Please Do Not Vote for Donald Trump

Pretty insane that one has to keep saying this!

It is a longstanding tradition — one, that goodness, has now gone on for more than eight years — that, in an even-numbered election year, I write an electoral endorsement post. Here’s 2016, and here’s 2018, and here’s 2020, and here’s 2022. This year, during a time when there is nothing most people want to talk about less right now than politics, I have decided to write two.

The first, today’s, will attempt to grapple, hopefully one last time, with the Trump era. Next week’s will be an endorsement of his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. In a race this close, I find it inadequate to simply argue why one should vote against Trump; it’s important to make what I believe to be a compelling case specifically for her as well. So next week: Her. This week: Him.

When Donald Trump won the Presidential election (but of course not the popular vote) in 2016, the one thing everyone seemed to agree upon — including, it turned out, Trump himself — is that it felt like an accident. I remember attending a school event the Monday before Election Day back then, and even Republican friends (who, I suspect, ended up voting for him anyway) were openly mocking the notion that he could possibly win. His victory felt, when you took a bird’s eye view of it, like an absurd…