1.

When you vote for Jill Stein, you don’t elect Jill Stein; you help elect the leading candidate that you would rather have lose.

We have a two-party system. In a two-party system, voters can elect one of two parties and, assuming that party has power, work within that party to try to bend it more towards their side of the party.

If you vote for Jill Stein because you are not happy with the Democrats position vis-a-vis Israel’s expanding wars, you are voting against the only person in the United States of America who still has both the desire and the opportunity to lead the entire nation. Netanyahu is using war to keep his right-wing allies happy and thus to keep his power in Israel. Netanyahu would prefer a Trump victory; Netanyahu is moving towards autocracy, and he has long been leaning strongman; he would prefer to have an anti-democratic strongman indifferent to humanitarian restraint leading the USA. Someone in the club of those who understand that power is most of all for keeping to oneself, and for using to win, to crush opponents, to be “great”. Trump has long signaled that he only cares about his supporters; the notion of rising above us-versus-them thugocratic score-keeping and governing for the whole nation is completely foreign to him; he also — one would point out to his supporters — is willing to sacrifice them for any political expediency (see, for example, his evolution on abortion, which obviously he personally couldn’t care less about either way).

The democrats are still trying to be the president of both Jewish and Muslim American. The Democratic Party is not perfect, but it is still working from the old blueprint, the one where we are one nation under God — free to worship in the way that speaks to us; the one where we remember that though we disagree on many things, we agree on what is essential: on the dignity and blessedness of all humans; and on the values (aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, loving-kind, joyfully-sharing) and systems of government (checks on individual power, a leadership beholden to the people) and culture (one people willing to recognize their shared humanity and share the rights and duties of a free people in a free land) that make it possible for us to protect ourselves and each other from tyranny (an upside-down government, where crime at the top means that dishonesty, cruelty, and corruption are rewarded; and honesty, decency, fair play, and good will are punished).

There is no perfection; but by supporting Donald Trump after all he has said and done, the Republican Party is signaling that democracy is dispensable: They are signaling that compromise, building consensus, and serving the whole nation knowing that the majority will eventually decide whether or not you are hired for a second term — that all that is dispensable. There is no perfection, but it seems a shame to give power to the party that is no longer interested in creating a government wide and fair enough for all the US citizens to find shelter, nourishment, and a path forward all together. The better guess — for what is a vote but an educated guess about the past present and future? — would be telling Trump and his GOP that their anti-democratic, us-versus-them, lies-based politics are not what we are looking for from our political leaders.

Trump and Netanyahu hope the war in Gaza will create an intractable problem for Democrats, causing them to lose the support of both Muslim and Jewish Americans. But the democrats are vulnerable here because they need the support of minority groups; the Democrats are vulnerable here because they are trying to be the whole nation’s party; but that is not a mistake; that is what the leadership of a healthy democratic republic does.

This is a difficult political situation for the Democrats. On the one hand, the actions they are expected to control are those of another state’s leadership at a time when that state’s leadership is heading towards autocracy and needs this war to retain power, and would anyway prefer to help Donald Trump become president of their most powerful ally; on the other hand, the Democrats need the support of both Muslim and Jewish voters throughout the country. There will be no perfect outcome here; but it seems a shame to reward those who have shown indifference to democracy, restraint, and the universal rule of law because Realpolitik has squeezed those who are still fighting for those values into a difficult spot.

Anyway, the main point here is that this is not a parliamentary system. Trump is not going to have to form a government with the Greens. He is not going to put Jill Stein in charge of foreign policy. If Donald Trump wins the presidency, he is going to do whatever Donald Trump wants to do with all power. What we have in the USA is a two-party system; in a two-party system, one of two parties will win power and inter-party politics will decide how individual policy decisions are shaped. Well, that and lobbyists — but we will leave until later a discussion of the very real problems facing our representative government

2.

When you vote for Donald Trump, you don’t vote for you to get to be a Russian oligarch with your own special money laundering bank in a chic part of Moscow, nor do you vote for you to be the mafia don of your home state;

you vote for a man who illegally used his first term in office to enrich himself, and who attempted to consolidate power by undermining the independence of the other branches of government and attacking press freedoms and by replacing lie-based communication with honest policy discussions, and who, at the end of his term in office, attempted to remain in office by subverting a peaceful and fair election through a variety of legal and illegal schemes — but who committed all these anti-democratic maneuvers a little haltingly, surrounded as he was by a GOP that still largely believed that we must abide by the rules, norms, and standards of our democratic republic:

If you vote for Donald Trump in 2024, you vote for that same man, but after he has reshaped his party in his image, sidelining the kind of people who stood up to him when he tried to (to cite one of many examples) force his own Department of Justice to send a letter to the state of Georgia falsely claiming that the DOJ had found irregularities in Georgia’s 2020 election results, a party that now elevates those most willing to help Donald Trump twist the rules of government to his (to cite one of many examples: this GOP has replaced Mike Pence — who certified Joe Biden’s victory because Joe Biden clearly won the election fair and square and this is a representative democracy — with JD Vance — who has stated that he would’ve honored Trump’s request to not not certify Joe Biden’s victory, which would’ve set Trump up for his next step in the scheme: having the electors he planted in the states he lost to Biden cast their votes for Trump):

That is to say, voting for Donald Trump will not make you a kingpin, or even a high ranking loyal lieutenant in his gloriously us-against-them operation, or even a trusted hitman in his palace: Voting for Donald Trump will help a man with criminal instincts with his ever-more-naked quest to be the first real dictator of the USA: a thug as president, presiding over a government that routinely commits crimes against its citizens in order to stay in power — that is the coup you are rooting for when you vote for Donald Trump:

Not for you to get to be cool tough solid and respect-loved in a mafia movie, but for Donald Trump — and his new and improved GOP — to get another attempt at using the resources of our shared government to take the power away from the people and hand it to Trump, his family and his cronies, allowing them to exploit that power to silence the many and enrich a few:

That is what it is to have the back of the man who would be king.

And what is it to vote against Donald Trump and for Kamala Harris? It is to vote for a chance to improve ourselves together; with Kamala Harris we can work on shoring up and improving our shared democratic republic because she wants to be president of that democratic republic — where leaders serve temporarily and at the pleasure of the elected, and where they do the best they can for all the citizens and then make their case to all the citizens. Donald Trump isn’t going to work with us on that because he doesn’t want or even understand that kind of government by for and of the people.

Donald Trump thinks he should only govern for those who vote for him. A government that only serves the narrow margins of those who voted for their party is a nation divided against itself, a nation that is killing itself. But thinking his citizens are only those that vote for him is just part of Donald Trump’s misunderstanding about what it is to be president; because Donald Trump thinks that first and foremost being president is about having, keeping, and using power, about shoving people around and being rich and important. That is not what the office was designed for, and if we hand people like Donald Trump and those who would aid and abet him now — after breaking the rules and norms that protect our democracy and keep us all safe from tyranny — the keys to the White House: we’ll, at some point there is no going back, no telling the king that he can’t stay king, no telling the mob they can’t use power mostly to enrich themselves and their cronies, no telling the government that it needs to go back to serving the people instead of using the people to serve the few who have managed to turn the government into their own personal weapon, plaything, pleasure palace, and ornament.