I haven’t been watching the Democratic National Convention in its entirety, just pieces here and there. It’s no surprise that this thing is unlike any political convention we’ve ever seen before. What’s kind of astonishing is the degree to which it looks like a long political ad, with some variations in production values. A lot of it is just a crap show, putting a spotlight on some never-Trump Republicans and various center-right figures. I keep expecting some kind of technicolor tribute to Ronald Reagan, or a cameo by George W. Bush. Stuff like that makes it a bit more like drinking urine than it should be, but then I am a leftist, which means I’m just supposed to suck it up and offer my unqualified support. Still, being asked to sit through Colin Powell is a bit beyond ridiculous, in my humble opinion.

I have talked about this on my podcast, Strange Sound, so I won’t go into great detail, but my decision to vote for the Democratic presidential ticket is rooted in the notion of harm reduction, some of the contours of which have been highlighted throughout the virtual DNC. The fate of undocumented immigrants, the so-called “dreamers”, as well as refugees from both state sponsored or tolerated violence and economic hardship, hangs in the balance – a second Trump term would spell disaster for them, and very likely for so-called legal immigrants as well. It would not surprise me to see a second-term Trump move to strip legal residents of their rights, then perhaps naturalized citizens, particularly if they are members of the communities he most despises. (I can picture an Ilhan Omar-focused executive action revoking citizenship from those who escaped Trump-dubbed “shit hole” countries.)

Then there are those who depend on their health insurance … like just about everybody at some point in their lives. A second Trump term would mean a death sentence for many of those people. Hell, the first Trump term was enough to dispatch more than 170,000 unnecessarily. Single-payer advocate Ady Barkan made this case quite eloquently at the DNC in one of the better speeches. For as little effort as is involved in casting a ballot, it seems to me that we should listen to the voices of people on the edge of disaster, for whom four more years of this might amount to a death sentence. As I said on Strange Sound, we don’t need to invest in the new administration – quite the opposite. We need to be ready to push them from day one. And they will need to be pushed. The lobbyists always have the loudest voice, but we have the numbers. We can flip the tables of the moneylenders if we all do it together, but we need to have an administration that will respond to pressure. Trump won’t. Biden will.

That’s my two cents. What’s yours? Leave a comment or a question. Excoriate me. Shake your cyber fist! Always glad to hear from you.

luv u,

jp