Tuesday, Nov. 8 – GET OUT AND VOTE! pic: R.T.

By Edith Morgan

It’s time to “bite the bullet” and VOTE: decide who will be our next president. I have been a fully convinced supporter of Bernie Sanders and still support his ideas. But with the election less than a month away, it’s time to take sides.

This will not be the first time in my many years of voting that none of the candidates is a perfect match for what I would like to see in government, but this time, there is one choice that is, to me, utterly impossible, while the alternative is one that is at least amenable to reason and can be moved.

If “politics is the art of the possible,” then by his own words and deeds, Donald Trump has pretty much let us all know that he is unmoveable, knows better than the rest of us what to do in all cases, and will not follow advice from any of us. He has said he will practice revenge on anyone who attacks him, has the most simplistic answers (when he answers at all) to complex problems, and appears to believe that violence is the answer to all problems. But even more than those traits, what worries me most is his overbearing egotism and self-centeredness.

I was a refugee from Germany and always grow fearful when I hear talk from someone who spent a lifetime gaming our democratic system, using “the little people” and using all the tricks of the authoritarians that are so familiar to me. European history is replete with stories of the self-identified “supermen” who do not believe that the laws apply to them, that they are exempt from them, and can do what they desire. So, under no circumstances could I ever bring myself to vote for this bosom buddy of the evil Roy Cohn, and who employs the techniques athat many in my age group will recognize from the Joe McCarthy days.

I can not stay home on November 8, because I know, from having attended the State Democratic Convention and watched the National Convention, that we have succeeded in including in the platform of the Democratic Party many of the things we had been supporting. It will be up to us not to go into a coma after the election, but to see to it, by constant pressure, that our platform is carried out.

I know that neither I nor anyone can have any influence on Trump. But I know that Hillary Clinton can be moved – and I do not believe that the e-mails, Benghazi (so many of our overseas personnel were killed constantly before the Democrats were in power) and Bill’s transgressions are anywhere near to what we would get under Trump.

Beyond that, there are other things on the ballot – the 4 Questions and other races. As is often heard, “all politics is local” and the decisions that most closely impact us are closer to home.

The top of the ballot gets the most attention, but the rest of it affects us here in Worcester the most. So let’s pick and choose – but get there – and CHOOSE.