It is time to vote in the most important election since 1860

William Galston, political philosopher and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, in his opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on October 29, entitled Democrats Despondency May Be Premature, seeks to provide perspective to the millions of voters — Democrats, disaffected Republicans and anti-Trump Independents — that their angst, anxiety and desperation to vanquish Donald Trump’s hopes of regaining the Presidency does not need to be shrouded in hopelessness, gloom or pessimism. His message — delivered just a week before the election — should be a vote of encouragement for so many of us that want to defeat this man that seems to have achieved cult leader status, not despite but because of his tirades, hateful speech, conspiratorial thinking, misogyny, threats of revenge against opposition, the use of Nazi rhetoric favoring Hitler’s generals, appeals for violence and racism directed upon an immigrant population that has entered the United States, many legitimately. To those of us that have grown weary, exhausted, and have felt battered by the constancy of Trumps incendiary rhetoric over the past nine years — by the virulent and toxic repudiation of America’s system of justice, the fairness of our elections, our exceptionalism deriving from our optimism that is the founding principle in our Declaration of Independence, the right to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — Galston offers hope that our votes may end up being just enough to have the ‘right side of the coin’ come up in this ‘coin flip of an election.

Mr. Galston writes that during the past three months those that want to defeat Trump ” have gone from gloom to relief to exuberance and back to gloom.”

This emotional roller coaster ride begins with the sense of ‘relief’ that President Biden dropped out of the Presidential race following his ‘catastrophic’ debate performance; continues to the exuberance in discovering in Vice President Harris the charisma, joy, optimism, intelligence and leadership qualities and a realistic hope that she can win this; and then on to the apprehension and recent gloom as her lead in all the battleground states has evaporated into a sense of fear and foreboding.

The sense of foreboding clearly comes from dread of this man–convicted of sexual abuse; convicted of 34 felonies for falsifying business records to hide payments to a porn star prior to the 2016 election; charged with attempting to defraud the voters of the legitimate results of the 2020 election when he stoked the fires of an insurrection on January 6, 2021 that resulted in six deaths, many injuries including 174 police officers; this man that was found to have committed fraud in his business practices and was assessed a fine of $355 million becoming our President for a second time.

Indeed, there is reason for optimism when we read that Mr. Trump’s polling advantage over the Vice President on the economy has dropped considerably: a recent released NY Times and Siena College poll found that by a 52% to 45% margin registered voters believe Trump would be better at handling the economy. But this margin has narrowed considerably from the 54% to 41% split between recorded in September.

Perhaps the electorate is finally realizing that Trumps tariff proposals–no longer given a free pass by much of the media–would be a tax on imports that will raise prices for households and, crucially, for businesses that rely on imports to make their products. And that not only will prices rise for the imported products, but so will the prices of goods produced at home that compete with imports. Perhaps the message is breaking through–emphasized constantly by the Vice President–that there is a virtual consensus among economists in America that Trump’s economic tariff policy would create trade wars and acts as a barrier to US markets. It would weaken economic growth, cost jobs, and while increasing the US budget deficit –especially if accompanied by a massive corporate tax cut–create a global recession. Maybe the voters are starting to realize the potential for the stock market to plummet as a result of this confrontational trade policy. And that as the budget deficit increases as a result of declining GDP, interest rates would start to rise again–potentially causing a nasty bout of stagflation. Perhaps the voters are realizing this pretty quickly now and in the next six days the opinions of how each would handle the economy would have narrowed to even or even favoring Ms. Harris. Yes, there is hope and reason for optimism in these economic polling numbers.

Mr. Galston offers hope in the notion that in 2020–before the overturning of Roe and the current desperation of millions of American women to regain the constitutional right to reproductive freedom stripped of them by the Supreme Court-52% of the electorate was comprised of women. President Biden won about 55% of these votes. He reasons that if that number increases to about 54% or 55% Ms. Harris would win the election. And that is assuming that she only retains the 55% of the female vote. She could increase that percentage while increasing the number of women voters–potentially substantially more than offsetting an increase of non college educated white men that Mr. Trump is pursuing by appealing to their masculinity–and invoking the apparently impressive genitalia of the great golfer, Arnold Palmer.

In the closing days of her campaign Ms. Harris is passionately empowering women to recognize the health risks at stake if Trump were to institute an abortion ban of the type that exists in states such as Texas–a state that prohibits all abortions after six weeks–a law that has already caused significant harm by stopping doctors from performing medically necessary abortions. She is empowering women to realize they have a choice and can take back their rights. And she is offering a plan to help provide child care, a cost that has surged well above inflation. She would cap child care costs at a level no greater than 7% of household incomes–a policy endorsed by the National Women’s Law Center.

It is certainly reasonable to expect–given the Vice Presidents passionately delivered empowering of women coupled with her ideas regarding making child care affordable–that the female vote will win this election for Ms. Harris. It is certainly beyond possible that there will be enough women to cross over from Republican to Democrat because they want to take the government out of their reproductive decisions: decisions that they want to make with their doctors without fear that their doctors would be put in jail for such advice. It is certainly possible that enough women will defy the temptation of whatever Donald Trump offers them to want to vote in favor of giving their parents, spouses, siblings a say in their reproductive decisions rather than having the Federal government deprive them of such consultations. Ms. Harris is empowering women to know they have a choice–and they can take back these rights.

Sometimes emotional exhaustion leads to loss of hope. But there is certainly reason to get a ‘ second emotional wind of hope and optimism’ and defeat this man who has stated that he would use the instruments of power to prosecute his political enemies and the “enemy within”.

No doubt If Donald Trump is defeated a large percentage of his followers will follow the former President’s claims of ‘foul play’ and an unfair election.

Statistics show that approximately 70% of Republicans believe Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite all of the legal challenges that were defeated–many of them by Republican appointed judges.

And there is another scary statistic: roughly 1/3 of Republicans believe that violence is justified for political purposes. I find it highly unlikely that anywhere near this number existed prior to the arrival of Donald Trump to American political life–a political life that since our founding has for all intents and purposes never doubted the integrity of our elections. America has been known to export election overseers to developing countries to safeguard the sanctity of their elections. Donald Trump has accused these very people of election corruption.

We can only hope that whichever candidate loses accepts the results of the election. I feel fairly confident that such would be the case for Ms. Harris if she does not win this election. But for Mr. Trump it is much more likely to be a ‘heads I win tales you lose’ proposition. And he has been hard at work convincing his supporters that the only way that he could lose this election is through cheating by the other side.

Mr. Trump, it is more than possible that your loss would have much to do with your abortion policy and the appointing of judges over ruling Roe vs. Wade; that it has much to do with your reported reverence for Nazi generals; that it has something to do with scapegoating ethnic groups by saying they eat the pets of their neighbors; that it has something to do with your potentially disastrous economic plan; that America as a whole rejects a person transparently interested in personal power and is obsessed with ‘getting even’ with his opposition once in office. I can only hope that America chooses wisely in this election, because it is the most important election since 1860.