First-Timers: A True Independent Voter
S1: When I hear people talk about the energy of young voters, sometimes to me it feels like they’re conflating young with liberal, which is why when we set out to talk to first time voters this year, I wanted to talk to someone like Jeff.
S2: Your I’ll be honest, you know, if you think back to your high school days where they have you know, they’re giving you the talk on the experience of Irish immigrants and Italian immigrants and whatnot. And there are all these like cartoons that depicted the pope as an octopus and the Catholics are going to take over the world. That’s basically what I want.
S3: I’m the religious extremist your parents warned you about. Jeff’s 20 years old lives in upstate New York, a pretty conservative region. He says maybe the most inspired he’s felt politically over the last year or so has been when he went to the March for Life back in January.
S2: It was just nice to be, you know, surrounded by people who feel the same way about something that’s so important to you.
S4: It is my profound honor to be the first president in history to attend the March for life. In an odd way, it kind of gave me hope for just the American process of general. Unborn children have never had a stronger defender in the White House.
S1: For Jeff, this right to life march, it’s in the same bucket as demonstrations against the Dakota access pipeline or the Black Lives Matter movement. What really gave him hope at this political rally? It wasn’t the speech President Trump made or even meeting up with so many other people who think like him. It was something else.
S2: Every now and again on the side of the road, you know, you’d see one person sitting by themselves with a pro-choice sign. That takes balls. I mean, just sit there in front of an entire crowd with the exact opposite opinion. It I don’t know, I, I respect that. I don’t know whoever that was. But if you’re listening, I got a lot of love for you and I’m really impressed.
S1: So, OK, I just want to talk about like voting more generally, like are you excited to vote because this is your first presidential election, right?
S2: Yeah, it’s I’m not entirely sure because it’s I don’t plan on voting for Biden, but living in New York and with the Electoral College and everything, I know that if I’m not voting for Biden, it doesn’t really matter. So I think I’m I don’t I wouldn’t really say I’m excited to vote now. It’s more just something I’m doing because I feel like I should. It’s a duty. Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. But I think that the biggest reason I’m voting is because, you know, if all of this goes down the crapper, I’d at least like to say that I did it once.
S3: Dark, super dark.
S2: Yeah. And see, the truly beautiful part about the health scape that we’re living in is that you could hear that from anybody with any political beliefs nowadays. That’s that’s the true American spirit right there. That’s the unity.
S3: Today on the show, as you wait around for election results, we’re going to share a couple of first time voter conversations with you. First up, Jeff, you are a student whose ideas about democracy might surprise you. I’m Mary Harris. You’re listening to what next? Stick around.
S1: I’m super curious about your position for a lot of different reasons, but one of the big ones is that you’ve come of age in this Trump era, such an unusual presidency. I’m wondering how you’ve experienced it. I mean, it sounds like you’re a little bit uncomfortable with Trump as a person. Is that fair?
S2: To put it lightly? Yeah, it’s I’m uncomfortable with a man who has several accusations of credible sexual assault, who’s been divorced. I want to say three times, but I could it might be, too, you know, who’s said and supported terrible things about other people. Yeah, I’m I’m a little uncomfortable with them, I suppose.
S1: Did you ever try to get into Trump as a candidate because he was elevating issues that were important to you and you thought, OK, maybe I just need to swallow my pride and get with the program?
S2: You know, I will I will actually give a super honest answer on that one. You know, in twenty, fifteen, sixteen, when all the debates and caucusing and when I first started, I was huge on Trump because think about it like this. Even then I was big on, you know, this whole two party system is really stagnant. It doesn’t really do all that much. I want an independent candidate and I feel that outside. And I could see in the corner of my eye the finger on a monkey’s paw begin to curl down and then all of a sudden Trump is running for president.
S1: And, well, here we are, the monkeys poor Jeff is referring to. It’s from a short story by W.W. Jacobs in the story, an enchanted monkeys paw will grant its owners three wishes, but with terrible consequences.
S2: You know, the thing about the monkey’s paw is, you know, I want whatever and then it happens. But in the worst way possible, I wanted somebody that’s going to come in and shake up the system, outsider candidate, destroy the two party system. And then, well, like I said, the finger curls on the monkey’s Paul and there’s an outsider candidate. All right. But who when did you have that realization?
S1: Was it when it was down to Trump and Clinton? Was it when Trump won?
S2: I would say I would say it really started dawning on me when it was down to Trump and Clinton. The nominees had been decided. And you started seeing you know, I distinctly recall the thing about him mocking disabled the reporter on live television. And I’m sitting there like, can I curse do it? I’m sitting there like, what the fuck? Like, how do you see that? How do you do that about someone that’s unbecoming? It’s not the conduct anyone wants to see in a a world leader period and be the person who is quite arguably the most powerful person on the planet.
S1: Jeff was too young to vote in twenty sixteen, so he waited, started thinking about how he could both vote his conscience and get what he wanted in twenty twenty. You weren’t planning to vote in this election until just like a couple of months ago, right.
S2: Right. I wasn’t planning on voting in the presidential. I was, I was planning on voting in local and state. Why. Why were you planning to avoid it. I, I, I have a huge gripe with the idea of voting against someone rather than voting for someone. And personally, at least, I have enough issues with both candidates that I, I don’t really know that I could support either of them wholeheartedly. What were your issues? So the big thing with me as a Catholic is abortion. And I don’t I’m not really going to go with the Democratic Party line on abortion. But at the same time, I also subscribe to the wild idea that maybe we shouldn’t let people go bankrupt because they get cancer or something. Not exactly the nicest thing or, you know, treatment of people at the border, treatment of displaced people in general.
S1: So Jeff is voting for a third party ticket. Brian Carroll and Amar Patel of the American Solidarity Party. Jeff explains their platform as fiscally liberal and socially conservative, anti-abortion and pro universal health care. For example, in 2016, their candidate for president received about 7000 votes total. So some people might say voting for a third party candidate is just throwing your vote away.
S2: I think that I’m kind of very blessed in that way, that I live in a state where the outcome is already decided. So, you know, I can vote for whoever I want and it’s not going to change the outcome. If you were in a swing state, would you do it differently? I would consider it, but I don’t I can’t tell you what I would do, honestly. You know, I think that, you know, you see a lot of things and you saw some twenty sixteen to that. Oh, if you’re voting for third party, you know, this isn’t the year to throw your vote away. This year you need to vote whatever, whoever it is, because the other guy is so much worse. Or in twenty sixteen states the other woman is so much worse. But I. I feel like we just kind of hear that every year you can’t vote for third party because this is the most important election ever. Well, you said that for the last five election cycles, when can we finally vote third party, when can we have another option?
S1: As you might have figured out, Jeff’s pretty mistrustful of the two party system. He doesn’t believe either side is genuinely committed to the issues. They make speeches about he thinks they just use those issues as a way to maintain their own political power.
S2: I don’t think that either of them actually want to change anything. I think they just want to keep getting elected and getting fat stacks from different lobbies. Either of the parties. Yeah. I mean, for example, you know, Trump went on and on and on about the wall for the first two years of his term. He has a supermajority. He has the presidency, he has the Congress. And at that point, he basically also had the Supreme Court as well. And, you know, there isn’t some wall on the border made of eight foot thick concrete that goes ten feet into the ground and 800 feet high. It’s not there. Democrats have had a supermajority to. And, you know, there hasn’t been an assault weapons ban since the sunset of the national. And I want to say, like 2003, both parties talk a lot of talk, but neither of them really seem to walk the walk when they get the chance because they know that if they lose those, you know, political cudgels, then all of a sudden people will say, OK, well, that’s solved onto the next thing, I guess. What’s my number two issue?
S3: Back with more. What next after the break.
S1: You say abortion is your number one issue. I’m just I’m really curious how for like a young man like you, how it became your make or break issue. Like, was there a moment where you thought, oh, like this is this is important to me. Like, this is the one thing I want to go to the mat for.
S2: Yeah, I think I think it was really when I started I’m a convert to Catholicism.
S1: I wasn’t born Catholic. So tell me what happens in your, like, ideal world here when it comes to this, when it comes to abortion, when it comes to politics, are you talking about abortion being theoretically banned or are you talking about something else? Like how does it work?
S2: Well, that’s that’s the thing. I don’t think banning things really has all that much to do with whether or not people do them. I think it can in some cases. But, you know, to use an obvious example, it’s illegal to kill people and people still kill people. It’s illegal to use a lot of drugs do. Yeah. And people still do a lot of drugs. What I would really want to see really is just a world where, you know, even having legislation on abortion is unthinkable because nobody thinks about it. It’s not an issue, I guess.
S1: Hmm. So Joe Biden is leading in the polls. And I kind of wonder he’s Catholic, too. And I think he has a different way of seeing his Catholicism than you do. But do you think someone who’s pretty impassioned, like you would think it was worth compromising with him in some way on your most important issue, which is abortion?
S2: I can’t really say it is. One thing I do want to say, though, is thank you for saying he is a Catholic, because there’s a lot of people, you know, in Catholic circles who say, oh, Joe Biden is not a Catholic. No, Joe Biden is a validly baptized and confirmed Catholic. And baptism leaves an indelible mark on the soul. Once you are Catholic, you can no longer become not Catholic. I just want to bring that up because a lot of people, you know, get pissy about that just to begin with. As for compromise, I. I’ll put it this way, I think Biden could be reasoned with better, but it’s it’s not something that I’m that willing to reason on necessarily. I the way that I think about it is that church teaching is held rather than something that’s achieved through, you know, if A, then B, if B, then C, ergo, if A, then C, it’s just divine truth. It’s what is called revealed truth, which is, you know, if you’re told if A then C period, that’s just how it is. And if that’s, you know, that’s the case. I don’t feel I don’t feel it’s something to debate about necessarily. I think it’s something that you can talk about how it would be done and what needs to be done to accomplish it. But I don’t think that I don’t think it’s something that Catholics should compromise on. No.
S1: What do you think that people don’t get about someone like you, a young conservative who has strong opinions about where they want the country to go?
S2: I guess, you know, not to not to make myself look super complicated and big brained here, but I guess that it’s it’s more nuanced than it seems. Like I said, I’m all for the whole idea of Medicare. For all you know, you shouldn’t have to choose between, you know, getting treatment and eating dinner. I think that’s ridiculous. I think it’s a totally false choice in the very idea that we have to pick between one or the other is ridiculous. It’s you know, I like I I like people at the border to be treated well. I also don’t like, you know, killing people for any reason. You know, I think that what’s going on in the Middle East is terrible. I think what’s going on in North Africa is terrible. You know, I think what’s going on at the border is terrible. I also think that what’s going on inside of Planned Parenthood facilities is terrible. You know, let’s let’s just not kill people.
S1: It is the strength of these convictions. Even if he doesn’t see them reflected in either of the establishment parties, that’s bringing Jeff to the polls. And the fact is, despite all his pessimism, Jeff does believe change is possible, even if voting isn’t his preferred way to make it happen.
S2: I think that what’s more important, at least from my point of view, is, you know, making things heard in other ways, you know, going out to demonstrations, going out to things like the march for life, going out to, you know, marches for black lives matter, you know, going to demonstrations against the Dakota access pipeline. I think the demonstrations and actually going out and doing something and making your voice heard in any way. I think that matters more in the end than how you vote, because I think that has more of an impact on culture. And really, I think that’s what changes things more than any law ever could.
S3: Jeff, I’m really grateful for you joining me.
S2: Yeah, absolutely. It was wonderful to be here. Thank you.
S3: And that’s the show the whole team wants to thank all of you listeners who called in to share your voting stories with us. We got a kick out of them each and every voice mail, including this one from Gabrielle in Brooklyn.
S5: Definitely not my first time voting, but I have a great first time voting story. The first time I voted it was for Clinton, Bill Clinton. And when I entered the school gym, everybody stood up and started clapping and I thought, wow, this is great. Oh, this is your first time not realizing that right behind me was a man who’s a hundred and two people and they were clapping for him. Anyway, it’s my first time voting experience, very special and memorable.
S3: What Next is produced by Daniel Hewitt, Jason de Leon, Mary Wilson and Elena Schwartz are life coaches are Alicia Montgomery and Alison Benedicte. I’m Mary Harris. You can always follow me on Twitter. I’m at Mary’s Desk. Later today. We are going to be dropping a special bonus Election Day episode, the final installment in our first timer series. You are not going to want to miss this first time voter. And let’s face it, what else are you going to be doing today? Doom scrolling through 538 or Twitter? Don’t do it. Just listen. I’ll catch you back here in just a few short hours. Now go vote.
