Writings
Why I’m Voting Red
Originally published on Substack.
Let me say the obvious first, so no one can accuse me of hiding it: Donald Trump is not a perfect man. I don’t need him to be. I’m a cardiologist. I’ve spent my career learning that you don’t refuse the treatment that works because you dislike the bottle it comes in. You look at the outcomes.
So look at the outcomes with me. And look, clear-eyed, at the alternative — because the alternative is no longer the Democratic Party of my parents’ generation. It is a movement, loudest in its Democratic Socialist wing, that has told us plainly what it intends. I take people at their word. Here is why I’m voting Red.
1. Because I refuse to normalize the celebration of murder. An American was shot dead in front of a crowd for the crime of debating in public. That should have produced one universal reaction: horror. Instead, some public voices cheered, excused it, or reached for “well, hurt people hurt people.” There is a line in a civilization, and it is this: you do not celebrate the killing of the people you disagree with. A movement that blurs that line has lost the moral authority to govern anyone.
2. Because a nation without a border is not a nation. Compassion and chaos are not the same thing. A country is allowed to know who is entering it, on what terms, and in what numbers. Erasing the border doesn’t make us kinder — it makes us ungovernable, and it punishes first the legal immigrant who did it the honest way, and the working family whose wages and safety absorb the shock.
3. Because you cannot run a superpower on wishful thinking about energy. We are the greatest producer of oil and gas in human history, and that abundance is not a sin to be flagellated — it is leverage, prosperity, and national security. Declaring war on the very thing that heats homes and moves the economy, before any real replacement exists, isn’t idealism. It’s malpractice.
4. Because safety is the first civil right. Prosecuting crime, funding police, and keeping violent offenders off the street is not cruelty. It is the baseline promise a government makes to its citizens. A city that will not protect the weak from the predatory has failed at the one job that matters most.
5. Because antisemitism is now worn openly, and I will not pretend otherwise. I have watched hatred of Jews and hatred of the only democracy in the Middle East move from the fringe to the microphone — dressed up as politics, excused as protest. When a movement’s fluency in “anti-Zionism” always seems to land on Jewish students, Jewish businesses, and Jewish safety, I trust my eyes. A party that cannot name this evil plainly cannot be trusted to fight it.
6. Because I believe in biological reality and in parents. Girls deserve fair competition and safe locker rooms. Parents deserve to know what is happening to their children in the institutions they’re forced to trust. This isn’t hatred of anyone — it’s a refusal to sacrifice the safety and dignity of young women to a slogan.
7. Because “burn it down and rebuild it” is a threat, not a platform. The most honest thing the radical left has said is that if you elect them, you will not recognize this country afterward. I believe them. And I don’t want a country remade by people who are ashamed of it. You do not hand the keys to someone who tells you they intend to demolish the house.
8. Because free speech is the immune system of a free country. When government leans on platforms to bury inconvenient stories, when disagreement gets relabeled as “harm,” the disease isn’t the speech — it’s the silencing. A republic that can’t tolerate argument is already sick.
I love this country the way you love something you know isn’t flawless — fully, and without apology. America is not the villain of history. She is, still, the greatest engine of freedom and opportunity the world has ever built, and her strength lies in her traditions, her Constitution, and her stubborn faith in the individual.
That’s the real choice in November. Not between a perfect man and a perfect party — that ballot has never existed. It’s between imperfect stewardship of something worth preserving, and a movement that has told you, out loud, that it wants to tear it down.
I’m voting to preserve it. I’m voting Red.
Blessings.
Afshine Ash Emrani, M.D., F.A.C.C.
Assistant Clinical Professor, UCLA
David Geffen School of Medicine
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