We Need a Placeholder President
By: Jessica Wildfire
Tags: Culture, Society, Women, Politics, News

We Need a Placeholder President

Here’s why I’m voting for a candidate I don’t support.

Photo by tom coe on Unsplash

Joe Biden doesn’t instill the most confidence. We know he’s told lies, compromised his own principles, and he’s most likely used his power and influence to pressure women into sex. And yet, there’s one thing to admire in this tired mule of a candidate. Do I have to say it?

He’s not Donald Trump.

Lots of people have already planned to sit out this election. They’re citing moral duties. They’re talking about choosing the lesser of two evils — like we haven’t been doing this our entire lives.

Look at any single moment in U.S. history. It has a slithery secret. Any progress always comes with moral sacrifices. Sometimes they make us sick to our stomach to think about.

This is the unpleasant part of adulting.

Now isn’t the time to haul out the moral turpentine. Let’s revisit some of the things Trump has done:

Torn apart immigrant families.

Locked children in cages.

Threatened to imprison political rivals.

Presided over the worst tax plan in U.S. history.

Referred to a global pandemic as a hoax.

Cut funding to the World Health Organization during a pandemic.

Encouraged Americans to self-medicate with everything from fish medicine to household disinfectant.

Approved the wholesale slaughter of Kurdish allies.

Jeopardized national security on a weekly basis.

Engaged in Twitter feuds with world leaders.

Paid homage to dictators around the globe.

Alienated us from all of our allies.

Watched the entire UN Assembly laugh at him to his face.

No fewer than 25 different women have accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct, including toward minors. Trump is literally on tape bragging about how he uses his celebrity status to get away with it.

Trump isn’t the greater of two evils.

He is the greatest evil.

Trump has bragged that he could shoot someone dead in the streets, and people would still vote for him. He is:

A failed businessman.

A con artist.

A pathological liar.

A narcissist.

A sociopath.

A danger to himself and others.

Every politician tells lies and half-truths. Hillary Clinton has been caught in plenty of lies. Anyone I know who didn’t vote for her in 2016 said the same thing, they couldn’t tolerate her dishonesty.

Clinton’s also been accused of condoning her husband’s own legacy of sexual harassment and assault.

Well…

She still would’ve made a better president than Trump. In fact, here’s a list of people who would make a better president than Trump:

Richard Nixon.

George W. Bush.

Mitt Romney.

Mr. Burns.

Oswald Cobblepot.

Darth Maul.

Willem Dafoe.

Hannibal Lecter.

Ra’s Al Ghul.

We could go on, but you get the idea.

Joe Biden gives our country a slim chance at re-establishing presidential norms, rebuilding our devastated institutions, and muddling through for a few years until we can finally get our shit together.

Biden could very well collapse under the weight of criticism and allegations during his first year in office. This might be the only way we ever get a woman into the presidency — by putting her a heartbeat away first.

Biden is like a political version of self-quarantine. He flattens the curve of destruction, and buys us some time.

He won’t be a bold leader.

Biden will be a figure head, which could be the best possible thing for us now. We need a president who doesn’t keep us up worrying at night. We need a president who will defer to experts. We need a president who will sit back in a Lazy-Boy and watch CNN all day.

We need a president who won’t appoint openly white supremacists dirt bags to his cabinet and give them the highest levels of security clearance. We need a president who won’t give his own children jobs inside the White House, or trust them with Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

We need a president who will stay out of the news.

Deep down, Biden knows this. Look at him. A few sparks are still firing. When he’s lucid, you can tell what he wants.

He wants to get rid of Trump.

It’s time for a reality check. The Democratic Party didn’t force Biden on us any more than they forced Clinton on us in 2016. Those of us who didn’t vote for Clinton stayed home and pouted on election day, or we comforted ourselves with the idea that Trump could never win. Look what happened. He won. And the country is so much worse off for it.

The 2020 primaries are over. It’s time to decide the fate of our country — not just for the next four years, but the next four decades. Anyone who despises Trump has three choices:

Vote for a less dangerous old white man.

Vote in protest for a third-party candidate.

Stay home on election day.

I’ve decided to vote for a less dangerous old white man, even though he may have raped a woman. That’s the choice that leaves some glimmer of hope for my child’s future. The other three choices leave nothing.

The other three choices put someone in office who has shown time and again that he cares about nothing but himself.

Trump doesn’t even care about his own kids.

He uses them as tools.

Trump has said he would fuck his own daughter.

People talk to me about morality. After four more years of Trump, we won’t have the luxury of ethical debates. We’ll be that much closer to a global ecosystem savaged by climate change. We’ll be marching straight into another pandemic we’re not prepared for. Some of us will be jobless, homeless, and without healthcare.

Being Americans, we’re used to a certain safety net. We’ve had the luxury of refusing the lesser of two evils, of protest votes, and abstaining in order to gratify our moral conscience. That safety net is gone. Later this year, we’re either going to vote for someone who won’t definitely get us all killed, or someone who will.

Look yourself in the eye and say the country can withstand another four years of Trump. That’s where we’re at. If you can honestly do that, remembering the last four years, then vote how you want.

The day after Trump won, many of my anti-Clinton friends came to me in contrition. They felt embarrassed. They didn’t actually think Trump could win. Let’s not make this mistake twice. We can’t afford it.