I’m not voting for Kamala Harris because she deserves it. Nobody deserves to be president. There is no single person in America who knows everything and is right about all stuff. I like Harris a lot, but the more I learn, the more it’s truly alarming that we elect anyone to the position—especially someone who wants it.
Don’t get me wrong. I think Harris is joyful, smart, good at her job, and she seems to be an actual sane human being who wouldn’t—just as an odd example—threaten to use the military on her own constituents or talk about all the ways Hitler really had it going on. But that’s not the main reason I’m voting for her. In fact, it’s not really about her at all.
I’m voting for Kamala Harris because of what I deserve.
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I deserve to have the right to make decisions about my own body. I deserve to be able to travel while being a lady-person without worrying that—depending on what state I’m in—maybe they’ll just let me die. I deserve not to worry that the dumbest people we know are going to outlaw both birth control and IVF.
I deserve to not have to explain to young girls that we chose a sexual abuser to hold the highest office in the country.
I deserve not to have a vice president who calls people like me “sociopaths” who “don’t have a direct stake in this country” because I don’t have children.
I deserve to not have to worry that my gay friends won’t be able to get married anymore if Trump gets to appoint even more Supreme Court justices. I deserve to attend those gay weddings! They have better music and decorations. (Food could go either way, depending on the couple’s feelings on carbs.)
I deserve a president who taxes billionaires instead of inviting them to their rallies.
I deserve not to pay approximately $400 million for medicine that costs drugmakers 15 cents to make.
I deserve to know that if I live through a natural disaster, the government will provide aid—not to have a president who withholds disaster relief aid from suffering human beings who happen to live in states where he thinks not enough people voted for him.
Now do I agree with Harris’ policies on everything? Absolutely not. Guns scare the hell out of me and so does fracking. And, at least as of right now, we have an incredibly consequential policy disagreement. Like a “keeps me up all night” level disagreement. And I don’t want to sound flippant here or make jokes. If I thought voting for a third party would end what’s going on in Gaza and now much of the Middle East, I’d do it in a minute. If I thought sitting out this election would stop the slaughter of innocent people, I would sit it out.
It’s not that the issues on which I disagree with Harris don’t matter. It’s that electing Donald Trump isn’t going to solve them. In fact, like with literally everything I can think of, he will make them worse.
I’m voting for Harris at least partially because I actually remember what 2016 through 2020 was like and oh-my-God we all deserve to not have to go through that again.
Huge swaths of our country seem to have gone through some kind of collective amnesia. It happens when you go through something terrifying. It’s like how after childbirth, women forget about how painful it was, except at the end of this you don’t get a baby—you get a dictator. OK, yes, I hear myself. BUT THIS ONE WILL NOT GROW OUT OF IT WHEN HE GETS OBJECT PERMANENCE.
Just a few visceral memories of the Trump years:
- He appointed the justices that ended Roe v. Wade, and he said that women should be punished for having abortions.
- He called the people who died in battle fighting for our country “suckers and losers.”
- He gave Vladimir Putin, a dictator who has repeatedly threatened to nuke us, COVID testing equipment before it was widely available to our own citizens.
- He billed taxpayers millions and millions of dollars by making government employees stay at his own properties.
- He committed a minimum of 34 felonies while he was president. What is this world where “he’s a felon” is genuinely this far down the list?
- He separated thousands of immigrant children from their parents with no plan to get them back together. He put babies in cages.
- He f---ing tried to buy Greenland.
- He lied about winning the election, sent a mob to the Capitol, and created a plan to send fake electors to overturn the will of the voters. It’s weird how you hear something enough times that it starts to sound normal, but this remains complete and utter madness. It’s how countries get overthrown and turned into dictatorships. He called up election officials and told them to CHANGE VOTES.
The fact that he failed doesn’t make it less horrifying that he tried.
There are so many ways that I wish the system was different. But I’m not voting for the system. I’m voting for Kamala Harris because I’m voting for me and the people I care about. And, if I’m being perfectly honest, because it’s my best shot at never having to hear about Donald Trump again.
On top of all the other things we deserve, we deserve a break.
