Deja Two

I still clearly remember election night in 2020, in part because I wrote a book about that year. Early on, it became clear the race was going to be close. And then my stomach started hurting. And then I remembered my ironic relationship with presidential elections: each one takes four years off my life. And then, after what felt like a few hundred hours of watching election results trickle in, I curled up on the floor of my man cave and moan-cried for about thirty minutes. It was a combination of things. Part of it was personal: I spent so much time thinking, writing, tweeting, and distracting myself with this all-encompassing political story that I may have been momentarily overwhelmed. Maybe I was also considering how much dough I spent, entering my credit card details to support various races around the country—I don’t want to overstate how invested I was in these campaigns, but on election night when I heard an engine roar in front of my house, I was sure ActBlue had come to repossess my car. The bigger part was less personal: Trump had been the same guy the whole time he’d been president. And knowing this, tens of millions of Americans still voted for him.

Now here we are, four years and 91 indictments later, and we’re right back in the same place with the same two candidates. The GOP is fully lining up behind their nominee, including Mitch McConnell who hasn’t spoken to his latest endorsee for three years and described him as “practically and morally responsible” for January 6. Nikki Haley dropped out of the GOP race without endorsing Trump. But she didn’t exactly unendorse him either: “It is now up to Donald Trump to earn the votes of those in our party and beyond it who did not support him. And I hope he does that.” That would require erasing the memory of Jan 6, the countless betrayals of America, the nonstop lies, the sexual assaults, and relentless efforts to overturn an election. But don’t worry, he has plenty of help doing just that. Meanwhile, North Carolina’s GOP voters nominated Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson to be their Gubernatorial candidate, despite his history of (among many other things) antisemitism, calling gay people “filth” and defending Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. It’s all enough to make one curl up on the floor and moan-cry, and I invite you to do just that. But only for second. Then get up, brush yourself (and your credit card) off, and, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, become a one-issue voter: that issue is democracy. Yes, this is a campaign between two elderly candidates, but the only age that matters in this election is 237 years. That’s how long our Constitution has been around. The goal in November is to make sure we get to 238.