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I Can’t Believe I Have to Vote for Joe Biden
Democratic women are once again being asked to help save the country by voting for a deeply problematic man
On election night in 2016, my six-year-old daughter and I wore matching “feminist” T-shirts, ordered a pizza, and sat glued in front of the television with my mother. Assuming three generations of women were about to watch the first female president be elected, I bought a bottle of champagne. (It’s still sitting in a dusty corner of my bar.)
This November, there won’t be buzzy excitement or matching T-shirts with my daughter. On election day, my choice will be between Donald Trump, a dangerous bigot who has been credibly accused of rape, sexual assault, and harassment by more than two dozen women over a more than four-decade period, and Joe Biden, a man recently accused of sexually assaulting a Senate aide in the 1990s, and who has made fun of the women who complained about his penchant for unwanted shoulder rubs.
Biden is the better choice by a mile, and I’ll do what’s right for the country and vote for him. But I’m still furious: I can’t believe that when faced with the most dangerous president of our lifetime, Democrats are moving ahead with a nearly 80-year-old moderate who has shown himself time and again not up for the fight. I am livid that Democratic women will be called on, once again, to cast our vote in the name of reducing harm to the country rather than moving it forward.
Most of all, I’m angry that people who want Trump out are expected to just vote without airing our concerns about the man who stands between him and another four years. I understand the deep worry so many Democrats share about fighting Trump with anything less than full-throated enthusiasm for our candidate. The consequences of losing another election — more far-right Supreme Court justices appointed, more children separated from their parents at the border, more hate crimes, and more lives and jobs lost amid this mismanaged pandemic — are real and terrifying. But the idea that we can no longer speak the truth aloud for fear of losing is a dangerous one.
And the truth is that this election is going to be terrible for women, no matter what we do. Feminists…
