TL:DR: It’s somehow yet again an immensely consequential election year and we have a future to fight for. Get started by checking your voter registration (make sure your friends and family do too!), signing up for an org like Vote Save America, and making a donation to a candidate you want to see elected.
Welcome to 2024, my friends! It’s hard to believe, but we are once again in a presidential election year. And not just any presidential election year, but somehow, again, one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime. We are once again confronted with widespread violence and uncertainty, a myriad of looming crises we must make ever more progress on, and a political party that has all but abandoned democracy and the rule of law. The stakes are high, and our candidates are at best fallible and at worst disastrous.
We welcome this election year with that convocation of catastrophe, that reunion of ruination, the Iowa Republican caucus. On January 15, Iowans will come together to choose their preferred Republican nominee for president. While Trump leads the pack by 30 points, the remaining candidates are doing their level best to show that they can be just as destructive and just as corrupt as their most likely nominee. Nikki Haley is trying to rewrite history to erase slavery from the Civil War. Ron DeSantis continues to attack trans people while distracting from his own corruption. Vivek Ramaswamy is using his moment in the spotlight to amplify dangerous conspiracy theories and represent assholes. And while there may be some other candidates running, their polling amounts to a rounding error at this point.
For all the efforts of the other candidates, Trump is the most likely winner of the Iowa caucuses by a mile, and mostly without campaigning much at all. That hasn’t stopped him or his campaign for making their plans for a potential second term known. From using the Justice Department to go after his political enemies and the military to police the southern border, attack protesters, and invade Democratic-run cities, Trump’s second term plans promise further corruption, chaos, and violence. His plans for repealing the ACA, an extreme crackdown on immigration, more trade wars, and more distance from allies make it clear that his second term would expand on what we hated most about his first. And of course, Trump is also under indictment for, amongst many other indictments, attempting to overthrow the government.
All that being said, no matter who wins the Republican nomination, the future under a Republican administration promises to be grim. Whether they are attacking bodily autonomy and banning books, or dismantling the regulations that keep us safe and protect our environment and making themselves and their friends richer at our expense, the Republican agenda to say the least does not have our best interests at heart. And with the many crises we face, from Israel’s destruction of Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to economic inequality and the climate crisis, we need leaders who are not out for just themselves and do not have it built into their platforms and policies to cause more harm in pursuit of their own power.
There is no problem we face that Republicans plan to make better. Even problems they consider paramount, like immigration at the southern border, they’d rather use as a political weapon than work together to address. As millions of Palestinians in Gaza face starvation, disease, displacement, and death as a result of the Israeli bombardment, Republican candidates competed to highlight their support for Israel’s violence - from Trump’s “full support” for Israel to DeSantis’s urging that they “finish the job.” As they assert the need to prioritize fossil fuels over addressing the climate crisis and try to obscure their support for broader abortion bans Republican candidates in the 2024 primary from Trump to Asa Hutchinson (who yes, unbelievably, is still running) plan to trample all over any recent progress we’ve made on the most important issues we face.
On the other side we have Joe Biden running for reelection - Joe Biden who is the oldest president we’ve had, and who has used that wisdom and experience to make vital inroads on issues we care about; Joe Biden who has been unwilling and/or unable to restrain Israel’s violence against Palestine while millions face displacement, starvation, and death; Joe Biden who has remade the judiciary with judges more diverse in race, ethnicity, gender, and background; Joe Biden, whose administration oversaw the first major piece of gun control legislation in decades, legislation which doesn’t go nearly far enough; Joe Biden, who signed the largest investment in addressing the climate crisis in history, including major investments in environmental justice. Joe Biden, the alternative, not the almighty.
If the climate crisis shows the power of difference between President Biden’s accomplishments and what we face under future Republicans, Palestine highlights how little those differences can be and just how many people are harmed by those similarities. On the one hand, we make monumental strides in executive action, legislation, resource appropriation, and cultural attention to a major issue that results in progress, and that opens up space for even more progress and growth. On the other hand, even as polling shows rapidly growing disapproval with the administration’s handling of Israel’s attack on Gaza, Biden turns a blind eye towards the scale of the violence. The Biden administration negotiated a brief humanitarian pause, and continued aid into Gaza, something I do not believe any Republican president would or will prioritize - we can acknowledge that, and acknowledge too the bigotry of small differences. In either case, the killing continues.
But democracies are made up of people, and people are fallible. We can’t solve every problem with one election, one candidate, or one vote. If it seems like I am fixated on the destruction of Gaza, it’s because to me it is a critical reminder that our responsibility does not begin and end with elections, and that elections are not simple contests between good and evil. We do ourselves no favors by simplifying democracy and its consequences. Our task is not to choose the hero to whom we relinquish all responsibility, but to choose a direction, to widen the aperture of possibility, to open ourselves up to more change. Voting is a vital part of this process, the opportunity to make our voices heard, and to choose our trajectory. Do we want someone who undermines our right to do so, who discounts and dismisses and represses the choices of the millions who do not fit in their tiny boxes, and silences disagreement? Or do we want representation at all levels of government that respects that right, that listens, that creates space for us to build a world where we can all thrive.
Every election is an opportunity to set the stage for greater and better change. 2024 is full of opportunities to show up, from protests to volunteer shifts to the ballot box. As we fight for a better future for all of us, the whole world over, I hope you will take every opportunity to make your voice heard, to push us to be better, and to get us ever closer to the world we want to see. I promise I will, and I hope I’ll see you there.