Crib notes for ‘undecided’ voters

A colleague came into my classroom during my free period the other day while I was staring at a stack of essays, trying to avoid grading them. “Are you busy?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “What’s going on?”

She sat at a student desk and folded her hands. “I was talking with an old high school friend last night, and she said that she was still undecided about who to vote for in the presidential election,” my colleague said. “You sometimes write about politics in your column, right?”

“When I’m not grading essays.”

“So can you help me convince her to vote for Kamala? Can you give her a list of reasons not to vote for Trump?”

“I can think of a few,” I said. By “a few,” I meant 17,982 reasons to not vote for Donald Trump.

For starters, at this point in the respective campaigns, I’m truly confounded by this 1 to 2 percent of undecided voters. To me, when it comes to the presidential race, it is a binary decision without a single shade of gray. You don’t have to like Kamala Harris. In fact, she was far from my first choice of candidates to oppose Trump in November, but my decision has nothing to do with Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.

The Menendez brothers could be on the Democratic ticket, and it would still be a no-brainer.

This election, plain and simple, is about keeping one of the worst people on the planet out of the Oval Office for a second time. At this point, I can’t fake diplomacy or pretend to be conciliatory with the MAGA movement.

So, working off the assumption that character matters, this is a list for my colleague’s friend and anyone else who needs to hear it. Here are four of my 17,982 reasons to not vote for Donald Trump on Nov. 5.

He is a misogynist and a sexual predator. How can you prove this?” His supporters love to ask. Well, he was found liable in a civil court, by a jury of his peers, for the sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll. Additionally, he was also found liable for defaming her allegations. But maybe that’s not enough to convince you. In addition, at least 26 other women have accused Trump of sexual misconduct. Let’s suppose all of these women are also lying, you still have the infamous “I grab them by the p—-y” comment that was caught on a hot mic in 2005. Do you really believe a man who has shared a frame with Jeffrey Epstein is being set up by all of these females?

He was convicted of 34 felonies by a jury of his peers and is awaiting sentencing. Oh, you’ll hear some great yarns from the MAGA hats trying to vindicate their leader, but if you or I were convicted felons, we wouldn’t be running for president. We would be waiting for our state-issued prison jumpsuits and working on our penmanship for future correspondences. This mentions nothing about his pending indictments for attempting to incite an insurrection and interfering with the peaceful transition of power on Jan. 6, 2021. It’s not hard to deduce that Trump’s main reason for seeking the presidency for a second time is to keep his own ass out of jail.

He is an existential danger to the world community and should never have access to nuclear codes. If you don’t have to believe me, maybe you’ll take some stock in the words of the officials who served in his first administration.

As reported by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic (the Pulitzer Prize winning “fake news” magazine) in his piece titled “The Patriot” in November 2023:

“Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, considered Trump to be a ‘fucking moron.’ John Kelly, the retired Marine general who served as Trump’s chief of staff in 2017 and 2018, has said that Trump is the ‘most flawed person’ he’s ever met. James Mattis, who is also a retired Marine general and served as Trump’s first secretary of defense, has told friends and colleagues that the 45th president was ‘more dangerous than anyone could imagine.’”

But like the women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, these officials are probably all lying, too.

He is a career con-artist, grifter and pathological liar. There are a few certainties in this life: the sun will come up tomorrow; the Patriots will lose on Sunday; and Donald Trump will tell another whopper that will put innocent lives in danger. As we near Election Day, the former president’s lies are coming at us like a Muhammad Ali flurry of punches. If it’s not dogs and cats being consumed by Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, then it is lying about the current administration’s handling of FEMA and the hurricane relief in the Southern states, which he needs to carry to have any prayer of winning the electoral college. Every day brings a new lie from this man’s mouth. Ask yourself: Is this someone you really want leading the free world?

This list doesn’t even mention Trump’s comments about becoming an autocratic ruler, or his adulation of world dictators, or the threat he poses to democracy.

Listen, we already know that Trump is going to lose the popular vote by a landslide and lean on an outdated electoral college to carry him to victory. But I can only hope that enough of the American people—especially the “undecided” voters—will choose decency over deceit, civility over vitriol, and kindness over hate.

I should probably get to grading those essays, but if I put them off until Nov. 5., and these “undecided” voters lean toward Trump, it might not matter.

You can reach Nathan Graziano at ngrazio5@yahoo.com.