Max Stearns
Efforts to persuade have passed. So let me get a few things off my chest this morning:
If you spent the past four years defending Trump and attacking the left, no matter who you ever so secretly cast your ballot for, you made the effort to defeat Trump more difficult.
If you spent the last four years providing accounts of why voting is not morally compelled, then yes, you made efforts to defeat Trump more difficult.
If you imagined that the imperfect choice between two candidates neither of whom were quite right for you allowed you to vote for someone else, or not at all, you made efforts to defeat Trump more difficult.
If you were willing to overlook blatant racism and sexism coming from the very top, from the foaming evil mouth of this vile man, you made defeating Trump more difficult.
If you cared more about tax cuts than children in cages and dividing families seeking to escape brutality who now might never be reunited, you made defeating Trump more difficult.
If you condoned placating dictators and alienating allies because that made this evil man appear strong, and by association, you as well, you made defeating Trump more difficult.
If you were more worried about the precision of media accounts on the ebb and flow of COVID rates in localities than about Trump's systematic lying about the risks to the point of causing upwards, or north of, 200,000 deaths, you made defeating Trump more difficult.
If you claimed that the Democratic party was suddenly overtaken by radical socialists, despite knowing that to be a lie, you made defeating Trump more difficult.
If getting angry at people like me for hammering and hammering at this evil, anti-democratic, ignorant, narcissistic, man, and his obsequious spineless followers mattered more to you than doing what's right then yes, you made defeating Trump more difficult.
We don't know who won this election yet. But we know who lost. Americans who care about decency, fairness, justice, kindness, goodness, and rightness. Yes, those people lost. No matter who wins, we know that a huge share of our electorate falls in one or many of the preceding categories, meaning that even if Biden pulls this out, we still lost. And it will take a hell of a lot to make us and our nation whole.