This is the last column I will write before the American presidential election, and I have been dreading writing it for months. (The next one, filed on Election Day itself, might prove impossible. Maybe then I'll post my recipe for parsley as a side dish.) In the meantime, I've been watching other “double haters” squirm in print. There are two models for dealing with this dilemma, one by Andrew Sullivan. The conservative commentator “came out” in a September Substack newsletter — no, not in that outdated sense: everyone knows he's gay — in support of Kamala Harris, only to waste the overwhelming majority of that column on what what a terrible candidate she was.

I find it impossible to determine which winning candidate might turn out to be worse

The second model for confronting two clearly unacceptable electoral choices was embodied by my friend Bret Stephens, a long-time Never Trumper whose opposition to Donald in 2016 alienated him from his colleagues in the Trump Party Wall Street Journal but inspired a job offer from the New York Times. While Bret was as determined as ever to defy his Republican bête noir, he announced in one NYT column weeks ago that he couldn't vote for Kamala Harris. It still had not provided substantive answers to a number of crucial policy questions. This purist fence thinking has driven the democratic readership crazy. It's a common thread for Bret's weekly public dialogue with the more liberal columnist Gail Collins, who has never stopped urging him to support the only halfway level-headed, law-abiding candidate who has a chance of becoming President of the United States.

From an academic perspective, I deeply sympathize with Andrew's assertion that any former president who has obstructed the peaceful transfer of power and any candidate who has refused to accept the election results has invalidated themselves for high office. But I'm so incredibly bored by the countless hysterical diatribes denouncing the character of Donald Trump and calling him a “threat to democracy” that I don't want to subject you to any more of it. Because what receives less attention is the threat to democracy posed by the “Democratic” party.

Admittedly, our friend Kamala is an empty pants suit, insecure and at least subconsciously aware that she is overwhelmed in this regard. So if she wins, her presidency will likely be title. She will do as she was told by the same henchmen who controlled her senile predecessor, and her government will pursue roughly the same progressive policies for four more years. This makes them seem like the safer choice. But continuing the same policies is only safe if those policies were ever safe, and four more years of willful self-destruction are not safe.

More like this: a de facto open border that lets in millions of low-skilled foreigners who represent a net loss to taxpayers over their lifetime and are already burdening major American cities like Chicago and New York with bankrupt bills for free food, health care, etc. School and accommodation. Whatever Harris now pretends to do to get elected, she will continue to appease the climate change lobby by subsidizing expensive green energy while denying licenses for oil and gas exploration and pipelines, hampering what was previously an economic miracle freed the US from blackmail in the Middle East. Expect more unnecessary net zero suicide.

Harris supports divisive, unaffordable and arbitrary reparations for slavery. In 2019, she embraced “justice” – the Marxist equality of outcomes, not opportunities. Elements of her current platform aimed at black male voters reflect the strict racial preferences that “Justice” demands. This includes a promise to provide $20,000 in “fully forgivable” loans to Black entrepreneurs – which sounds an awful lot like gifts to me and would be unconstitutional based on race.

But since when did Democrats care about the Constitution? The Supreme Court packs up, the Senate packs up new Democratic-controlled states (DC and Puerto Rico) and underhandedly abolishes the Electoral College – all rattling away happily in their bag of potential tricks. The party has shamelessly weaponized the justice system to keep Trump off the ballot or put him in prison, which is scary even to people like me who despise this guy. Democrats' refusal to prosecute shoplifting neglects government protection of private property. The Biden administration has systematically pressured social media companies to censor or suppress comments that contradict government policy. Harris has never distanced himself from such First Amendment violations.

Last week, Andrew Sullivan admitted that he is considering voting for Harris because he is appalled by her government's relentless promotion of chemical and surgical sex reassignment on children – although he has not officially withdrawn his support. In contrast, on Monday my friend Bret finally capitulated to the inevitable for any Never Trumper and admitted in his dialogue with Gail Collins that he would vote for Harris.

I may not have embraced the label, but I'm close to being a Never Trumper myself. That makes me a Harris supporter, right? Furthermore, while as a voter I have the right to a secret ballot (in democratic New York it doesn't matter who I vote for anyway; easy, right?), as a pundit I'm surely obligated to take sides? I've finally come to the conclusion that the answer is no. I don't remember saying “strong presidential support” in my life Viewers Contract.

I detest Kamala Harris. Empty, incapable and gloomy, she would break through the ultimate glass ceiling like a piss-poor specimen. To the extent that she has any real beliefs, I share few of them. Thanks to Holden Caulfield, I just can't bring myself to advocate for something like this publicly incorrect. I also can't bring myself to publicly support Donald Trump. I vowed a long time ago that I would never burden myself with supporting that clown on the record.

I was paralyzed the entire campaign season. I find it impossible to determine which winning candidate might turn out to be worse. I accept that neutrality means cowardice. Still, at the risk of seeming pathetic, I'll skip that for now. At least I share Gerard Baker's conviction Wall Street Journal this week that my country will survive a terrible president, a fragile confidence that must pass for optimism these days.

This article was originally published in The spectatoris the British magazine. Subscribe to the World Edition here.