Anticipation

The coming of the Autumnal Equinox marks the coming of the fall season which this year also marks the coming of the election(s). Tuesday, Nov 3^rd. All 435 House of Representative seats, 35 of the 100 Senate seats, 39 Governors, plus Attorney Generals, Secretaries of State, and various local offices are on the ballots. Generally, the choice is a Republican or Democrat with a smattering of third party and margin candidates thrown in.

Some states and localities offer ranked choice voting but in most, it is a simple plurality (i.e., whomever has the most votes “wins”) that determines the outcome. You’d like to think it would be 50% plus 1% of the votes cast but that is not always the case. In the last presidential election, the winner had 49.8% of the votes cast, the loser 48.5%, with approximately 1.7% going to third party candidates.

I have to also note that while 155 million did cast a ballot in that election, another 89 million – 36% of eligible voters, did not. That is a huge number who, while now complaining about the result, left the determination of our shared future to someone else’s choices because candidate X or Y was not the 100% embodiment of whatever issue(s) they wanted dealt with. Their abstention guaranteed that an imperfect candidate who was not everything to everybody would not be able to accomplish some portion of what they did want.

In my years as a lobbyist, I was struck by how many state and local races were decided by a 1% difference in vote totals, which in many cases meant fewer than 100 votes.

I’ll say it now and then say it again before I’m done: Voting is a right and realistically, a civic duty. Your vote counts. Perhaps more than you realize, especially if you are in a locality that has ranked choice voting where you can have more than one choice, where the fewest votes get dropped and the rest added to the remainder until one candidate has that 50 plus 1.

Politics is the practice of achieving what can be done in the time and place you are in. Most of the time, it is a matter of compromise and progress by inches unless you have a veto proof legislative majority. The current government shows how difficult it is to get that 2/3 majority even if you are the party in power.

Realistically, if we want to make the world conform to our desire, we vote for the party and the policies rather than the candidate. Not only the President, but Senators, Representatives, the Governors, County Boards, Mayors, City Councils, etc. all down the line to School and Library boards whose policies or proposed policies are aligned to a greater or lesser degree with our own views.

I have voted in every national, state and local election since I was eligible. I have voted for an amazing number of losing candidates. In ’68, I was “clean for Gene” (McCarthy) based on his anti-war stance and then after the Chicago Convention/riot supported an imperfect Humphry over Nixon. He lost. In ’72 I went to my local DFL precinct caucus in rural Winona County and being one of six people there, get elected Chair. That was followed by attending County and State conventions, serving on the state platform committee and volunteering for McGovern in MN and WI. He lost. Carter won the first campaign in ’76 and lost the second. Mondale lost in ’84. ’88 was an election I was tempted to sit out because I felt there were no good choices.

In ’90 Paul Wellstone revived my faith in politics when he said, “Politics is not about big money or power games; it's about the improvement of people's lives” It was the kind of progressive politics that we needed then and still need today. His (suspicious) death in 2002 was hard but reinforced in me a commitment to making “We all do better when we all do better…” more than a slogan.

Clinton won in ’92 with 43% of the vote total and again in ’96 with 49% of the vote. I supported Gore in 2000. He lost (due to a Supreme Court intervention). Kerry lost in ’04 but Obama won in ’08 and again in ’12. Hillary lost in ’16. If I am cynical, I would say it I because America is not ready to elect a woman. Biden won in ’20 amid ravages of COVID and spent the whole of his administration repairing the damage. Kamala lost in ’24. If I were cynical, I would say America was unwilling to elect a Black woman but that is a hedge as I suspect the election really was “stolen” by the 1% who are fighting to keep the money flowing to themselves rather than the American people. Fear and promises that would not be kept were thick and effective in shaping voter opinion.

In every instance I began not with the personality, the who’d I want to have a beer with, but with the question: what would benefit the common good? Universal health care. Free college and trade school education. Active programs to end homelessness. Paid parental leave and free child care. Expanded public transit. A living wage that was adjusted for inflation. All programs that folks on the right call socialism (or worse) which are the norm in European countries including Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Germany, France, and to a lesser degree Canada. If that’s what Socialism is, I’m for more of it.

So here we are with another election looming. The President is not on the ballot but for most Americans, he is very much on their mind and their votes will be a referendum on whether his “leadership” is to be supported or repudiated. On one side, the persistent Republican accusation (straight out of the ‘50’s Joe McCarthy playbook) is that voting for Democrats is a vote for Socialism (or worse). On the other side, the question Democrats pose is whether we can afford food, gas, medical care being priced out of reach? Do you vote your pocketbook or your ideological leanings?

I’ll say it again: Voting is a right and a civic duty. Your vote counts. There are machinations afoot to suppress or deny your vote. Check your registration. If you are not registered or have been taken off the rolls after a move, register again. If you can vote by mail, do not trust the post office to get a ballot returned to the proper place at the proper time. There have already been too many indicators that the mail is not reliable. Fill out that mail ballot and deposit it in a official drop box or deliver it in person to the appropriate office. If you can vote early, do so. If you intend to vote on Tuesday, Nov 3^rd, be prepared to stand in line with your neighbors for as long as it takes. If you are told that you are not in the register, ask for a provisional ballot (which is your legal right) and fill it out. If you can register in person the day of, do. But whatever it takes, I ask you to vote as if democracy itself depends on it, because from my perspective, it does.

I anticipate a heavy turnout. I anticipate disruptions and delays. I anticipate that anything less than an overwhelming repudiation of the current regime will be called into question. Words like “cheating” and “stolen” will be flung like so much ketchup in an effort to taint the result. In a worst-case scenario, we will have demonstrations, political violence, a repeat of January 6^th. Those potential negative outcomes do not justify abstaining from the election or despair.

I usually end these seasonal missives with an invocation of nature or an affirmation of storytelling. I want to end this one with a reminder of the first rule of white-water rafting. The command of what to do when you fall off or as swept overboard: “You must participate in your own rescue.” Do not let fear override your participation. Vote.