The one Thanksgiving that was different

For many years, Thanksgivings had always been a very pleasant time for our family in Indianapolis to get together and enjoy a traditional feast and each other’s company. 

The one exception to this was 2016, when the holiday landed in the wake of what I felt was this country’s worst-ever decision for electing a new president of the United States. For the first time that I can recall, the subject of politics surfaced in our discussions at the Thanksgiving get-together that year. 

One family member who enjoys needling people started it by needling me because he knew I detested the Republican candidate, who I shall not name. It’s true; everyone in the family knew how I felt.

As a career newspaperman, for years I’d made a point to stay on top of current events and explore topics below the radar of most people. So long before Election Day, I’d formed an opinion on the 2016 Republican candidate for President based on:

*** His history of demonstrations of greed (even to the point of slighting people in his own family)

*** His insatiable appetite for the public spotlight

*** His failed casino investments and ensuing bankruptcies

*** His shafting of small contractors on his casino construction projects

*** His association with an attorney with lengthy known ties to the mob

*** A superiority/me-first complex perfectly fitting the classic definition of narcissism

I feel that such a person should never be installed in a position of power and authority as a national president. 

Did the Democratic candidate have her faults? Yes, but I also knew she would never do anything to undermine our democracy as I feared could happen with the power-hungry Republican. Another family member, bless him, mentioned his distaste of both candidates for the two major party candidates, so he took the Switzerland route and voted for the Libertarian candidate. As he explained at our Thanksgiving Day get-together, he also felt strongly about the Libertarian Party philosophy that promotes civil liberties, non-interventionism, laissez-faire capitalism and limiting the size and scope of government.

I happened to opine how taking such a course wasn’t risky in most elections, but the 2016 election was not like most elections. I explained why the election outcome presented an existential threat to the country, and that in this instance country before personal ideology should have been paramount.

The family member who started this ruckus in the first place told me the country needs to give the new guy a chance. By this time, the discussion had transitioned to mid-level argument, so the women stepped in and told us to nip it in the bud (apologies to Mayberry Sheriff’s Deputy Barney Fife). 

It might seem otherwise, but this whole lively “debate” transpired over just 15 minutes or so, and thankfully, calm was restored in relatively short order.

I do not feel smug today even though my worst fears in 2016 proved to be correct, given all that happened in the previous president’s administration. It was a toilet bowl term that began with large tax cuts for big corporations and the richest Americans, though the administration tried to masquerade it as a boon to average citizens. 

The former president’s botched handling of the COVID pandemic is also high up on the list of utter failures. But his signature transgressions were the false claims of illegal voting during the 2020 election and his tragic attempt to undermine democracy and violate the Constitution — not to mention the laws of the land — in the Jan. 6, 2021, attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. And make no mistake, that was an attempted insurrection, replete with loss of lives (plural). People today forget about the loss of lives ... or conveniently choose to overlook them.

This is all a prelude to the real purpose of this post, which is to share a current op ed column by John J. Pitney Jr., a professor of American politics at Claremont McKenna College. From 1989-91, he was deputy director of research at the Republican National Committee.

His column appears below, topped by the headline that appeared with it Thursday in my local daily newspaper, the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer. He speaks with more clarity on the subject than I could have:

I’m a ‘Never Trump’ conservative who voted third party in 2016. Here’s why I won’t make that mistake this time.

Some right-leaning voters who oppose Donald Trump are thinking of voting neither for him nor Kamala Harris.

I understand how they feel. In 2016, I published an article urging Never Trump conservatives to consider casting their ballot for a third-party candidate. In the election that year, I did just that.

I regret writing that column. I regret casting that vote.

To people like me, Trump represented a repudiation of everything that Ronald Reagan stood for. But as a conservative and former GOP staffer who had never voted for a Democratic presidential candidate, I harbored reservations about Hillary Clinton.

Voting for neither Trump nor Clinton seemed to be a “safe” way to express disapproval of both. Most polls at the time showed her on track to win comfortably. It seemed reasonable to argue that a significant tally for a third-party candidate might check her liberal ambitions. After all, the number of votes for independent candidate Ross Perot in 1992 may have nudged Bill Clinton to accept bigger budget cuts than he wanted.

But the 2016 election did not go according to expectations. Despite losing the national popular vote, Trump squeaked into office by edging out Hillary Clinton in the Electoral College tally, claiming key states where polls were way off the mark.

Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson won 3% of the national vote, a high-water mark for that party. An exit poll asked his supporters whom they would choose in a two-person race. Though many said they would abstain, more picked Clinton than Trump.

We will never know whether Trump would have lost if more such voters had switched to Clinton. We do know what happened because he won. He blew up the federal debt. His incompetent handling of COVID-19 caused tens of thousands of needless deaths. He finished his term by trying to overturn an election he lost and instigating a violent rebellion against the government he had sworn to protect.

Trump turned out to be a catastrophe for our country. Hillary Clinton just was a candidate with whom I disagreed. I wish I had voted for her and encouraged others to do the same.

The next president of the United States will be Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, not anybody else. The election will almost certainly be close. We don't have the luxury of voting third party or writing in the name of a fantasy candidate. (In most states, those write-ins won’t even count.)

Currently, many states are likely to give a lopsided margin to one candidate or the other. For example, California will probably go for Harris and West Virginia for Trump. Voters in such states might think it is OK to skip the election or vote for somebody who can’t win, thinking: “What the heck, it won’t make any difference in the electoral count, right?”

That attitude is wrong in two ways.

First, “likely” does not mean “certain.” As we have already seen, the polls can err. Never Trump folks do not want to wake up on the day after the election to find that their wasted votes have helped him score a narrow upset in their state.

Second, the popular vote matters. Under any circumstance, Trump will almost certainly refuse to accept defeat. But if he loses big in the popular vote, as well as losing the electoral vote, it will be harder for him to claim that he is the people’s choice. The larger the margin, the weaker his claim.

For us Never Trumpers, as for everybody else, the 2024 election is a binary choice.

If you abstain or vote for somebody other than Kamala Harris, you effectively vote for Trump. Consider the consequences for our country. Don’t do something you’ll regret.