Ambivalent Hillary Voters: Don’t Assume Someone Else Will Stop Trump
Katha Pollitt, The Nation: Ambivalent Hillary Voters: Don’t Assume Someone Else Will Stop Trump
Maybe you’re still mourning Hillary’s victory over Bernie Sanders. (Bernie has gotten over it and urges you to support her.) Maybe you’ve been assuming Trump will lose, so you can afford to relax and rely on herd immunity, like an anti-vaxxer. Maybe you’re having too much fun in the circular firing squad of Twitter and Facebook: Why spend your evenings phone-banking or your weekends in swing states canvassing when you can impress your friends with zingers about what a sellout Clinton is? If she loses, it will be her own damn fault, right? No. If she loses, and you did nothing to help her win, it will be your fault. Are you assuming someone else is going to do the work you’re too tired or too dejected or too good for? Are you picturing a middle-aged Hillarybot who sleeps with Lean In under her pillow knocking on those doors? Because even if she is, you need to be too. Remember, a Donald Trump presidency isn’t all that’s at stake: What if the Democrats don’t retake the Senate because not enough people turn out for Clinton? And if those candidates further down-ticket—the congresspeople and state legislators and judges and local pols—lose, how are you going to feel about that? In a presidential year, people go to the polls to vote for the president, not town supervisor. If turnout is down, other candidates go down with her.
Trump is arguably the greatest threat to American Democracy since 1860. This really may be the most important election of our lifetimes. Don’t sit it out on the sidelines.