The U.S. Presidential election is a week away, and I wanted to explain how I am voting in it. This is not an endorsement; I don't expect anyone to vote like I am. However, I do feel that I am making a logical and sensible decision, given the choices before me.
If you were not aware, the election is between Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump. In the state of Illinois, where I reside, one other candidate is also listed on the ballot.
I have quite a bit of history when it comes to voting in elections. I turned 18 in 1982 and voted officially in that election and voted in my first Presidential election in 1984. Before that, I had voted in 2 mock elections, one in 1976 at Grove Jr. High School where I voted for Gerald Ford over Jimmy Carter, and one in 1980 at Elk Grove High School where I voted for Carter over Ronald Reagan. Incidentally, I voted for Carter for the same reason I voted against Carter: I thought that the incumbent candidate needed more time to complete their work. On both these occasions my views were in the minority.
My procedures for choosing who to vote for have evolved since those mock elections days. I take the responsibility to vote very seriously. Initially, I try to pick between the majority party candidates, and if neither stands out to me as the best choice I may vote for an independent or write-in candidate. I believe one time, four years ago, when I found no candidate worthy of my vote, I just skipped down to the next race in the election.
The first thing I try to determine is whether the candidates are credible. That is to say are they believable? Will they do what they say they are going to do? It may surprise some people that this is the first thing that I try to determine. Why not look at what the candidates say they believe and vote on the one I agree with the most? Why not? Because, if the candidate is not credible it doesn't matter whether I agree with what they are saying if I don't believe they can or will do it.
Among the two major party candidates, there is only one credible candidate and that is Vice President Harris. When I read the issues page of her website I believed her when she said these are the issues that are important to her. So, she is credible in that regard.
Unfortunately, there is very little that Donald Trump says that I believe. To me, he is not a credible candidate. He says that he won the last election, In fact, 3 minutes into his Jan 6th, 2020 speech at the Capitol Mall, he stated "We won this election, and we won it in a landslide". This was never a credible statement. Trump has been creating a false narrative since he first declared in 2015 that he was seeking high office and that the only way he could lose is if other people cheated. So naturally when he lost the election it was because of massive fraud.
There are very few things that Trump has said that I have believed. Most of his few credible statements are not positive. He said recently that if reelected he will consider arresting his opposition. As scary as that image is and how undemocratic it seems, I can totally believe that he would consider that. When he was caught on a hot mike saying he wanted to force himself on women, I found that credible. Morally reprehensible, yet credible. When as President, he maligned the countries that were sending us the most immigrants, I truly believed that he could be so mean-spirited and uncaring. Unfortunately, all those statements match to what has already been revealed by his character. When he makes positive claims, his character, and his history of previously false claims, make it virtually impossible for me to believe a word he says.
This is why when he claimed to be pro-life when running in 2016 I did not believe him. When he actually did appoint conservative judges and justices I was surprised. Those appointments did lead to Roe vs. Wade being overturned in 2022. So you might think that I would now find Trump credible at least on this issue. No, Trump has backpedaled on his abortion views for the 2024 election and so I can't find him credible on that issue either. I chalk it up more to political expediency than anything else.
In most Presidential elections since I started voting in 1984 there have been (in my opinion) 2 major party credible candidates running against each other. The only exceptions are the aforementioned Donald Trump and Bill Clinton. In Clinton's case, I never found him to be a trustworthy candidate.
If there are 2 credible candidates I don't then try to decide who's more credible. I decide who's more worthy of my vote. Only credible candidates are worthy of anyone's vote, and then I am free to decide from who's left.
The Republican Party has done the country a great disservice over the last 3 election cycles by not putting a credible candidate on the Presidential ballot, Fortunately for them, most voters look for a candidate who purports to match their views first and then judge the character of that candidate. This puts the voter in a difficult situation by looking for candidates who agree with them they open themselves up to be maneuvered by master operators like Clinton and Trump.
In 1992, it seemed like the Republicans saw Clinton for who he was, but the Democrats failed to grasp that. They were enamored with the idea of putting the first Democrat in the White House since Carter won in '76. In 2016 despite a field of credible Republican candidates, the Republicans reimagined themselves in the worst possible way picking a bully who could win and make populist gains at the risk of the party's soul.
I think it might be easy to think that if there is only one credible candidate that is the candidate you should vote for. But this has simply not been true for me. I could have gladly supported Joe Biden years ago when he was a Pro-Life Democrat, especially over Trump. Biden decided to believe that a Pro-Life Democrat could not elect his President and changed his stance so he could get the job he always wanted. Biden abandoned his beliefs for the expediency of office for the same motives that the Republicans abandoned their integrity to embrace Trump. In the 2016 and 2020 elections, this put me in quite a pickle. I didn't believe that anyone should vote for Trump and I could not bring myself to vote for Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. While I found both these candidates credible, my conscience would not let me support them.
People would tell me you must choose the lesser of two evils. I would say why should I choose evil? Also, if I had to choose the lesser of two evils in those elections it would not have been Trump. I'm not even sure that Trump would ever admit that he was the lesser of two anything. "People are always telling me Don you're so evil. Frankly, If I was going to be evil I'd be amazing at it."
Adam Kizinger made an impassioned speech at the 2024 DNC urging his fellow Republicans to vote for Harris in the election, It is tempting but the truth is that the 2024 election has me in the same pickle. I won't consider Trump and when I do consider Harris, I can't get past her pro-choice positions. It's frustrating because I would have gladly supported someone like Nikki Haley or Kizinger and will probably end up writing one of their names on my ballot. I'm not picky, I just want to be able to choose between two credible candidates and the Republican party keeps on robbing me of that opportunity.
