[Header Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash]

Although hard to believe, it has been almost 20 years since I was sitting in a hotel with a friend after a bit too much day drinking in New Orleans during an education conference.

This was the spring before Katrina, and our conference was in the convention center that would become infamous during that disastrous hurricane.

We were watching Charlie Rose interview George Carlin from 1996. Like W.E.B. DuBois, Carlin explained why he was a non-voter.

While I have never been a partisan, and I have always felt a great deal of skepticism about politicians, I had dutifully voted since turning 18 in 1979.

Neither DuBois or Carlin, I must emphasize, were taking a “both sides” approach to politics in the US; however, they were confronting how in the context of their time that the policy implications of voting were not as clearly defined by who you voted for or what party came into power.

One of the first scholarly pieces I published, in fact, came out in the late 1990s; I made the case that for education policy, specifically in my home state of South Carolina, neither party offered any promise of the sort of education policy I supported.

So in the 2000s I became a non-voter also.

For me, the other aspect of this practice was (and remains) that in SC, we are an entrenched Red state; most elections have only a Republican on the ballot. Whether I vote or not in SC has no impact on the outcome.

This certainly made my stance a pale form of performance (or non-performance)—merely symbolic.

Just about a decade into that commitment, I did recognize that the era of Trump was different.

It was futile, but I voted for Hillary Clinton, and I begrudgingly voted for Joe Biden. Neither vote made any difference in SC, of course.

Yet, there simply is no way to justify voting for Trump or voting/not voting in ways that allow Trump to win.

By 2024, we can no longer claim that policy outcomes are essentially the same regardless of party in power.

Too many were naive, and we collectively allowed the US to render women not fully human with the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The US has been awash in book bans, curriculum bans, assaults on LGBTQ+ rights, and a horrifying realization that Christian Nationalism is a possible future reality for a country founded on religious freedom as well as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

In recent weeks, the nonsense arguments that people couldn’t vote for Biden has been unmasked as well.

With Biden out of the picture, the utter horror and emptiness of Trump/Vance have come more fully into focus (mostly for those who refused to see).

Trump hasn’t changed.

Only the context has.

Yet some continue to refuse to support Harris/Walz for so-called ethical positions about Palestine or some other essentially leftist or progressive ideal.

Before Harris chose Walz, I too championed a key policy concern of mine; I publicly rejected Shapiro for his horrible education policy (reminding me of the Obama/Duncan era of education reform disasters).

However, I was certain Shapiro would be chosen, and, yes, I would have still voted Harris.

How on earth could not voting Harris in any way help the issue I was committed to?

There is no universe in which Trump being elected benefits any position you believe is leftist or progressive.

The people in Palestine and Ukraine, women in the US, LGBTQ+ people in the US, Black Americans—none of these groups with whom many of us stand as allies will be helped if Trump is not elected.

The only option is Harris/Walz—regardless of the many credible criticisms we may have of their policies and even them as people.

Yet, as people, they seem at least worthy of my support in the context of mainstream politicians.

You must be incredibly naive to think there are politicians who are not at least ethically compromised. Those politicians who are wealthy are almost certainly doubly ethically compromised.

With Trump/Vance, we have candidates who without question cannot be supported because of deep personally failures and anti-democratic policy commitments.

Ultimately, however, we cannot allow this presidential election (or our democracy) to remain mired in the cult of personality.

Frankly it doesn’t matter if a candidate is likable; we should be voting for what policy insures the most human rights and human dignity to the most people.

In 2024, this isn’t even a close question.

Republicans are the party of bans, denying rights, and seeking ways to impose a singular way of living onto everyone, Christian nationalism.

Democrats have been an impotent party, a spineless party.

But Democrats are our only option if we have any hope for not only full humanity and rights throughout the US, but also imploring the US to extend its power to protect all people throughout the world as well.

It seemed a principled option just a couple decades ago to be a non-voter. Or even a protest voter.

It seems capricious, self-defeating, and frankly calloused to take that stance today.

I love George Carlin who profoundly shaped my life, but I must say today, there is nothing funny about politics and elections in the US.

Voting in 2024 is life-or-death for the most vulnerable among us, which now include more than half the US—the girls and women who call the US their home.

What am I voting for? Harris/Walz.

Because that is a vote not for those two people, but for all of us, all of humankind, all of human decency.

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Note

For the grammar Nazis, let me clarify I recognize that “whom” is, at best, in Hospice and I have never trafficked in the “don’t end a sentence or question with a preposition” camp. I know, I know, many think the headline should be “For What (Not Whom) Are We Voting?” I humbly disagree.