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In the 21 years since the first issue of this newsletter, I’ve tried to make it a voice for values that I hope you share: doing right by other people, doing right by the planet, acceptance of diversity, and not just fostering democratic and empowering outcomes, but reaching those outcomes through democratic and empowering processes. Because I focus on leveraging the power of profitable business to change society, and because many of you are not US voters, I’ve attempted to keep electoral politics out of these pages. I don’t believe I have ever endorsed a specific candidate for any office in this newsletter until now.
But we are at a critical moment in history here in the US. One candidate has largely endorsed the values I just listed.
The other attacks them at every turn, spewing hatred, putting down people who are different from him, threatening the vast numbers he perceives as his enemy with “retribution” (a direct quote) that includes massive incarceration and deportation, and assailing the very roots of the 248-year US commitment to electoral democracy.
This man also showed, during a previous term as president, that he doesn’t value the US’s hard-won positive relationships with other democracies around the world—but he does value the dictators who have figured out that if they pretend to adore him, they can manipulate him.
He’s a man whose speeches are almost always about his self-perception of greatness. A shallow,
superficial man who values the trappings of wealth and power but has no idea how to exercise those things responsibly. A convicted felon who a civil court found not only committed rape but slandered the victim.
Trump even attacks his super-loyalists like former VP Mike Pence and former Attorney General William Barr). He’s made it abundantly clear that his government will be a brutal culture of repression. He wants people who will agree to his every crazy whim and never bring up questions or concerns. He’s even gone after Greta Thunberg! And let’s not forget that he is a serial liar who lied 162 times in just one campaign event and an astonishing 30,573 times during his term (that’s more than 7,500 lies per year).
And Vance, his running mate, has admitted there was no truth to his crazy fantasy that Haitian
immigrants were eating their neighbors’ pets—a fantasy that has led to threats of violence so extreme that Springfield, Ohio’s schools went back to remote learning
Meanwhile, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are going about the task of putting together a government that will uplift all of us, continue to address the climate crisis through a myriad of ways, build on the already-remarkable economic turnaround that began under Biden, honor the rights of all ethnic, religious, and racial groups, welcome LGBT folks and people with physical disabilities (among the many groups their opponents have mocked and insulted), and bring well-practiced leadership to foreign policy.
Harris and Walz honor our tradition of dissent, acknowledge the humanitarian crises in Palestine,
Ukraine, and at the US-Mexico border, call for a two-state solution in Israel-Palestine, oppose dictators, and acknowledges the reality of the climate crisis that Trump repeatedly dismissively scorns and mocks.
Harris is far from my perfect candidate but she’s orders of magnitude better than her opponent on
every issue. And Walz has a remarkable record as a caring governor who has used the power of his office to make lives better in his state, someone who cares far more about his social legacy than about accumulating wealth on the backs of others.
Yes, Harris could be much better on several issues, especially the Middle East and energy policy. I
understand why you might want to consider voting third-party. I’ve voted third-party several times in
the past—but this year, Please Don’t!
Third-party candidates rarely even get beyond single-digit vote percentages, and that’s with one clear choice. Even Ralph Nader got less than three percent in a well-run national campaign in 2000—but that was a factor in having the nation suffer eight years of George W. Bush, including the disastrous and destabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan wars and refusing to take meaningful action on climate.
This year, with at least three third-party candidates courting the progressive vote and none of them
getting any traction, the next president will be either the Democratic or the Republican nominee—and therefore, the election can’t be about turning our backs on a decent but flawed candidate in a doomed-to-failure attempt to pick the perfect over the good.
Until we have ranked-choice voting, a third-party vote ends up being a vote for the candidate you favor the least. Voting for a “perfect” but unelectable third-party candidate could shift victory to the most evil choice: Trump. This election cannot be a quest for unachievable perfection. It has to be about which candidate will enable those of us who are activists to better organize for more meaningful change while also making improvements that help people right now.
If you live in a swing state, your vote could mean the difference between democracy and dictatorship. If you live in a red state, you might help it shift blue. Many so-called “red states—including at least Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Montana, Arizona, Indiana, and Florida—have elected at least one Democratic statewide candidate (e.g., governor, senator) and/or voted Democratic in at least one presidential race in this century. With massive new voter registrations and unpopular Republican polices such as severe restrictions on reproductive freedom on the ballots of multiple states, even more formerly safe Republican states could be in play this year, surprising the pollsters.
And if you live in a blue state, you need to help ensure the margins of victory are so large that no one will believe Trump this time when he once again falsely claims the election was stolen. Jane Fonda’s short video gives a few more reasons.
