I’m a relatively recent transplant to New Hampshire, from MN via IL, and so my attachment to the first-in-the-nation primary is tenuous at best.

It seems like the era of a couple primaries setting the tenor of a national election is past, and honestly watching political reporters trying to pretend that the Republican Party doesn’t remain the party of Trump has been embarrassing and enraging. The DNC is clearly engaged in setting up its own new centers of influence right now, but watching the nationalization of politics and the dangerous “populism” that social media enables, some counterweights are probably not a bad thing.

I’m a Quaker, a progressive, and a lifelong democrat, and I care about peace and climate change and the fundamental dignity of every person, including those who have historically been marginalized, many of whom are not well-represented by New Hampshire’s electorate, and I care about using our democratic process to make the world a better place and allowing our nation to live up to its best ideals, and I hope my children will have the opportunity to live in a country where that process still exists.  It doesn’t seem to me that there’s any reason to list those in any particular priority order, since one party is trying to deal with most of them, and the other actively opposes them.

On Tuesday I’m going to write in “Ceasefire” and hope that enough others do that a few news stories get written and the people working towards peace in the Middle East have more leverage.  This fall I’m going to vote for Joe Biden with many fewer reservations than I expected after the last time I voted for him. And when I do, I’ll think about how we don’t have any soldiers killing and being killed in Afghanistan, the massive amounts of money that IRA is channeling into clean energy, and that I can even still feel like my vote has an impact.  And I’ll hope in the future for the opportunity to vote for another candidate even more closely aligned with my values.

Jonah Sutton-Morse
Canterbury, NH