Tag: voting

I’m tired of throwing my vote away, so I’m voting ASP

For most of my voting life, people have been urging me to vote third party. The two-party system is broken, they say, and we have to send a message that we’re not happy with our flawed choices. It’s degrading to make ourselves vote for one or the other of these absurdly bad candidates, they say. We’re sending a signal that we’re ready for a change. 

I have always had some sympathy for this argument. As I’ve said several times, I can’t remember the last time I actually voted for someone. It’s always been a “hold your nose and check the box for the one who will do the least damage” kind of situation. I felt like it would be nice to stand on my principles and vote third party, but this current election is just too important. The stakes are too high, and I really can’t afford the luxury of throwing away my vote. 

Today I asked myself: What have I been doing, then? 

Here’s my voting record, since people seem to care: 

1992: George H.W. Bush
1996: Bob Dole
2000: George W. Bush
2004: George W. Bush
2008: John McCain
2012: Mitt Romney
2016: Hillary Clinton
2020: Joe Biden

I was never excited about any of the republicans I voted for, but when Trump came along, I held my nose so hard I almost broke it, voting for Hillary so she could stop him. She lost. I held my nose and voted for Biden in 2020, and he won. And I’ve spent the last few weeks gloomily preparing myself to vote for Kamala Harris, because while I don’t exactly hope she wins, I sure don’t want Trump to win. Don’t want to throw my vote away. 

Then I asked myself, Have I not been throwing my vote away? I don’t even mean that my person doesn’t win every time. I mean that even when I win, I lose. Biden didn’t stop Trumpism at all, and he didn’t stop Trump himself for long. (That’s not entirely Biden’s fault, but I’m hard pressed to see how he’s earned credit for any wins, either.)

And every time I vote this way, I stray a little further from even understanding clearly what I believe, or from feeling like it’s important, because my standards keep shifting out of sheer self-preservation. You have to change your standards if you don’t want to go insane. You have to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils, right? 

But we have noses for a reason. They’re a gift from God to deter us from consuming things that will hurt us. Plug your nose long enough, you forget what noses are for. 

Where are we now? Nobody feels any pressure to represent me in any way. Both side perpetually crap on me and then stand back and wait for a thank-you. Even when I do my duty and stop the Great Evil from landing, all it does it put more wind in its sails. If anything, Trumpism, with its bloodthirsty strutting imbecility is more pervasive and more mainstreamed than it was four or eight years ago. Doing my duty and voting for Biden didn’t help. (Voting for Trump also wouldn’t have helped, if you think I’m suggesting some kind of “Let the worst happen and let people learn from their mistakes” strategy.)

When the republicans endorse something I support, they do it in such a backwards, revolting way that I want to kick my own ass for being in the same room with them; and when the democrats endorse something I support, they do it so limply and incompetently that I can barely bring myself to look at them. And then they both spend the rest of their time doing dangerous and depraved things that I hate. 

Maybe the worst thing of all, I’m used to it. I no longer expect anything different.

I have been throwing my vote away. 

I don’t want to do it anymore! Before the next president is sworn in, I’ll be fifty years old, and I’m sick to death of being told I must do things that I know are stupid and wrong, and that I don’t think will work. I’m tired of it. I don’t want to do it anymore.

So, I’m voting American Solidarity Party. They seem to be aligned with Catholic social teaching, including in ways that will annoy both democrats and republicans. They’re not libertarians, whose platform always gets distilled down to weed and underage girls. They’re nowhere near as flaky and unprofessional as they were when they first appeared (and their logo is better, too). I can’t think of a single reason not to vote for them, so that’s what I’m going to do. 

People keep lamenting how polarized the country has become, and then they go ahead and say, “Well, I have to vote this way or that way, because these are the choices in front of me.” But where do those choices come from? They come from us, from how we vote. Keep doing something that you can clearly see isn’t working, and it really does become your fault. And if you want to argue that individual voters don’t really make a difference, then you’re just arguing against voting (which is also something I considered). 

But I’ll say it again: I hate where we are, and I see very clearly that the way I’ve been voting has helped get us here. The left doesn’t care about me, the right doesn’t care about me, and voting to stop the left or the right doesn’t work. How I’ve voting has not served me at all. I am all done with being told I must do things that work against me. This time, I’m going to walk out of the voting booth feeling like a human being instead of a used tissue.  

Will it change things? Will we ever have a truly competitive third party who even goes so far as to be invited to debates, never mind have a shot at winning the presidency? Who knows? Not this election, or any of the next several elections.

But besides voting, the other thing I have on my calendar for this fall is to plant bulbs. Crouch there in the cold, dig a little hole, bury the bulb, and walk away. We do thankless work now so that good may possibly come of it later. I wish a massive group of people had started voting third party back in 1992, to break the back of the two party system; but the next best thing is to start doing it now. 

And maybe someday, someone who isn’t like Harris and isn’t like Trump will run and win. Maybe! Don’t tell me, in 2024, that such a thing could never happen. The last decade has been one thing that could never happen after another, happening.

For the very first time, I am going to vote in a way that lets me feel a little bit of hope for the future, and brings me peace for now. I’m not throwing my vote away. I’m burying it, and maybe at some point it will even bloom. 

Image: solidarity-party.org, via wikipedia, Fair use 

Note: As you no doubt noticed, I screwed up the election timelines! Sorry about that. What can I say, I was writing fast. 

Doesn’t anyone vote against their self-interest anymore?

Today the Supreme Court will begin to hear a constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act. I don’t know how to talk about this without coming across as unbearably self-righteous, but mainly I just want to know that someone else knows what I’m talking about! Here’s the situation.

The ACA is what is making my family’s life tolerable right now. My husband and I are both self-employed, and even when one or the other of us worked for some company that offered employer-sponsored insurance, we couldn’t afford it. So, except for me when I was pregnant, we both went for nearly two decades without health insurance, and therefore with very little health care. This meant we always had the choice between risking bodily or financial ruin. We got away with it, more or less, because we were young. Now we are both 45, and the ACA, and the expanded Medicaid it funded in our state, came along just in time to save our bacon as we begin the long downhill slide into decrepitude. 

So I am following these hearings with fatalistic interest — interest because the decrepitude is speeding up, and fatalistic because there is nothing I can do about what the court decides. If the ACA is found unconstitutional and repealed, all I can do is petition my state reps to work out something else. That’s not nothing, but it’s not much. 

Here’s the part I’m having trouble conveying without sounding crazy. Several of my more liberal friends openly insisted that I oppose the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court specifically because they believed she would certainly favor ACA repeal. They made it clear that I was doing something bad to vulnerable people by not taking a stand against Barrett. And never mind that there was literally nothing I could do to change the course of events — and that events were by no means set in stone. The question of whether or not the ACA is constitutional was deemed irrelevant on the grounds that it’s very hard to be poor; and the fact that I know what it’s like to be poor just made my point of view more offensive in their eyes. I offended them just by not being personally angry at Amy.

I have a confession to make: I think the ACA is unconstitutional. Or it may be. I don’t really know, because I am a housewife who knows how to type, and those are my qualifications to speak on the topic of constitutional law. I very much hope our legislators find a way, with or without Barrett, to keep the ACA in place. I hope the courts decide it is constitutional, or that they can preserve the constitutional part that is useful to poor people. But I also hope that Supreme Court justices see it as their job to figure out whether something is constitutional or not! I’m really attached to this idea! 

There is no power on earth or under heaven that will keep you from instructing me, in the comments, about why I’m wrong about constitutional law, so go ‘head. But that’s not really my point. My first point is that I would never vote for a president based solely on the likelihood that he will appoint a judge who is likely to make a decision that I think will benefit me. This is partly because there are too many variables in play, and I’d much rather vote based on things that are indisputable, rather than things that are hypothetical.

But my primary point is that that every adult should vote against his self interest from time to time, and I will never stop being dumbfounded at how many people can’t accept this as normal, everyday virtuous American behavior. When I say, “I think so-and-so will happen, and that will likely hurt me, but thus-and-such is indisputably true, so I’m going to proceed based on that,” people look at me like I’m some kind of moron, and the want to argue with me that so-and-so will be BAD for me, BAD, you see. But I don’t make all my decisions on whether they will be bad for me or not, because I am not a psychopath. 

Don’t think I’m saying it’s only liberals who make these arguments. Conservatives do the exact same thing, just for different issues, and they’re just as baffled that I would ever vote for someone who has promised to do something that might hurt me. 

Am I missing something? Didn’t it used to be a quintessentially American thing that we cared about what was right, even if it wasn’t personally good for us? Didn’t there used to be such a thing as ideals that are separate from self-interest? Or am I laboring under some kind of penumbra of American Catholic masochism, wherein things that are hard and unpleasant automatically seem more virtuous? Or what?

I already know that I’m some kind of impossibly starry-eyed idealist because I still care about the separation of powers. Whatever. All I know is people I used to respect are straight up making arguments like “This vote is necessary to protect my stocks” or “I heavily depend on the coal industry, so I’m proud to give him my vote.” 

Don’t misunderstand. I get making compromises. I can’t remember the last time I went through a day without making compromises, political and otherwise. But I don’t get being okay with it. I don’t get pretending like it’s not a compromise. Making compromises should make you unhappy, either because it hurts your conscience or it hurts your bottom line. Voting should make you unhappy! Why aren’t more of you people unhappy? That’s what gets me. 

Maybe we really should be restricting who gets to vote — not based on land ownership or bank accounts or education, but based on your ability to even consider voting against your own self interest. Maybe voter registration should be designed like one of those wretched social experiments they perform on kids: You can eat this piece of candy now, or you can give two pieces of candy to your mommy. Except your mommy is the constitution, and the candy is your self-respect.

Listen, whatever party you belong to is going to screw you over eventually, because that is what parties do. If you think your party is going to always help you out all the time, that’s a sign you’ve become an absolute amoeba, and have simply learned how to brainwash your own self into believing good is bad. Voting against your self-interest is like swallowing something prickly because you’ve been gorging on pudding so long, you’re in danger of forgetting how to chew. Snap out of it! Especially if you make a big deal about honoring the founding fathers. It’s as if people think the point of democracy is so everyone gets their chance to be their very own King George III.  

Voting against your self-interest reminds you that no system will save you. The constitution won’t save you, either. But at least it’s something outside of yourself. You do remember there’s something outside yourself, right? 

Remember the scene in The Silver Chair, when Puddleglum stamped on the witch’s fire, and the children woke right up? He broke the spell partly because the magic fire was out, but also partly because the room now smelled like burnt Puddleglum. That’s what democracy should smell like: A nice, pungent stink of self-sacrificial burning flesh, that breaks the trance and reminds us we’re not in paradise here and never will be. More Puddleglum, please. 

***
Image via Pxhere. (Creative Commons)

Blessed are the rats, for we are all rats

Last night I stepped into a madhouse. I had driven to a local town to snap a quick photo of the election results to send to a numbers aggregator. A quick job—no need to talk to anyone or do anything but stay out of the way until the official results were in. I told the kids I would be back in time to put them to bed.

But 20 minutes before the polls closed, there was still a line stretched out the door of the polling place. A giant moon rose in the frigid air, and a mixed crowd of young and old chattered excitedly in the dark as they waited to cast their ballots. Feeling like something of an impostor, I told the police officer on guard, “I’m with the press; could I squeeze in here?” and he quickly cleared a path so I could get inside. One man shouted out, “Watch out, Jerry, she wants to talk to you!” and everyone laughed.

If I had had my wits about me, I would have stopped and talked to Jerry. But as it turned out, lots of others had plenty to say.

It was, as I say, a madhouse inside. People were clamoring to get in and cast their ballots, and I quickly realized that many had never voted before. They were not familiar with the process, and they weren’t sure how to do it. And there were so many of them that the line from the little curtained booths to the counting machines was all backed up. The machines themselves were full, and every third ballot or so got spit back out, and a cranky man named Paul had to open the machine and feed them in manually.

When I was growing up, election night felt like a party as we stayed up late snacking and joking, watching the electoral map fill up with numbers. I was baffled to discover the other kids in third grade weren’t wearing their Reagan/Bush pins every day and did not have strong opinions about taxes or Palestine. So at the polls last night, I was delighted to find a bustling crowd turn out for one of the most important elections in memory. Paul told me he had never seen so many voters before, and that hundreds of people had registered that day, most of them in the last hour.

“Good for us!” I said

He pulled a sour face. “I smell a rat,” he said.

And he kept on saying it. I questioned him and any other official who had time to talk. They all agreed: This was unprecedented. No one expected this many voters. They thought the bulk of citizens had gotten their duty out of the way with absentee ballots, and they were completely unprepared for this crush.

And no, they did not think this flurry of enthusiasm was a good thing. The same man who, in a lull, complained about how few people turned up for the town meeting every year was disgusted and suspicious to see so many people coming out into the cold to sign up to vote. I saw democracy; he smelled rats.

He was so sure it was a bad thing, I began to doubt myself. Maybe all these people shouldn’t be here. Maybe they didn’t really belong. What if they were scamming the system, somehow, even after showing their IDs and proof of residency? What if they were legit but voting for all the wrong reasons?

It is hard to talk about these things without sounding naïve. I know full well how ideas like “inclusiveness” and “welcome” can be exploited. We have all been in situations where people who really do have bad intentions take advantage of the open-hearted and take cover in a crowd of honest people. And once they are let in, they do the harm they came to do.

Read the rest of my latest for America Magazine.

Image: (cropped) April Sikorski from Brooklyn, USA, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Pray for our country, but try not to get too attached

“I felt so sad that I groaned aloud an Old Testament lamentation AAAAIEOOOOOW! To which responded a great silent black man sitting next to me on the blocky couch: ‘Ain’t it the truth though.’ After that I felt better.”

                                                                —Love in the Ruins, Walker Percy

 

For the last several months, I’ve slowly turned into Father Rinaldo Smith, and wish to spend my days in a tower, watching for fires, pooping into a bucket, and most of all not talking to anybody. It may not be helpful, but it feels like the least bad thing I can do in a most bad year. But today’s the day, so here’s my little speech:

If you’re a Catholic voting for Biden because you just love tearing innocent babies limb from limb in their mother’s wombs, don’t do that! That’s bad! Bad Catholic voter!

If you’re a Catholic voting for Biden because you think he has the guts and the grit and the vision and the know-how to turn this country right around, please send me your address so I may invoice you for your new bridge.

If you’re a Catholic voter and your parish has started playing the Star Spangled Banner at the elevation at Mass, and you definitely don’t want to vote for Biden, and yet HERE WE ARE, I’m with you. I’m going to vote for Biden, because I’m pro-life, because I still stupidly believe in the Constitution, because I don’t want war, civil or otherwise, and because some things are just not tolerable. It’s not a sin to do the best you can in a crappy situation, no matter what bozo told you what bozo thing, even if it was a priest. I’m with you. 

I’m going to a little town to pick up election results for an election night results aggregator, and I keep wondering if I should bring a gun in case someone flips out and gets violent (and despite the repeating riot loops you’ve seen on Fox, it’s many, many, many times more likely to be a far righter flipping out and getting violent than a far lefter). I doubt it’s necessary, but it pisses me off that I even have to wonder. Get it together, America. We will always have 99 problems but this should not be one of them. 

I guess before I leave, we will pray this litany to Mary under all her various titles as patroness of each state. (And get it together, Colorado!)

“You’re a fake Catholic going to hell” comments will be given the Mr. Tiddles the Obliging Kitty Cat treatment, so if you want to waste your time and mine, feel free. I’m just sitting here making meatballs anyway. 

Before I go back to my fire tower, what I really want to say is: Our duty today is the same as it ever was, which is: To keep our humanity, to remember the humanity of everyone we meet, to walk away if we’re having a hard time with that last one, and to remember our death. Pray for the dead. Pray for my friend Elizabeth who starts chemo today. Pray for my friend who’s having a very important disability hearing today.  Avoid useless fights. And pray for our country, but try not to get too attached. 

***
***
Image by Royalbroil via Wikipedia (Creative Commons)

On disenfranchisement and community

The question of felony disenfranchisement is in the news again. Depending on what state you’re in, if you commit a certain class of crime, you may be prohibited from voting even after you serve your time, sometimes for the rest of your life.

I won’t go into the particulars of the specific question in the news, because, as is so often the case, the really interesting part is how the law plays out in the life of actual people.

If you had asked me in the past, I’d probably have said that it only seems fair. I would have said that if you don’t want to play by the rules, then you shouldn’t get to be involved in any part of the process of making the rules; and that’s what voting is, I would have said: Getting to choose who makes the rules. That’s what it means to live in a democracy.

I think differently now, about a lot of things. Specifically about felony disenfranchisement, I began to change my mind when I heard a man tell his personal story. He said that when he emerged from prison after a long sentence for a felonious crime, he was a different man.

What he had done in the heat and foolishness of youth, he regretted every day of his life since then. It was right and just that he be punished; he accepted this. But when he emerged from prison in an election year, everyone around him was busily making plans and arguing and getting involved . . . and he was out.

It wasn’t just that this was unpleasant. It struck him to the heart. He felt that he was being placed outside the realm of human activity, and it changed how he thought of himself as a human. He was being told that no one expected him to act like a regular citizen. And so he didn’t. He began to fall back into petty crime, mugging and robbing and fighting.

A complex story, to be sure. No one thing is ever to blame for the actions of a human being with free will. But I was struck in a brand new way by how wounded was his sense of self by being excluded from this right, and how directly his sense of self affected his sense of self as part of the community. If you’re not part of a group, why should you act as if you are? You’d look like a fool.

There was a law that said he didn’t have a stake who represented him, and he took that to heart, and began once again to treat his fellow man as if they were not connected — and everyone suffered. He took it personally, and he acted out personally.

And in a way, it was reasonable to do so, because living in a community is a personal thing, which means that being made to feel like you’re not part of the community is also a personal thing.

These past few months, the daily news has been an absolute firehose of larger-than-life events. Topics of life and death importance; issues that strike at the very heart of what it means to be a citizen, a Christian, a human.

When I sit down to write, I am overwhelmed with helplessness at what one can possibly say, when everything that’s going on is so huge. And at the same time, the misunderstandings and dishonest discourse about these issues have also been huge, and hugely alienating.

People do not wish to understand each other; they only wish to rule over each other. And as someone who doesn’t wish to triumph or be triumphed over, I feel like I have nothing to say.

I have been feeling alienated from my own country, from my own democratic process, in a way that feels disastrous, like something I can’t recover from. I feel like huge machines are whirling away at their processes entirely without me. I feel like I don’t recognize the place anymore. I’m not literally disenfranchised; I can vote. But I’m having a hard time feeling like I should.

I don’t even feel like I can talk to anybody about important things, because the vast, violent processes of American politics are excluding me so definitively.

But there was one night when I didn’t feel that way…Read the rest of my latest for The Catholic Weekly. 

The GOP is forcing me to stop them because they won’t stop themselves

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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?

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

.

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.

Wait! Before you vote!

Here’s the most valuable advice you will receive all day:

Don’t forget to take the little “I voted” sticker off your shirt before you put it in the wash, or it will leave a mark.

 

Who am I kidding. It’s gonna leave a mark.

I’m a single-issue pro-lifer in a swing state, and I cannot vote for Trump

I’m a pro-lifer. I believe that the term “pro-life” encompasses so much more than abortion; but I also believe, as Flannery O’Connor says, that you can’t be any poorer than dead.

So when I vote, I vote for the candidate whose presidency will result in fewer dead babies, because you have to start somewhere.

Many of my friends who think the same way are voting for Trump. This is something I cannot do.

As a single-issue, pro-life, swing state voter, here’s what I know:

The President doesn’t just rush over from the swearing-in ceremony, wielding a copy of the Constitution and a Sharpie, passing laws or repealing laws by fiat. They are required to work with Congress. A President Hillary can’t just repeal the Hyde Amendment on her own, any more than a President Trump can’t just repeal Obamacare on his own. So if you’re voting for Trump just because you think Hillary will repeal the Hyde Amendment, then think again. The Hyde Amendment comes down to budgetary issues, and who passes the budget? Congress. So if you’re worried about specific legislation, think of who you’re voting for down ticket. They’re the ones who hold that power.

Presidents also don’t just show up at work and decide who’s going to be on the Supreme Court. The president can nominate someone, but then Congress must approve the nomination. Remember? Remember how Obama shamed the GOP by nominating Merrick Garland, who is widely known as a thoughtful, rigorous, non-partisan judge, and the GOP dug in its heels and blocked him out of spite? That’s how that works.

So if you’re voting for Trump just because of potential Supreme Court nominations, think again. The president can’t put anyone in place without congress’ say-so, and congress has shown that they’re more interested in vengeance and grandstanding than in anything to do with Roe v. Wade or any other pro-life legal case. They’ll say yes to any idiot Trump chooses if they think that idiot will grease their palms in matters that are actually important to them, and they’ll say no to any good judge he might accidentally choose if they think that it will impress their constituents to stand up to Trump.

Congress. Doesn’t. Care. About. Abortion.

Speaking of the Hyde Amendment and Obamacare, if the fate of tens of thousands of babies really does come down to funding, as I keep hearing from the “But the Hyde Amendment!” crowd, then riddle me this: The Hyde Amendment (and I keep accidentally typing “Hype Amendment,” which is pretty accurate) means that federal tax dollars can’t go for abortions. And it’s completely bogus. The federal government funnels millions and millions of tax dollars to Planned Parenthood, and has done so for years. Planned Parenthood is mainly in the abortion business. Money is fungible. Your tax dollars have been paying for abortions forever. The Hyde Amendment  is there so republicans can point to it and say, “SEE? This is why you have no choice but to vote for me!” That’s its only function.

But what about Obamacare? It’s a huge friggin’ mess. Lots of my friends are suffering because of it. But also, it pays for things like prenatal care for poor people who have no other insurance. It pays for thing like the delivery of babies, and for healthcare that keeps alive already-born babies (and children and teenagers, not to mention pregnant and non-pregnant women, and men). One of the reasons people seek abortion is because they think, “How can I possibly afford a baby?” And . . . Trump has sworn to repeal Obamacare.

So if you really believe that it’s mainly big government funding that makes the difference between life and death, you might as well vote Hillary, because she’s not talking about yanking Obamacare. (But those are ugly, leech-like Obamacare babies, not clean, noble Hyde Amendment babies, so screw ’em, right?)

Where do pro-life laws or pro-choice laws really come from, anyway? The president has all kinds of ways of influencing what kind of laws come before congress. The president can make deals with legislators, appointing people heads of committees, and promising rewards in return for favors done; and the president can occasionally pass executive orders or try to repeal certain laws, if they are extremely important to him and worth making a stand over.

But the political will and clout for big, important, life-changing laws come from the ground up, from the states and from individual communities. That’s where the momentum comes from. That’s how legislatures get the idea and the courage to introduce new bills: if they think their constituents will like it, and if they think someone will put money behind it. That’s also, frankly, how laws come before the Supreme Court: if someone has the stamina to keep challenging it, and if someone puts up the money to keep championing it.

I know you don’t want to hear that our legal system rises and falls on popular opinion and money, but it does. It’s really not mainly about who’s president. That’s simply not how it works.

So what happens (and what’s already happening) when pro-lifers openly support Trump and say that he represents our goals and values? Checks come pouring in to pro-choice candidates. Sane people take one look at him and say, “If that’s what it means to be pro-life, then helllllll, no.” A Trump presidency backed by pro-lifers would energize the pro-choice movement in ways we’ve never seen before, ever. Money, enthusiasm, legislative pressure, local and state election — all, all will go shrieking away from pro-lifers. And this is one thing that you really can pin directly on who’s president.

What happened during the Obama presidency? The pro-life movement was tremendously energized. Dozens and dozens of pro-life laws have been passed. Abortions have gone down. This is what it looks like when pro-lifers look at the president and say, “This is the enemy. Let’s fight back!” The very same thing will happen if Hillary is president.

And the very same thing will happen is Trump is president — only it won’t be pro-lifers saying it; it’ll be pro-choicers, and it will be pro-choice laws being passed, and pro-choice causes gaining clout and energy and donations. If I were pro-choice, I’d vote for Trump.

And now let’s talk about pregnant women in crisis. Let’s talk about how they get that way. Let’s talk about the fact that so very many pregnant women who seek abortion say they felt pressured into it. Where could that pressure possibly come from?

Maybe from men who treat them like sex objects. (This is how Donald Trump treats women, past, present, and future.)

Maybe from men who hear that their wife or girlfriend is pregnant and immediately see it as a problem. (This is how Donald Trump treated his wife.)

Maybe because they think they can’t afford to be pregnant and can’t afford to take care of a child. (Donald Trump doesn’t want poor women to have access to free healthcare.)

Maybe because they’re involved with a man who doesn’t feel any need to honor his promises. (Donald Trump is a rich man because he routinely backs out of his promises, refusing to pay contractors and declaring bankruptcy.)

Maybe because they’re living in a culture where men feel that they have a right to push their way into women’s lives, grab whatever they want from women, blame and shame women for anything that happens next, and leave whenever the relationship becomes inconvenient for him. (Donald Trump Donald Trump Donald Trump Donald Trump.)

Women end up having abortions mainly when they feel like they have no other choice: when they feel that their lives and their identities are only worthwhile if they’re more serviceable to people who have power over them.

And I have just described the world that Donald Trump builds around himself, and will continue to build as president.

Just yesterday, Baby Christian Trump said that a reporter’s accusation of sexual aggression isn’t credible because “look at her.” This is how he operates. This is how he sees women: as either pretty enough to be worthy of his sexual onslaught, or as too ugly to be worth anyone’s time.

Women seek abortion for a reason. Donald Trump, and the people who admire him and imitate him, are that reason. Trump has been telling us who he is. Pro-lifers, let’s believe him.

So how to vote, then?
-Vote for Hillary if you think she’ll be better, in the long run, for the unborn. Since I live in a swing state, this is probably what I will do, because I think it’s the least un-pro-life option.
-Vote for a third party candidate if you think he can’t win, but you just can’t stand to vote R or D.
-Vote for a third party candidate , or write in someone if you can, if you think your candidate won’t win, but it will crack open the monstrously dysfunctional two-party system that got us here in the first place.
-Leave your ballot blank, if you think that’s what this election deserves.

But don’t vote for Trump because you’re pro-life. It would be better to hang a millstone on your ballot and throw it into the sea.