A song for the 2024 election.

Because really the best part of creativity is using it to channel your anxiety.

Good day and happy Thursday! Remember a couple weeks ago when I said I was working on a 2024 election song and I had written a version that I completely scrapped? Well, I am proud to say that I finished a new version of the song.

It was really hard to write. I seriously went through at least five other versions in the past two weeks before finally landing on this one. Part of the difficulty was that the stakes of this election feel so high, it’s almost impossible to wrap one’s mind around. And then zeroing in on an approach to writing a “fun” song that will maybe inspire at least a few folks to consider voting or getting involved in these last two weeks (!!!!!) when they otherwise wouldn’t was also very difficult.

I have no idea if the version I landed on is “the right one,” but I do know that channeling my anxiety into this process was helpful for me. And even if this song ends up mostly preaching to the choir, maybe it will help ease your anxiety for a couple of minutes too. That’s why we do art, right??

As I’ve mentioned before, I generally don’t cover politics front-and-center on here, but I actually think the state of where we are as a nation is intricately entwined with these slow dopamine problems. Each of us is saturated every day with information—click, tab, read, scroll, click—but it’s not necessarily the same information for everyone. And it’s not necessarily factually correct information for everyone, either.

Turns out the big tech companies promised us a utopia but have ended up creating the perfect conditions for fascism to bloom and thrive in our country for the first time since World War II. It’s quite scary.

And hence: this song! In writing it, I was trying to get to the core idea of what I’m feeling right now, what I wanted to convey to reluctant voters or third-party-curious voters.

This is where I landed.

Thanks for taking the time to watch! If you feel inspired to forward it to a friend, please do. I’ll also be posting on Instagram later and if you feel inspired to share it there, I would be grateful. 

And now let me say: in spite of what I said above, in spite of this song, I feel hopeful. As divided as our nation seems, as tight as the polls are, I think the majority of Americans don’t like Trumpism. They don’t like the Big Lie. They want to get back to integrity and functioning institutions. They want to codify reproductive rights into the Constitution. Election after election has shown that to be true since the Dobbs decision in June 2022, and I think it remains true today.

But Democratic victories won’t happen automatically. If you’ve been doing work to elect blue candidates up and down the ballot, THANK YOU SO MUCH. If you’d like to jump into the fray now, PLEASE DO. It’s not too late, and every bit helps.

Follow Jess Craven’s incredible Chop Wood, Carry Water substack if you want inspiration and action steps in the coming days.

I’ve done some phone banking over the past month. If you’ve never done it before, you should know the current phone dialer tool is great—it does all the dialing for you, so no one sees your phone number, and it only connects you when someone has picked up the phone.

Phone-banking is always intimidating at first, and honestly, there are a ton of hang-ups and wrong numbers. But when you do connect with a voter and open their minds to a candidate or give them information about how to vote that they genuinely needed, it’s the best feeling in the world. It’s incredibly meaningful work.

There are MANY phone banking opportunities you can find at Vote Save America and here’s one I think is great that’s a Harris-Walz Voter Protection Phone Bank, where you’re helping people with their registrations or ballots that were some reason not counted. So you don’t have to feel nervous about trying to persuade people with this one because you’re literally just trying to help them vote or help their vote count.

Also: NY, you can early vote starting SATURDAY, 10/26. DO IT.  

Thanks as always for being here with me! I really appreciate all of you so much, and I hope you’re hanging in there during this uncertain time.