I am not pleased about the outcome of the election, but it is what is and I am not surprised. My post from four years ago still rings entirely true.
I am surprised by how much other people are surprised, though. A friend I haven't seen in ages wrote to me to ask if I was doing ok despite the obvious and overwhelming racism and sexism now running rampant. I was somewhat stumped on how to reply.
If I were being honest, I'd tell her that I'm doing amazing. This is the best time to be alive in the whole history of the planet, and this is one of the best countries to live in! It's definitely the best time and place to be a woman, the best time and place to be a (quasi) Jew, the best time and place to be someone who likes to read indoors with central heating. So, yeah, I'm doing ok, thanks.
Do I like Trump? Absolutely not. I am as Democratic as you can get — I've never voted for a Republican in my life. And yet, unlike most people who have never voted for a Republican, I know lots of people who have. I know people who voted for Trump. And I understand why they did it! I know they aren't racist or sexist.
But if, like my friend, you don't know any conservatives and only read the New York Times, it would be very hard to know what Trump voters are talking about. It might even be easy to dismiss them all as fascists.
I'm trying to be sympathetic to this view of the world, but honestly I find it very tedious. How can you be so uninterested in why millions of your fellow citizens freely voted for a man you think is a demagogue? Why aren't you curious about their decision, considering it will determine the future of the country you profess to care so much about? Why don't you want to take their opinions seriously, so you can win them over next time?
Really, how is it that Democrats are so uninterested in winning elections? If you want to win an election you always need to convince people who don't already agree with you. You need to make a case that speaks to people outside your party. If you insist that anyone who disagrees with you is a racist, sexist, and fascist, how exactly does that help??
Again, I'm very much not a fan! Trump is a raving nincompoop and I dislike him intensely. But telling everyone who doesn't like Democratic policies that they have to vote for a Democratic candidate because otherwise they are racist, sexist and fascist is pretty much the worst campaign strategy ever.
Is no one in the Democratic Party friends with a Republican? Do they not talk to anyone who disagrees with them? They should probably look into that before 2028.
5 comments:
I don’t think the Dems ran a dismissive campaign or didn’t try to persuade their opponents. Someone was asking me recently why I wasn’t supporting Harris despite her efforts to tack to the center in ways that should appeal to me. And it’s quite true that she said some stuff about immigration and whatever, but I didn’t find any of it believable and I don’t think anyone else who was unexcited about Trump but basically conservative did either, except the Never Trumpers, who were already Democrats. So I wouldn’t say the party itself ran a campaign of demonizing their opponents as racists and sexists etc (individual liberals may feel this way), but enough people were already mad enough at them that nothing much that Harris, whom everyone was mocking four months ago, could say in three months was going to change their minds.
Of course, individual hyperventilating about fascists on social media continues apace. But I feel like it’s less than 2016? Do you think so? Big shifts in black and latino voters taking the wind out of Team Antiracism’s sails.
That’s fair. I don’t think Harris’s campaign ran on this message. Since I don’t read the news I’m only going by vibes, and the vibe I got was that I should vote for Harris because Trump is a racist and a sexist and a fascist. And that’s what my Democratic friends say too. It’s a lot of what I’ve seen in the NYTimes when I glance through the coverage, too.
So it’s less a policy critique and more a critique of the Democratic vibes. And I think most people vote on vibes, tbh.
The hyperventilation is less this time, yes. I haven’t seen anyone crying in the streets. But it’s still very much there, especially online.
I had a lot of feelings in 2016 and that kind of broke my ability to have feelings about elections forevermore. I am completely not surprised at the results. I think a lot of people in DC feel similarly. In 2016, people were openly crying in the metro/at work the next day, and this time people just had a look of dull resignation.
I disagree that I should be curious about the motivations of people who voted for Trump. I understand the things they are unhappy about (I am unhappy about some of them too) but thinking Trump is the answer to anything is what is tedious to me.
Ok! Well, agree to disagree, I guess. I am personally quite curious why over half the country voted for this dude. I hope someone in the Democratic Party can figure it out, so it doesn’t happen again.
Yeah, I think the not buying the campaign rhetoric was due to believing the vibes, pretty much. One side of that was, you should vote for Harris to be a Good Person. But, substantively, Biden/Harris had established who they were via the vibes of 2000-2023 and nothing anyone said in a campaign was going to reverse that.
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