“This is the most important election of our lifetimes.”
It seems like we hear this line every election cycle. We heard it in 2018 during the midterm referendum on the first two years of the Trump presidency. We heard it in 2020 when the election was framed as a choice between four more years of Trump or moving in a different direction favored by the overwhelming majority of the American people. As we begin the early voting and mail-in balloting for the 2022 midterms that will take place in less than two weeks, we’re hearing it again. If you didn’t take the admonition seriously in the past, take it seriously now.
Just as those making that proclamation in 2018 and 2020 were not being hyperbolic in their declarations about the importance of those elections and their potential ramifications for this nation, neither am I when I say that the 2022 contest is truly the most consequential election in my lifetime. This time, democracy itself and our autonomy as citizens with something at least resembling equal voices are on the ballot. It’s a simple choice, really. Do we believe in “one man, one vote”? A “free and democratic society”? “Separation of powers”? “Liberty and justice for all”? Or are these merely platitudes we were force fed in high school civics classes that have little if any relevance in the real world?
The approaching contest is not a traditional one between Democrats, who have a core belief that the needs of the many outweigh those of the few and thus government has a responsibility to protect and advance all its citizens as well as do its best to ensure equal opportunities and access for said citizens, and Republicans, who believe in free markets with minimal government intrusion, fewer government programs, limits on taxation and a beefed-up military. That’s because the sad fact is that the Republicans I described (whose philosophy I can agree to disagree with) don’t exist anymore. Those Republicans have left the building and are currently engaged in a fight to save the party and principles most of them have spent a lifetime believing in. They now call themselves “non-party affiliated” or “Lincoln Republicans” or “Republicans for (insert the name of a state or national Democratic candidate currently on the ballot here)”. The one trait they share is the desire to purge the GOP of the cancer that has consumed it in the years since the 2016 election cycle.
With the reasonable, principled (even if your beliefs don’t align with theirs) GOPers gone, the Republican party of 2022 consists of racists, bigots, misogynists, election deniers, sycophants and devotees to the cult of personality who are fighting to put America and her people under an authoritarian regime. There are no scruples. There are no principles. There are no norms. There isn’t even the pretext of searching for or adhering to truth or facts, but merely regurgitating the lies and misinformation spewed by those with the loudest voices.
What we are voting on in a couple of weeks is whether people who disagree with the results of an election because their preferred candidate or ballot measure lost should be allowed to simply disregard the will of the voters, declare the results fraudulent and install who and what they want? We’re voting on whether it’s okay for the party in power to make it is as difficult for members of the opposing party to cast a ballot as humanly possible and whether it should be permissible to offer a drink of water to citizens standing in a long hot line at the polls without fear of legal repercussions. We’re deciding if judges should be given lifetime appointments to the federal bench based upon their experience and qualifications or on their fealty to a particular party or politician. We’re going to choose whether people with documented histories of mental illness or domestic abuse should have access to firearms and if disgruntled employees and disturbed students should have unrestricted access to weapons of war for the purpose of carrying out displays of mass carnage. We’re going to decide if a ten-year-old impregnated by a rape should be forced to carry the rapist’s fertilized fetus to term, and whether a woman with sepsis due to an ectopic pregnancy should be able to receive the treatment and care that will save her life or if she should simply die because her physician is prohibited by federal law from performing the procedure that will keep her alive.
As I said, this is not hyperbole. It’s what’s on the ballot this year. If we make the wrong choice, there will be no “do over.” This is the America we will be forced to raise our children and grandchildren in.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think that’s a little more important than how much a gallon of gas costs.