With sixty days to go before the presidential election, the extraordinary power of ordinary Americans to cancel Donald Trump is at last beginning to dominate public life. Will you and I succeed in ending the presidential double-dealing, callousness, vulgarity, and ineffectuality that we’ve had to put up with for the last four years? Game on.
The COVID epidemic and Trump’s full-throttle drive to assail the legitimacy of the election make it all the more essential that Joe Biden score an big, incontrovertible win on November 3rd. Instinct tells us what the polls barely reveal: Trump is a loser, his appeal passé. Tens of thousands of Americans are abandoning him, including many prominent people from within his own Republican party.
His outrage, his desperate rhetoric, his increasingly erratic attempts to smear the election process: Trump is behaving this way precisely because he knows he’s going down in flames.
But only we, the people, can make it official. We’ve got to vote and make sure that polling places are open and adequately staffed on Election Day. We’ve got to drive Democratic majorities to the polls. We’ve got to demonstrate enthusiastic support for Biden–put out our yard signs, dole out the swag. We’ve got to help turn out the vote for him, under circumstances that make turning out much more complicated. And we have to encourage independents and persuadable Republicans to turn out for Biden this time.
If everyone who wants Biden in the White House does something to assist him, he will emerge as the victor on Election Day.
Image:
“Counting the Vote, on November 7th, at Elephant Johnnie’s” (1876),
from this source.
I am in total agreement. I HOPE Biden & Harris win big. Even if he isn’t the most charismatic or exciting president, it will be a welcome relief to have someone “normal” and sane in the White House. (I think Harris is exciting and holds some real possibility for addressing some of our racial issues.)
Good to hear from you, Peggy. I hope that Arizona is among the states that come through for Biden. The nation is going to face huge difficulties in the coming months. At the least Americans deserve someone competent and compassionate in the White House.
Susan
What an excellent, well-written post. Thank you!
You’re welcome, Lisa. Feel free to share your insights about the state of the race in Florida going forward. We can never have too much of that kind of political intelligence.
Take care,
Susan
Juvenilistic mobs burning businesses, beating those wishing Trump re-elected. Terrorists one and all. These are not protests about police brutality, racism. This is about ending the American dream. This is about making everyone equal by tearing down the successful not by elevating the unsuccessful. I see thousands of hateful people rioting who don’t have any moral convictions.
What this election boils down to is a decision between socialism and freedom of choice. The freedoms we do have in our country are not absolute. Liberty is a constant struggle between good and evil. I look around at those who are openly advertising for Trump to be re-elected. Wearing MAGA hats, flags on houses and cars, construction companies, loggers, farmers, fuel companies most everyone who produces food, clothing, energy, construction, recreation facilities, restaurants, etc. Then I see an opposing spectacle. The evil side, Those who can destroy anything and everything because they can’t or don’t want to build for themselves.
I do not support Donald Trump, President Trump’s actions support me and the advancement our Constitutional Republic. Our freedoms are trampled upon everyday by government regulations, taxes, insurance requirements, etc. I do not want more millionaire public servants like Vice President Biden in office at all. President Trump has not lied about anything, he is not in the office to promote greater government control of our lives. He has reduced government regulations by the thousands, he is a man of action. My view of the world and our government have developed over the span of my lifetime. Government should not be the enemy it should be a reliable silent partner supporting us. President Reagan made a remark, “the most feared words in the English language”, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help”. It may be true, but should not be.
From the Democrat side I hear “tax the rich”, yet the rich they are talking about that pay taxes will just add it onto their products so you and I will be paying the taxes. I hear calls to end racism from the left yet I see nothing other than policies that promote greater and greater regulation which promotes higher taxes and reduced freedom for all.
I live and work in a community that by currant social description is conservative. In this community I live and work with people from every ethnicity and many nationalities, likely varied sexual preferences. There is no bigotry, there is no preference given to some and not to others, accept of course when we turn on the news for our daily dose of racial hatred propaganda.
I will vote this election for Donald Trump, but most important of all I am voting against Joe Biden and everything that he and his party’s actions reflect. I want my country to provide greater opportunities for my great grandchildren than it did for me. I and everyone who has been elected to or employed by government have taken the oath to “defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic”. I freely took that pledge. I cannot vote Democrat.
Dave, I’m publishing your comment because I believe in free speech, but I’m not going to respond at length because I don’t consider you persuadable. What strikes me about your tone is how it lacks nuance and moderation, how unjust and bitter it is. I’m disappointed to see you discredit yourself by putting forward diatribe so full of over-generalizations.
Have you tried meditation?
Susan
PS I don’t have the time to moderate long exchanges in the comments section of this website. I will not publish a second comment from you on any post, even if you are replying to another reader who has commented on you. Furthermore, comments must be relevant to the post. For example, this article is about turning out the vote for Biden and voting for Biden in November. Your lengthy peroration is about a bunch of other issues. Next time, I may choose not to publish you.
I subsequently received this reply from farmrdave via email and am posting it here:
Thank you, Susan, for your honesty. In fact I am temporarily registered as Republican so I can vote in that primary. I hold no allegiance to any party. The purpose of my comments is to provide reasons not to vote for VP Biden. I feel that my “last post” on your blog addressed exactly the point of voting for VP Biden. Maybe I ramble in my remarks, but it seemed at the time good to back up my viewpoint with some reasoning. The major news media do not present both sides of the picture. Most newspapers no longer publish comments contrary to the narrative of a published article. The blogs and facebook pages I have come in contact with usually allow comments that echo the moderator’s point of view; non-agreement warrants termination. If this is the end of our conversation, thank you for vocalizing things from your side of the issue that I then had to reconsider. I hope that I have done the same for you. farmrdave
I think someone should ask Farmer Dave how much the RNC is paying him to be a mouthpiece for orange head. My cousin who lives in Oregon says that Farmer Dave trolls different websites and blog posts, looking for ones which express a distaste for orange head and the ilk of legislators and cabinet members who attach themselves to that lying fiend. She has found his comments on more than one such website, and all he does is spew the usual lies coming out of the White House and orange head’s press secretary.
A GREAT post; thanks. I’m going to take a training class this afternoon via zoom to learn how to make calls for the Biden campaign. I’ll be making my calls to Michigan, which, last time around, orange head won by only 10,000 votes.
I’ve seen polls saying orange head has lost 18% of the farm vote so far and 40% of the entire suburban vote country-wide.
The state of Arizona shows Biden with a 9% bump. Texas is almost a dead heat; thankfully O-Rourke and Yang are rallying people to vote anti-orange head and it’s working.
Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, the entire West Coast, N. Carolina, Georgia, the entire northeast corridor, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, maybe even Nebraska, Montana, looking good for Biden.
Orange head can and did fool people once but won’t do so twice. He’s gonna be toast.
Orange head is done. His constant lying, his constant badmouthing of the post office, his badmouthing of our brave veterans and men and women in our armed forces, his farcical pardons of goons like Roger Stone and more, his despoiling edicts to dirty our air and water, the rats that blindly follow him around–Pompeo, Barr, McConnell–all must be cast out; this country wants no more darkness.
Orange head telling folks to “inject themselves with bleach,” saying “COVID is nothing but a case of sniffles”–why has he never visited a hospital where all those poor people sick with it are fighting for their lives? His constant “no need to wear masks” statements sicken me.
Orange head is a coward, a five-time draft dodger. He pandered for Russian help in the 2016 elections-it was proven by 16 American intelligence agencies, according to a report released by the Republican-controlled Senate about four weeks ago.
This agent of Satan must go, and go below, way below, where he can burn in eternal Hell.