The 2024 primaries and your call to duty

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Recently, on the highway near my house, there was a car-deer collision. I didn't see it happen, only afterward the handsome eight-point buck lying dead on the shoulder among plastic bumper parts and sprinkles of blue glass. A hard hit. A messy scene. As we do, I averted my eyes and drove on, glad it hadn't been my car, and sad for the deer. Which lay there for a day. Then two days. Each time I passed, I thought, "Somebody needs to do something about that deer." Beltrami County, where I live, has highway workers to handle such matters, but for whatever reason they did not come. Maybe they were busy. Maybe they didn't know about the deer. Maybe everyone thought someone else had called it in. On the third day, as I approached the increasingly messy scene, I understood that the "somebody" was me. I carry tire-changing gloves in my car. I stopped and dragged the buck down into the ditch and mostly out of sight. Let the eagles do their work.

Because we live in a democracy, the benefits of which accrue to us daily (including nice, smooth highways), at some point for each of us there comes a moment to step up. Contribute to the greater good. Usually such moments are higher level than moving roadkill, but they come in endless varieties and they all count.

In American history, the iconic moments of "do the right thing" are well known. In Revolutionary America, the midnight ride of Paul Revere. In the Civil War, the courage of Frederick Douglass, who recruited Black people into the Union Army. Abraham Lincoln, who took a stand against slavery and united, as best he could, America after its terrible civil war. Susan B. Anthony in the 1920s and her advocacy for women's right to vote. Rosa Parks in 1955, for refusing to take a back seat on the Montgomery bus. And certainly Al Gore conceding the 2000 presidential election after controversial vote counting narrowed Bush's Florida win to hardly more than 500 votes. Quoting Stephen Douglas and his concession speech to Lincoln in presidential election of 1860, Gore said, "Partisanship must give way to patriotism." Gore's own words were even more clear: "For the sake of our unity as a people, and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession and every assistance to President Bush." History called. Al Gore did the right thing — for the country.

Another such historical moment approaches, one that touches us all. Former President Donald Trump, now under multiple indictments, is pressing ahead with his campaign to return to the White House. Pundits and political analysts disagree as to what might/could/should/will happen. All would agree, however, that "America is about to go through some things."

But it need not. The former president is not yet his party's nominee. If he were not, America would not have to go through the civil unrest and national trauma that seems inevitable, and on a scale not seen since the 1960s. In short, the call at this pivotal moment in American history is for us to vote thoughtfully in the upcoming presidential primaries.

As an old Humphrey Democrat, I happen to think President Joe Biden is too frail for another term. I know several 80-plus-year-olds plenty vigorous for the job, but Biden is not one of them. For the good of the country I would happily vote for nearly any younger Democratic primary opponent. I therefore invite my Republican friends to put country first and candidate second. If you liked the former president's vision and policies, there are several Republican candidates who sound much like him, but who come without the baggage. The divisiveness. The potential for political chaos and injury to our democracy. "I alone can fix things," the former president likes to say. We know that's not true. It's we, together, with the power of our votes. Today, right here, consider yourself called.

Will Weaver, of Bemidji, Minn., is a writer.