I’m devastated by the election result and post-election “transition.”
I always loved Hillary Clinton on a personal level since I read her autobiography, Living History, in 2003. Bernie Sanders moved me in 2010 with his speeches on the floor during a time I felt completely powerless and disillusioned by the confluence of unchecked influences the private sector (particularly finance, though certainly not limited to it) had over both parties in our government. I was skeptical of his viability at first and it took some coaxing by my partner to get me on board the Bernie train but by February, after watching a full debate, I was entirely on board.
I accepted his loss after the New York primary. I had a lot of grievances and did some venting here and at a few other sites but ended up squarely with Hillary. I voted for her because while I do think she had a complicated relationship with money/donors and had difficulty explaining that in a way that would be politically feasible, that didn’t override the fact that she was incredibly knowledgeable, intelligent, qualified, and deeply driven by women’s and children’s issues. It wasn’t about the threat of Trump browbeating me into supporting her; I actually liked her from the start and initially would have been equally happy with either Hillary or Bernie.
I can’t even imagine what it must be like for her right now. I bawled during her concession speech.
I’m clueless of what to do about the breakdown of civility both among Americans and among factions of the Democratic party. There are so many legitimate grievances out there and unfortunately some illegitimate ones. By the same token, I feel we need a united front not only against Republicans but also with some people who may have not voted for Hillary. Two observations I’ve had:
Opponents as Stereotypes
1. In the early part of the 2000’s, likeminded individuals congregated on political oriented websites and identified more deeply with their party or point of view. A cartoon stereotype of the other side existed on both right and left leaning sites, and the embodiment of that type was reprehensible, stupid, naive, brainwashed, deluded, and so forth. In the latter 2000’s, we connected more to people in our personal/professional lives via Facebook and other sites and were shocked to discover people we’d once respected were as clones of that preconceived stereotype. Because people feel so righteous about their cause (often justly, though sometimes as an excuse for exhibition), they severed friendships and ties to family, out of principle or disgust. I’ve noticed Republicans assign the identity of the essential/stereotypical Democrat to persons who vote that way or align with the Democratic position on a given issue and vice versa. In essence, arguing about marriage equality can invite attacks for being “[soft on immigration]” or hellbent on “[taking guns away].” I’ve seen individual people singled out for one statement and attacked in a way that suggests that poster has endorsed the entire platform on every issue of their party. In reality, we’re all more complex than that and simplifying other persons for analytical convenience in the digital age is dehumanizing and has contributed to the breakdowns we’re seeing in empathy and civility.
Who Are Trump Voters
2. We know approximately half of them from Hillary’s notorious basket-of-deplorables description. Racism and bigotry are sliding scales and the more possessed by such things one is, the more likely one is to cast a ballot for Trump. But that’s not nearly enough to win the Electoral College. While it’s tempting to assign equal blame to each and every American who voted for this candidate, there are several gradation of culpability. There are even intellectuals on the right and alt-right that are as non-motivated by racial animus as many non-minority progressive. While protectionism and nationalism are often lumped in with xenophobia, they are not the same and the first two are entirely defensible. The position that a transnational corporate elite is purchasing governments to effectively use nations, including first world nations, as labor and resource colonies is entirely rational and compelling.
Secondly, there are those who take the view that Donald Trump harbors no actual racial resentment. The argument there is that he assumed the role of being the most outrageous and explicit candidate during the GOP primary as a performer knowing the true core of enough of that audience to win the required 35%-40% and later more to secure the nomination. It follows that as his stump speeches had mostly cleaned up their act by summer, focusing on trade and a corrupt media/political elite, one could listen to hour long appeals to the disaffected working class including an awkward appeal to African Americans and still hear the mainstream media excoriating his bigotry. A casual observer might conclude, “What are they talking about? There was no bigotry there” and be left with the oft-repeated impression that the media was simply in the tank for Hillary, which was true (albeit justifiable). That being the case, there’s a different level of culpability in knowing or willfully ignoring a candidate’s bigotry and legitimately believing the candidate is falsely painted as racist. A lot of us here have a vast knowledge of history and understanding dog whistles and other implied connections in language. It’s unfair to project such breadth of knowledge on casual voters, especially when there’s a faux news article or propaganda piece to support almost any absurdity out there. We can say “you should have known” (which, again given the overload and unreliability of information, is debatable) but that is critically distinct from “you definitely knew and still voted for it intentionally.”
Finally, the dysfunction and compounding unhealthiness outside of the Top 10-20% of areas in the country is staggering. As someone who lived in several parts of Pennsylvania, including Philadelphia, Wilkes-Barre, and Central Pennsylvania, I can attest to it firsthand. Life among too many people I know, the former middle class, is a neverending tragedy of illness, addiction, physical/emotional abuse, overwork, alcoholism, divorce, malnutrition, gambling, and more without trustworthy pillars of society. It feels fundamentally hopeless and abandoned, an amoral cascade of cheap thrills. Demanding the attention span and thirst for knowledge we political junkies exhibit for relevant information would be futile and cruel. Included in this is the “fuck it, what do I have to lose” vote, also observed by Michael Moore. Part of it may be a payback vote for those who blame all elites for their communities’ devastation. Even I find it personally infuriating that Wall St. can so brazenly flaunt the fact that it got off scot-free for knowingly/recklessly inflicting so much harm on these places. I recently took a road trip from Northeastern Pennsylvania to Colombus, Ohio. The abysmal state of so many communities along the way contrasted with their former stature is bone-chilling.
I’m sharing these examples of Trump voters who are so far from the white nationalist stereotype because these are by and large the redeemables. Several are 2x Obama voters who didn’t vote for the “change” candidate this year because “they couldn’t stand seeing a black man in power.“ Generally speaking the deplorables are beyond hope, as they’ve always been, but they’re the same X% of Trump’s vote as they were for Romney, McCain, Bush, and so forth. But we need the redeemables because they are our fellow Americans, our family, our friends, our neighbors. We do ourselves no good villainizing people who don’t deserve it as much as the “deplorables” and end up looking delusional ourselves in addition to turning off potential allies. It’s also tearing apart friendships and families, support networks we need in life. I’m treated respectfully by many people who identify as Republican—people who supposedly should hate me because I’m gay, but my real life experience has been nothing like that. It would be hypocritical for me to paint them with a broad brush and lash out at them with contempt.
And importantly, I do not want to invalidate the concerns of many minorities who see the conscious and subconscious biases all over our society. In the summer, when I saw Hillary’s campaign strategy of characterizing Donald Trump as a consummate bigot to drive turnout among minority groups, I told my partner “wow, I understand the logic there but I hope they realize if she doesn’t win this result is going to have the reverse effect of soul-crushing the nation.” Maybe they were so confident of victory that never occurred to them.
Ugh, so here we are. It happened. I knew there was a risk, but I didn’t see it coming. An alarm bell went off the day before the election when it occurred to me that the 12-15% of undecided voters were probably overwhelmingly white given the tenor of both campaigns having portrayed the election as a referendum on bigotry. But I didn’t think she would actually lose.
There’s bound to be infighting for control of the party but I don’t want to see the party destroyed as a result. The empirical data suggests Bernie would have had a stronger chance (all of the head-to-head polls, outsider/change/anti-Establishment, lack of scandal/distrust, strength with Independents, white working class, and Bernie > Trump > Hillary voters), but I acknowledge there’s no way of predicting an alternate future. It’s conceivable something could have derailed his campaign, although the effect of negative ads is seriously under question after this cycle. Either way, I don’t want to find myself in the position of hating on people like Paul Krugman, Tim Kaine, and Donna Brazile regarding the “soul of the party” when on so many issues of greater importance, they are natural allies. I don’t want to be someone who dislikes Daily Kos, a site that aggravated me earlier this year, when it it’s on the right side of so many critical issues (climate change, science, identity equality, choice, education).
I have no idea what to expect in the coming years but whatever misgivings I had about the “Establishment” left during the primary, I expect it to be part of the nation’s voice of sanity. We need that more than ever.
Thank you for reading,
-Brian