Our Voting Duty
Voting, as ever, is a difficult duty to do well. In many states like my own where one party dominates, voting in the general election is largely pointless for major offices since the battle was already decided in the primary election. Remember that there are always other general election ballot issues which still need a vote regardless of whether your vote is likely to make a difference in the outcome of the big ticket races. Always vote, regardless of whether or not you feel your vote will make a difference. If nothing else, you have no right to complain about politics if you haven't done your civic duty and voted.
I wish everyone had the advantage of not only a single open primary for all parties, but ranked choice voting of all parties candidates. We'd have a better general election if we were just picking the best from those who actually had a chance of winning.
There are a few places in the country where this is working, and it should be widespread. Combine that with one date on which the primary falls for all states and maybe everyone would have a real say in the Presidential office rather than just a few randomly selected early voting states. But those ideas are subjects for a different article.
My Hopes
I hope and pray that the best politician from all the parties in each race will actually win. I believe that God does have a plan and a preference in each elected office. But as the country gradually forgets its Christian roots, and even Christians are swayed more by party, passion, and campaign literature than His still small voice, His plan becomes harder to accomplish.
That is not a blanket endorsement for voting for a Christian over a non-Christian. You don't know how far along the Holy Spirit is at in converting any person's heart to God and you don't know whether any outstanding Christian will turn their back on God the day after the election. So you need to try to listen for the Holy Spirit's guidance in who to vote for. He has a much better idea of what an individual is likely to do in the years to come. Only He knows how they will react to the pressures they are or will be under for good or for evil.
Sometimes a good man or woman who knows politics and how to work with others is better than the best Christian who knows nothing about politics and can be led astray or swayed by others too easily. Sad but true - most Christians don't listen to God any better in office than they do out of office.
As a Republican, it pains me to hope that every Republican politician who hoped for an overthrow of the government on January 6th is never elected to another political office. Trump lost the election in 2020, praise God, and January 6th was long past the time when the Republican party should have accepted that, told Trump to stop blathering, and gone on about fulfilling their political duties in such a way that people might actually want to vote for their candidates again.
Instead, the litmus test has shifted to "do we support the falsehood that the 2020 election was stolen" in way too many races in the country. This idea has been shot down by 60 plus lawsuit losses and some forced recounts conducted by Trump friendly organizations which didn't find any significant problems and didn't change the results of any race. Enough.
If a candidate supports the falsehood, they'll rise far in the party. If they stand up for truth, like Liz Cheney, they're doomed as a Republican for now. Sad to see the party that started out standing up against the injustice of slavery and supporting immigration stooping so low to pander to our most recent ex-President, but that's what it's come to.
As an aside, historians who rank presidents on many different aspects of their term of office have ranked Trump as 43rd worst out of 45 presidents according to a Wikipedia table of presidential surveys. Later in the Wikipedia article a table shows the latest (2021) Gallup poll reporting 61% of respondents put Truimp's place in history as below average or poor. Lest you think that's completely partisan, only 33% reported Obama in those categories. It is long past time caring what Trump thinks about anyone or anything.
I'm not an absolutist in saying vote out all the people who championed a falsehood. Perhaps by now some have seen the light. I still want the best politician who will work hardest to get the country working peacefully with each other to win. Sometimes, a person who has realized their mistake in the past can do much to correct it if they so choose. And sometimes their opponents might be very poor candidates. So I pray for God's will to be done rather than focusing on any one issue. But my bias is still against those who tried to overthrow the legal functions of the government.
I do know one thing. The root of bitterness that has taken hold in the Republican party over the years against the Democrats needs to be uprooted and killed. Attacks like that on Mr. Pelosi and attacks against those who stood up for truth or even just voted in a manner on general legislative agendas that weren't what the party wanted done and earned them discipline from the hierarchy have no place in the Republican party. Where is the forgiveness? Why take judgment into our own hands?
As I said above, I will always have biases against those who have tried to push what I think were ill-conceived and wrong ideas through the party. But I know neither the pressure they were under nor their hearts. Some have let the bitterness and hatred that fill their hearts show through their words. God does say in Matthew 12:34
O generation of vipers, how can ye, being evil, speak good things? for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.
So the words they speak show their hearts. Do they have the heart of a Christian? Can they forgive and work with everyone for the betterment of the country?
There are few politicians, even with the extreme and stupid gerrymandering that goes on who don't represent people of both parties in the districts. Can a politician who wants my vote agree to work together with the opposing party for the countries good? Does anyone even know what that is anymore or has partisanship completely destroyed what once was a good an honorable political party? Don't be like Simon in Acts 8 and let a root of bitterness continue to destroy you. Turn to God again.
The Challenges Today
The country has economic issues today. Nothing can change that. The huge spike in the money supply, led by Trump's own letters trying to take credit for the stimulus checks, kept the country afloat during the shutdown for COVID-19 but also led to a spike in inflation. While Trump and particularly Congress gets credit for keeping the country from slipping into depression during the shutdown, the lasting damage of all that money piling up and not being spent is now come home to roost.
The Russia - Ukraine war hasn't helped matters any, but that also can't be laid at the feet of the current administration or Congress. It was Trump who played politics with military aid to the Ukraine during his reelection campaign and it is almost certain that his friendliness with Putin and ability to antagonize allies and NATO would have been a disaster for the Ukraine had he been elected.
Finally there are large supply chain issues that are still unresolved with COVID-19 and backlogs and the war that also can't really be laid at any politician's feet although the latest tariff war was also started by everyone's forced buddy - Trump. About 1 in 330 Americans died due to COVID-19. Many more are still suffering health issues. Another winter cold and flu season will be upon us soon and everyone is tired of trying to stay healthy by getting boosters or using masks. Supply chain issues aren't going away any time soon, regardless of who is in office.
But the feeling that Trump would have done better than Biden in bringing about any relief on the inflation, war, or supply chain fronts isn't valid. These are huge macro-economic forces that would have been out of any presidential or executive branch to contain. The Federal Reserve is doing what it can, but as usual, they have waited too long and will likely overshoot their interest rate targets probably triggering a recession, because the macro-economic forces are hard for them to alter the course of as well. It isn't guaranteed that will happen, but history paints it as a likely scenario. So we're stuck with inflation and probably the war for a good long while. No party or politician can be fairly blamed. What happens next with COVID-19 is anyone's guess. The last mutations made it spread more easily but not be as lethal. The next mutations could change it in worse ways.
Don't let your good feelings for a really poor president coerce you to vote for someone whose only real claim to fame is that they sucked up to Trump and got his or the party's endorsement. Vote for the best politician from any party. If you think that a politician of either party was best, but they wanted to overthrow or cast doubt on the last election even after 60+ lawsuits failed, ask yourself seriously if you want a person like that to be governing you for their next term of office. That's a lot of reality staring them in the face they are choosing to ignore just to make points with an ex president or to curry favor with party hierarchy or its fringe elements. We need politicians who will take off their party polarized glasses and see the reality that is out there for all the issues of the day. Little is black and white. There is much gray. If you're a politician, see all sides to an issue and have compassion on people. If your legislation doesn't lift everyone up but just favors a small number, it isn't something you should champion. There have been way too many tax cuts for the well to do.
Finally, times are tough. That's a reality we're going to have to deal with for some time. Interest rates are up, but they've been unusually low for a long time. Yes, mortgage rates are now over 7%. But when I bought my first house they were over 10%. People adjust. But none of the party platforms really have much to recommend them for fixing these issues. For the Republicans, they can say it happened while the Democrats happened to be in office even if their administration policies and actions started the ball rolling. But if they're honest, they're probably glad they didn't have control of Congress and the Executive branch since the bad luck of the oncoming tsunami would have happened to them. They'd have been just as useless in trying to stop it.
Anyone Have Any Good Ideas?
A final thought for anyone still reading... When you think about Congress, has anyone from either party captured your attention with any good ideas? All I've heard from the Republicans is the plan a vendetta against anyone associated with Biden and Biden himself, a vendetta against any of their own party who didn't support Trump, and making it harder for anyone who wasn't upper middle class living in the suburbs to vote. Oh, and some would like to ban abortion everywhere at the Federal level as well. Is that really what you want for the future of the country? Others want to ban all guns and leave the population dependent on police forces that can't be everywhere at once.
If Republicans don't win both houses of Congress this round, they can lay the blame squarely with Mitch McConnell's refusal to let Obama's choice for the Supreme Court go through and then letting Trump appoint three conservative justices. The Roe v. Wade decision, if anything, will be what comes back to haunt the Republican party for years to come, as well it should. I'm not a fan of abortion, but I'm also really not a fan of the lives that many kids lead whose mothers had no choice but to have them. And since the Republicans would rather build another aircraft carrier than fund the programs to help those in need, you need to give a serious thought about which party and which candidate is most likely to make you really proud of your country 5, 10, 20, and 100 years down the road.
Is a bright and shiny toy for the Navy really better than mothers and kids being pulled out of the poverty level? Is it really better for those who work for big companies or the government to have great and affordable health insurance and everyone else to have poor or no health insurance because it is not affordable? Is that really something you can be proud to say "I'm an American" about or would nationalized health care be more equitable? It doesn't have to be a new entitlement. It can be paid for by having everyone kick in the same sane premium or everyone having the same group of options to choose from and a sane premium for each level of care they want to choose. That isn't free. It's just equitable.
Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to worry about out of network expenses? Wouldn't it be nice if you didn't have to travel a long way for less expensive in-network surgeries? Wouldn't it be nice if ER's weren't crammed full of people because they had no general provider since they had no insurance? Wouldn't it be nice if "Usual and Customary" had no medical connotation? Yes, there would be a lot of adjustment for the medical and insurance industries, but many other 1st world countries have managed it and they still do have doctors and hospitals.
To be clear this is about general principles and not about a particular ship that may or may not be in a budget or under construction and I know that there are many more than just single moms or moms to be that need help. Ship building does provide many jobs. A few billion for a ship isn't much in the grand scheme of government expenses. But we did spend somewhere north of $2 trillion on wars post 9/11 and for what? By 2050, some estimates put that total at around $8 trillion when including veterans' care and interest expenses since we financed them. Again, for what? That's nearing $25,000 for every person in the United States. Put another way, I'll bet we could have socialized medicine in the country to everyone's satisfaction for that price and actually had something we could be proud of.
Think about that when you're trying to decide between "smaller government, big military" Republicans and "big government, big social programs" Democrats. Your money is going to be spent by Congress regardless of who is in control. The only question is whether it goes to equipment, munitions and lives lost or changed in foreign battles or on our own people. Five years after we leave the foreign battlefield, the situation there will look unchanged from when we arrived.
Conclusions
Give it all some serious thought before you cast your vote. Voting straight party tickets is rarely the way to go. Pick the best candidate for all races. Shake them up. Don't vote for an idiot, but if two candidates look about the same and one guy has been in office forever, use your own term limits ability and vote some new blood in. Listen to God the best you can. Pray for the right outcomes (as determined by God). Pray for whoever is elected, regardless of party. Get rid of the bitterness in your hearts and start working together whoever is elected.
There'll be another election two years from now. Whoever is elected needs to start doing their job so they'll be worthy of our vote in the next election. Voting like a party robot is not the way to do that. Hold up what is right in God's sight. Listen closely so you know what that is. God cares about every aspect of His people's lives. He isn't focused on just one piece of legislation or on one idea.
Have and keep your faith.