Today, I voted. In a surprise to exactly no one, I voted for Hillary Clinton.
I’ve said a lot of stuff over the last year about voting against a semi-sentient rotting pumpkin with a mis-placed merkin, but that’s not the only reason I voted today. I’m not just voting against fascism, I’m voting FOR Hillary Clinton.
I believe in HRC. She has a proven track record of public service for longer than I’ve been alive. Her policies align with my values. She’s simultaneously hard-assed and compassionate, intelligent and genuinely kind. She’s the single most qualified candidate for POTUS this country has ever seen.
And that’s what it takes to rise to that position as a woman in our society. If she’d only had Obama’s qualifications, or Romney’s, or pretty much any of the previous candidates’, she’d be looked over and left behind. But she’s fought her way to this place by being better than every contemporary in her company. To quote everyone’s favorite play, she “got a lot farther by working a lot harder, by being a lot smarter, by being a self starter”.
She’s intelligent.
She’s proactive.
She’s cunning.
She’s knowledgeable.
She’s experienced.
If this were literally any other election against any other opponent, this would be 100% of my reasoning. But this is not a normal election, and the spray-tanned gibbering mouther is not a normal opponent.
In previous elections, I’ve been mildly concerned about one candidate or the other. Previous candidates’ values have run counter to my own, and I, of course, don’t want to be led by someone whose policies I oppose. But I understand the workings of our democracy and if that person is elected, I know we’ll soldier on and there are checks and balances.
But that’s not how I feel this time. I’m stressed. Genuinely afraid. And not the kind of fear the GOP whips up with propaganda. Not disgusted rage, or frenzied xenophobia, or moral indignation. No… genuine, sinking, suffocating fear. A gut-churning fear that the world I’ve grown up in, with all its progress and flaws and bright spots and blemishes, is in danger of ending.
So, this time, I don’t get to vote for Hillary solely on the basis of her own qualifications, although that is enough. No, in this election we’re quite literally voting against a fascist demagogue whose rhetoric echoes the worst the human race has ever had to offer. A misogynist, racist, ableist, subhuman caricature whose vision for our nation would undo literally the entirety of our progress since our founding.
The entire world looks to us as the superpower we claim to be, and is collectively holding its breath against the potential for the worst parts of our nature to become normalized across the globe. And I won’t stand to be a part of that. I will stand on the right side of history.
I look forward to seeing our country’s first woman President. I look forward to being led by a capable, sophisticated, progressive President. Even though it’s too much to ask, my hope is that she’ll stand side-by-side with cooperative Legislative and Judicial branches to push our country forward rather than stall in quagmire or de-evolve.
Barack Obama has been my President. I’ll miss him, dearly. He is a man who has accomplished more positive outcomes for the United States in his eight years in office than nearly any other President in my lifetime, and all of that in the face of the single most obstructionist Legislative branch in our history. Although I’ll miss him, Hillary Clinton has the chance to carry on his legacy, and improve upon it. To make history herself.
Today I voted.
I’m With Her.
