Tuesday, November 5, 2024

#310 / A Final Pitch



If you haven't already voted, today is your last chance to do it. I urge anyone reading this blog posting to make sure to cast your ballot. Get your vote in! To the extent that politics is "action," and is not just a "spectator sport" - and that is definitely my contention, as I made clear yesterday - voting is the very minimum action that all citizens can take, in an effort to make "self-government" a reality, and not just a slogan. 

I urge anyone legally able to vote to do so, and to do so today, if they haven't already voted. To repeat myself, "today is your last chance to do it." 

Now, let me be clear about that just-repeated statement. Normally, citizens can vote on Election Day (or can decline, or fail, or forget to vote), and if they don't vote, there will be other, future opportunities to do so. 

In this election, however, one candidate for president, Donald J. Trump, has claimed that if he is elected this really will be our "last chance" to vote. I presume that most readers of this blog posting will have already heard about this claim from our former president.

Was it a "joke"? Or was it serious? You can watch Trump tell "Christians" that this is the last time they'll ever have to vote. Just click that link. 

Below, click on the video that features Trump's face to hear what historian Heather Cox Richardson has to say about Trump, and about the significance of this election, and about his claim that this is the last time "Christians" will ever have to vote. This video interview with Richardson is well worth watching: 


Because today is Election Day, this blog posting really is my "final pitch," urging anyone who reads this blog posting to be sure to vote. As you can undoubtedly tell, I am hoping that those reading this will vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, and not for the Trump-Vance ticket. But even if that won't be the case. Today is it. Get your vote in!

I want to conclude this blog posting by saying that the election being held today is not, and will not be, our "final opportunity" to make self-government work, including our opportunity to make our system of democratic voting work. 

If the election being held today were to result in the selection of a president who aims, really, to eliminate democratic self-government in the United States (and that is what various pronouncements by both Trump and Vance suggest - and what that "Project 2025" guidebook suggests), that is not the "end of the story." 

We will have many opportunities in the future to put into action the words of the Declaration of Independence, and the words of President Abraham Lincoln, and to dedicate "our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor" to the proposition that "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from this earth."

So, as a "Final Pitch" to everyone who cares about maintining democratic elections and an effective and active system of self-government in our country, let me make use of a phrase actually employed by Donald Trump, himself, after the 2020 election: "Stand By." 


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