I've always been someone who has always told everyone to vote no matter what.
I've worked and volunteered for the Democratic party and for progressive causes since I was a teenager. I took on unpaid internships. I went without food for a couple days here and a couple days there if it meant I could stay where I was needed, canvass and make phone calls.
I did that because I believed in the sanctity of the franchise, in the sacred promise that elections meant something. So many people have died to protect our rights, after all, how could they not?
I've never felt that faith truly shaken until today.
Someone tell me I'm wrong. Someone tell me this isn't going to stand as a horrible precedent. That billionaires aren't going to use this as a blueprint for blackmailing and replacing elected officials they don't like.
Please tell me that we haven't lost our voice because we can't protect our own. Please tell me that we won't be stuck trying to convince elected officials to do the progressive thing only for them to tell us "look what happened to Biden."
Someone tell me that primary elections won't be overturned again. Someone tell me that this won't become a trend.
Someone tell me that the one good thing about this is that the president left voluntarily and that at least the public can't see the gun hidden under Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen's coats.
I was on a textbank when I heard the news. Which is good because if I was on a phone bank who knows what the poor person on the other end would have heard. I have to figure out how I'm going to keep doing these canvasses and phone banks and text banks and not let our special progressive microbrewed cynicism drown me before the election.
And now I'm trying to convince myself not only that all this volunteering works, because your vote is somehow still sacred, somehow still the final word but don't believe your lying eyes, but I'm trying to convince myself that I can get other people to agree.
We have stripped the idealism from our movement like so much used paint. Or rather, we have allowed it to happen. And now, somehow, we have to put it back, and fast.
Maybe the world was trying to tell me something and we should hold off on trying for a child after all.
