Dear Republican friends and relatives by blood and marriage:
Some of you have told me more than once that you really don’t like your party’s choice for nominee this year. You think Donald Trump’s more boorish and vulgar than a trailer camp brothel owner. You think he’s an ignorant yahoo. You know he’s a crook. You don’t trust him because he’s been both pro- and anti-abortion. You have seen him say stuff he later denies he ever said. Some of you have called him huckster, scam artist, deadbeat, pathological liar. His comments about and behavior around girls and women, including his own daughters, you say is creepy. In your most serious moments, you whisper that you don’t want this guy anywhere near the nuclear launch codes.
For the first time, for years, in some cases for decades, you and I find ourselves united in agreement about the guy at the top of the GOP ticket.
Now I know you can’t bring yourself to vote for Hillary Clinton. Or any other Democrat. After all, a couple of you called my primary candidate, Bernie Sanders, a “commie.” (Looking at you, cousin P.) So I won’t ask you to cross the aisle and vote for Hillary.
But I do urge you to give yourself something to be proud of on November 9. Be able to tell your children and grandchildren that you didn’t cast a ballot for this travesty, this walking atrocity of a candidate who calls himself The Donald.
Don’t just avoid voting for him, however. You know plenty of those other Republicans on the ballot support him even if they would never appear on the same stage at a campaign event. How can you back them given what you know they know about him. You really can’t trust the ones who say they don’t support him (even when they don’t change their minds a few days later). They’re just hedging their chances, climbing off the bandwagon they were happy to clamber aboard not so long ago. Do they really reject him? I mean, really really? How can you be sure?
So I urge you most sincerely to wallow in your despair. When that mail-in ballot arrives, chuck it in the trash. When the phone-bankers catch you midday on November 8, hang up on them. When the GOP GOTVers send you that fifth email trying to spur you to go stand in line at the precinct, delete it.
I know many of you have never skipped an election. I know Uncle W voted for Ronald Reagan the second time literally from his deathbed. But this year is different. I know that. You know that.
Think of all the kudos over the next few years that you’ll get for not turning out. Besides being able to stand tall when the kids and grandkids ask what part you had in not electing Trump but also for not electing the other Trumplodytes on the ballot this year, you can stand proudly and say “I helped make it not happen.”
Then, too, you won’t have to read all those interminable election brochures explaining the referendums and bond issues. You won’t have to read all that conspiracy stuff on the internet. On Election Day Tuesday, you can watch a movie instead of tensely following along as the results come in.
So … don’t vote. Don’t waste your time. Don’t hold your nose. Just stay home. Do it for me. Do it for the nation. Do it for your own mental health. Then maybe your Thanksgiving dinners can be all smiles instead of the disasters I’ve heard they’ve so often been in the past.
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For the record, about half of my cousins and step-cousins aren’t Republicans.