Your job, from now until Election Day, is to make yourself as off-putting as possible.
It’s crunch time, America. The days when fundraising totals mattered are behind us. The organizational apparatus that will put one or the other candidate in the White House is in place. The universe of genuinely persuadable voters is negligible. The real work of winning this election is in the campaigns’ hands. All that’s left for average political observers to do is sit back and count the votes on Election Day. Right?
Wrong! Don’t let anyone tell you that your only contribution to your candidate’s electoral prospects is your own measly vote. Now is the time when you are called upon to become obnoxious. Those who are sufficiently committed to the cause understand that displays of unrelenting bombast and the kind of cynicism reserved primarily for staffers on the campaigns’ payroll can meaningfully alter the trajectory of political events. Your job, from now until Election Day, is to make yourself as off-putting as possible.
That imperative compels you to take drastic measures. Do your interlocutors on social media seem unenthusiastic to cast their ballot for Donald Trump? The only course available to those who “know what time it is” is to bombard them with shoddy memes until they change their minds. Overwhelm them with the compelling logical power of your certainty that Kamala Harris never worked a day at McDonald’s. If that doesn’t work, demand from them proof that Harris does not owe her political career to her willingness to provide transactional physical favors to the powerful men in her life.
If they’re still unconvinced, you’re dealing with heretics. The would-be assassins who targeted Trump? Most likely a deep-state plot of which your Harris-supporting friends and neighbors probably approve. It’s no cognitive leap from that conclusion to another corollary: They probably thirst for the cleansing fire that a nuclear conflagration will deliver to America’s cities in a Harris administration — assuming those metro areas weren’t burned to the ground by marauding bands of woke college students first. Make sure your conversation partners know that you’re onto them.
Harris fans can’t take that lying down. Go ahead and call him a rapist — you’re not a lawyer, and no one expects you to have devoted the time necessary to comprehend the imprecision of the charge. The liberal application of linguistic signifiers like “bone spurs” and “hand size” are sure to trigger Trump’s insecurities when he sees your latest searing critique, as he surely will. The targets of your agitation clearly missed the events of January 6. You should remind them of what took place and Trump’s alleged role in those events in as granular detail as you can muster. And if all that somehow fails to produce any behavioral changes, you’re clearly dealing with a fascist. They should know that you’ve got their number, if only for the benefit of your vast and electorally significant audience.
Both campaigns’ supporters are obliged at this point in the race to respond to the faintest hint of dissension with disproportionate force. Is your candidate earning favorable media coverage? Ruthlessly hunt down anyone who objects to that rosy portrait to inform them that they should “cry more.” If, however, the other candidate finds herself in a similarly advantageous position, that can only be attributable to a vast conspiracy arrayed against your specific interests. Emphasizing your own persecution is crucial to winning over hearts and minds. It’s important to convey to casual political observers that your movement’s avatar is all but infallible save those rare moments when beset by insurmountable forces beyond the candidate’s control. Establishing that contrast is critical if you’re to be believed when you contend that the other guy’s latest campaign-ending gaffe is all that voters will care about come November 5.
Skeptics will likely dismiss all this as the political equivalent of dragging that 20-year-old T-shirt out of storage on game day. But this is no superstition. Your participation in the political process is not limited to voting, donating, or volunteering. Winning campaigns can count on a phalanx of insurgent hellions, and you’re obliged to do your part.
Those who are willing to promulgate the most uncharitable assumptions about their political opponents make or break a tight race. Don’t let anyone tell you that you’re engaging in the desperate pursuit of agency when all other avenues to shape electoral outcomes have closed. They may appear turned off by your hectoring, but your casual sleights, memetic arguments, and the insistence that you’re laughing out loud when you aren’t laughing at all can have a subtle impact. So, get out there and show them what you’ve got. Your candidate is counting on it.