In a two-party system, voters have to make one of two choices Nov. 5, either the Democratic candidate, Kamala Harris, or the GOP’s regurgitated selection. One could simply not vote, although that seems like a lousy, passive choice. I definitely can’t take that route, as I still feel guilty about forgetting to vote for my local 2023 school budget. One could also vote third party. Please don’t. Third party or blank ‘protest’ ballots look like privilege to me, most often cast by those who aren’t on the verge of losing more rights in our work-in-progress democracy.
Elections are about our future, collectively looking forward while honoring and acknowledging the past. It’s hard, however, to witness the aged, bumbling, raging, grudge-holding GOP nominee and not feel stuck neck deep in very old mud.
Yet it’s never only about the candidate at the top, it’s about the policy platform and team a potential president has; those reveal a nominee’s ideas and values, and they should reflect our values — ‘our’ as in the voters — too. Successful political teams are composed of individuals of principle and skill who offer a positive vision for our future. An addled, volatile captain bereft of values who makes everyone else on his side get in line (or else!), is a bad choice for America, especially as he thinks the U.S. is in decline. Huh? I beg to differ, Donald.
The Harris-Walz Team and Democratic platform propose forward-looking policies most Americans want, policies that address our housing crisis, climate change, childcare and child poverty levels, paid family leave, reproductive health care access and sensible gun control measures, protect voting access and workers’ rights to organize, all while increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans and multi-national corporations.
In 2020 the GOP had no platform other than whatever their now-convicted-felon nominee said they were. This year they’ve got Project 2025, which looks like a white Christian nationalist’s dream scenario; which makes sense, because its drafters want to ignore that pesky separation of church and state principle — “the congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” — our founders put in the constitution. America is not, in fact, a Christian nation; we are a pluralistic society without a national creed, free to follow any religion we choose, including none at all.
Project 2025 calls for an end to marriage rights and legal protections for LGBTQ+ Americans, and the abolition of no-fault divorce; it outlaws abortion medication, which is safer than aspirin or Viagra, proposes making in vitro fertilization illegal along with any contraceptive method that interferes with the implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus. Sounds crazy, right? The self-described party of “small government” wants to insert itself into our doctors’ offices and bedrooms in a big way, including a total ban on pornography. No thanks.
Project 2025 also drastically cuts subsidies for farm insurance programs, eliminates the EPA, dismantles the National Weather Service, eliminates NOAA (which tracks hurricanes), ends the Federal Flood Insurance Program and the Conservation Reserve Program for farmer-landowners. No thanks.
The vast majority of Americans support our public schools because the vast majority of us attended them and continue to rely on them to educate our kids. But the GOP’s headliner wasn’t joking when he said he’d cut the Education Department: Project 2025 eliminates it entirely, returning full oversight of public education to the states. That’s what overturning Roe did, returned control of reproductive health care access to state legislatures. That return (I prefer the word regression) has not panned out well for pregnant people in GOP-led states; in Georgia, Idaho and Texas, miscarrying women are dying, or being airlifted to other states in order to receive basic health care. No thanks.
Project 2025 eliminates Head Start, free school meals programs, and requires public school students to take a military entrance exam from which private school pupils are exempt. Do we want climate-change-denying, book-banning censors controlling our schools and private lives? No thanks.
The GOP’s Project 2025 was written by activist conservative think-tankers backed by billionaires, a handful of whom have limited government experience during #45’s chaotic administration: Richard Hanania, Eric Teetsel, Troup Hemenwey, Spencer Chretien, Dustin Carmack, Russell Vought, Thomas Jipping, William Wolfe, Alexei Woltornist and Hans Von Spakovsky. And, no — I have not made those names up. Notice anything? The vast majority of Project 2025s conservative activist authors are pale males; they want to take us back, not to 1950, but 1650. No thanks.
Voting is a privilege and a responsibility. This election season, I urge you to read up on Project 2025, and to support Team Harris-Walz, and state Senate candidates Michele Frazier (51st district), James Meyers (53), along with congressional candidates Josh Riley (CD-19), John Mannion (CD-22) and Paula Collins (CD-21). We’re not going back. Tuesday, Nov. 5, we’re voting blue.