Election 2024

With only three weeks left to go until U.S. Election Day, here are my two cents—two thoughts that I’ve been pondering the past few weeks and that I put out there for whoever might want to pick them up.

One, I think that honesty requires all of us to admit that there are no good options. I suspect that Republican-leaning voters who minimize or dismiss the problems of the Republican candidates and exaggerate the problems of the Democratic candidates—or invent new, slanderous charges against them—do so because the urge for self-justification runs deep and the alternative—to admit how bad a shape our entire political system is in—is terrifying and demoralizing. Likewise, I suspect that Democratic-leaning voters who minimize or dismiss the problems of the Democratic candidates and exaggerate the problems of the Republican candidates—or again, misrepresent them—do so for the same reasons. Everyone is tempted to look for someone else to blame for how we’re all stuck between a rock and a hard place, so that we can all feel vindicated for the far-less-than-ideal choices we make under duress. Partisans find it easier to blame supporters of the other party than to accept their own share of the blame for the state of the nation—and, because misery loves company, partisans of both parties tend to rally together in pointing their fingers at those who vote third-party or don’t vote at all, accusing them of helping the wrong people get into office by throwing away their votes. All this is preferable to admitting the faults in our own political stars and confessing that the moral fog is so bad that none of us can see a north star overhead to lead us back to political sanity. We should be grieving that our only choices for president are Trump, Harris, some third-party candidate who has no chance of winning, or refusing the choice entirely. Instead we want to beat our chests in pride and act as if our choice is the obviously right one, or at least the least wrong one, and conclude everyone else is a fool or a coward.  

Two, if all the options are really as bad as I suspect they are, then we need to have charity for those who choose differently, and we need to accept responsibility for the consequences of our own choices. 

Concerning having charity for one another in political contentious times, we’d do well to practice the intellectual humility that Alexander Hamilton modeled in the first letter of The Federalist Papers. Hamilton firmly believed adopting the Constitution and having a stronger centralized federal government would be for the benefit of all the States, and he did not withhold this opinion: “Yes, my countrymen, I own it to you, that, after having given it an attentive consideration, I am clearly of the opinion that this is the safest course for your liberty, your dignity, and your happiness. I effect not reserves, which I do not feel.” And he expressed a concern that some were opposed to the Constitution because they either stood to lose power through federal consolidation or stood to gain power from the continued fracturing of the union (see his third paragraph). And yet, he chose not “to dwell upon observations of this nature,” because “I am well aware that it would be disingenuous to resolve indiscriminately the opposition of any set of men … into interested or ambitious views: candor will oblige us to admit, that even such men may be actuated by upright intentions.” That is, Hamilton didn’t want to attach impure motives to everyone who disagreed with him. He admits that “we upon many occasions see wise and good men on the the wrong as well as on the right side of questions of the first magnitude to society.” This should be “a lesson in moderation” for all of us. “And a further reason for caution,” he adds, is “that we are not always sure that those who advocate the truth are influenced by purer principles than their antagonists.” We shouldn’t presume to know why people make the choices they do. You could pick the “right” candidates for bad reasons; you could pick the “wrong” candidates for good reasons. If we’re honest, we’re all flying blind here. So, this election cycle, can we believe the best of each other and give grace to those who are no more perplexed and fearful, and no more vulnerable to mixed motives, than we are?