We Understood the Assignment

It will take some time to sort out exactly what happened in the election, and there are probably a bunch of reasons why Kamala Harris lost. She got millions fewer votes than Biden did so part of the problem appears to be that not enough Democrats showed up.

I’m not a political analyst or pundit but a few things did jump out to me in the aftermath. Three blocs voted for Harris in very high percentages: Black voters at 86% (94% of older Black voters), Jewish voters at 78%, and LGBTQ voters at 86% (including 82% of white LGBTQ voters and 92% of queer women). I don’t want to make assumptions about voting blocs I don’t belong to, but I wonder if we all voted for Harris because we know who gets the shaft when the right wing gets into power. We know our history and we’ve all been subjected to either state-sponsored violence or being deprived of our civil rights by the state. We understood the assignment.

 

I can’t speak for other voting blocs, but I do have insight into what LGBTQ voters are thinking. We see an America in which our hard-won civil rights and human rights will be stripped from us, and with the Republicans in control of all three branches of government, we will have no legal recourse.

 

For myself, I fully expect—through a combination of laws, executive orders, court decisions, and a lack of federal protection—to become a second-class citizen in certain respects. I can’t imagine marriage equality surviving. The right wing has never seen my family fit into America, and I’ve always been clear-eyed about that. I expect the president to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the troops to crush any dissent toward these losses of rights. The man said he'd do it throughout the campaign. He said it several times: Democrats in general are part of “the enemy within.” How many people were listening and really understood? It’s state power turned against our own citizens, and it’s going to be bloody.

 

I fear that trans people, already vulnerable, will suffer the most. They may not be able to get the healthcare they need, may suffer the indignity of having the gender on their birth certificates or ID changed, and may be forced to detransition and become different people against their will—people they never were. Again, the right wing told us all this would happen. They promised it. It’s all laid out in Project 2025. I skimmed a little of it and the language about trans people is chilling. It sounds like powerful men standing in rooms and musing on “what to do about the transgender problem.” It sounds like they could have sketched it out on cocktail napkins at the Kit Kat Club.

 

And people voted for this. A lot of voters saw those “boys playing in girls’ sports” commercials that demonized trans people—that put a target on the backs of people who are already at risk—and lapped it up like the bottom-feeders they are. People chuckled at that “Kamala is for they/them” but how many people realized that people who go by they/them are Americans, too? This was a catharsis of hate.

 

If anybody else in our LGBTQ acronym thinks they’re safe, don’t. That commercial endorsed a heterosexual nuclear family as an unsubtle signal that this is the only family the right wing will accept. They laid all that out in Project 2025, too—the architects of this second administration want to “maintain a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family.” That means, my fellow cisgender gays, they’re coming for us, too. Was anybody paying attention?

 

So some of us understood the assignment in the voting booth, but white people—we fucked up. Only 41% of white men voted for Harris and 45% of white women did the same. I wonder if this is because, unless we’re in another marginalized voting bloc, white people have no history of the power of the state turned against them in the form of violence or a denial of rights. I’ve never in my life been in fear of being beaten in the streets for who I am as a white person. We just don’t have a collective history of that; those are consequences for other people. Consequences are still coming that will affect plenty of white people. Abortion is going to be de facto illegal in the United States and the administration doesn’t need Congress to do that. I guess not enough white people gave a shit about it, or figured those were consequences they wouldn’t have to face. Best of luck if you have pregnancy complications in the Republic of Gilead.

 

I’ve heard some variation this past week of “democracy doesn’t matter when you can’t pay your bills.” This is the idea that goods and services are more expensive (inflation is back to normal but that doesn’t mean companies will drop their prices) so people had to vote with their wallets no matter whose rights were at stake.

 

You know what, I have money problems like anyone else, but I saw my choice another way: when your rights are at stake, you vote to preserve them and you find a way to deal with the higher cost of a dozen eggs. I’ll manage with higher food costs; I won’t manage so well with my family no longer legally intact.

 

But right wingers are never, ever expected to empathize with people on my side of things. Instead we will have four more years of sympathetic interviews of people in diners who pretend like they had no other choice but to fuck over their fellow Americans, and they want grace for that. But they won’t extend it to us. Maybe we can share some magically affordable omelettes before the black van comes for me.

 

Apparently there were Democrats who stayed home on election day. There always are. This pisses me off. I canvassed for my candidates for four weekends in a row. I phone banked. I donated. I wrote 600 postcards to voters across the country. I worked with the PRIDE Caucus to get our candidates elected in Delaware (we were mostly successful). I was a poll worker on election day, helping my district to vote. I literally walked the walk and talked to talk, and I still wish I could have done more.

 

So forgive me if I’m a little pissy that some people couldn’t be arsed to do the bare minimum at a time when so many people and rights are under threat and instead sat home and moued that “She didn’t earn my vote.” It’s a convenient way to accomplish two things: (1) not having to get off your ass, and (2) having a smug smirk ready when things go bad and saying, “Don’t blame me. I didn’t do a goddamn thing.” Their inaction still means they have a little piece of responsibility for the world of hurt ahead for people who—conveniently—probably aren’t them.

 

When Republicans win, it’s because their people turn out. They treat election day like church: when the holy day comes, they go. Every four years, there seem to be Democrats who get precious about their moods and sit home in a snit, and then end up fucking over a lot of us, including themselves. Well, when so much is at stake, you get yourself in the mood. The candidate may not have been left enough for you, and that’s a valid debate to have, but how does it make a lick of sense not to choose the candidate who would only get you part of the way to your goals and instead let the candidate win who would not only get you zero percent of what you want, but would in fact actively destroy what you already have? If you stayed home for Gaza, how did you think the Palestinians would fare under the tender ministrations of President Muslim Ban? They’re fucked now. But hey, your progressive halo shines undimmed. Congratulations.  

 

I was on the fence about whether I would write something this acidic in case any of my four readers would be offended, but I couldn’t give a fuck at this point. I’m determined for these people not to steal my joy but I’m incandescently angry about the state of America so don’t expect me to sing “Kumbaya.” It’s easy to call for “unity” when you get everything you want—what the right wing really means by “unity” is “We won so shut up and take the shit we’re making you eat.”

 

The hell I will. I’m not stupid or self-loathing enough to unite with people who hate me. I’ll stand and fight for marginalized and vulnerable people whose country is turning on them. I’ll be loud about it. I’m not scared of any of these motherfuckers and I won’t obey any of them in advance. I’m not going down quietly.

For the Third—and Hopefully Final—Time

I am exhausted. I’ve been canvassing and phone banking for candidates in Delaware and Pennsylvania, writing postcards to voters across the country, and today I’m spending a very long election day as a poll worker. I’m exhausted but democracy is hard work and it’s worth it. I’m also quite exhausted with having to push back on Donald Trump and the rot and hate he’s inflicting on the United States. There are many positive reasons to vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and I know they will do something great.

But you know me: it’s more fun to complain and point out the negative—and in Trump’s case, he’s so malignant to the very idea of America and our Constitution that it’s imperative for me to point out to my small corner of the internet why you should not vote for him. So, for the third—and hopefully final—time, here is my case against him. To save time, I’m limiting this to just what he’s done since he lost reelection in 2020. I tried to prioritize this list but it’s like a Billboard chart where almost every song is tied for #1. If you’re a Trump voter, you may want to close this tab. The rest of you, get ready to scrooooollllll down.

 

Donald Trump incited a violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 to try to overturn the election results in an illegal attempt to stay in the White House. You might remember it: a mob attacking the Capitol, people and police officers dying, Congresspeople given gas masks and evacuated, gallows erected to hang the vice president. Trump tried to throw away my vote and the votes of anyone else who voted for Biden. Nobody ever actually presents any evidence of this “election fraud”; the campaign got laughed out of court about 60 times after the election. And when advisors were pleading with him to call off his rioters, Trump sat on his ass in his dining room and watched the chaos on TV and refused to do anything about it. When told his vice president was taken to a secure location to shield him from the mob, Trump said “So what?” Trump also demanded election officials “find votes” for him in Georgia, trying to overturn the will of the people in that state. These were naked authoritarian attempts to subvert democracy, and he’s absolutely responsible for the disgrace of that day. He was impeached for the insurrection (his second annual impeachment) and he’s been indicted, and hopefully he’ll be brought to justice. But if the courts won’t stop him, the people must, and he should never be near the levers of power again.

 

Donald Trump appointed three of the six Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and shattered reproductive freedom in this country. The government should not make reproductive decisions for you. This has led to women like Amber Thurman and Nevaeh Crain dying from pregnancy complications that could have easily been taken care of by a doctor, were it not for abortion bans in Georgia and Texas. Maternal mortality has “skyrocketed” since the Dobbs decision. We may never know how many pregnant women—some raped or facing medical complications—were forced to have children they didn’t want to have, since stories like that don’t always make the press. If Trump gets back in, he won’t need legislation to outlaw abortion—all he’d have to do is direct the Department of Justice to enforce the Comstock Act and nobody in America would be able to get abortion medication through the mail. The Republicans are coming for IVF and birth control, too—they already voted against protecting the former. Trump said last week that he would protect women “whether they like it or not.” That’s not protection; it‘s control. The idea that abortion should be “returned to the states” is deeply wrong. Bodily autonomy is a human right—why should women on one side of a state line have that right, and women on the other side of the line be denied it?

 

Donald Trump is a fascist who wants the military to go after political enemies on the left, calling them “the enemy within.” If this doesn’t apply to you, it applies to someone you know, who could very well be rounded up by a Trump administration. He doubled down on this rhetoric at his Bund rally at Madison Square Garden, so it wasn’t a slip of the tongue, and we can’t say we weren’t warned. He basically suggested Liz Cheney should face a firing squad for the high crime of opposing his candidacy. This is a pattern with him: he has consistently spoken about terminating the Constitution and using violence and the power of the state to prosecute his enemies without even a pretext of an accused crime. It is blatantly unconstitutional to declare a person or group of people guilty of a crime without due process, and it’s blatantly illegal to use the military to enforce the law. It would be extremely dangerous to have a man like this in office again, and the Supreme Court would probably let him get away with using the military to go after his enemies, thanks to their disastrous decision giving the president immunity for official acts and putting an asterisk next to the rule of law. Don’t give me some dopey-dope tapdance of “Take Trump seriously but not literally.” Even broaching the idea of using the military to go after your perceived enemies is un-American and disqualifying, and if a candidate for president broaches it, then you act like an American and you vote against him.

 

Donald Trump’s Project 2025 would remove federal protections against discrimination for sexuality or gender identity, and advocates that the government "maintain a biblically based, social-science-reinforced definition of marriage and family." They basically want to legally undo families like mine. Project 2025 would demonize and dehumanize trans people and its clinically hateful language against the trans community sounds like it came from 1933. Project 2025 would outlaw porn in defiance of the First Amendment. It would allow Trump to fire career government employees and replace them with loyalists who will allow him to implement his desire to be a “dictator on day one.” It would allow the government to prosecute anyone who takes an abortion pill. It would round up undocumented migrants and intern them in camps. This is the plan devised by Trump’s advisors for America if he wins in 2025. Don’t believe anyone who says Project 2025 is disbanded or that they disavow it—the ideas remain no matter what the initiative is called. Project 2025 would not end well for immigrants, women, or LGBTQ (especially trans) people.

 

Donald Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies for campaign finance violations related to his sleeping with a porn star while married. With that rap sheet, he’d have trouble getting a job at McDonald’s or driving a garbage truck, so why are we considering him a viable candidate for leader of the free world? He’s also liable in a civil trial for sexually assaulting a woman in a dressing room, and has been fined millions for defaming her. His company has also been fined $355 million for fraud. Trump behaved like a complete ass at all these trials, insulting the court, complaining about everything, and moaning about his victimhood. Any of these indictments should have been the end of his campaign, but here we are.

 

Donald Trump purloined top-secret documents when he left the White House and brought them to Mar-a-Lago, storing many of them in unsecure areas such as a ballroom and bathroom. This slob put our national security at risk. Who knows how many secrets he spilled to foreign powers, how many sources he burned, or how many of our people he put in harm’s way. It was only a personal favor from a judge in Florida that saved him from trial and conviction. We can’t trust Trump with national security information.

 

Donald Trump’s tariff plan is dumb and will wreck the economy. This plan will jack up the prices of goods that foreign companies will export to us and guess who will pay those higher prices? We will.

 

Donald Trump is still racist to immigrants and people of color. This goes back decades but he’s been on a real tear during this campaign. Trump said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” which probably didn’t sound any better in the original German. He said migrants have committed crimes did so because of “bad genes.” He spread that stupid rumor that Haitian migrants—here in this country legally—are “eating cats and dogs” in Ohio, building on a long racist tradition of saying non-white immigrants eat pets. His mass deportation plan would not only be cruel but would ruin the economy—who would do the jobs migrants used to do that keep the country running? Add all this up and Trump has been saying “Auslander aus.” We can’t say he didn’t warn us.

 

Donald Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, is an absolute tool.

 

Donald Trump’s own vice president won’t endorse him (probably still salty from almost being hanged). His former cabinet and advisors have spoken against him. National security advisors are against his reelection. His former chief of staff said Trump admires Hitler and wished his staff were more like Hitler’s generals. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs has called him “fascist to the core.” Even Darth Vader and his daughter (not Leia; the other one) are dead-set against him. These are not leftists; they’re diehard conservatives Trump himself hired. They worked closely with him and many are now pleading for the public not to vote him back in. Take the hint.

 

Donald Trump is out of it and not up to the job of presidency. I don’t know exactly what his problem is but his mental faculties have been deteriorating as this campaign goes on. He’s babbling—I’m sorry, weaving—about sharks and electric boats and Hannibal Lecter as if he’s a real person. It’s not clear that he knows asylum for immigrants is not the same as an asylum for the mentally ill. He grinned like a dimwit and gave a thumbs-up over a soldier’s grave at Arlington. “They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, they're eating the cats!” “There are some places, your boy leaves the school, comes back a girl.” He’s yapping about Arnold Palmer’s endowment. He fell asleep at his own trial and fell asleep at a campaign event. He’s too “exhausted” to go to scheduled events. Last weekend Donald Trump—a 78-year-old man—simulated manual and oral sex with a microphone stand at a rally. It just goes on and on and on. If your father acted like this, you’d call a family meeting and discuss options. The press ran Biden out of town on a rail over a lot less. The worst, for me, was Trump playing “Ave Maria” and “YMCA” and swaying to the music for 39 minutes at one of his rallies. You could make a meme or a joke out of this but imagine giving the nuclear biscuit back to someone who fugues out like this. It’s really not funny at all.

 

Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden Bund rally—all its ugliness and hate—crystallized a lot about his appeal and his mission. Some jackwad vomited out vile racism about Puerto Rico (part of the United States!) being a “floating island of garbage” and said Black people were “carving watermelons” instead of pumpkins. He also took a shot at Jewish and Palestinian people. Trump’s once and future advisor echoed a Nazi slogan and said “America is for Americans and Americans only.” Some nut brandished a crucifix and called Kamala Harris “the Antichrist” and “the Devil” and a “prostitute.” Somebody called Hillary Clinton a “sick son of a bitch” (we can assume he only meant the last word of that). These clowns were invited and vetted by the campaign and their words were displayed on the teleprompter, so the campaign knew what they’d say ahead of time. It was the distillation of what this campaign believes. At the rally Trump reiterated that he will use the power of the state to go after the Democrats as the enemy within—people you know; people like me. Donald Trump has been warning us all along of who he is and who he and his goons will come after if he wins. Their vision for America is obscene.

 

So if you haven’t already, get out and vote, and let’s send this miserable SOB back to Mar-a-Lago!