Would the Real Party of Family Values Please Stand Up?

It’s time for anther politics update.

Remember last week, when I said “Every single time I write a paragraph about political news, another wave of political news crashes and the old post seems pointless. I have a feeling this will be the case for the next three months. I feel as if we’ve had an October Surprise per month, every single month since at least March of 2023. I think I’ll just copy this little paragraph to my clipboard so I can save time saying it every single time I write about politics until January?” Well, I just copied and pasted that paragraph. I imagine I’ll have plenty more opportunities to do so.

And please refer back to my previous remarks about the Catholic teaching on remote cooperation with a sin. I absolutely insist that you are not in sin if you vote differently than I do. I may think you’re very stupid, you may think I’m very stupid, but neither of us is in sin, depending on the reason for our votes. It is a form of spiritual abuse to lie to someone that they HAVE to vote for a certain person or they’re in sin. We all have to make the best choice we can for the best possible chance at a just society. Maybe I’ll paste this paragraph to the clipboard as well.

In the past several days, Kamala Harris mercifully took the attention back away from Donald Trump by announcing her Vice Presidential candidate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz.

Walz looks like he could be Harris’s father despite the fact that they’re a year apart in age. Walz is, aesthetically, her complementary opposite: whereas Harris is a polished and meticulously dressed Black woman with a slick, Californian way of speaking, Walz is a plump rosy-cheeked white guy who looks kind of like a Cabbage Patch doll and speaks in a relentlessly Midwestern manner. I desperately want to stand in a doorway in front of him so he can turn sideways and say “ope just gonna sneak right past ya,” because I KNOW he would say that. There are photos and videos of him doing all kinds of wholesome Midwestern things: hunting pheasant, ice fishing, going to the fair with his children, teasing his teenage daughter that turkey is vegetarian.

Can you imagine either Trump or Vance taking their children to the fair?

Walz is known for signing a law mandating free school breakfast and lunch for all public school children in Minnesota, and the video of him signing the law is heartwarming. He is responsible for making sure that ladies’ and unisex bathrooms in Minnesota schools all had a discreet supply of menstrual supplies for the students to use free of charge, which the right wing is somehow trying to paint as scandalous. He has been an ally to queer children. He served in the National Guard for decades and then was 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 coaching any kind of after school activity for children?

Meanwhile, J. D. Vance had another extremely awkward campaign stop, where a reporter remarked that he had a reputation for anger and asked “what makes you happy?” This was a softball question. Every politician knows how to answer that question. A politician like Vance, who won’t stop talking about how childless people are worthless and only people who have children  have an investment in the country, ought to be able to reply in his sleep. The correct response to that question is “My children! My beautiful wife, Usha, and my lovely three children, always bring a smile to my face when I come home from a long day of venture capitalizing.” So, of course, Vance responded by mocking the reporter as “fake news” and letting out his dry, mirthless bark of a laugh. This man is not normal.

Vance is following Harris all over the country, holding mini press conferences as he goes from place to place. Trump, on the other hand, hasn’t strayed from his Mar-a-Lago home. He’s not really campaigning. Yesterday he announced a press conference, which some assumed would be to declare that he was dropping out of the race. But in fact, he just wanted to rant at reporters for an hour that Kamala Harris can’t possibly be biracial and that he had bigger audiences than Martin Luther King.

It seems to me that the 2024 Harris-Walz ticket is what would happen if you looked at the 2016 Clinton- Kaine ticket and said “But, but, hear me out, what if this, only LIKEABLE?”

And it seems to me that the 2024 Trump-Vance ticket is what would happen if you looked at the 2016 Trump-Pence ticket and said “But what if the WHEELS FELL OFF?”

All kidding aside, I look at these two candidacies, and I wonder.

If the Republican party really is “pro-family, pro-child, pro-life.” Leaving 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’s wholesome and traditional and normal, why can’t they come up with a normal candidate? If the Democratic party is really the Party of Satan and Communism and destroying the traditional family, why do they look so kind?

How did the Democrats, the supposed baby killers, end up nominating a witty stepmom who likes to cook, who is lauded to the skies for her parenting not only by her husband but even by her husband’s ex-wife, and a fun dad and football coach who has done all he can to see that children are fed and kept clean? And how did the Republicans, supposedly the squeaky clean pro-family party, end up with an elderly rapist with three sleazy marriages and an angry young money grubber who openly despises his family?

I know full well that appearances can be deceiving, but couldn’t the Party of Life find even one candidate who knows how to act like he likes children?

Couldn’t the Party of Family Values nominate a man who isn’t famous for philandering?

Why is it that the people who appealed so strongly to the Republican base are so awful?

Could it be that we’ve all been deceived?

Just throwing that out there for your consideration.

And I’ll have another politics update next week!