It’s time for another policy update.
Remember last week when I said, “Every time I write a paragraph about political news, another wave of political news crashes and the old post seems pointless. I have a feeling that’s going to be the case for the next three months. I feel like we’ve had an October surprise every month since at least March 2023. I guess I’ll just copy that little paragraph to my clipboard so I can save time saying it every time I write about politics until January?” Well, I just copied and pasted that paragraph. I imagine I’ll have many more opportunities to do so.
And please refer again to my previous comments on Catholic teaching about long-distance cooperation being a sin. I absolutely insist that you are not sinning by voting differently than I do. I may think you are very stupid, you may think me very stupid, but none of us are sinning depending on the reason for our vote. Lying to someone that they MUST vote for a certain person or they are sinning is a form of spiritual abuse. We all need to make the best choice we can to have the best possible chance at a just society. I may paste this paragraph to the clipboard as well.
In recent days, Kamala Harris has graciously diverted attention from Donald Trump by announcing her vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.
Walz looks like he could be Harris’s father, despite their one-year age difference. Walz is her complementary opposite, aesthetically speaking: While Harris is a neat and carefully dressed black woman with a smooth, Californian way of speaking, Walz is a rotund, rosy-cheeked white guy who looks a bit like a Cabbage Patch doll and speaks in a relentlessly Midwestern style. I desperately want to stand in front of him in a doorway so he can turn to the side and say, “Grandpa, I’ll just sneak past you,” because I know that’s what he would say. There are photos and videos of him doing all kinds of wholesome Midwestern things: hunting pheasants, ice fishing, taking his kids to the county fair, teasing his teenage daughter about turkey being vegetarian.
Can you imagine Trump or Vance taking their children to the fair?
Walz is known for signing a bill mandating free school breakfast and lunch for all children in Minnesota public schools, and the video of him signing the bill is heartwarming. He is responsible for ensuring that the women’s and unisex restrooms in Minnesota schools have discreet menstrual products available for students to use for free, something the right somehow tries to portray as scandalous. He has been an ally of queer kids. He served in the National Guard for decades and was then a beloved teacher and football coach. His former students don’t have a bad word to say about him.
Can you imagine Trump or Vance leading any kind of extracurricular activity for children?
Meanwhile, JD Vance made another extremely embarrassing campaign appearance where a reporter, noting that he is known for his anger, asked, “What makes you happy?” It was an easy question. Every politician knows how to answer that question. A politician like Vance, who never stops talking about how worthless childless people are and how only people with children invest in the country, should be able to answer in his sleep. The correct answer to that question is, “My children! My beautiful wife Usha and my three sweet children always put a smile on my face when I come home after a long day of venture capital raising.” So, of course, Vance responded by deriding the reporter as “fake news” and letting out his dry, mirthless laugh. This man is not normal.
Vance follows Harris around the country, holding mini-press conferences as he travels from place to place. Trump, on the other hand, has not left his home in Mar-a-Lago. He is not really campaigning. Yesterday he announced a press conference that some assumed would be an announcement of his withdrawal from the race. In fact, he just wanted to spend an hour telling reporters that Kamala Harris could not possibly be biracial and that he has a bigger audience than Martin Luther King.
It seems to me that the Harris-Walz ticket of 2024 is what would happen if you looked at the Clinton-Kaine ticket of 2016 and said, “But, but, listen to me, what if this IS just SWEETNESS?”
And it seems to me that the Trump-Vance ticket of 2024 is what would happen if you looked at the Trump-Pence ticket of 2016 and said, “But what if the WHEELS FALL OFF?”
All jokes aside, I look at these two candidacies and wonder.
If the Republican Party is truly “pro-family, pro-child, pro-life,” setting aside the fact that statistically abortion rates usually go down faster under Democrats and occasionally go up under Republicans, if they really, really stand for family and life and everything that is healthy and traditional and normal, then why can’t they put up a normal candidate? If the Democratic Party is really the party of Satan and Communism and destroying the traditional family, then why do they look so friendly?
How did the Democrats, the alleged baby killers, nominate a witty stepmother who loves to cook and is praised for her parenting not only by her husband but even by his ex-wife, and a funny father and football coach who did everything he could to make sure the kids were fed and kept clean? And how did the Republicans, the supposedly squeaky clean party of family welfare, nominate an old rapist with three sordid marriages and an angry young money-grubber who openly despises his family?
I know very well that appearances can be deceptive, but has the Party of Life not been able to find a single candidate who acts as if he likes children?
Couldn’t the Family Values Party nominate a man who is not known for his womanising?
Why are the people who appealed so strongly to the Republican base so terrible?
Could it be that we have all been deceived?
I just want to touch on this briefly so you can think about it.
And next week I’ll have another politics update!
Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The worries andd Joys of MaryAnd Stumbling into Grace: How We Encounter God Through Small Works of Mercy.
