Don't Vote 2020
If our parties are not going to nominate leaders, I'm not going to vote for who they pick.
No recipe today, but I promise that tomorrow’s full newsletter will have a great one.
I said almost a year ago that come November I would not be voting for Donald Trump and I would not be voting for whoever the Democrats nominate. I have stood by that, even while friends have decided that they can pull the lever.
We live in an era that is refusing to choose leadership and is instead choosing opposition. Rather than proposing ideas, candidates run on who they are against. Donald Trump did not win in 2016 on ideas, but on the fact that he wasn’t a Democrat and specifically that he wasn’t Hillary Clinton. “Build a wall!” and “Lock her up!” are not campaign messages and not idea proposals, but they are great for riling up the masses in your base.
Trump’s base did not win the election for him, though. Moderates and independents who hated the idea of a Clinton back in the White House did.
Joe Biden is no more a leader than he is conscious. His best polling comes from when he is out of sight, and when he is out making speeches, the American voters can see and hear how bad his cognitive abilities have gotten over the last several years. The Biden of 2020 is not the Biden of 2008, and it definitely shows.
Erick Erickson, a friend and mentor in a lot of the political writing I do, wrote a scathing rebuke of Trump, Trump’s supporters, Biden, the Democrats, and the media all in one column. And the only thing I can really disagree with is that he hints he isn’t sure if he will vote in November and I know I am not. Here is the best part:
What we’re arguing about right now is power, not principle. Character still counts and we have a bunch of people with terrible character competing to run the place and a bunch of leftists in the news industry and academic who have taken it upon themselves to decide which voices on the left and the right are legitimate. The President has terrible character and there’s no use pretending he doesn’t. The man cheated on his current wife while she was pregnant and he did so with a porn star. His Christian apologists would make Madonna blush at how they use the cross to self-pleasure themselves on piles of cash. They are so busy humping the man’s leg and trying to tell us everything is great that they are blind to the virus spreading. “It’s not bad. Look at the low death toll. Those other countries can’t compare. China!” they prattle on.
Jerry Falwell, Jr., Robert Jeffress, etc. are like chihuahuas in heat riding his master’s leg. It’s gross, sad, and pathetic at the same time.
On the opposite side, the cadaverous coffin parked corpse of a candidate for President has mouthpieces demanding an end to capitalism, an expansion of government, and more killing babies, targeting Christians, and destroying anyone who dares say something the left disagrees with.
The American public is forced to choose between a party that hates everyone not like them and a party that hates America itself.
And I can’t do it. I can’t vote for hatred, when I have spent the last few years pushing for us to start trying to talk and understand and work together over issues. I can’t support campaigns of opposition rather than ideas. And if you try to tell me that either campaign is built on ideas, I will acknowledge that they are perhaps offering the bare minimum of ideas, but the candidates and their surrogates are not offering anything substantive.
I refuse to vote in 2020. I refuse to play this game. A pox on both their houses and may God have mercy on their souls. I will focus my electoral attention on local and state issues and any national issues I focus on will not be cheerleading for one side or the other. They don’t deserve it.