What This Election Means, For Us and About Us

If Harris wins, we can say we rejected the worst.

Photo by Gage Skidmore

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Today, as Americans by the millions tap screens and fill in bubbles to make known their will, we should consider what it will mean if the seesaw falls down on Kamala Harris’s side. Not what it will mean for the next four messy and inevitably disappointing years of governance, but what it will mean about who we are and what our country is right now. 

It will mean we were, nearly 250 years after declaring our independence, finally willing to put a woman in charge of our government — and a non-white woman at that. It will mean that, presented with one hopeful campaign and one campaign of almost indescribable malice and venom, we chose the hopeful one. It will mean we were offered the chance to dismantle democracy in favor of something that looks a lot like fascism and said “We’d rather not.” 

But more than anything else, it will mean we rejected Donald Trump. 

Yes, he is just one man, and he is supported by an entire party of cowards, sycophants, and cronies who have knuckled under to him and propped him up for nine long years. But though he could not have succeeded as much as he did without that collection of two-bit villains behind him, he is nevertheless something unique, a character so repugnant that just as people all over the world today struggle to understand how he could ever have been elected, historians will labor for centuries to explain how he ascended to the very apex of American political life.  

Donald Trump was always, and always will be, the worst of us. Had we searched every city and hamlet throughout the land and tried to find a more contemptible human being to elevate to the position of ultimate power, we could barely have done worse. We could not have found someone more dishonest, more corrupt, more venal, more petty, more narcissistic, more juvenile, more ignorant, more misogynistic, more bigoted, more despicable in every one of his thoughts and utterances, a bully and a sexual predator and a con man and everything any sane person would shudder at the thought their children might grow up to be. 

If we reject him, we reject the blood-and-soil appeal he and his running mate offered, one that says America only belongs to those whose families have been here for multiple generations, especially those tied to a particular plot of land (but not Native Americans of course, who are you kidding). We will have reaffirmed that America’s genius has always been in its ability to incorporate generation after generation of newcomers, who bring with them their hope and determination and ambition, and yes, their culture too, which we weave into our own to make it more rich and vibrant. 

We will have said that America is a place whose best version of itself is not in the past but in the future, that we are proud of growing beyond our sins and injustices, and as fitful and incomplete as that progress has been, it is still progress, and there is more to come. We will have said that we don’t yearn for a whiter and dumber country, that we don’t define ourselves just by who we hate, that we don’t take joy in rudeness and cruelty, that we don’t believe all life is zero-sum and the best measure of success is how many people you can step on and humiliate. We will have turned away from scapegoating the most vulnerable, and banning books, and treating women like half-citizens whose lives and bodies must be subjugated to the desires of men with power. It will mean that once again — because last time was not enough — we looked at the politician whose singular talent lay in locating our darkest impulses and ugliest feelings, who asked us to be the worst version of ourselves, and we said no. 

Or at least most of us will have said that. It is to our credit that Trump never commanded majority support — not in the election he won, nor for a single day as president (the first in the history of polling never to crack 50% approval), nor in the two elections he lost, if indeed he does lose this time. But as ever, almost half of us looked at Trump in all his hideous glory and said “Yes, that is what I want.” 

But only almost half, never most of us. It may not be much to brag about, but the alternative is so much worse. 

As much as our politicians may shower us with compliments, we are mere human beings, as imperfect as those of any other nation. We are not uniquely wise or virtuous, and we have made terrible mistakes. But sometimes, we decide to reach for something better, or at the very least turn away from the worst. If that is what we did this time, we can celebrate in relief. We will make more mistakes, and lift up more demagogues. But this time, we will say we did the right thing.