let’s get real here, people. Like it or not, the United States is still a two-party system, especially at the presidential level. Across my lifetime, I have yet to see any third party be serious enough about its existence that it’s willing to do the ground work to support having a real presidential contender–which is to say, building up local constituencies by putting candidates in local elections, and letting the people get experience with their policies. This bullshit of only surfacing every four years to try to put up a presidential candidate doesn’t cut it.
Not to mention that if your third party only surfaces every four years, I’m going to be side-eying you hard regardless and wondering which far-right assholes are bankrolling you in an attempt to pull votes off of the Democratic ticket.
Green Party, I’m looking straight at you.
And two: I cannot let perfect be the enemy of good. Or more specifically, I cannot let “not doing everything I think they ought to be doing” get in the way of “being the party whose presence in the office I can actually maybe survive“.
I do not identify as a Democrat myself, but the Dems are a hell of a lot closer to me politically than the Republicans are. They’re also the party which has at least some history of being willing to move in the right directions on the things I care about.
Including, but not limited to:
- Environmental protections
- Support for the rights of the LGBTQIA+ community, especially transgendered persons
- Support for the reproductive rights of women
- Support for the Black community and all other communities of color
- Support for religious freedoms, including the freedom to have no religion
- Support for labor rights and the rights of workers everywhere to unionize
- Renewable energy
- Elimination of warfare and genocide across the world
- The expansion of the Supreme Court
- The abolishment of the Electoral College
- Respect for the workings of elections in this country
- Fixing the trashfire that is the American health care system
- Reducing this country’s reliance on fossil fuels, and building better infrastructure for biking
On some of these, yes, absolutely, the Democrat record is spotty at best.
But there’s a huge difference between not doing enough about an issue–and being actively out to destroy it. And time and time again, the Republican party has demonstrated that they want to destroy pretty much everything I care about. Hell, they even have a roadmap for how thoroughly they want to destroy it all: Project 2025. Look it up.
I’ve written before about how I take it extremely fucking personally that the Republicans want to make my marriage illegal. I’m never not going to take that extremely fucking personally. But the scope of my anger is not limited to just what impacts me personally, because I do not exist in a vacuum.
With the Democrats, there is still a chance to get the right things done.
With the Republicans, there isn’t even a question.
And that’s why I’m voting for Harris and Walz–why I have voted, because Washington is a vote-by-mail state and I’ve already turned in my ballot. And why I’m begging you, reader of this blog post, to vote for them as well via whatever means you have available to you. Even if they’re not the perfect candidates for you right now, they’re the candidates that have the best shot of moving America in a better direction.
Thank you.