Impeachment has come and gone, I pray that the ridiculous flood of eulogies for the Senate and the soul of the GOP has also ended. Just to be clear: the day the Senate died as a representative and deliberative body was years ago when Mitch McConnell killed Obama’s last pick for the Supreme Court.
Lost in our forlorn hope for the “Constitution” to rid us of Trump (and the knickers twisting over Iowa) you might have missed that the single most important document of the 2020 election was released recently. Did you see it?
It was a letter in the lefty news website Portside signed by Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich and other leading lefty intellectuals, calling on the Green Party to use a “safe states strategy” this year. They addressed the leaders of the Greens, but their plea was to all of us who seek to dump Trump by the only way that was ever proper: the ballot box.
A safe states strategy means the Greens would not put themselves on the ballot in any state where Trump might win with third-party voting as he did in 2016. Trump’s Electoral College victory in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania was not due to Obama voters voting for Trump, as it was third-party voters handing the winner-take-all Electoral College to Trump.
And that is not only the strategy the Greens will hopefully take up, but the exact same strategy we all must carry in our hearts. This election cannot prioritize any consideration other than Trump’s defeat. And that includes “privileging” our personal conscience over the right way to vote. That the left broke into “I will never vote for…” infighting is one reason we have a President Trump. It is not because of what the GOP (or even the Russians!) did, but we failed to do: put our personal priorities and preferences away for an all-out “Defeat Trump” movement.
But as the letter makes clear, the authors wrote in response to an article from a candidate for Green Party president explaining why he would not pledge a safe states strategy. The letter, from a legend like Chomsky among others, warns against answering the siren call that the Democrats are “the real problem” and there is, after all, no real difference between them and the GOP. And there was a time when we spoke that way and thought that way – there is even a great truth in it – but not this election cycle!
My friends, this will be the sole factor when we wake up Nov. 4 to the election results. Everyone must accept there is only one way to vote, for the Democratic candidate no matter who or what, and we need to make sure none of our compadres are off voting for third-party anything, including boycotting, spoiling the ballot, or, worst of all, staying home.
Our moral universe should not always be the calculus for how to vote or whom to support. There is tactical voting and strategic voting. In tactical voting, we vote the way we must so our state goes to the right candidate. We don’t bemoan the loss of our sovereignty nor agency – we know our duty and we go to the polls and pull the lever as it must be pulled. Nothing else. Instead of the highest example of our moral reasoning, sometimes a vote is just a vote.
But the signs are worrying. It is a truism that the history of America for the last 40 years is a history of what the GOP has done and Dems failed to do. And all we have to do is not screw this up, but that is a tall order. The spectacle of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren fighting over a “he said, she said” moment was the most disturbing aspect of the campaign so far.
You heard it online and on TV, partisans swearing that one or the other of the best candidates standing were now their “enemy” because of what? A spat? Will the Bernie Bros refuse to enthusiastically endorse and work for Warren? Will the Warren Warriors do the same? Will enough of “us” slouch to the polls and pull the lever for a third party because “our guy” or “our gal” did not get the nomination?
At this point it is an unknown. Liberals do like to eat their own. You know if we had the most perfect candidate imaginable, on an unstoppable march to crush the GOP – and then a 40-year-old “blackface” photo showed up – we would put their head on a spike and lose.
Rep. Alexandria Ocassio Cortez recently bemoaned the lack of a “left party” in America, and she is right. But look at what we have! In all polls, the left vote is the largest voting bloc in the election, but is split between Warren and Sanders, two candidates whose campaigns are virtually indistinguishable from each other. In Iowa the “left party” won over 40 % of the vote, but split. And yet the vitriol unleased by the partisans for each over Bernie’s alleged “a woman can’t win” crack could signal the beginning of the end for Trump’s defeat.
Or not. It is up to we the people, not they the candidates. Let’s stay informed and on top of the issues, but let us please all agree, we all already know who we are voting for: whoever’s name is next to that “D” in November.
Joe Gannon, author and teacher, lives in Easthampton. He can contacted at opinion@gazettenet.com