Undecided voters, I have a question for you:

HOW?

How do you look at these two candidates and tap your finger thoughtfully on your chin and think, hmmm, well, he does seem to be a bit unhinged, but her policies are not calibrated to my explicit and exact benefit.

How do you listen to him, the t-shirt cannon of bullshit, fire lie after exaggeration after falsehood after wild, unbelievable conspiracy theory and think, yeah, maybe he’d be a good keeper of the principles of America. How do you listen to her—cogent, forceful, intelligent, warm, humorous, and direct—and think, meeehhh, not so sure she’s any different from the other guy.

How do you compare his 9 years of chaos-making as a political figure versus her 25+ years in public service and/or elected office and think, well, she’s just not qualified, or she’s not ready.

How do you look back at life four years ago and think things were better? Remember the onset of COVID and all the uncertainty, havoc and anxiety it engendered and how Trump’s lack of leadership, his administration’s half-assed attempts at addressing the crisis just fed the confusion?

How do you not understand that inflation is a global issue—a problem affecting every nation with any sort of economy as an after-effect of the disruption of the pandemic? How do you think Biden or Harris or Democrats have anything to do with it or any means of simply fixing it? I get that everything is more expensive—it’s awful, it’s untenable, truly—but no one can flip a switch and make everything cheaper, no matter what Trump tells you. We are all at the mercy of market forces no one has meaningful control over. (Thanks, in part, to the anti-regulation bent of the Republican party, but that is neither here nor there…)

I understand how Trump supporters fail (and never try, really) to consider anyone else besides their cheetoh king—their reasons for following him are various, and I know better than to expect reason or circumspection from that whole crowd. I know the Fox News-Newsmax-4Chan-Xitter-various-conspiracy-theory-subreddits-etc reality they live in is drastically different from mine. Fine. Those 33%-ish of Americans can keep their fine opinion of the clown. I don’t care.

I understood why people didn’t want to vote for Hillary. I understood why people didn’t want to vote for Biden. I do not understand how people can look at Harris then look at Trump and think, hm—I’m on the fence. The only substantive arguments I’ve heard from people hesitant to vote for her involve the Israel-Gaza war and her somewhat waffle-y take on frakking. But come on, people. Consider the alternative.

How can you understand him? Do you listen to him? Do you listen to the disjointed, unconnected words and thoughts that pour from his mouth? His most clear and cogent talking points are terrifying in their ramifications. Eg, tariffs—no way huge tariffs on imports is not going to badly impact American consumers and potentially exacerbate inflation to whole new heights and likely implode our (currently strong by all the usual benchmarks) economy; tax cuts for the wealthy—do you really believe Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk need the extra scratch more than a single mom with three small kids and two full-time jobs? Then there’s immigration—I will agree the immigration system is broken beyond belief but the idea of deporting millions of people, ending birthright citizenship and creating detention camps for “illegals” will solve exactly zero problems and will only create more; reproductive rights—he waffles conveniently on the topic given the mood of the day and yet people think that a national abortion ban won’t actually happen? That IVF won’t actually become illegal? Why would you trust that he’ll come down on the right side of that in office? You do understand he does not care, right? He’ll just do whatever his Evangelical minders will tell him, no matter what he said during the campaign.

Which brings me to another point: as big of a problem Trump is, he is not THEE problem. He is the truck laden with explosives that Christian nationalists want to drive into the American system of government (see: Project 2025). He is the unfun orange-flavored Kool-Aid Man busting through the norms of secular democracy. Trump as an individual is a sideshow. Trump as the vehicle for putting in place an entirely new federal government led by loyalists and Christan nationalists and feckless capitalists and any number of other people out for themselves and their own interests is the real problem, and I don’t understand how undecided voters can’t see that.

Can you tell me?

How do you not see that he’s the useful idiot of very smart, calculating people like Leonard Leo, who’s been packing the courts with right-wing activists for a decade? People like Speaker Mike Johnson who would happily begin the process of forming a new America in the approximate shape of Gilead from the Handmaid’s Tale? (And, by the way, if the Republicans keep the House in 2024, he’ll be third in the line of succession; meaning if Trump wins, and he croaks or gets 25th-Amendment-ed, JD fucking Vance will become president and Johnson will become the VP. How’s that for a national nightmare? And speaking of that charisma-filled smoke show Vance—childless women are miserable and don’t have a stake in society? Nice, bro. The nineteenth century called. They want their old-timey misogynistic bullshit back.)

I am the first to admit I exist in a bubble of my own. I am a liberal, definitely. And I’ll be the first to admit Democrats in general and Kamala Harris in particular are not perfect; they are not some magic bullet. I’m not saying that Democrats have all the answers or will create some kind of strife-less Utopia. I’m not saying there aren’t Democrats who are not as self-dealing and disingenuous and self-righteous and corrupt as many Republicans and MAGA loyalists. Political parties are made up of people and sometimes people just suck.

But sucky Democrats are not trying to burn American democracy down. Sucky Democrats are not trying to remove bodily autonomy from half the population. The shittiest of Democrats is not going to attempt to overthrow the government. The worst of the Democrats are not interested in forcing their own religious beliefs on anyone (and don’t try to tell me “woke-ism” is the same thing; asking people to examine their own prejudices and be alert to other people’s experiences is not the same as religious extremism). And importantly, no matter how bad some Democrats might be, you can still work with them. You can get shit done with them. And if they really fuck up and get caught, they possess some modicum of shame that is frankly lacking in most modern Republicans.

Take Bob Menendez as the most recent example of a very shitty Democrat. Corrupt. Self-dealing. Liar. Insisted to the end he’d done nothing wrong. But still resigned (granted with a bit of a pout) after his conviction. Because the other Democrats made him do it. Because there was enough of a collective conscience among them to insist that he remove himself from Congress. Republicans have no such sense of shame and accountability, George Santos notwithstanding.

I’ve heard the refrain that everything Trump touches turns to shit—sort of like a reverse Midas. Well, think about it: Trump has had his grubby fingers up America’s skirt for almost ten years. This election is our last, perhaps only chance to slap him across the face and say, no, sir! It’s our final opportunity to create a more workable normal—even if it’s a normal with some problems. (And there are A LOT of problems, to be sure.)

Kamala Harris will not solve all the problems. No one will solve all the problems (except, possibly, an enormous meteor). But what she will do is lead a government of experienced, intelligent people who have a greater interest in searching out real solutions to those problems rather than making more. An administration that is more focused on the good of the country and the world than themselves. People who understand the role and responsibility of being a public servant, of being entrusted to a public office. Not a person whose sole criteria in literally every circumstance is what’s in it for him.

Also, finally, for fuck’s sake, it’s time we see how a woman can do the job.