This article appears in the October 2026 issue of The American Prospect magazine. If you’d like to receive our next issue in your mailbox, please subscribe here.
Here we go again, dumbasses. It’s time to put on some serious slacks, press pause on the playoff baseball, and go vote. Yes, again. Who knows? Maybe it will be your last time, that is if you like unwashed blueberries or iceberg lettuce. You will have died doing what you sort of liked: democracy. Or maybe it’ll be your last election, since the current president will seize power and hole up in a bulletproof ballroom that smells faintly of old men.
Either way, it’s time to lock in.
You’ve been here before, you tl;dr scrollmonger. You’ve filled out your mail-in ballot early and then it just sat next to the box of the wrong cat litter you’d been meaning to return … and it sat there looking at you with those cow eyes. Then you put it in the mail the day of the election, slapped on an “I VOTED” sticker, and got a pet on the head from a passing dog-walker. This time, that’s NOT GOING TO CUT IT.
This time, you’ve got to vote early and by any means necessary. If you’re not being heralded for door-busting your polling place on the first day of early voting by a librarian in a purple pashmina, you’re not trying hard enough.
Anything can happen in this midterm election. You might show up and the legion of armed divorced dads known as ICE will say you can’t go in ’cause you “look Mexican.” Or maybe you do try and vote but your name has been preemptively purged from the registry for what DHS officially calls “sounding Mexican.” Or maybe you’ll show up and the earth beneath your feet opens up as the San Andreas Fault finally gives way, violently breaking California off from the rest of the Union, whereupon it unifies with neighboring nations and you become Mexican.
If there is a line, wait in it. Just like you do for matcha, Gen Z; just like you do for Disneyland, Star Wars Dad; just like you do for the new Trader Joe’s tote bags, Asian aunties. Lines suck, yes, but the only thing worse than a line is no line. And when autocrats go unchecked and the dollar tanks, you think there’ll be a line to see who arm wrestles next for the last gallon of gasoline at the am/pm? No. If you’re in line to fight fascism, stay in line.
This is your “makeup sex” of an election, America. It’s not going to solve the underlying problems, but it shows you still care. One thing you can do to prepare is go to a mirror, and if what you see staring back at you is a white person over the age of 45, you need to stare right back and firmly state the following:
“WOKE IS NOT THE REASON GROCERIES ARE EXPENSIVE.”
“TRANS PEOPLE DID NOT START A WAR WITH IRAN.”
“MY IMMIGRANT NEIGHBORS ARE NOT IN THE EPSTEIN FILES.”
To the weakest links amongst us, I have some words. White women: You’re horse girls. Think of the wild stallions rounded up by the Bureau of Land Management to be sold for meat. Gen X: The gender binary isn’t more important than the habitability of the planet. Relax, you own a home. Latinos who voted for Trump: I don’t get you at all, but I respect your right as Americans to vote against your own interests. Let’s switch it up this time though and not sell out the abuelos in the process. Men: Look, you tried listening to every MAGA manosphere podcaster and influencer, you watched every UFC fight, you never missed an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience—and it is still the same size. Not a centimeter more. Time to try therapy and voting better.
We’re all in this together. Do we like each other? No. But we’ll figure that out later. First, let’s vote to get a chance to do that.
This article appears in Oct 2026 Issue.
