The Election of 2020

 So, Joe Biden has formally announced that his VP pick is California's own Kamala Harris. This news has apparently sent voters everywhere into a frenzy. On the one hand, she is the first ever POC (half-black, half-Asian) to be nominated for the position. On the other, she served as an Attorney General (I personally voted for her), so she may be pro-cop during a time when the nation is alienated against its law enforcement agencies.

I've gone on about Hamilton before, and perhaps you caught the reference in the title of this post. And I would like to call your attention to "The Election of 1800", when Aaron Burr runs against Thomas Jefferson in the third presidential election. The musical plays things up a bit, but it boils down to this. Burr has spent the entirety of the musical, up until his grand "I want" song of "The Room Where It Happens", waiting for opportunities to present themselves. While the show creates a fictitious narrative, it presents Burr as a wishy-washy candidate who doesn't have any particular motivations of his own, while Jefferson is seen as an out-of-touch elitist. The election appears to be a close call, and the votes hinging on an endorsement from Burr's long-time frenemy and Jefferson's political rival, Alexander Hamilton.

"I have never agreed with Jefferson once. We have fought on like 75 different fronts. But when all is said, and all is done, Jefferson has beliefs. Burr. Has. None." -Alexander Hamilton, Hamilton

These words seem prophetic in this current election. We have two very polarizing candidates. People will vote for Biden because A) he is not Donald Trump, or B) as a Democratic candidate, he will be able to lead the nation out of the quagmire that Trump's presidency has caused. Likewise, people will vote for Trump because A) they obviously do not care about women's lives, LGBTQ rights, or the lives of children, or B) he is not Joe Biden. And Biden's VP pick may have swung people who were formerly in his camp to vote for Trump because they really do not want Kamala Harris as a VP.

Despite how you may feel about these candidates on a personal level, what we need to focus on is the future.

Time and time again, the Trump administration has proven that the lives of women, children, LGBTQ, immigrants, and minorities DO NOT MATTER. Trump himself has made many derogatory remarks about political opponents and journalists. He is also responsible for the 35-day shutdown, the longest in United States history, during which federal workers were left confused and without pay. If I were to list every single grievance I have against the man, it would take a while to get through. His immigration policies are responsible for the detention of children and separation from their parents. His delayed response led to over 100,000 deaths in the United States. He has defunded the National Endowment for the Arts and has rolled back protections on nationally-protected land. He has sullied the American reputation on a global scale. In addition, his advisors are no better. He's gone through so many staff changes that Reddit has taken to using "mooches", after Scaramucci's notorious 10-day reign, as a means of measuring how long people have lasted.

That's not to say that the Biden/Harris ticket is unproblematic. It is, and it was a very risky move for Biden to choose Harris as his running mate. But she has challenged him openly in the Senate, and as Vice President, she will do the same thing. She will keep him accountable and on his toes. But the biggest thing to remember is that it's not just the individuals you're voting for. You're also voting for Supreme Court justice nominations. You're voting for people to lead you through a national crisis. You're voting for people who will, at the very least, get us walking back in the right direction. Whether it's for four years or eight, we need to change course.