what if we pollinate political conversations with honey instead of vinegar?
Maybe we need a little more practice being cordial and curious.
If it's not already clear from this newsletter, I enjoy the intellectual discourse of politics, even and maybe especially with people who disagree with me. I’ll pass on the rage-baiting and screaming, but I'm always happy to hear other perspectives in good-faith discussions. Most people would rather poke their eyes out than talk about politics, but I'm a big nerd (which is news to no one).
I've recently had political conversations with friends who are either undecided or Trump supporters. Some topics came up that I feel often surface as frequent talking points (probably thanks to outsized media coverage).
It’s essential that we relearn how to talk about politics with people with different opinions so that we can see the humanity in perspectives other than our own. It helps build community rapport and connection. I’m not unleashing any diatribes during conversations with friends. I often spend more time asking questions than offering answers.
Here are some considerations that inform how I respond to some of the more common critiques I’ve heard that deserve deeper dives. Maybe they can be useful talking points if you have an opportunity to discuss our presidential candidates in a way that builds rapport instead of breaks it down.
Don't you think Harris is dumb?
I don't think she's dumb or unqualified. I think she's cautious, strategic, and well-qualified.
She attended Howard University for her undergrad and UC Law San Francisco for her law degree. She has been a district attorney, a state Attorney General, a United States Senator, and a Vice President. She earned those positions through legitimate elections, accumulating votes from millions of voters (not through salacious acts, as some have been wanton to suggest—classic misogyny). 🙄
She's shared negotiating tables with powerful, professional assholes much of her career and spent the last three and half years meeting with international leaders in her role as Vice President. As a district attorney and Attorney General, she took on aggressive opponents and big corporations repeatedly (big banks, fossil fuels, and predatory for-profit colleges) and often won. She would be the only president with experience in all three United States government branches.
As for her demeanor, she's more cautious and compassionate than we're used to seeing from presidential candidates. But is that bad? Being cautious does not equate to a lack of effectiveness. It's not a quality we've historically viewed as ideal for presidential leaders, but maybe we should. Don't we want a president who is cautious and strategic when representing and making decisions that have lasting and life-changing impacts on our country and the world? That seems refreshing, not something we should diminish.
She was less cautious but incredibly strategic at the debate. This speaks to her strength in knowing how to modify her behavior to suit different settings. She knows when she can be careful and understands when she needs to be prepared to be more aggressive, and she executes accordingly.
Some write off her strong demeanor and ability to manipulate Trump during the debate (which she did extraordinarily well) as a reflection of her preparedness, not her competence. Don't we want a president that diligently prepares for significant events? Shouldn't that be a qualifying trait? Being good at preparing is part of what makes one competent. Her previous experience and her performance at the debate indicate she's capable of going toe to toe with powerful people. Being prepared doesn't mean she can't think on her feet; it makes thinking on her feet easier because she's ready for what might be thrown her way.
For the sake of argument, even if she wasn't very smart, which isn’t the case, the president's administration does substantially all of the heavy lifting. Surrounding oneself with a competent and qualified team is as important as or more important than being qualified yourself.
Donald Trump demonstrated his inability to build functional, lasting administrative teams during his first term as President. Many on his administrative team left during his term, and since then, more have spoken out as hard critics against him (at great personal and political cost). He is uniquely unfit in this respect to lead a team of people to run our country.
Would you want Harris at a table with Putin?
Her experience noted above, negotiating with hard-nosed power players in many of her previous roles, makes her well-qualified to sit across the table from Putin or any other international leader.
Putin's opinion on this matter is more telling, though. Putin is abundantly clear that he wants Trump to win. We all know it's not because he wants to be friends with the United States but because he wants to destroy the United States. That Putin prefers Trump as his adversary instead of Harris is telling about who he thinks is a more formidable negotiator and political opponent.
At the debate, Harris played Trump like a pile of Play-Doh. She baited him repeatedly, and he took the bait every single time. It sucks that our politicians debate this way, but Trump has made any other mode of discourse impossible. Hopefully, the VP debate between Vance and Walz showed us that we can focus more on substance and less on postering power once we get past Trump.
But if Harris can manipulate Trump that easily in 90 minutes with just words, imagine how easily foreign leaders like Putin can manipulate Trump with bribes and promises of power over four years. If I had to choose one of them to sit across the table from Putin, stand their ground, and stand up for the United States, and I do because we have a binary choice, I would choose Harris every single time.
Putin's choice of Trump tells us all we need to know. If Putin thinks that Trump is his easiest path to destroying the United States, we should believe him.
Furthemore, Bob Woodward’s new book, War, suggests Putin and Trump are friends (or some version of friends with political benefits). What that really means is that Trump, an especially insecure man who values nothing more than money, power, and praise, admires and aspires to be like Putin. When he sits at a “negotiating” table, he’s advocating not on behalf of American citizens but on behalf of himself and Putin. None of us should want that for our country.
Both candidates are terrible! This is the best we can do?
Are they, though? What do we want from them? And more importantly, are they equally terrible?
We have to choose between these two candidates. That is our only option this year. If we want a better system for the future (more parties, ranked-choice voting, updated or eliminated Electoral College system, etc…), we need to work towards that as well. Today, we can choose either Trump or Harris, and we can anticipate the future each will likely bring to our country.
Even where Harris isn't perfect, and no one is perfect, she's better than Trump at every turn, especially those that matter (character, principle, policy, coalition building, etc...).
Hundreds of former Republicans (including many people who worked closely with him), national security advisors, and former staff have been abundantly clear that Trump is wildly unfit to be President of the United States. There's no net gain for people like Liz Cheney,
, Cassidy Hutchinson, and others publicly endorsing Harris instead of towing the party line. Whatever they've each gained is far less than what they would have retained by ceding to their conscience and supporting Trump.You don't have to love a candidate to vote for them. You have to decide that they're the best option available today. One of them is going to win. We can choose to use our voices to support the best option that serves our communities. Or we can be silent and let other people make decisions for us.
Why didn't Harris solve these problems over the last four years?
Harris is the Vice President. She doesn't set the political agenda—that's the president's job. The vice president doesn't have many responsibilities or powers other than those delegated by the president. The agenda of the last four years wasn't hers.
More importantly, if we apply this logic, it should be more damning to Trump. Why didn't Trump accomplish his goals in the four years he was President? If we're concerned about what she didn't do as vice president, why are we not more concerned about what he didn't accomplish as president?
Many problems can't be fixed by executive orders only. In an era where the President has more power than ever in the history of our country, we don't want more executive orders. We want negotiated Congressional laws to dictate major policy changes to ensure our system of checks and balances holds. Unfortunately, we have had the least effective Congress in modern history.
On the heels of a pandemic, protecting and rebuilding the economy was the utmost priority for the Biden/Harris administration. They set the United States on a path to the best economic recovery globally and landed us in a position where inflation concerns have waned and jobs numbers are strong.
They did this, in part, by passing successful legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, which has fueled more than $200 billion in cleantech manufacturing investments. Not only does this help address climate change, but the legislation is benefitting mostly "red" districts, where many manufacturing jobs were lost in the past and local Republican lawmakers opposed the legislation.
More than 80% of the investments spurred by this legislation have been made in Republican congressional districts. Now those representatives are celebrating the investments for their communities while trying not to draw attention to the fact that they voted against the legislation that fueled them. The chart below shows the relative size of investments from the IRA in Republican and Democratic districts.
Excessive income inequality makes the economic recovery feel less fruitful for many Americans, and that fact shouldn't be ignored. To adequately address the issues and assign responsibility, we need to bifurcate broad economic success from the allocation of that financial success among social classes in our country. Then, we can understand how various economic policies contribute to overall growth and benefit people who don't feel like the economy is strong despite the macro metrics.
No administration can fix everything in four years in a country of 330 million people. All administrations have to prioritize what problems to solve and what to endure. The Biden/Harris administration prioritized the economy, and based on where we’ve landed, it’s working out pretty well considering the mess handed to them when they came into office.
I don't think I'm going to vote.
Dear friend, that's not an acceptable answer. We have the immense privilege of living in a democracy that works pretty well. We owe it to the people before us who fought for representative democracy. As women, we owe it to those before us who fought for decades for women's suffrage. We owe it to our children, who cannot vote for themselves, to protect and maintain the democracy we hope will still be alive and well for generations.
Election Day this year might be a little crazy. If mail-in ballots are available where you live, request a mail-in ballot today. Send it in from your home. You can track its progress online. And you never have to enter the polls or leave your house on election day.
As a Pennsylvania resident: To my friends in Pennsylvania and other swing states, we have a unique privilege and burden to vote on behalf of our country. While it may not be fair, our vote carries more weight than in many other parts of the country. Let's be our best citizen-selves and vote on November 5 (or even earlier if that's an option where you live).
Listen and learn without convincing
In all of these conversations, I respect that we each have the privilege of using our vote as we choose. I set out to listen and learn, not change opinions. I know many of us engage in this way, and I hope more of us can follow suit.
There's a time and place when the mental exhaustion of a friendship made toxic by political disputes is no longer worth holding. But I suspect we all have many friendships where there is space for hard conversations without severing the relationship. And having those conversations is increasingly important to our collective well-being.
I'd love to know what you think. Do you have topics where you find space to have productive political conversations? What do they look and sound like in your communities?
💛 Do you enjoy this space? I’d love for you to share it with a friend and/or hit the HEART at the top or bottom of this newsletter. It helps more people find Sage Neighbor (and totally makes my day). TIA 💛
Jen Panaro is a self-proclaimed composting nerd and advocate for sustainable living for modern families. Through her writing, workshops, and podcast guesting, she helps others find ways to incorporate sustainability into their everyday lives more easily while appreciating the joy along the journey.
When she’s not writing and creating, she’s a serial library book borrower, a messy gardener, a composting tinkerer. She’s a wife and mom of two boys and spends a lot of time in hockey rinks and other sporting venues watching her boys tear it up for their teams.
Such a great post today! Amen to everything you wrote!