After we win the war
Today is the start of the final full month of this election. So where are we? I suppose that depends on how you want to look at it. On the one hand Kamala Harris is winning by every possible metric: polls, debates, fundraising, enthusiasm, ground game, and even rally crowd size. On the other hand modern presidential elections have a way of remaining at least semi-competitive even when they’re heavily one sided.
But it’s not just about the horse race. Winning is everything when winning means we get to remain a democracy and prosper, and losing means a senile, paranoid, unhinged, patently evil Donald Trump becomes emperor. There’s also what happens after the election is over. And no I’m not talking about another January 6th. If these idiots want to storm the Capitol again, this time without Trump being in place to run interference for them, they’re welcome to meet the fate that’ll be waiting for them. But there is a bigger picture.
As Trump’s prospects of winning continue to dim, he and his campaign are becoming even more brazenly evil and unhinged than ever. So are his remaining supporters. Trump spent the weekend claiming that Kamala Harris was “born mentally disabled” while insisting that police should get one day a year where they get to beat up anyone they want. And Trump’s remaining supporters are going right along with all of this, because they’re society’s losers to begin with and they’re willing to go along with anything if it allows them to feel like they’re the special ones. If this past month has shown us anything, it’s that Trump’s remaining base will go along with literally anything he says or does. As Trump takes things even further into depravity, a few of his supporters are renouncing the cult entirely. But for those who are remaining in the cult, they’re all-in for as long as they’re in.
Of course that’s not our immediate problem. Any time you win a war of any kind, there’s always the difficult question of what to do with the side that lost. When it comes to these anti-American right wingers, we’ve been defeating them and fending them off for about 250 years now. The battle to keep our democracy intact, and prevent right wingers from dismantling it, is a never-ending one. We can figure out what to do with these Trump-supporting losers once we win the war. But first we have to win the war.
On that front, we only have five weeks left. That’s thirty-five days. That’s an incredibly short amount of time if you think about it. If you’re going to register yourself and others to vote, you only have about a week left in some states. If you’re going to phone bank or knock on doors, you only have five weekends left to make it happen. The time is going to fly by. If you’re not careful, you’re going to wake up on election day wishing you’d done a lot more to try to put our side in a position to win.
So let’s not allow this election to be a tale of regret. Let’s get to work and leave it all on the field these final five weeks. You’ll spend the rest of your life being glad you did. And I’ll spend the rest of my life feeling grateful to you.
