So, election 2024.
When I was younger, I took absolute delight in understanding and picking apart politics. Process was this fascinating puzzle. So was figuring out how coalitions came together, how stuff winded through committees, how you could get surprising results, like Old Bush and Tip O’Neil coming together to put the clean air act into place. I wrote a lot about politics, both in blogs and in social media. I wanted to take this messy and complex thing and make it understandable. I still kind of want to do this sometimes.
But, that has gotten harder and harder and harder as the years have piled up. The first big hit was seeing how the Gingrich Congress unfolded. I was too young in 1994 to really understand what was happening, but Gingrich took the above approach and firmly rejected it in favor of a new, scorched-earth style of politics. Republicans of this period, quite overtly, stopped talking about careful policy proposals and opted for streamlined and centralized talking points. Right wing media arose at the same time, in the form of Rush Limbaugh and Fox News to reinforce this sort of newspeak, along with this notion of being at total war, even with the explicitly centrist Bill Clinton.
Even still, there was some joy in communicating the differences amongst even the Republicans. I’d hold primary watch parties. I’d liveblog states of the union. I’d cheerily talk about all of the stuff to kind of indicate why it *mattered* and how you could push the system in places to get outcomes. This got worse and worse. I endured the September 11th game of everyone who wasn’t explicitly with the Iraq war being accused of treason, and getting that much for even daring to suggest “perhaps going to Afghanistan without a plan is unwise.” Still, there were important and interesting differences inside both of the parties through the GWB era. And I could follow it, and have chats with my friends about all of it. It seemed like a critical mass of people were getting upset with how things were, and that the dam was breaking with the 2008 financial crisis. Obama won…
And around this time, three things happened that changed my relationship to politics. First, there was a hyper-acrimonious primary that was nearly completely online for the most part. It was very interesting watching friends groups destroy themselves over what was, to me, a very small policy difference between Clinton and Obama. Second, the republicans, out of racism and what seemed to be a realigning election, went absolutely apocalyptic in their resistance to Obama. The “everything gets filibustered” behavior became even larger, which lead to the third thing, which was Obamacare’s initial passage being pretty much the last hurrah of any ordinary process for a bill passing Congress. Even this process involved a bunch of nasty private negotiating, most notably Ben Nelson aggressively holding out unilaterally on the bill. This last feature would become a key feature of pretty much all future congressional wranglings, with committees being replaced by ping-pong legislation between the two chambers and the President, with committees being de-emphasized more and more, and the real understanding coming down to Kremlinology of the Speaker, the President, and the Senate Majoritiy leader, along with maybe some party holdouts. In such an environment, there is nothing really to follow, and even organizing is close to meaningless, because the decision comes down to “I hope this asshole from West Virginia is merciful”.
And so, Donald J. Trump got elected. There’s not much useful to add on to the pile of Donald Trump discourse, but all I really will say is that the purpose of Donald Trump is not to inspire, not to solve problems, not to do anything but to be mean. The media has tried to call him out for his namecalling and meanspiritedness, but that’s the point of him. His supporters are angry, and nihlistic, and don’t want solutions, they want someone to blame, and he is blaming them in blunt, harsh, and direct terms. Since the Republican party has become the Trump party, to the extent that for most of that period, the Republicans have had various blocks in the place in the system, there is no talk of anything but “surviving this”. Who, at the moment, the exact white whale that Captain Ahab is stabbing at from time to time may vary, but he is there to stab, and no amount of legalistic or philosophical discussion can get through to him or his supporters. And it’s turned my analytical brain off.
And so, we’re at election 2024, in late October. Most election forecasting shows a 50/50 shot for the election. We have, in Kamala Harris, someone who is desperately avoiding so many issues, most notably Gaza, but in the face of the Republican closing message on this election being “demonizing trans people”, she can only muster “I will follow the law” on a question of fundamental rights. No comment on Israel expanding its war to Lebanon, or on them firing on UN peacekeepers. She threw the people dying on the border under the bus in her first week of having the nomination, resetting the debate about immigration to “catastrophically deporting 20 million people” versus “draconian compromise border bill”. Even “codify Roe into law” does not do enough to protect people needing abortion care or for the numerous other people whose bodily autonomy is desperately threatened. Nor does it repeal the fucking Hyde amendment. Also, of course, we did not have a real primary to get here, which eliminated the opportunity to have a public internal debate about all of this. And, also, of course, the DNC was so so so so jingoistic, even for a political convention.
But the thing is, with this years swift boat attempt being trans people, with the catastrophic hate that Trump brings to the table (and I honestly think focusing on the policy in project 2025 misses the point — I doubt Trump will systematically enact an agenda so much as “grab power and scream at opponents, and act vindictively), it’s pretty clear to me that the Democrats will be directly blaming trans rights for an election loss, and that Trump will be out to punish whoever he can to feed his ugly little hate machine.
I will be voting for Harris and Walz next week, but any joy in doing so will be long gone. Whoever wins, I will be investing in my local community and disengaging from national elections. I will be annoying to my state and federal legislators, and I will never ever ever shut up about trans rights. I don’t believe in voting as anything other than pushing a button and hoping for a response, and do not have the moral sense of “endorsement” that a lot of people have, and I vote with that in mind. Instead, I simply hope for a next four years where continuing to fight will be easier and more survivable. Anyone else’s path can be what it will be. I can absolutely understand not being willing to do the same, particularly from a state where the electoral college has rendered your individual vote irrelevant. That said, this is what I am doing. If you are a Trump voter at this point, and wish to maintain ties to me, well, we will have to look each other in the face and really talk about what this man’s legacy has done to me and mine in the past eight years, and you will have to make a choice.
May all the fucking guns in the world be melted to scrap iron and we actually get past fighting about bullshit and actually start helping each other.
Zoë Michelle's little corner of the internet 