Sunday, October 30, 2016

#morethanredandblue: Time to Vote

Here we are at the end of this long, winding road we call a presidential campaign. If marathon runners get a 26.2 sticker for their car's bumper, shouldn't we get something too? Maybe we can get giant marathon-sticker-style versions of the "I Voted!" stickers to commemorate our slog.
So now it's time to vote.

As I explained before, Mr. Trump's total aversion to acknowledging marginalized people turned my 99%, want-to-wait-and-see-on-his-pro-life-stances to a 100% can't-vote-for-him. Given his utter lack of integrity, I didn't see any prospects in holding out that his promise to appoint judges that might overturn Roe v. Wade as being worth considering a vote for him.

So that left me with Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Johnson, and abstaining from voting for president. With all due respect to Dr. Stein and the Green Party, I didn't find her platform or nomination acceptance speech compelling. On the other hand, I tried to hang in with Mr. Johnson as long as I could.

I followed him on social media and signed his online petition with the goal of helping get him into the debates. Given two candidates who were unsatisfactory in so many regards, I thought his presence in the debate could at least force a different dynamic and bring attention to issues in different ways. As someone who enjoys finding new, fresh way to reframe difficult issues, I thought a different format could force better dialogue (tri-a-logue?). Rather than have Trump and Clinton spar directly at each other in the usual ways, I thought a three-way debate would bring a variable to the usual dynamics and pull the conversation in ways that would force candidates to re-frame their positions and re-explain them in new ways. Unfortunately, despite cracking double digits for a bit, Mr. Johnson never reached the 15% polling average he needed to earn a podium on the debates stages.

I was drawn to Mr. Johnson for his combination of experience as a Republican governor in a typically blue state; I enjoy people who can find comfort in the middle and/or reaching across to the other side (such as the increasingly endangered conservative Dems and liberal Republicans). Also, Mr. Johnson campaigned from a platform that was less finely honed, less pre-fabricated, and less predictable. He was a little rough around the edges - too rough at times, even if a bit entertaining and declaratory - which seemed a little troubling but a little refreshing.

My intrigue was similar to that which I felt when voting for Bruce Rauner for governor in our last state election here in Illinois. Given the horrible state of Illinois' budget and spending, I thought Rauner's business background and conservative financial positions could help our state right its ship. We needed fiscal discipline to rein in an enormous deficit and move toward a balanced budget. Unfortunately here, Rauner is not politically skilled enough to work effectively with our Democratic State Assembly machine and its insular politics, and that stalemate is hurting everything. (Please, give Illinois term limits.)

I was intrigued about how Johnson could bring his experience into this equation of massive national debt, an indefinitely rising debt ceiling, and economic recovery that's on its way but not sustaining strongly. Cutting budget and finding more responsible, sparse ways to handle revenue raising and federal spending could help us recalibrate the way we use our national revenue to sustain our social stability and help marginalized people. Conservative financial positions can keep more money in the hands of private citizens who can then better support programs for marginalized people by their personal decisions. Each party's basic principle can help or hurt this situation, but I thought this corrective could be welcome.

The Chicago Tribune's endorsement of Mr. Johnson was appealing, and I agreed with some of their points. I even enjoyed Mr. Johnson's slight unpredictability and candor, even amid some gaffes, but some of his issue stances were just too much to handle without a fuller chance to hear him out in mainstream media coverage and presidential debates. I was attracted to his support of term limits, religious freedom, and the environment. However, I was most averse to his abstention on abortion and tacit affirmation of choice as well as his desire to legalize marijuana and pull federal support from drug enforcement agencies.

While I wish I had a fuller chance to hear him out in the brighter spotlight of the debate stage, I just don't think I can vote for him - not because I feel a third-party vote is a vote wasted, but because I don't believe in him strongly enough as a candidate. Thanks, Mr. Johnson, for everything you did to stimulate new and different conversation by your campaigning and for drawing attention to non-Republicans and non-Democrats. I hope you beat the 5% threshold and earn federal funding for the party's future.

So that leaves me with Mrs. Clinton, who has been a source of great personal conflict as I've followed her campaign.

Thing started on an interesting note when she named Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) as her running-mate. Immediately, Mr. Kaine's Catholic faith came out, in his comments and in many well-done biographical sketches. However, Mr. Kaine and Mrs. Clinton tripped over each other right away with their disagreement over the Hyde Amendment. Having just strengthened the party platform to be more extreme in supporting abortion rights than ever, Mrs. Clinton seemed poised to take down the Hyde Amendment, too. This compromise restricts federal funding from going toward most abortions. Mr. Kaine waffled a bit, but eventually came out in continued support of it, which he admitted was at odds with the top of his ticket.

Mr. Kaine took the lead in talking about his faith, though Mrs. Clinton's Methodist roots became clear as more stories came out about her faith background as well. I respect and enjoy the way she has shared bits of her Methodist upbringing, though some of the influence of this tradition seems to be permissive toward her pro-abortion stance.
Mr. Kaine has spoken about his Jesuit formation, Catholic education, and commitment to his faith. Sometimes though, Mr. Kaine spoke at such great length that he went too far for me, and probably too far for many bishops. On multiple occasions, Mr. Kaine went beyond simply sharing his opinions with candor to even suggest the Church can and should change its position, specifically on gay marriage and women's ordination. While I respect one's right to honest self-expression, I also expect my fellow Catholics to proceed with humility and care when speaking publicly. Mr. Kaine, while clearly a committed and faithful Catholic, overstepped his bounds and disappointed me. I appreciate the way he has brought Catholicism into the mainstream throughout this campaign, but his words and positions have on the whole been a net-negative to me.

But I needed to decide especially where I landed on Mrs. Clinton, the lead of this ticket. I was very attracted to her candidacy in the early weeks following the conventions and up and through the first two debates. When it came to marginalized people, Mrs. Clinton consistently brought the goods while Mr. Trump never did.










I loved it. As a I live-tweeted, I rejoiced each time I could cite her advocacy for marginalized people. Even if Methodists don't use the terms as much, I could feel preferential option for marginalized people in her policies - for refugees, for parents under stress, for the poor, for un(der)insured people, and more. It was thoroughly heartening.

However, the debates steered clear of the profound moral implications of her increasingly liberal stance on abortion. By the meat of the third debate, she was forced to confront it. To be honest, the Hyde Amendment stalemate frustrated me pretty bad, but it didn't make me rule her out. I just wanted something to show that she gave the unborn some significant value in the tragic and challenging calculus of abortion. What followed disappointed me immensely.


From the liberalization of the platform - where her husband popularized safe, legal, and rare, a phrase from which she then helped to remove the final word - to the rejection of the Hyde Amendment to the defense of partial-birth abortions, I was too frustrated. I am not opposed to voting for pro-choice candidates, but I want to see something significant in support of life as part of their approach - opposition to partial-birth at minimum, if not requirements of parental consent for minors, prohibition of post-viability abortions, restrictions against morning-after pill access for minors, etc. With Mrs. Clinton, she gave those of us who uphold a complete, consistent ethic of life nothing.

Given no kernel of affirmation here, I found it harder to navigate the cloudiness of Mrs. Clinton's political indiscretions. Given a candidate who is so in favor of abortion, I would be looking for a pretty sterling resume and platform across the rest of her campaign. While we may never have all the facts with the Benghazi situation, with her use of a private server for State emails and her deletion of many of them, and with the transparencies of her impressive foundation, the haziness of these things cast too much doubt on her integrity for me. I find Mr. Kaine to be a person of great integrity but was troubled by his vociferous dissent toward our Church.

All these things together made me conclude that I cannot vote for Mr. Clinton and her ticket either.

She is clearly a faithful, grounded human being. She values her Methodist Christian faith. She seems to genuinely have a passion for public service, which preceded her high public profile, and for using her platform to advocate for marginalized people. And she does have the integrity to specifically and publicly apologize for her mishandling of emails while Secretary of State, a job during which he made excellent international accomplishments in rebuilding the American image and our international relationships.

While I have decided I cannot vote for her, I will be comfortable supporting her as my president, even if critically and skeptically. I know that she brings thorough competence and professionalism. I know that her penchant for policy has the potential to make excellent laws. I will be proud to have seen a black man and now a woman ascend to the office of president. And I hope and pray her humility will lead her to work with both parties and all cross-sections to build unity and discover consensus around the value and dignity of life in all forms in all people.

*  *  *

When I dug into this campaign in deeper earnestness, shifting from the horse-race of the primaries to the voting discernment of the general election, I initially never thought of abstaining. I have always felt that eventually one needs to take a stand and support a candidate. I discerned my way to voting for Mr. Obama in 2008 and Mr. Romney in 2012, and I imagined I'd find a conclusion this time as well. But a conversation with a dear friend, in which he told me, "There is nothing holy about the disintegrated life," reaffirmed to me that an active, thorough process could result in abstention and have been still valuable and worthwhile.

This election has helped me to retain my idealism. Given two candidates that are so frustrating, I've looked more deeply into third parties, most specifically the Libertarian Party and American Solidarity Party, than ever before. I've held the candidates to a higher standard than ever before. And I've learned more about the truth and necessity of Catholic Social Teaching than ever before.

Working with teenagers to match the excellent insight of the Catholic vocabulary to the hard-to-describe experiences of life, and especially encounters with people who are marginalized, has reinforced to me the necessity of our faith. Catholicism is so coherent and cohesive that it can readily respond to any and all issues of humanity and society. In this case, I don't feel that my abstention from voting for president (I will still vote and likely check a box for many other races) is at all a failure. CST and the wealth of our Church teaching has done more for me in this process than I had imagined it could.

Let us all continue to engage in social justice with solidarity and an earnest preferential option for the people we marginalize.
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Saturday, October 8, 2016

#morethanredandblue: Toward A Final Vote: Getting Closer

In college political science class, I learned about "the myth of the independent." While around one-third of voters identify as independent, many of their voting patterns remain fairly predictable. Most independents who admit a leaning toward one party or another tend to vote almost as predictably as voters who explicitly identify with that party. Only about one-third of independents are "true independents," in the sense that they don't lean either way consistently and thus their voting behavior is less predictable because their decisions differ from election to election, candidate to candidate, office to office.

I am a true independent. I voted for President Obama in '08 and Governor Romney in '12. I voted in Illinois Senate seat races to reelect Senator Durbin (D-IL) and to promote Mark Kirk (R-IL) to the Senate to succeed Obama. While a resident of southern California, I helped oust Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R) in favor of immigrant and self-made doctor Rep. Raul Ruiz (D-CA). And in Spring of this year, I utilized the open primary system in Illinois to pull a Republican ballot and support the only reasonable, pragmatic, and thoroughly well-rounded candidate in the race from either party, Governor John Kasich (R-OH).

My approach and my voting record would drive pollsters and political scientists crazy. Some feel that if you don't know who you're voting for soon after the nominating conventions, then you're not paying close enough attention. I disagree.

Whereas lifelong Democrats might not ever entertain the ideas of a Republican candidate or vice-versa, I rarely disqualify any candidate for any basic reason. Unless the person is a known racist or white supremacist or a dictatorial fascist or something crazily extreme, I'm happy to hear the arguments and proposals of any candidate before I entertain opposition or support.

So maybe for people whose opinions and ideologies match more closely with a particular party, the decision can be simpler and easier to conclude more quickly. However, for me as an independent, a moderate, and a Catholic, I want to take in as much information as I can. On the one hand, 24-hour-news has skewed the quality and shallowed the depth of news, but the technology and social media age gives us huge amounts of news, reporting, analysis, and commentary that can inform us. And if we can responsibly curate the data - for me, via (most of) my Facebook friends and my Twitter follows - there's lots of good sources out there to look to for information.

I look especially to Catholic media like America Magazine, Crux, Catholic News Agency, Millennial Journal, and more as well as various secular media for political coverage like NPR, New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and more.

In the case of this election, I knew from the moments Trump began to rise in the polls, through his insurgence in the primaries, and his winning of the delegate majority, that I could probably not vote for him. Even with the primacy of opposing abortion and upholding the consistent ethic of life that is usually found in the candidates of the Republican Party, I just felt his demeanor and brutishness did not translate to presidential leadership. Each time he opened his mouth, this was confirmed more and more, but it was from sifting through the reporting and reaction that I first found the incisive language to match my discomfort with Trump as a candidate:
It was from this well-written opinion piece that I was able to grasp exactly what bothered me most about Trump the candidate: he values power more than anything, and ignores or even belittles marginalized people. Trump's pomposity as a reality TV star and egotistical personality are galling, but it was by reading this story and connecting the dots that I found why I could likely never vote for him for president. I set the likelihood at 1%, knowing the DNC was toughening their stance on abortion in the platform and fussing over the reasonable compromise of the Hyde Amendment, thinking that I might yet want recourse to the ticket with a more moral stance on abortion.

So as the summer rolled on into convention season, I wanted to hear the RNC's speakers, vet the acceptance speeches, and see what the campaign would talk about. I especially wanted to see how, without the crutch of a hand-picked crowd and control over how the event would unfold, Trump would avail himself in a one-on-one conversation with Hillary Clinton. Here's my thoughts on Trump as I watched him in the debate (see all my tweets in the homepage sidebar or by visiting my profile or clicking through to my hashtag):








The debate just confirmed that Trump's ego and personality preclude him from paying any attention or giving any due justice to people who we have marginalized in our society. He solely values power and wealth. And any time he explains a policy or position, those motivations are clear while any attention to marginalized people is missing.

Trump's running-mate Governor Mike Pence (R-IN) had some promising language in the tail-end of the Vice Presidential debate, but the whole of his comments in debating Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) showed that Trump and Pence are not on the same page with each other or with earlier comments they've made in the campaign versus their current stances. Pence's pro-life influence appears solid, but his influence is suspect; plus, he has his own issues in rejecting refugees and losing a showdown with the Archbishop of Indianapolis over admitting Syrians to Indiana.



I abhor the recourse to abortion that our law protects, but I am now certain that the vague chance (because why would we believe this one thing when so much of the other things he says are lies) that a Trump administration would appoint judges to overturn Roe v. Wade or reform laws to protect the unborn is not worth a vote for him in any scenario. (Note: this was drafted even before the 2005 video was released!)

Image result for never trump

So that leaves me with three options remaining:

1. abstain, which I feel if done actively can be a responsible use of one's right to vote (or not)
2. vote for Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate for President
3. vote for Hillary Clinton, whose addressing of poor and marginalized people has been strong and sturdy but whose ticket's platform on abortion is awful

One month to go. Stay tuned.
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