{"id":5747,"date":"2024-11-12T09:35:24","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T13:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/?p=5747"},"modified":"2024-11-12T09:35:24","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T13:35:24","slug":"presidential-election-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/consistent-life.org\/blog\/index.php\/2024\/11\/12\/presidential-election-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"Presidential Election 2024: Consistent Life Perspectives"},"content":{"rendered":"

We offer three different takes on last Tuesday\u2019s elections. As usual, we don\u2019t necessarily endorse everything said in our blog, since we encourage individual writers to express a variety of views. This is especially so when analyzing elections.<\/em><\/p>\n

Carol Crossed<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Peter Sonski is who I early-voted for at the Susan B Anthony House. Sonski is with the American Solidarity Party<\/a>.\u00a0Some say I \u201cthrew my vote away\u201d and I guess I did.<\/p>\n

Susan B. Anthony voted too, illegally in 1872, before the 19th<\/sup>\u00a0Amendment passed.\u00a0Because of the Republicans\u2019 opposition to slavery, she voted for \u201cthe party of Lincoln.\u201d\u00a0While to my knowledge the term was not in parlance, she could have been called a \u201csingle-issue voter.\u201d She was accused of being too singular in her support for \u201censlaved persons,\u201d and to that she responded that she was for \u201chuman rights\u201d \u2013 making the case that slaves were humans, like women were. Some retorted that slave owners were humans too and therefore had rights. Therein was the 19th<\/sup>-century struggle to define rights which continues today.<\/p>\n

\"Carol<\/a>

Carol Crossed<\/p><\/div>\n

Today again we are asked to evaluate people\u2019s rights. Are all rights equal, and what makes them unequal?\u00a0The difference is some are civil rights and some are human rights. Susan made it clear that one\u2019s humanity or one\u2019s sex or one\u2019s race fit into the category of a human right.\u00a0 They were not chosen and could not be violated by someone\u2019s choice, whether that choice was to own a slave, to own a woman or to own another human being to misuse for your own purposes. Hence as civilization progressed, slavery, rape, and abortion were considered crimes against humanity, and laws prohibiting them were established or strengthened all within the same 8-10 year period.<\/p>\n

Paradoxically, the crime of abortion is morphing into a \u201cright\u201d to the point that the State is called upon to give it legal recognition and make it available through the free services of health-care personnel.<\/p>\n

Human rights are therefore not explicitly denied, but rather expanded to cover violent actions against human beings: instead of protecting human persons against violence, here human rights have evolved to include protecting actions against a person\u2019s dignity or against a person\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

Its not surprising that the Democratic Party has dropped from its platform opposition to the death penalty.\u00a0Using violence as a right to solve a problem normalizes despair and elevates irresponsibility to a right.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t vote for Trump because I believe he\u2019s a narcissist, an illness that makes a person\u2019s actions unpredictable and wholly dependent upon one\u2019s own self-absorption.\u00a0I see Trump as dangerous in the short term and Harris as dangerous in the long term. As I see it, there is no \u201cbetter of two evils\u201d in this election.<\/p>\n

Lisa Stiller<\/strong><\/h3>\n

As I watched the returns coming in, and as I kept staring at the New York Times<\/em> website as their election meter stayed in the red zone for much of the evening, a feeling of dread set in. My fears were being realized. A return to the Trump era of enabling hate, emulating fascist and authoritarian leaders, and cutting programs and funding that help our most marginalized people was, for me, unthinkable.<\/p>\n

Yes, neither candidate was a consistent life candidate. Both had a lot of flaws. But saving what\u2019s left of our democracy and preserving some sort of decency in our national conversation was also important enough to be a large factor in deciding which of the lesser of two evils should become president.<\/p>\n

And Kamala Harris blew it. Instead of her being the candidate that would save us from a descent into a repressive government that will again enable hate and violence, turn its back on the poor, and enact a horrendous immigration policy, she basically ran a campaign centered on abortion. A campaign focused on the right to take life, rather than a campaign focused on those things that give life and help people thrive.<\/p>\n

She started her campaign with an abortion tour. \u201cProtect Our Freedoms\u201d was simply a euphemism for abortion echoed by Harris and her supporters throughout her campaign. Democrats saw their attack on the Dobbs<\/em> decision succeeded in 2022, so they thought they would do it again.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, they neglected to listen to what people were saying: concerns about economy and democracy topped the list. But Harris and her surrogates kept saying how great the economy\u00a0had become under Biden’s American Rescue Plan and the bipartisan Infrastructure Act. While she loudly sounded the alarm over another Trump presidency, Heather Cox Richardson led the rose-colored glasses parade. But too many people were being seriously negatively impacted by inflation, including soaring rents, health insurance costs, food prices, and utility costs. Harris turned her back on that until too late.<\/p>\n

Harris was too busy \u201cpreserving our freedoms.\u201d Abortion was front and center of her campaign. She didn’t link abortion to the other issues it\u2019s so closely tied to: lack of resources, fear of not being able to afford a child, lack of emotional and financial support. Abortion for Harris and the Democrats is a freestanding issue: a right, a freedom, an entitlement. The Democrats have held abortion as the cornerstone of their campaign efforts for years, without a thought to the fact it isn\u2019t a choice most women make lightly, without a thought addressing the economic factors that lead to having an abortion.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lisa Stiller<\/p><\/div>\n

Most polls had the economy and inflation as the number one concern of Americans. Biden didn\u2019t put our economy on the track they celebrated. Ordinary Americans are struggling with soaring costs — .housing, food, utilities, basic necessities. The Democrats failed to address it head-on. Instead they embraced abortion.<\/p>\n

What for me is so sad is that once upon a time, the Democrats did hold up economic well-being and addressing poverty as priority.<\/p>\n

Harris actually had some good ideas when she did talk about the economy, too late in her campaign.\u00a0 And a determined purpose to bring about a ceasefire in the Middle East, and stand\u00a0behind Ukraine and seek peace.\u00a0 And fairly and humanely\u00a0deal with immigration.<\/p>\n

But these weren\u2019t her focus. She didn\u2019t address them much until too late.<\/p>\n

A lot of people had moved on from casting their votes as a response to the Dobbs<\/em> decision. They wanted a better life.<\/p>\n

Harris failed us. And we are doomed to 4 years that aren\u2019t very pro-life in so many ways.<\/p>\n

Just some ramblings late at night when I was way too upset to sleep.<\/p>\n

Rachel MacNair<\/strong><\/h3>\n

There are many ideas about why Harris lost this election. I\u2019ll cover what I see through my consistent-life lens.<\/p>\n

War<\/strong><\/p>\n

Under Biden-Harris, we now have serious carnage in Ukraine and Gaza. The carnage of war is also in other hotspots now and was during Trump\u2019s first term, but those two major wars were on voters\u2019 minds.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s rhetoric was more anti-war than Harris\u2019s. This doesn\u2019t mean it was suitable for us peace activists. It was more from the view of military professionals and their families who believe in \u201cpeace through strength.\u201d They regard being prepared for war as a way of preventing it through deterrence. That\u2019s not my take on it, but it\u2019s still an antipathy to wars happening.<\/p>\n

Early on, Trump\u2019s supporters were disgusted with the war in Iraq. Many of them had fought in it, and felt (rightly) that their political leaders had let them down. It was a failure by elites.<\/p>\n

Discussing this, Democrat Pete Buttigieg said this in The New York Times<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Certainly, I think the complicity of the Democratic Party in the run-up to the Iraq war continues to be something that really helped set America onto the political trajectory that we\u2019re on right now . . . The Democrats everywhere who were skeptical of the idea of the Iraq War were still kind of pretending to be OK with it, because they thought they had to be.<\/p>\n

The war in Gaza was also explicitly one that distressed many voters who refused to vote for either candidate.<\/p>\n

When it comes to actual wars happening now, Harris\u2019s rhetoric was more belligerent. That didn\u2019t get noticed much by the press because these were conventional pro-war thoughts.<\/p>\n

This is an interesting take in The Washington Post<\/em>: The right way for Trump to play peacemaker<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Rachel MacNair<\/p><\/div>\n

Abortion<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the very least, it\u2019s clear that Harris emphasized abortion more than polls show people indicated an interest in. She could have been talking about topics they were more interested in.<\/p>\n

But I think there\u2019s more to it. Her extremism was great enough to attack pregnancy help centers. Her extremism asserted that conscientious objection to participating in abortions<\/a> shouldn\u2019t be allowed.<\/p>\n

There are millions of people who voted for pro-abortion measures who also voted for Trump. That means their commitment to abortion wasn\u2019t total. It\u2019s easy to vote for something when you\u2019re voting anyway, and many of them were taken in by the rhetoric that women suffering miscarriages weren\u2019t getting medical care.<\/p>\n

In other words, they were voting against what was presented to them as an extreme that\u2019s more extreme than what\u2019s actually happening. That didn\u2019t mean they supported the other extreme \u2013 even though that\u2019s what they voted for. I live in Missouri, so I kept seeing the pitch for our pro-abortion measure:<\/a> \u201cMissouri\u2019s abortion ban goes too far.\u201d They never delineated how far Amendment 3 went in the other direction.<\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s a discomfort with Harris\u2019s rhetoric that so totally ignores and discounts killed babies. Many won\u2019t articulate that to pollsters, and I don\u2019t think they\u2019re articulating that to themselves, either. Therefore, I can\u2019t document this idea, and could rightly be accused of wishful thinking. But I\u2019ll maintain it all the same: I think, poetically speaking, that the ghosts of all those children are haunting the public discourse now, behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

=============================<\/p>\n

For more of our recent posts on election politics, see:\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Summary of Results: Peace & Life Referendums 2024<\/a> (for far more detail, see our project website: Peace and Life Referendums<\/a>)<\/p>\n

Oh My, How the Election Conundrum Has Changed\u00a0<\/a>(2024) \/ Rachel MacNair<\/p>\n

Abortion on the Ballot<\/a>\u00a0\/ Lisa Stiller<\/p>\n

Slavery: Removing the Exception<\/a><\/p>\n

What History Shows: The Consistent Life Ethic Works for Pro-life Referendums<\/a><\/p>\n

How Consistent-life Advocacy Would Benefit from Ranked-Choice Voting<\/a><\/p>\n

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We offer three different takes on last Tuesday\u2019s elections. As usual, we don\u2019t necessarily endorse everything said in our blog, since we encourage individual writers to express a variety of views. This is especially so when analyzing elections. Carol Crossed Peter Sonski is who I early-voted for at the Susan B Anthony House. Sonski is… <\/p>\n