I voted!
President Trump has asked voters to pretend he’s on the ballot, even though he’s not. However, I agree with him. Every modern president can be judged by mid-term elections.
My first twenty years of voting for president were hit and miss. Mostly miss. Whom of these men became president: George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, John Anderson, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis? One for five. Not a great showing, eh?
Bill Clinton represented an uptick. I voted for him twice. Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama followed. See, my presidential batting average went from .200 to .455 since I supported Obama in 2008 and 2012. After that improvement, my political coach didn’t ship me to the minors. My final three at-bats were Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Which means I slumped in recent seasons, going one for three at the ballot plate.
Overall, I’m six for fourteen which gives me a respectable .429.
Is that respectable? It’s astounding in baseball. Maybe not so much in politics?
This is a midterm year and so my batting average will stay at its current level. Conventional political wisdom predicts the incumbent president’s party will likely lose seats in a midterm. We voters are a fickle lot and use the checks-and-balances system to remind the occupants of the Oval Office that the voters are really in charge.
As a social justice-oriented Christian, who takes the Bible seriously but not literally, I’m probably more liberal (or misguided as my conservative friends might say) than many citizens. But, even with my below .500 batting average, my vote matters. Yours too.
I won’t pretend; nothing on my 2026 California ballot got me excited. Indeed, I left several ovals blank beside the spots for a justice. I couldn’t find helpful information and the vote was based on approving their term on the bench for more years. How do I know if they’ve been doing a good job? Call me lazy for saving my black ink.
I admit to voting yes for a proposition primarily because a politician I distrust supported the no vote. Is that a good way cast a ballot?
The vote for California’s governor seemed as inspiring as the metaphoric paint drying or grass growing. As a longtime Democrat, I can’t muster any reason to vote Republican in the golden state. Sooner or later, the California Republicans will start offering better (aka, more moderate) candidates. With my cranky liberal bias, most moderate Republican candidates probably won’t appeal to me. But around 25% of California voters identify as “independent.” We need more balance. Like too many states, for good, bad, and ugly reasons, we’ve been gerrymandered into a one-party dominance.
I stared at the ballot. Ho-hum on the governor. None of my senators are running in this mid-term. I do have the choice of a new representative because—shock and dismay—we recently gerrymandered the congressional districts to favor Democrats. My “old” representative—a die-hard MAGA advocate who never answered my request for helping me understand who were the “enemies of the state” has been replaced by a new congressman. Except he’s not new since 1) he’s a month older than me and B) he’s served in Congress since the 2004 election. I’m retired. Shouldn’t he also be retired? Nonetheless, with a new old guy representing me, I unenthusiastically have someone closer to my priorities.
My ballot has a new tax on billionaires. There are other ballot measures that supposedly undermine that proposal. If a voter ignored the small print, she or he may cancel themselves out. I am of three or four minds about the taxing the uber-rich. As a citizen who’s more a thousand-aire than a billionaire, a part of me likes sticking it to the moneyed class. But there are other parts that A) I don’t truly understand the details of the tax, and 2) I believe that the really, really rich are so different from me that California’s handful of gazillionaires will quickly figure out ways to avoid the tax.
Maybe I could sneak into Texas and vote for James Talarico. He seems like fun. How many politicians have ever said in public that God is nonbinary? That makes my theological heart sing and dance. Maybe by disguising myself, I could scurry across more state lines to cast a vote for my United Methodist clergy colleague Adam Hamilton. He’s in the Kansas senate race. Those two politicians give me hope for the future.
Out-of-state fantasies aside, I was a good citizen. Since I currently can’t drive with my surgically-repaired right foot, my wife took us on a field trip to a nearby ballot drop box.
However you vote, whomever you vote for . . . please exercise your right to vote.
Thanks for reading. More next week . . .
in Peace,
Larry Patten
Photo by Element5 Digital on Unsplash