Leave It to My Teenage Daughter To Figure Out Why I Hate This Election
By: Ruben Navarrett Jr. (ArcaMax)
It will be hard to find a more "both sides" article than this one.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
By Ruben Navarrett Jr.
Leave It to My Teenage Daughter To Figure Out Why I Hate This Election
on Oct 8, 2024
SAN DIEGO -- My 15-year-old daughter is smarter than her old man. Everyone in the family knows this. So it came as no surprise that, recently, as she tried to pin me down, she wound up figuring me out.
She zeroed in on what I was thinking, and feeling, about this presidential election -- and the mediocre choices on the ballot -- and pointed out something I couldn't see.
Every week, my little girl corners me and poses a simple question.
"Dad, who are you going to vote for?" she asks.
Sometimes, I try to duck the question, or change the subject. But when I answer it, the response is always the same.
"I'm undecided," I tell her.
Yes, I'm one of those people.
With less than a month until the Nov. 5 election, the hour is late. And both camps of partisans -- Republicans and Democrats -- are detectably angry and frustrated with the sliver of the electorate that hasn't made up its mind between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
As for how wide that sliver actually is, it's hard to tell. Nationwide estimates of how many fence sitters are out there are all over the map.
A recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll put the undecided figure at just 1%. But a recent New York Times/Philadelphia Inquirer/Siena College poll found that the undecided account for nearly 1 in 6 voters, or about 15%. Some polls show up to 20% of voters are undecided, while others put the figure at 3%.
My gut tells me that the actual figure of undecided voters is probably somewhere between 5% and 10%, or more than enough to swing an election that is pretty much tied. Most polls show Harris leading Trump nationwide by two or three points. Among seven battleground states -- Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina -- Harris leads in four of them.
Still, it should worry Team Harris that many of the undecided appear to be drawn from three groups that many Democrats might assume were in their back pocket: those who are Black, Latino or young.
Spare me the insults. Contrary to what you hear from snobby media analysts who have lost touch with real people in the real world, these are not "low-information voters" we're talking about.
It's not that the undecided need to see and hear more from Harris and Trump. Rather, it's that they've already seen and heard too much. And the more they take in, the more unsure they become.
The undecided harbor serious doubts about both candidates.
Every time Trump says something outrageous on the stump -- as he did recently when he suggested that some migrants are genetically predisposed to commit crimes -- the undecided wince.
Every time Harris gives an interview where she comes across as evasive and inarticulate -- as she did during a recent sit-down with CBS News' Bill Whitaker for "60 Minutes" -- they wince again.
Recently, the Times/Inquirer/Siena poll took a hard look at the undecided and essentially asked: "What's the problem?"
The problem is our choices. Concerning Trump, the undecided object to his personality/behavior and question his ethics/honesty. With Harris, they doubt her honesty/trustworthiness and question her judgment/character.
I would frame it differently. It seems to me this is a contest between the morally deficient and the intellectually deficient. Both candidates come up short in important areas.
Here's another worry for Democrats. Among Black and Latino voters, Harris continues to have trouble closing the deal with men. Even those who would never in a million years vote for Trump.
Hey, that's me!
Which brings us back to my daughter and the interrogation to which she is subjecting me.
The teenager knows that I have about as much respect for Trump as the former president showed toward my grandfather and other Mexican immigrants when he described them, in June 2015, as criminals, rapists and drug traffickers. Which is to say, none at all.
"You're not going to vote for Trump," she said. I shook my head.
"So basically, you're just trying to get comfortable with the idea of voting for Harris," she said.
Smart girl. She's correct. I didn't get it. Now I do.
I'm trying to convince myself to support the Democrat if for no other reason than because I loathe the Republican. But it's not working. When I argue in my own mind the case for rolling the dice and putting Harris in the White House, I don't find myself very convincing.
Tags
Who is online
221 visitors
People like this guy will put Trump into the White House. The more people are willing to say it is a tough choice (it isnt) the better it will look for Trump, because people will see things like this as "permission" to take another chance on Trump.
The clock is ticking, and there is no more time for "both sides" bullshit analysis.
Roughly 652 hours left before the real fun begins, challenging every ballot for years...
LOL. I just posted a comment on your Metafied article about why NT IS (and IMO should be) a "both sides now" web site.
[✘] No one should be both sides. Donald Trump tried to overthrow our government. There really is no other issue, but the incompetence of the media has made a horse race out of it.
There are no two legitimate sides to this election.
It's pretty much impossible, for a non far left progressive, to make a positive case for Harris.
Not at all, its a binary election and Donald Trump is a demented lunatic. He's not fit for office, and there is no one, certainly not Kamala Harris, who is more unfit than he is.
The choice is simple and obvious.
No hard core reactionary is going to agree. Mostly because trump is their guy, no matter what they pretend.
I dont care if hard core MAGA agree or not. Many of them have been long gone for years.
You pretty much are proving my point.
The most positive case for Harris is she is not Trump.
Lets hear your positive case for Trump so I can laugh my ass off at it.
I set forth the positive case for Trump as follows:
That pretty much covers all of Trump's positives, but let me add this much more in his defense...
He's right. His daughter is smarter than he is.
I can fully understand his dilemma. As a person living as far away from the USA as is possible, NOT being an American citizen, and not really having much of a "skin in the game" as an American does, I think I can be relatively independent and objective, and I wouldn't vote for either of the leading candidates either. If I were qualified to do so I would vote for Liz Cheney if she were a candidate. But I also believe that in the event that Harris DOESN'T win, it will have been because too many of the women of America don't have the balls both literally and figuratively to want themselves and their female children to be anything better than Handmaidens, as described in the novel The Handmaid's Tale written by Canadian Margaret Atwood, and adapted as a movie with the same name.
I think the dems are going to be surprised and disappointed at the way the women's vote will go this election.
Many of them don't seem to be able to define and describe what a woman is, and even worse, seem to favor and encourage men pretending to be women who have caused all kinds of controversy and confusion, especially when it comes to women's sports.