Looking Up on Election Day
My various streams of social media and news are of course skewed, but they mostly seem to be cautiously optimistic. “Hopeful” is not the right word for what I’m feeling, but it does look like Kamala can pull this thing out.
Specifically, she can win Pennsylvania but I’d be shocked if she wins Michigan (for obvious reasons). On the other hand, some very good political scientists at Fudan University did agent-based modeling and predicted the following, as of October 6:
Trump will win Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Wisconsin. Harris will win Georgia, Arizona, and North Carolina.
Ugh!!! Fortunately, October 6 was a million years ago and I think agent-based modeling is basically nonsense invented by the devil.
John Mearsheimer, the most famous (and loathed?) living scholar of international relations said he won’t be voting for either Kamala or Trump. But then he added this:
I won’t vote for the Democrats because of the genocide in Gaza. I think the Biden administration is complicit in the genocide and genocide is a red line for me. I would never vote for Biden or for Kamala Harris.
As long as you’re not voting in a swing state, this is a reasonable position to take. And he’s not wrong about complicity.
But the subtext—that Republicans are not complicit in genocide—is farcical. Mearsheimer goes on to suggest that Trump would show more military restraint toward Gaza than Biden has…and that’s a joke.
Had Trump been president on October 7, 2023, everything would be playing out as it has, except that more Democrats would be outraged and in the streets. The Biden administration’s blank check to Israel is not happening in a vacuum; it’s the logical continuation of US policy on Israel going back 40 years. Support for Middle East atrocities is built into the system of US politics.
Anyway, today’s outcome has already been decided; we just have to wait to find out what it is.
If Kamala wins, god willing, I really hope organized labor, NGOs, and activists don’t give her the good faith that they did Biden—her administration needs to be critiqued and pressured relentlessly by progressives. And if Trump wins, it will well and truly be an emergency. Time for a new strategy.
Just remember, paraphrasing my friend Jairus Grove, even the end of the world is never the end of everything. ✌️