I’m a lifelong registered republican, and I’ll probably vote straight democrat today. I’m not trying to persuade anyone. I’m just telling you what I’m thinking, because I know there are plenty like me.
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I’m pro-life, always have been. I’ve always voted for whoever seems the most likely to benefit unborn children. That’s the most important issue for me, because you can’t be any poorer than dead.
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But there are no abortion-related battles in my state right now, and anyway, the moderate republicans are identical to the moderate democrats in practice on abortion issues. It may be different in your state.
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Our current republican governor voted to expand Medicaid for another five years, and I’m tempted stick with him as a pro-life voter based on that. This is how I vote pro-life: I look at abortion first, and then I work my way outward to intertwined issues. The next closest pro-life issue is healthcare. This isn’t code for “I’m really pro-abortion, and I think it’s pro-woman to allow choice, but I’m co-opting pro-life language to salve my conscience.” Nope. I’m fiercely opposed to abortion, because it hurts women and children and men and society. I think republican policies tend to create conditions that make abortion seem necessary. It means nothing to say “You should give birth” but then make it impossible to survive giving birth unless you’re rich. But as I said, our current governor is about as pro-life as his democratic rival, and he did vote to expand Medicaid. So as a pro-lifer, I’m on the fence with that race.
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Why am I on the fence? Why not just vote for the republican who more or less does what I hope he will do? Why even consider voting straight democratic ticket?
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Because the republican party as a whole is directly responsible for Trump and for what he has done. It may be true to that there are multitudes of reasons Trump came to power, but it’s also true that you can blame original sin for the guy who knifed my tire, but I’m still gonna look at the guy actually holding the knife. And the guys egging him on, and the guys who held his jacket while he did it, and the guys already working on the “More Knifings 2020” campaign.
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So yeah, the GOP is responsible for the 2016 election. And most importantly, they are responsible for what he and his coreligionists will certainly do more of as they get bolder and bolder, in the next election and in general. I love my country and I hate what they’re trying to turn it into. As a woman, as a Jew, as the granddaughter of immigrants fleeing poverty and violence, as a lover of the Constitution, as a parent who values decency and justice, and as a follower of Christ, I see no safety or goodness in the GOP as it exists today.
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They’re not going to stop unless someone stops them. They’re just getting started. They need to be swatted down and told, “NO, this is not what we want our country to look like.” So I will most likely vote straight Democrat. There is very little else I can do, except love my neighbor.
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I don’t want to vote democrat. I don’t like the democratic party. I don’t like most of the ideals at their core. They hold dear many values I have always found repugnant. But even in their errors they are recognizably American, and their mistakes can be remedied. That sets them apart from where I see the GOP taking us. The GOP is taking us down a road that leads off a cliff. These things do happen. You can ruin good countries. It could happen to us. It is happening to us.
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I’m angry that the democrats are putting me in the same position that the republicans have done for so many years: saying “hey, we know you hate what we do, but what other choice do you have?” That’s not representation, and I’m angry that I’m not represented. This is not how the system is supposed to work.
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But what I keep coming back to is this: We are becoming a nation that is learning to accept atrocities. Before atrocities happen, people must become accustomed to them, and this is where we are now. The worst are gleeful about what’s happening to us, and the best are measured and patient. That’s not good enough. If my grandchildren ask me what I did to stop atrocities from happening, at least I should be able to tell them I freaking tried to vote them out.
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So that’s my course of action, as a voter, with very limited power. I’m not falling prey to relativism; I’m refusing to pretend there’s an easy solution. But you know who did have an easy solution? My party. My republican party, for whom I stood out in the snow with homemade campaign signs when I was eight years old, because they told me they loved our country and I believed them. They’re the ones who could have done the easy thing and stopped Trump and Trump wannabees in their tracks.
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They had so many chances. My party had a chance to not nominate him. They had a chance to not support him. They had a chance to repudiate him and his rhetoric. They had a chance to distance themselves from his policies. They had chance after chance after chance to constrain the ugliest impulses of the far right, and they decided not to, over and over again. In many cases, they modeled their approach after his, which in turn emboldened individual citizens to do the same.
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They didn’t stop him. So it’s up to me. I usually vote for or against individual candidates based on their merits, but today the GOP as a whole needs to be swatted down. They are irredeemably polluted.
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If republicans had done the right thing, I’d be voting for them now. But they didn’t, and so I won’t. It’s not a punishment or revenge. It’s an emergency.
Why vote for either major party? Voting Democrat is not going to stop the Republicans; it’s going to make them think they have to be more Democrat to win elections. The first thing they’ll dump is the pro-life issue (which they all ready de facto have done), then all the other “easy” platforms. Republicans have become steadily less family friendly in my 37 years of voting. First, their piss-down economic and warhawk policy was a disaster for families, then they steadily got wishy-washy on life and marriage. Nothing is going to change voting for either major party. If there was a third party candidate, I voted for him/her; otherwise, I skipped it. The whole system is crashing down anyway, so right now voting is merely symbolic. My prediction (from studying history) is that we are creating the perfect environment for a despot.
“We are becoming a nation that is learning to accept atrocities”. Ummm…your Democratic Party actually promotes and celebrates a woman’s right to choose (to murder her own child) and loves this so much that it is unwilling to break with it. Loves it. They promote the idea that motherhood is a backward burden and that “real” women don’t want to be held back from their jobs, and education and being CEO by some blob of tissue. This is what your democrats say, routinely…but your mad about Trump? Is there anything more offensive and violent than actually celebrating a woman’s right to choose (to murder her own child)? Seriously Trump has said some offensive things but nothing he has said even comes close to the lack of humanity celebrated by your Dems.
According to Guttmacher, 56 million abortions occur each year, worldwide. Abortion is the leading cause of death both in the US and in the world. Progressive politics which push contraception, abortion and euthanasia are entrenching the culture of death not just the US but in the rest of the world. Dems support that. They love socialized govt controlled “healthcare” that increases “access” to their pro-death nonsense. They love to foist policies on other countries that make them bow down to the culture of death. To say that prolife is more than just abortion misses the point. Yes, there are many things to care about in this life….but right now abortion is #1 killer in the world. 56 million children each year. Enjoy your “healthcare”.
Other than being your personal Bogeyman, and that I guess you don’t like Trump, you haven’t said what they are doing wrong. Your “feeling safe” is a personal issue, don’t look to politicians to fix it for you.
I voted mixed. I voted for the people I thought were best for the job, one or two happened to be Democrat.
I thought that was the way you’re supposed to vote.
IT IS.
Hi Simscha,
You still sound to me like a poor, triggered, victim, and not the Christian ‘saint-in-training’ that Catholics are called to be! Remember your mission- “to save a thousand souls”
Heaven is just one charitable thought away….may God free you from the obstacles of negativity and oppression. I am still praying for you, I hope you are praying for me!
Amen.
I just couldn’t vote for Feinstein because her entire face says “abortion”. I couldn’t vote for Newsom for governor because he’s got that slick philandering Phil vibe.
I voted for the other obscure Democrats. At least I can hope they are decent. The Republicans are capable of anything now. The old Democrats are just as dirty, but at least their bigotry, misogyny, and love of wealth is something they try to hide.
Well, that was the emptiest, most pointless piece of rhetoric I’ve ever read. “The GOP is bad because it’s…it’s…BAD! And it’s responsible for Trump who is just…BAD!…because…well, he’s Trump, and I don’t like him!”
Yawn.
Until you can explain to me why you believe that supporting a party that endorses violence (even violence against a sitting President — see Maxine Waters), a “we can’t be civil until we win” attitude, a blatantly pro-abortion platform (“pro-life candidates not welcome here”), a culture of mass hysteria and constant fever-pitch outrage, etc., is preferable to supporting the party that has, in the last two years, achieved remarkable results (highest black business ownership in history, record low black and minority and youth unemployment, unprecedented support of Israel and moving US embassy to Jerusalem, peace negotiations with N and S Korea, highest middle class income on record, beginning to fix the disastrous Obamacare legislation which has prevented so many Americans — yours truly included — from being able to afford health care over the last several years, to name a few), I won’t be wasting any more time on your site. These opinions are not only completely laughable, they’re dangerous for the people reading your blog who can’t seem to spot a logical hole of Grand Canyon proportions.
I used to respect your opinions, but this is completely banal, irrational, and mind-blowingly naive.
Trump himself routinely endorses violence. Trump and his party have repeatedly re-funded Planned Parenthood. Obamacare made it possible for me to have healthcare for the first time in over a decade. So you’re still willing to support him and his party because of a rise in low-paying jobs and some useless grandstanding and photo ops when he flies overseas? You’re a cheap date.
Do the Democrats not endorse violence? Do the Democrats seek to defund Planned Parenthood? Or take any action counter to the pro-abortion platform? Do they promote a political culture of civility and reasoned discourse? What, exactly, do they promise that you find so appealing?
Well, we both have our anecdotal evidence then regarding liberal healthcare policies. Obamacare made it virtually impossible for me to get the healthcare I need. It got so expensive for my company to provide insurance that they dropped it, and the cheapest Obamacare plans were too expensive for me to afford — not to mention the specialists I needed to see were never covered. I would have had to travel over 300 miles to see one who took that insurance. As a result I neglected the tests, office visits and exams that I need for the last four years. And I am not the only one in that situation. Some honest research into the subject will show you some interesting figures relating to the real number of newly-insured people under Obamacare and the number of people who got dropped from employer-provided benefits, when the cost of insurance premiums for companies got too high for it remain feasible.
I honestly cannot believe that racist, elitist, disdainful comment about so-called “low-paying jobs.” You would rather people be on the dole, unemployed, victims of the system rather than working honest jobs? How do you justify this contempt for these jobs, and the hard-working people who do them? If that’s where people start, what is wrong with that? Is it better for them to have no opportunities, to stay unemployed and hopeless, because there are no “low-paying” jobs to speak of and they don’t yet have the experience or credentials to get a higher paying job? What, please explain, is wrong with there being a stratification in wages? Is it fair to expect all jobs to pay equally—say, a landscaper and a neurosurgeon? If not, what is the differentiating factor? How will you decide who gets to make what? And moreover, how, exactly, has the Democrats’ war on poverty succeeded in raising people in lower class communities out of their dependency on the federal government? Has it not instead continued the cycle of victimhood? Told them they were incapable of standing on their own? Is that an empowering story, really?
Useless grandstanding and photo ops. Wow. That’s exactly what I think of when I think of the way—for instance—the situation with N. Korea has played out. Because you know the Dems all swore he was going to get us into a nuclear war. He was gonna do it, man, he was gonna fly off the handle and get us into a war!!!!! Remember that? They were all in a frenzy because he didn’t bow and scrape the way they thought he should.
It always amuses me that liberals…who think they are so multicultural and diverse, always expect the rest of the world to think just like them, to act and react just like them. It never even occurs to them that other cultures view diplomacy and negotiation differently than they do. It never occurs to them that maybe, just maybe, someone like Trump might know something about how to treat with people who are not liberal Americans.
Anyway. At least, with the Democrats now in charge of the House, when the things that have been steadily improving over the last few years suddenly start swirling the drain, we’ll know who to blame. I do love a bit of clarity.
Pax.
Oh boy. I think you have no idea who you’re talking to and are mad at someone who believes stuff I don’t believe. But okay, pax.
Lucretia made a very good point about Obamacare. I’m a financial advisor and fiduciary, and I had three clients lose their coverage because they didn’t fit the Affordable Care Act mandates. Two of them had serious pre-existing conditions – one woman with breast cancer and a man with cardiovascular disease. He’d had a heart attack and several years later a brain bleed, probably because of the blood thinners he was on. This was despite the “If you like your coverage you can keep your coverage” mantra from President Obama. They had to find new coverage and new MD’s since in the physicians they were using were not in their new plan. This was in New York.
God bless you for even attempting to to make a sensible argument. I believe this is what they call Trump derangement syndrome…
Lucretia, you’re 1,000% correct.
You are delusional. Your idiot in the Oval Office – who has the vocabulary of a dim third grader and the manners of a pig – routinely threatens violence against his opponents yet gets all huffy when we push back. None of the things you listed are anything like accomplishments, and his tariffs, trade wars, and general boorishness will kill the tepid recovery which is directed entirely toward billionaires anyway.
Your party is the party of angry dumb racists. Brian Kemp won Georgia by openly prohibiting black people from voting and running such an inept election that, among other things, he failed to deliver power cords to voting machines in black precincts. Kemp has a canvasser who writes for VDare that he supports Kemp only because his opponent is a black woman.
As for abortion, and this goes for Simcha as well, please tell me how many years should a woman go to prison for causing a miscarriage? Should companies that allow women to ski, ride horses, exercise vigorously, or any other activity that could remotely cause a miscarriage be sued if they do so? Because that’s what will happen. If you think fetuses deserve the same rights as adult women, you automatically deprive women of those rights and make us nothing but carriers for possible pregnancies. Why don’t you just go ahead and make us the legal property of men?
Karen don’t sugarcoat your opinions.
Much love. **** haters.
The only thing I disagree with you about in this case is that Democrats are better than Republicans when it comes to Jews. They are hostile to Isreal and Jewish people. They just couch it differently than the right. At least Trump moved the embassy. Small thing, because he’s repellent and horrid, but it’s one time I admired him.
Here’s an alternate view on why to vote straight Republican:
A. Although a purported “Hitler” has been blitzing the headlines for 2 years, the institutional bulkheads have held. As horrible as individual events have been, they’ve been isolated events, not a government action.
B. This isn’t as bad as the 70s.
C. The democrats are so out of ideas that if they have a repeat disaster at the polls (after two years of Trump to help them) by doubling down on identity politics, cloud-cookooland social program pitches and “pro-choice-to-the-point-of-no-choice” (aka: repealing Hyde amendment), maybe they will move back to the middle and actually seek to be a diverse party coalition again. It’s better that this happen now than to wait another two election cycles for the Republicans to wise up, maybe.
The Republicans have been hijacked by righty wackos, the Dems have been hijacked by lefty wackos; the party that is first to self-correct will get the 80% of us in the middle.
And I don’t care which party that will be. Maybe we need “rest of us” party. Oprah/Jordan Peterson 2020! Get crackin on that, SF!
1. What do you mean by “identity politics” Cite to specific examples, with links to original sources.
2. What is a “cloud cuckoo-land social program?” Cite examples and links to original sources
Original sources are documents produced by Democrats describing these things, not crap from Breitbart. If this is true, then you can provide evidence of it.
Couldn’t agree more. I dumped the Dems over Clinton, (Bill), switched to Independent in 2015, voted 3rd parry at the top of the ticket in 16 and R down ballot. No more. This year I hit every D I could find. The Republicans are poisoning every cause they touch.
Thank you for being able to articulate what I have been feeling.
Same here. Thank you, Simcha.
Do you support what the Democrats attempted, and were willing to do to Kavanaugh? That was so low, so blantantly exploiting identity politics, and clearly a systematic witch hunt, it turned me staunchly against Democrats even though I despise Trump. See Jonah Goldberg on this point.
https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/columnists/national/jonah-goldberg-belief-now-outweighs-truth-in-the-kavanaugh-hearings/article_805e227e-db97-56bf-9315-ff5f2b714a9a.html
For the first time in my life, I voted the straight ticket, the Republican ticket. What clinched it for me was the alarming sight of the silly, silly woman attempting to pry open the great bronze doors of the Supreme Court building with her bare hands. I didn’t see how I could support those willing to morally manipulate and trigger people like that. I, too, despise Trump. I suspect the Republicans are mostly embarrassed by him.
What is so wrong with a woman opening a door? Do you hate women for existing in public as something other than flat helpless doormats?
Well I’m not quite sure which policies Trump has foisted on the Country that you object to. Yes, I (registered Independent) would have liked to see, Kasich, or Rubio, or Carly, or any of several others. And they would have won. But what policies do you object to? His Supreme Court nominees? His tax cuts and deregulation? Or is it just his big mouth? The fact that he adopted the same slash and burn tactics the Democrats always use? I live in NY and when the Dems take over the State Senate we’ll have the codification of Roe v. Wade on steroids (just in case it gets reversed) as well as something called “aid in dying”. Who needs hospice or therapy for depression when you can save $$$ with “aid in dying”? Yes the Republicans are gutless, but as it says here, the Democrats are out to get us. https://tomfaranda.typepad.com/folly/2018/11/bb-christians-face-choice-between-party-thats-a-hypocritical-mockery-of-their-faith-and-one-thats-op.html
Thank you for speaking up! You are right! The Dems ARE leading us off the cliff! I agree the GOP made mistakes, but putting anyone in office who will vote leftist is a big mistake😥.
I agree until you say that the Democratic Party can be remedied while the republicans cannot. Why do you think that? I personally think they’re both too far gone.
Thank you for writing this. I’m an independent, usually voting both sides of the aisle. But today it was all Democrat.
I’ve posted this on FB and Twitter as the best thing I’ve read all this election cycle.
(In the website space below I linked a blog essay I wrote about abortion.)
YES GIRL. As always, you say exactly how I’m feeling. I’m voting Democrat today for the first time in my life. I don’t feel great about it. But I just CANNOT DO IT ANYMORE. CANNOT. I will not let the Republican party rest on their laurels (my vote) with their false pro-life rhetoric. I literally used to take my mailer from Right to Life to the polls and vote that way. No more. There’s more to pro-life than abortion, and I don’t for a second believe that the Republicans are actually pro-life. I don’t even believe they are predominately pro-birth. I think they believe they have an easy “gimme” with pro-life Christians, and I refuse to be a pawn in their dangerous games any longer.
I agree Katie.
Amen, Sister!!!