It's different this time
It's different this time
I'm comparatively old. I was raised in a household that viewed news as the highest calling.
Net result is I watched, at 5, Geraldine Ferraro's speech at the 1984 DNC. She had far more energy than Mondale, and my takeaway was if I could vote, it would be for her. I told my parents as much, and we had a fucking picture of Thatcher in the office.
That was my dad's call, as somehow a believer in Reagan. Mom told me we weren't ready yet, but I would see a woman elected president in my lifetime.
That was 40 years ago. Hillary couldn't get there, but with so much baggage that you want a private jet, scarcely surprising.
What I see today is not that. I didn't really expect this to be "biracial woman of colour," but we are finally exhausted of Trump's artless self-dealing, and we have zero interest in playing that movie again.
I've previously expressed not being thrilled with Harris, but she's grown on me.
This is where we finally get out of the dark ages and recognise that a woman can run the goddamn country. This is different. It's rather crazy to me that no one in my lifetime has run on joy. We keep plumbing the depths of society and wonder how we don't move forward.
No politician has ever been perfect. I'd argue Biden gets close for seeing the writing on the wall and accepting he can't win again. Giving us this.
Harris is also not perfect, but she is right for the era.
I watched her acceptance speech and felt 5 again. With hope for the future.
What happens past Nov. 5 is going to be interesting, but I think the felon will lose and fight it tooth and nail. He's literally running again to avoid prison. That's not who we are. We cannot reward this.
There was a post on the local subreddit that Texas is now in play. Holy shit, do you have to fuck up royally to have that be a thing. Florida is in play. North Carolina is in play. Forget all the swing states, we have an election on our hands.
There's plenty of time before then, and, as someone who ran a newsroom for the first time in 2000, that's worrisome. But if we can finally break out of this pattern, I welcome it.
We are about to see the U.S. cast off the chains and see the GOP for the cult of personality it is. They have no policy we want. I won't go much past that, as it's clear they're unaware of what "soul searching" looks like.
But I have hope for the first time since 2008. I hope it's not misplaced.
This is why many of us pushed so hard for Biden to drop out. We made it a national conversation, rather than becoming frozen in fear and censoring ourselves like many people (even here) told us to.
Biden didn't choose this out of grace or magnanimity, he did it because he was pressured to, for good reason. He ran on nothing but fear and anger, mired in the mindset of past elections and old policies. He alienated millions with his stance on Israel and Gaza. His entire elevator pitch throughout his campaign was about not being as bad as a literal child rapist and felon.
He never ran on hope or joy, just the fear of being swept away by the torrent of shitty wannabe fascists and fake Christians. "Vote for me to hang on for dear life".
Kamala may not be able to change the fundamental issue of 1/3 of Americans choosing racism or "religion" over literally doing anything to help people, but at least she's (believably) saying she'll fight to get us to higher ground. And Walz isn't just an appeal to a demo, he's a genuinely jovial person who always seems like he's just a few sentences away from revealing a surprise party for someone.
A lot of people, myself included, made fun of Marianne Williamson for saying during a debate once that she was going to "harness love" to defeat Trump, and to be fair, I don't think she ever could have.
Right now, though, we feel pretty close to doing that.
My support of biden was for positive reasons. Im still blown away by what was accomplished in his term (although the recent court loss of noncompete sucks). This is the main reason I was not onboard with him dropping. If he had been worse or less effecttive I likely would have been but its hard to drop something thats been that effective regardless of how unpretty people saw it. Im more going with harris because anything but trump but also with the hope that having veep experience in such a great administration will help (I think biden owes a large part of his good job to being veep during obama). I love her veep pick to.
I, too, think Biden did a great job as President -- especially given the constant pushback he got from Congress and the corrupted Court. It frustrated me that the public didn't notice or care, but I could see from the polls and negative press that there was no way Biden was going to get re-elected, so I was living in despair for our future until he dropped out. With Biden out of the race, the public is paying attention to the race again, becoming aware of the crazy Trump/2025 "agenda nobody asked for", and (if we're to believe the polls) becoming more interested in voting for a new face. Yay!
I live in Texas. I had to cancel the appointment to finally correct the gender marker on my driver's license when the news dropped earlier this week. I don't know if I can muster hope. But I can do a lot out of spite.
Have hope! But also, if you can volunteer to talk to potential voters, do that too.
If your schedule is too tight to volunteer, or if it is physically/emotionally too much, consider at least talking about her in a positive way.
If that is too much, maybe at least, at least mention that you're hearing lots more support and enthusiasm than even when Biden won, so you are going to be very suspicious of claims that Dems 'steal' elections. Yes, Trump is still supported in the boonies, but more and more suburbs and cities are increasingly wanting Harris -- you know, the places with most the people.
Reminder that Obama won Florida. Also that Trump performed worse in Texas in 2016 and 2020 than McCain and Romney in their prior runs. Florida got weird, but Texas has looked close to flipping for a while now.
It’s nice to see people have hope. Mine was beaten out of me years ago. I haven’t really ever been surrounded by peer groups who thought similar to me politically so this all just seems beyond impossible.
I’m in rural Canada and you’d think we were the 51st state of the US. “F Joe Biden” flags on lots of houses and trucks driving around with two big blue Trump/Vance flags in the bed. These people are fired up. They’re not even American.
I hope you're right. It would finally be something very different and that's necessary, I think.
As far as I can tell, looking into her, she's a standard politician. She tells anyone whatever she thinks they want to hear.
So we just have to hope, and wait to see what happens.