What a Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Ticket Means to Me
What a Kamala Harris and Tim Walz Ticket Means to Me
Why I'm Choosing Hope Over Despair, Even at the Risk of Being Foolish
Being a far-left progressive who proudly embraces the term “socialist” and an outspoken atheist Humanist living in a cherry red state, I’m quite accustomed to feeling a bit despondent about the world around me. Our two-party dominate system intentionally drowns out voices like mine, referring to us as extremists and pretending that there’s some magical middle we should all be meeting in.
Bipartisanship is all but nonexistent in the third decade of the 21st century and has been for the better part of 30 years. That’s not because two equal and opposing ideological camps have gone sprinting from each other; it’s because those under the Republican tent (and far too many Democrats as well) have bolted right, while the rest of us have been left to wonder why common sense has suddenly been assigned a “liberal” bias.
I put the term “liberal” in quotations because I’ve come to detest it. Far too many of those who describe themselves using it have embraced elitist and white supremacist views, whether or not they realize it. Neoliberal corporatists and fascist apologists may be liberal (#notallliberals), but they’re not leftist, progressive or anything resembling socialist. There are clear distinctions.
Given these observations and this self-identification, I’ve been criticized frequently as of late by fellow leftist progressives and avowed socialists for voicing my support of the Harris/Walz ‘24 ticket for POTUS. At first glance, it does seem antithetical to my worldview to offer my enthusiastic support to this ticket. After all, Kamala was a Prosecutor and DA, evoking an ACAB mindset amongst those of us with serious reservations about our criminal justice system (to put it nicely), and Walz served for 24 years in the National Guard, perhaps evoking our anti-military industrial complex thinking.
Then there’s the ongoing genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza and the continued illegal Israeli occupation of other Palestinian territories. Harris and Walz both have been a little too cozy with Israel and AIPAC for comfort. Expressing disdain for this chumminess with Israel and the Netanyahu regime is completely legitimate, especially with AIPAC funding some successful primary challenges to the few Democrats in Congress who have stood for a Free Palestine.
BUT (you can exhale now, that “but” finally came around), electoral politics isn’t a love affair. I don’t have to love every single thing about Harris or Walz or the Democratic Party (I am not a registered Democrat and never intend to be again) to know there won’t be a Jill Stein or Cornel West or Claudia de La Cruz or Robert Kennedy (can you imagine the bear poser with the brain worm as POTUS?) in the White House come January 2025.
More importantly, given my being a West Virginian whose vote will not influence the outcome in the Electoral College, I’ve seen the Movement for Black Lives and the anti-genocide and anti-occupation movement to support Palestinians take shape in this country. There is only one major party in this system, stacked as it is against third party viability, where these movements can have real impact (hint: it’s the one where 29 Delegates were pledged in the names of deceased Palestinian victims and a Black woman just became the presidential nominee). I mention the Black Lives Matter movement because I believe that Kamala as an ethnic Jamaican and Indian Person of Color who leans left will be far more influenced in the Oval Office by this movement than by her prosecutorial past in California.
The Republican Party, especially the Trump/Vance ticket, can’t support Israel hard enough. I’d be surprised if the Israeli flag isn’t flying at both Mar-a-Lago and the Vance residence as I write. A Trump/Vance White House would be a geopolitical nightmare in countless ways, but by far the most dreadful part of the nightmare would be for Palestinians, whose very existence would be under unprecedented and unmitigated threat. As far as law enforcement and the military, well, I can’t even discuss how bad things will get in this country with regard to both institutions under a second Trump administration…without raising my blood pressure to unsafe levels.
No presidential ticket is going to be perfect (though a Bernie and Nina Turner ticket, in my humble opinion, would have been pretty damn close). That said, I finally have hope for the top of the ticket in this election cycle involving candidates with a real chance of taking office.
I’ve been a climate activist for nine years in oil & gas country. I’ve been a union member (almost 10 years) and union steward and recruiter/membership coordinator (almost seven years) for a federal public sector union in what has in all that time been a right-to-work state. I’ve been a secular and non-theist activist, for about eight years, who took his local government to federal district court (and won) over an unconstitutional prayer invocation practice in an area of the country with a disproportionate number of right-wing evangelicals and other authoritarian Christians. A second Trump White House spells doom on all these fronts that I’ve devoted, and continue to devote, so much of my life to with such passion.
I despise the “blue no matter who” way of thinking, but you couldn’t pay me to vote Republican anywhere on a ballot and third party viability will not become a reality until we have at least three provisions in place: 100% (or nearly 100%) public financing of elections, redistricting that is as truly independent as we can make it, and ranked-choice voting in every state and territory. Until then, I for one am happy to see Kamala Harris and Tim Walz taking the election by storm since President Biden did the right thing and stepped aside.
The same reluctance and hesitation to trust any of it still bubbles in me the way it does many of my comrades, but not as intensely as in the past. I’m allowing myself to feel like things can at least begin to change for the better. I wish that same sense of at least minor (and hopefully not temporary) relief for all of you readers.