Contrary to what some newspaper owners think, it’s endorsement season. But for reasons that should be obvious, I’ll stay out of that brouhaha. Instead, I’ll just explain how I personally think about the election, starting with my vote.
I’m not going to vote for either of them.
But that doesn’t mean I’m neutral as to the outcome of the election. If I lived in a swing state, I might vote for Kamala Harris; I certainly wouldn’t vote for Donald Trump. But given that Harris will carry the District of Columbia, where I live, by at least 30 points, the “It’s a binary choice!” arguments leave me cold.
If I were to vote for Harris, it would be only to vote against Trump. I don’t think Harris has been a compelling presidential candidate, vice president or senator. I think she’s exceedingly wrong on a number of issues. But I also feel something like P.J. O’Rourke did in 2016, when he said in the course of endorsing Hillary Clinton, “She’s wrong about absolutely everything, but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”
I don’t think Harris is wrong about absolutely everything, but O’Rourke’s framing is right. Trump is simply unacceptable. The mere fact that he violated the American tradition of the peaceful transfer of power is inherently disqualifying. Enumerating all the other reasons not to vote for him — and there are many — would amount to shoveling another 10 pounds of manure into a 5-pound bag.
Moreover, speaking of manure-shoveling, the willingness of most Republicans to excuse Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election is another reason to hope he loses. His running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, and House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana have both embraced the embarrassing lie that we had a peaceful transfer of power because Trump ultimately left office on time. That’s like saying a prison riot didn’t happen because eventually everyone went back to their cells and served their sentences.
Breaking Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party is worth enduring a conventionally bad Democratic president for four years. That’s particularly true given that Harris will have a hard time getting much of anything through Congress, never mind anything catastrophic, because of the probability of at least partial Republican control.
Of course, Harris could surprise me and be a better president than I expect. But that would most likely require her to move to the center and work with Republicans on her “to-do list,” and that too would be good for conservatives. A more moderate Democratic Party would push America’s center of political gravity rightward, which is supposed to be the goal of the conservative movement.
And if Harris becomes a moderately failed president, that will also be good for a post-Trump Republican Party — much as Herbert Hoover was great for Democrats and Jimmy Carter was a boon to Republicans.
Many people attribute some cosmic significance to voting: “Tell me how you voted, and I will tell you who you are” seems to be the modern iteration of Carl Schmitt’s aphorism. I think this is pernicious nonsense. Elections are simply job interviews as well as performance reviews in which we hire and fire public servants. We’re not anointing kings and queens.
So I will write in some normal, decent Republican on my ballot — former Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, former Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse; I’m taking suggestions — because I want to send the signal that I would have been a gettable vote for a sane Republican Party.
In short, I’m thinking beyond this election because politics is a marathon, not a sprint. The Madisonian structure of our system assumes that there will always be another election. We have elections constantly in this country, for everything from coroners and insurance commissioners to governors and senators. Before polling, this was how politicians and parties took the electorate’s temperature.
My perspective may not make sense to those who believe the fate of the world hinges on this election. But the impulse to treat every race as a life-or-death “Flight 93 election” is a major reason our politics are so broken. It turns political contests about competing policies into religious wars about the nature of reality.
A conservative, I’ve been told, is not a conservative if he doesn’t vote for Trump. Nonsense. I won’t vote for him because I am a conservative, and I think this country needs healthy, rational conservatism.
Given this view, many have also told me I should have the courage of my convictions and not only vote for Harris but also shill for her. I earned a lot of strange, new respect from the left for refusing to lie for Trump, which is nice. But I see no reason to lie for Harris either.
