I don’t actually expect that anyone reading this needs me to help them make up their mind. This is a pretty existential election: Donald Trump has not been saying the quiet part quiet. Even in Minnesota, which has been a consistently blue state for decades, I think people need to vote for Kamala Harris to provide the most energetic repudiation to Trumpism possible.

But there are nine sets of candidates on the ballot and you might be wondering who they are. So: a roundup of the US Presidential race. (Cut for length.)

Donald J. Trump and JD Vance (Republican)

Donald Trump lies like he breathes and he wants political violence to be committed on his behalf to feed his ego — it’s not like he wants the job of running the country, he hated actually doing the job when he had it. But he cannot stand the idea that he lost. In addition to being a fascist, a rapist, a racist, and generally a terrible person, Trump lacks the mental coherence to be trusted with the presidency.

Trump is responsible for the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. His presidency created endless stressful chaos even before we had a global pandemic. (Was the pandemic his fault? The one chance we had to maybe avoid that pandemic would have been for the early warning signs to get picked up in China, something that maybe could have happened if he hadn’t eliminated the CDC offices in China that monitored for early signs of novel viruses.) Once the pandemic was happening, he made state governors beg and try to outbid each other for basic equipment and protective gear while also shipping tests (at a point when US hospitals were desperate for them) to Vladimir Putin, as a present.

The Republicans out there who are unhappy with an incompetent, narcissistic, Putin-loving fascist as the leader of their party should vote for Kamala Harris: the more devastating the loss this time around, the more quickly the party will move towards rebuilding in something that is not Trump’s image.

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz (DFL)

Kamala Harris is an imperfect leader of an imperfect party. The Biden administration in which she has been VP has, to my surprise, been the most progressive Democratic administration in my lifetime. (More progressive than Obama’s, for all that I am quite happy to have gotten the ACA.) The Inflation Reduction Act did more for climate progress than I honestly thought was politically possible. They got some amazing stuff done despite an incredibly closely divided Senate and a hostile Supreme Court.

My biggest frustration with the Democrats is and remains their kid-glove approach to the murderous IDF. Even there, Trump would clearly be worse. Do you remember Trump’s “Muslim ban“? How it was implemented on people who were literally in the process of traveling to the US, refugees who had nowhere to return to? Do you think this is a man who would do anything other than encourage Netanyahu’s worst impulses?

I really like Kamala Harris and I think she’ll be a good president. I don’t know what that she’s promised she’ll be able to accomplish: it depends on what happens with the Senate and the House. (She recently started talking about expanding Medicare to provide in-home services to the elderly — that would be amazing. Will she be able to do it? Depends on a bunch of things.) I do know that if a vacancy opens on the Supreme Court, Harris will appoint someone like Kagan, Sotomayor, or Jackson — not a Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, or Barrett. Harris will not be trying to undo IRA’s progress on climate; if she can, she’ll move us further on the path towards carbon-free energy. Harris will not be trying to further restrict abortion rights; she will take any opportunities that present themselves to protect women who need reproductive care.

And I’m going to discuss the rest of the candidates on the ballot, but just to be clear: we actually have two choices. There are two people on this ballot who might become president in January: Kamala Harris, and Donald Trump. And anyone who thinks it doesn’t matter which one does has willfully buried their head in the ground.

Chase Oliver and Mike ter Maat (Libertarian Party)

There’s a long-standing joke that Libertarians are Republicans who want to smoke weed, or Republicans who want to date pro-choice women.

Interesting positions held by Oliver: any healthy adult without a criminal record who wants to immigrate to the US should be able to do so easily. (“It should be simple for those who wish to come here to work and build a better life to appear before immigration officials at an accredited port of entry, be given medical and criminal checks to assess their safety, and receive a visa allowing them to immediately find employment. This is a process that should take, at most, days – not months or years.”) (I like this position! I feel like there’s probably some other universe where this is the Republican position, instead of the unhinged nativism of Trumpism.) He wants to end “the death penalty, corporate bailouts, drug criminalization, abortion restrictions before viability, and excessive employment regulations.” (“Excessive employment regulations” is a funny thing to see on that list. Is he saying that it’s a violation of his personal autonomy that it’s illegal for him to work for below minimum wage?)

He also thinks the free market can solve climate change, that federally-backed student loans should not exist, and that not only guns but also bump stocks should be legal.

There’s a “24 Types of Libertarian” cartoon I always pull up when looking at Libertarian candidates. Chase squarely fits into “briefly tempting,” though it’s not so much that I would want him as a president, personally; it’s more that I wish the Republican Party would embrace more of his stances.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Nicole Shanahan (“We The People”)

Vaccine denier and absolute fucking weirdo RFK Jr. has dropped out of the race but is still appearing on the ballots in MN because he pulled out too late to have his name removed.

If you somehow missed the story about him dumping a dead bear cub in Central Park in NYC, here’s Stephen Colbert’s coverage of it.

RFK Jr. is like the best possible argument for an aggressive inheritance tax. People take him seriously for two reasons: his name, and his money. Literally any public project, no matter how stupid, would be a better use for the money than RFK Jr. running around having influence his whole life.

Jill Stein and Samson Kpadenou (note: her actual running mate is Butch Ware, but he’s not on the ballot in MN) (Green Party)

Jill Stein spent years palling around with Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad; put on the spot, she reluctantly agreed that Assad was a war criminal but still didn’t want to call Putin one. More recently, she’s been interviewed by a right-wing troll she thanked for being a “real journalist.” Her campaign has bragged about how they’re going to deny Michigan to the Democrats.

She is a grifter, a hypocrite, and genuinely bad for the Green Party, which has lost steam every time they’ve handed an election to the Republicans. She has zero interest in building grassroots power or cooperating with anyone towards the goals she claims she shares.

Jill Stein is the living embodiment of the problem that talk is cheap. She can promise literally anything at all, since she will never have to deliver any of it; meanwhile, she’s doing everything she possibly can to hand the election to the rapist with dementia who actively wants to cook the planet. ETA: Also Butch Ware in an interview both said he’d support abortion restrictions and repeated some transphobic right-wing talking points about trans people playing sports. Which frankly illustrates what I’m saying here: Jill Stein can put whatever policies she wants on her website, but when it comes to actions open to her — like picking a running mate — she picked someone who made it clear that neither trans rights nor women’s rights are a priority for him.

Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia (Socialism and Liberation)

Given that Tim Walz regularly gets called a communist for implementing free school lunches for children, I just want to make it clear that when I say that De la Cruz’s party, the PSL, is communist, I mean they are actually communist. (I’m not sure precisely which variety; there seems to be a lot of disputes among leftists about this, and I don’t personally know the difference between Trotskyist and Trotskyite so I cannot help with this.) (OK, I do know what Tankies are, and a lot of people seem to think they are Tankies.)

Searching for “PSL abuse” on social media will turn up a really impressive number of accusations around (a) sexual abuse, (b) coverups of sexual abuse, and (c) doxxing of people trying to blow the whistle about sexual abuse. (Here’s one such story.) Former members also describe them as cultish. (There’s definite evidence for them monitoring the social media of members and popping up in DMs to demand to know why you liked something that was originally tweeted by an organization they disapprove of.) They defend dictators, imperialism, and oppression based on ethnicity/religion when it’s not the US or our allies doing it.

One of the many critiques that popped up over and over is that if you organize a left-wing protest, PSL will show up and try to pretend it’s their protest. If they do organize a protest, they’re apparently very uninterested in considering the safety of their participants.

Anyway: it can be hard to differentiate between “this particular leftist organization genuinely sucks” and “leftist organizations will all fight each other to the death over bullshit” but even the people who like them describe some of the same stuff, they just put a happy spin on it. (Like instead of saying they act like a cult, they’ll say that they have mandatory classes for prospective members, and that your dues are supposed to be a “sacrifice.”)

I would recommend not voting for these candidates.

Rachel Fruit and Dennis Richter (Socialist Workers Party)

The Socialist Workers Party candidates never have a campaign website. I’ve linked to The Militant, which is their newspaper, but I also found an interview with their Vice Presidential candidate (a Minnesotan) that puts the true weirdness of their views on display. If you click through to The Militant you’ll notice pretty quickly that they’re pro-Israel; they’re opposed to a ceasefire and in the interview Richter says that “there’s only one way that the Palestinian people can get this oppressive, nationalistic government off their back and that is through the efforts of the Israeli military.” They also oppose criminal charges against Trump for any of the various crimes he’s committed (“It’s an attack on free speech and the right to a fair trial.”)

Cornel West and Melina Abdullah (Justice For All)

I genuinely do not know what possesses a man in his 70s who’s broadly respected and viewed as interesting and worth listening to to say, “I am going to run for President,” start out in a third-party primary, drop out of the third-party primary, found a new third party, and launch an independent bid. What a weird, embarrassing way to end a fairly distinguished career.

His campaign website raises a number of entirely valid concerns, none of which his campaign is helping to solve in any way because he’s such a footnote to this year’s race. He’s not even the fringe candidate people are mad at. He could have picked one of these issues, taken out a $17,000 personal loan (his campaign is now $17,000 in debt) and bought billboards saying “why are so many Black women dying in childbirth? Politicians should fix this!” and that would have been more effective than a presidential run.

Shiva Ayyadurai and Crystal Ellis (Independent)

Ayyadurai is not eligible to be president — he was not born a citizen of the US. (He addresses this on his site by saying the constitution does not define natural-born. Which is true. But “is a naturalized citizen a natural-born citizen?” is not in fact something anyone else considers to be in dispute.) (Do I think naturalized citizens should be able to run for the presidency? Absolutely yes. We should amend the constitution to say so. Currently, however: he is not constitutionally eligible.)

Other things worth knowing about Ayyadurai: he sued Gawker for disputing his claim that he personally invented e-mail in 1982. (Note: there were people using e-mail before 1982.) He spread a bunch of conspiracy theories about COVID and claimed it could be cured with Vitamin C. He’s an antivaxxer. Instead of providing any actual platform on his website, he links to another website that promotes a “system” that will apparently solve all your problems if you watch all his videos and give him money. I am not going to watch the videos (or give him money.)

He has a Twitter. I’ll warn you it’s weird and also filled with a lot of offensive shit. I’m not even sure how to describe it beyond “full of offensive shit” — he throws around the N-word (with the A-ending) a lot and also calls Trump supporters “MAGA-tards” and also has coded antisemitism (ranting about the Rothschilds).

This guy is gross and extremely weird.

AND WITH THAT I think I am done with the election blogging. If I missed anything, you can let me know. (Remember, I stick with races that appear on ballots in Minneapolis and St. Paul.) I will do a big roundup post sometime before November for the convenience of everyone who pulls up this site from the voting booth (but the search functional also works pretty well.)

I would strongly encourage my fellow Harris voters to also take a shift and volunteer. You can knock doors, make phone calls, or text: it makes a difference. You can sign up to get information on events in your area. You can also sign up to do virtual phone banks in other states, like Florida (I have a friend in Florida who has been recruiting people to phone bank there; she thinks Florida is winnable). I find GOTV volunteering to be the best possible antidote to anxiety about the election, because it means I am doing something. Now that I have finished my election blogging, that’s how I’ll be spending (at least some of) my free time.

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I do not have a Patreon or Ko-Fi but instead encourage people to donate to fundraisers I can then see fund. Usually I do teacher fundraisers (and I found one for this year, Ms. Pierce at Lucy Craft Laney school in North Minneapolis who would like donations to buy books, math manipulatives, and social and emotional learning resources.)

But I’m also fundraising for something slightly more personal to my family this year: YMCA Camp Northern Lights. Camp Northern Lights is a family camp, which is a camp that whole families attend together. My family went to Camp Du Nord (the other YMCA family camp) for many years, and my daughter Kiera has worked as a counselor at Camp Northern Lights for the last two summers. One of the things that makes Camp Northern Lights unique is their serious commitment to inclusion of families from communities that have been underrepresented at YMCA camps.

Last summer, Camp Northern Lights had a serious fire early in the summer — no one was hurt, but they lost their commercial kitchen and the housing for the counselors-in-training. They are hoping to raise enough money to rebuild an expanded kitchen. I have set up a fundraiser towards that goal. If you’d like to express your appreciation for the usefulness of this blog, you can show your love by donating to my fundraiser!