To voters who have reluctantly chosen to vote for Hillary Clinton as the lesser evil over Donald Trump:
Firstly, I understand the fear. My family considered leaving the country in 2008 if McCain had won, and he was a much less terrifying figure than Trump is. It’s not hard to shudder at Trump, hold your nose and compromise on Clinton.
Still, I would want everyone to choose their own candidate based on conscience and issues, not fearmongering. The politics of fear hold enormous power over us, and who in these times can deny the gravity of the things we are afraid of? But casting a vote under the coercion of fearmongering can corrode the democracy of voting, of freely choosing a candidate to support.
Saying that this election is “not the time” to vote your conscience begs the question: if not now, when? If not now in this most tumultuous and bitter and bizarre of election seasons, when will conscience matter? Voting your conscience doesn’t put the onus of blame on you if Trump does indeed win. If Trump wins, it will be because his opponents failed to field more effective candidates. (Note that I did not say better--just more effective at campaigning.) Voting your conscience is an opportunity to start thinking and building an alternative outside the binary system in which a vote for “safety” is freely admitted to be a sacrifice of conscience.
But to those who out of fear of Trump are reluctantly choosing a lesser evil and voting for Clinton--do that, if you do feel that it is your safest and most pragmatic choice at this time. Do it. Vote. And know what you are voting for. Remember that you do not have to start defending a candidate you may not like just because you voted for her--or maybe not even for her, just against Trump. A vote for Clinton is not a vote for peace and security. Neither, of course, is a vote for Trump, but it is easier to have Clinton gain the White House and feel a sigh of relief, instead of a surge of anger and determination. It is easier to avoid holding her accountable.
Voting for Clinton does not obligate you to support her any further than this election. She is an active proponent of US interventionism and oversaw the US involvement in regime change in Libya and Honduras. Her opposition to neoliberal juggernauts like the TPP and TTIP is lukewarm at best, and liable to shift, absent serious, sustained pressure. Her husband’s track record on welfare and criminal justice “reforms” bred disaster and suffering for multitudes of mainly working people of color. As with Bill, as with Obama, one could call Hillary Clinton a centrist hawk willing to adopt center-left positions when convenient.
Ironically, the record on progressive legislation and policies is often no better under Democrats than Republicans, and sometimes worse: contrast Clinton’s record, from NAFTA to the Defense of Marriage Act to a doubled prison population, with the environmental, abortion, and workers’ protections enacted under Nixon. Were those gains gladly given? No. Would Trump, even with pressure, be likely to grant similar protections? Hell no. Nixon was decidedly not Trump, and even so, the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts, for instance, were only passed by overriding Nixon’s veto. But remembering this history of past administrations demonstrates that Democrat does not equal progress or safety and Republican does not guarantee no hope for people’s movements.
Our work as activists after Hillary Clinton’s election, then, will be to make damn sure that what benefits our communities is, by the force of our pressure brought to bear on her administration, always the convenient thing for her to do. We must be prepared to push back against Clinton as much as we would push back against Trump. That she's not Trump has been her best selling point, but it cannot continue to be a get-out-of-accountability-free card.
And remember, also, that stopping Trump isn’t just about the idiotic businessman named Donald Trump. It’s about pushing back against and building solidarity in the face of the rise of right-wing pseudo-populism, predicated on frustration, fear, and shallow scapegoating. The right-wing forces Trump stoked and gave voice to will not demobilize. Neither can we. Electing Hillary Clinton will not, ultimately, “stop Trump,” only bar him from the presidency for now. Meanwhile, defeating Trump the candidate leaves no funnel for the frustration and the vitriol of the disaffected people who supported him; in an effort to handle both this stoked energy and her own corporate interests, Clinton will pull the Democratic Party further to the right, leaving a vacuum on the left in which no real alternative exists to concretely address the legitimate frustrations and exploitation of millions of US working people, let alone the continuing oppression of marginalized racial, gender and sexuality, and religious groups. Clinton’s campaign represents the neoliberal interests of the corporate sector and the 1% (or is it .01% by now?). She will equivocate on crucial issues, as she does already on fracking, drone strikes, trade, and the death penalty. Given to whom she is beholden, her presidency will not be one of progressivism but rather of concessions to the right. This is hardly a long-term strategy to uproot the racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic fervor he has helped stir. Electing Clinton would deny Trump only the power of the presidency, not the influence he has already gained.
Trump would be terrible, to be sure. I do not want Trump to be president. I am queer and disabled, and my communities would be among those coming under greater attack were Trump president. Then we’ve got hashtags trending like #RepealThe19th, which I won't pretend doesn't sicken me. Trump would menace our already limited safety and tolerance, make the everyday situations of women and people of color increasingly intolerable and dangerous, sabotage our planet, teeter into further unstable territory on foreign policy…
Yet so may Clinton. It’s inaccurate to say that there are no differences between the two, but Clinton’s foreign policy--her history of hawkishness, her antagonism to Russia, her support for no-fly zones and drone strikes--is deeply alarming. We know the flavor of policies she would promote, and they would not be genuine peace, security, or sustainability.
Trump is scary, though, in a way that a lot of us are threatened by in a visceral and immediate way. That’s a reality that it is disrespectful and shortsighted to ignore. Fear is a powerful mobilizer, and complacency in the face of Trump is unthinkable for many of us, so we are turned reluctantly towards Clinton. Ironically, the drive to organize for our own protection may well be dampened if Clinton wins, for we will be more likely to think “Thank god it’s not Trump” than “Okay, now let’s organize for something better.” Instead of shaming people for the votes they cast, though, one of the critical things to do now is form contingency plans for either scenario: how will we continue to fight if Trump wins? And how will we continue to fight if Clinton wins?
Bernie Sanders’s campaign would not have brought us to real equality or socialism, but the things he stood for were not unreasonable or obsolete. People heard him, and people believed. We know what we need. Sanders’s campaign served mainly to illustrate the gaping inability of the system to accommodate real demands for justice, and it has contributed to the vacuum on the left, with a lot of newly radicalized people now struggling with where to turn. But if Bernie really represented a political revolution, then he doesn’t need to win the election for us to keep fighting for something better than the status quo. Bernie may have endorsed Clinton, but Clinton will never endorse revolution. You don’t owe her your loyalty. You don’t owe yourself that disservice. We all deserve better, and whether it be under Trump or Clinton that we’re working for change, the voices for peace and justice, solidarity and sustainability, struggle and equity, will not come from the White House.
