Today's the first day of Texas early voting.

I don't pretend that I'm gonna change any minds at this point. Anyone vaguely aware of politics has already decided, and if you're on my friends list you at least see political stuff from me all the time if nowhere else. But for what it's worth, I'll throw my final pitch out.

There are four candidates for POTUS on my ballot. Not living in a swing state, I don't have to bother with worrying about whether or not my vote will be a spoiler or something... if Trump loses Texas he's not gonna win elsewhere either. So my choices are either not voting (I may as well... it takes a couple of minutes and there's down ballot stuff that affects my locality... 28 races in total), or voting for one of the following:

Trump. He lies excessively for a politician. Whether it's pandering, self aggrandizement, hyperbolic exaggeration, meant to be taken seriously but not literally... he simply cannot be trusted in any meaningful way. He's got a couple of pet issues he cares about (immigration and trade), and the rest kinda depends on who he surrounds himself with. The issues he cares about he's mostly wrong on, and who knows who he'll surround himself with... he doesn't appear to hire the best people and they don't tend to stick around long. He's got authoritarian impulses and doesn't seem interested in nuance or complexity at all. I don't think he's some kinda fascist Hitler threat to democracy, but he is a populist nationalist demagogue. His first term really wasn't bad for a modern President in my view prior to COVID, but that's not enough when we're less than a decade away from entitlement collapse he wants to ignore.

Harris. Her entire public-facing persona this campaign has been focused on avoiding saying anything of substance whatsoever. Politicians often talk in platitudes and avoid real answers, but she really takes it to the next level. She is easily the most annoying and unlikable major party candidate of my lifetime (including Hillary even), and I physically cringe when hearing her speak. She's run away from any positions that defined her in the past and hasn't really replaced them with anything solid, and the closest one can assess is her saying she doesn't even know anything she would have done differently than Biden. To be clear, Biden was awful, throwing a shitton of money at COVID after it was already over and making what was already gonna be high inflation (from responses to an emergency) even worse (after that emergency had passed). Her tendency and focus does seem to lean Marxist in it's rhetorical framing domestically, and she seems to have embraced neoconservatives (and likely their foreign policy) more than any other Democratic candidate of my lifetime. She's combining the worst of two worlds. Hard pass.

If there was no third party candidates, I wouldn't even vote in this race, or I'd write in Javier Milei.

Stein. She's a damn commie.

Oliver. There may be some issue disagreements I have with him on social issues, divisions of power, or particulars on specific reforms. But I don't have to question whether I can trust him or what he stands for and he's not a tankie. That alone is enough in this election, honestly. He recognizes the fiscal path we're on is unsustainable while it's going completely unacknowledged in any serious way by his opponents. He's opposed to mandates and coercion in politics as a general principle, he's the only fiscal conservative in the race, and he's antiwar without resorting to being pro-Putin. When I do point to disagreements I have with him, it's mostly that he's wanting to go the right direction in the wrong way while the ideas of his opponents would make existing problems worse. At $35t in debt with annual deficits in the trillions, there simply is no option for the country long term to avoid collapse other than combining entitlement reform, massive military reduction, and tax increases, and he's for two of the three (the better two).

There's a US Senate race I'm participating in as well, and I'm not a fan of who I'm supporting. His personal character is questionable, his face is punch-able, and there's ways that he's embarrassing. I would never want a man like him to marry a daughter of mine. But I know where he stands on things and votes the way I'd prefer more often than his opponent, sometimes in opposition to his own party. The man he's running against, by contrast, has shown that he'll just vote the way his party leadership says to without having an independent bone in his body. And, larger picture? I am more concerned with a Harris administration backed by a Democrat Congress than a Trump administration backed by a GOP Congress. I am reluctantly pulling the lever for Cruz, but I'm not proud of it or anything.

Most of the rest of the races all fall under simple harm reduction rather than any kind of enthusiasm. 66% GOP, and 16% each for Libertarians and Democrats.