I turned 18 a few weeks after the 1992 presidential election won by Bill Clinton. Had I been born a few weeks earlier, I would have been able to vote in that election like all my friends could, but I could not. Either way, it certainly wouldn’t have made a difference.
I came of age as part of a politically cynical cohort. Like many Gen-Xers, I saw Republicans and Democrats as shades of the same color, both of them beholden to the same masters, even if they paid lip service to slightly different ideals. As a young adult, I viewed politics as a fool’s game. I saw voting as something that made little or no difference, so I didn’t bother with it. National elections seemed preordained, especially presidential ones (I live in New York, which is decidedly not a battleground state), and I moved too much to have any real feelings about local politics.
The first time I voted, I was 38 years old, in 2012. I stepped into the booth for the first time not because I thought it would make a difference, really. I voted because I wanted to be part of the electorate that voted for Barack Obama’s second term. I was very happy with his first term and wanted to express my endorsement in some way. That was it.
I continued voting in subsequent elections, as I had become more settled and more familiar with local issues, but I never felt very strongly like I was making a difference.
I still hold to the belief that there is a lot less difference between the two major parties than most people seem to think, even now. However, the 2016 presidential election greatly affected my views on the utility of voting.
I’m not going to make believe that the result of that election was something I saw coming. Right up until the end, I was fully confident that Clinton would win. I paid lip service to the possibility that she might not, but in my heart it was pretty much a foregone conclusion. I was imagining the weirdness of having the Clintons back in office with their roles switched, of calling Bill “first man,” or whatever. I didn’t just think she’d win — I thought it would be a landslide. I couldn’t imagine that more than a rabid base would see Trump as anything other than a con man. Then again, I’d said the same about him getting the Republican nomination.
I was not a big Hillary Clinton fan. I liked the idea of having a female president, of course. It would be a big step, especially on the heels of having the first Black president. But I saw her as too hawkish and too beholden to the same old system that all the previous presidents had been beholden to. I voted for her, but with little enthusiasm.
I didn’t realize how common that lack of enthusiasm was among Democratic voters (for the record, I am not a Democrat and don’t consider myself to be one, though my politics are much more in line with their stated positions than with the Republicans’). There just wasn’t any great drive to get her elected. Like me, many others just assumed she would win and didn’t bother voting. I truly and sincerely believe that this was the main reason for her loss to Trump. He had fewer supporters, but those supporters were pretty rabid in their support. They got out and voted.
That result completely changed my views about voting. Yes, individual votes make little difference, but complacency — choosing not to express one’s preference and leaving the choice to others — is what allows something like Trump to happen. It opens the door for a determined minority of people to wrest control of the whole country from a more sensible — but less engaged — majority. The only way we can counteract such things is to consistently get out and vote. Even if the candidate we favor is not ideal, we should pick the best one available. But we should pick someone, or this will happen again, or worse.
As for Trump, he is, to use one of his favorite terms, a disaster. I can’t imagine a worse president. I thought W was bad (and he was), but this is just ridiculous. The best thing I can say is that it will end. It is temporary. While he will certainly inflict lasting damage on the country, he is limited in his ability to do so (unless those authoritarian impulses of his are realized more fully). If enough people vote in the midterms this year and flip at least the House, his power will be further constrained, and in two more years we’ll have a chance to oust him once and for all. Hopefully we will, and we’ll learn from the experience, and we’ll actually work on making things better rather than just giving the idea lip service.
