Consider this a plea for forbearance toward your fellow voters.
All over the internet, one sees people not just touting the cause of his or her own presidential candidates, or criticizing the other candidates, but also besmirching all those, both public figures and private, who dare to reach different voting conclusions. And tales are legion in the private lives of families and friendships riven by what should be respectful disagreements about this election.
Enough already.
If one cannot even put oneself in another person’s shoes, one isn’t a kind or reasonable person or, for that matter, not even a moderately well-adjusted adult.
In this presidential election, especially, there is absolutely objective reason for people to see each candidate as a sort of extreme. Making a prudential judgment about which one to vote for (or against, which may be the bigger motivator), or whether to cast a write-in ballot or leave the spot blank, can be a tough task.
It is a simple fact that former President Donald Trump tried to sic a foreign government on his political opponent, a fact that he tried to overturn election results duly certified by all constitutional processes, a fact that he knowingly withheld classified documents and lied about it, a fact that he repeatedly has listed political opponents he wants to throw in prison, a fact that he has called for domestic use of U.S. military forces, and a fact that he regularly praises authoritarians and totalitarians specifically for their exercises of power. If one of his fans can’t even credit the sincerity of those who think this is all so worrisome that it necessitates a vote for someone ordinarily of the opposite ideology, the fan has a serious problem with perspective. The anti-Trump person’s conclusion may or may not be wise, but it’s not as if the concerns aren’t based in hard reality.
Likewise, it is incontrovertible that by objective standards, Vice President Kamala Harris is one of the most left-wing major-party presidential candidates in U.S. history. She ran for Senate as the avowedly, openly most “progressive” of all the major candidates in a large California field; she was rated by a neutral voter-assessment outlet as the single most left-wing of all 100 senators, further leftward than even socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). She is part of the biggest spending U.S. administration in peacetime history, she is friendly to the idea of racial reparations, and she has been so hostile to basic First Amendment rights that the Supreme Court slapped her down for trying to violate a free-association precedent famously secured not by some right-wing group but by the NAACP. And those are just a few examples.
For the most “woke” progressives, these are all attractive stances for Harris. For the most MAGA-enthused people, Trump’s destruction of norms is not a problem but an admirable trait. But for many, many tens of millions of voters, even those who may lean toward the ideology or proclivities of one of these candidates, it is entirely rational to be concerned about the extreme nature of these records. It is not a mark of bad character to decide that one or the other candidate is less threatening or that one or the other is most likely to achieve good things despite their drawbacks. In all sincerity, good faith, and sober judgment, it is entirely possible for good people to reach different conclusions from one another.
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So stop questioning motives without solid evidence that the motives are benighted. Stop insulting people or, Lord forbid, killing friendships because of honestly diverging judgments. Start recognizing that we’re in uncharted political territory.
Come on, people: Give one another a break.