Down Route 66: Vote Blue

I usually don’t do political endorsements. Mostly because I honestly don’t see why I, in particular, need to.

Who is really going to take advice from the publisher of a pretty small online newspaper in rural Illinois? Also, since I am still considering having the Eagle be a non-profit, I try not to do things that could endanger that potential status. But that’s most years. This year is different.

Vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Vote for Democrats up and down the ticket.

I can give you a list of reasons. The horrifically anti-LGBTQ stances of both Trump and the modern GOP. The incompetence in the handling of the coronavirus pandemic that is affecting us all. The blatant racism and prejudice of the administration. The denial of how not normal we are now.

But you probably already know most of those. If you read this site regularly, you probably have an idea of the politics and either agree with them or like to rage-read. You’ve seen the news we’ve reported.

Illinois is a reliably blue state. We know it’s probably gonna go for Biden. But there’s still all the downticket races. State and U.S. House seats. The U.S. Senate seat. Local offices across the state. We need to vote for those too.

At this point, we honestly can’t trust the GOP to govern. Even now, Republican officeholders are working to roll back hard-won rights, pushing to put us all at risk from coronavirus, and denying the reality of racism and the state of our country.

I’m not saying the Democrats. Far from it. Too often, especially in the federal government, they try to find compromise where there is none to be had. They ignore what the vast majority of the American public actually wants, like affordable college and healthcare, and calls it radical.

At this moment, that doesn’t matter. We have an administration where the present refused for two days to condemn white supremacy. It should only take as much time as needed to breathe in air to speak. We still have kids in cages on the southern border. Immigration has become nothing more than a trickle. We are a laughing stock in the rest of the world. And the right is working now to stack the Supreme Court to enshrine far right beliefs for a generation. We can not let that happen.

We no longer have the luxury of getting exactly what we want. We just need to stop the bleeding long enough to save what we can. It’s going to take years to repair the damage this administration has done. It won’t be done in the next four years or even eight. But we won’t be able to if we don’t vote the people in office who are working to hurt us. We’re far beyond “band-aid.” We need a tourniquet to save the life of the patient. It will hurt, but the patient will survive.

So, everyone who is reading this, vote Democrat. For every office. Whether you live in Illinois our our neighboring states. Please, vote blue. It won’t make everything better, but it will at least get us moving to repair the damage Trump has done.

Just vote.