Yesterday, I got caught up in one of those social media debates/arguments/brawls that ended with a Trump supporter talking about how he can’t wait to “fill Gitmo back up with Muslims.” I called him out on his disgusting comments and he said to me “You know, I supported Obama, you need to win my vote back if you ever want to beat Trump, but keep talking like that and you’ll keep losing”
Indeed, I asked a mutual friend who admitted that he did support Obama but became conservative around 2014 when he became a cop and started talking “anti-immigrant and antigovernment nonsense”
My response was simple “Then I’m sorry to see you go, but people change, their politics change, and you’re gone to us.”
Enter this article, which is becoming so popular, it is trending on Twitter.
www.nytimes.com/…
The opening paragraph made me cock my head.
Jeffrey Medford, a small-business owner in South Carolina, voted reluctantly for Donald Trump. As a conservative, he felt the need to choose the Republican. But some things are making him feel uncomfortable — parts of Mr. Trump’s travel ban, for example, and the recurring theme of his apparent affinity for Russia.
Mr. Medford should be a natural ally for liberals trying to convince the country that Mr. Trump was a bad choice.
I’m going to stop right there. How is a “conservative who felt the need the choose the Republican” a natural ally for liberals?
Every time Mr. Medford dips into the political debate — either with strangers on Facebook or friends in New York and Los Angeles — he comes away feeling battered by contempt and an attitude of moral superiority.
“We’re backed into a corner,” said Mr. Medford, 46, whose business teaches people to be filmmakers. “There are at least some things about Trump I find to be defensible. But they are saying: ‘Agree with us 100 percent or you are morally bankrupt. You’re an idiot if you support any part of Trump.’ ”
He added: “I didn’t choose a side. They put me on one.”
No, you put yourself there. You’re a “conservative, who felt the need to choose the Republican.” If some things he's doing are making you uncomfortable, and you support him anyway, then don’t expect people to be nice to you.
Protests and righteous indignation on social media and in Hollywood may seem to liberals to be about policy and persuasion. But moderate conservatives say they are having the opposite effect, chipping away at their middle ground and pushing them closer to Mr. Trump.
“The name calling from the left is crazy,” said Bryce Youngquist, 34, who works in sales for a tech start-up in Mountain View, Calif., a liberal enclave where admitting you voted for Mr. Trump is a little like saying in the 1950s that you were gay. “They are complaining that Trump calls people names, but they turned into some mean people.”
Mr. Youngquist stayed in the closet for months about his support for Mr. Trump. He did not put a bumper sticker on his car, for fear it would be keyed. The only place he felt comfortable wearing his Make America Great Again hat was on a vacation in China. Even dating became difficult. Many people on Tinder have a warning on their profile: “Trump supporters swipe left” — meaning, get lost.
He came out a few days before the election. On election night, a friend posted on Facebook, “You are a disgusting human being.”
“They were making me want to support him more with how irrational they were being,” Mr. Youngquist said.
Tell me more about how Mr. Youngquist is “a moderate conservative.”
If you’re only “more supportive” Trump because someone called you out on your bullshit, then YOU are the one with the problem.
Conservatives have gotten vicious, too, sometimes with Mr. Trump’s encouragement. But if political action is meant to persuade people that Mr. Trump is bad for the country, then people on the fence would seem a logical place to start. Yet many seemingly persuadable conservatives say that liberals are burning bridges rather than building them.
Oh, well it’s great that we pointed out that “conservative are vicious too” but why is this article presenting Trump voters are “people on the fence?”
“I don’t have a problem with protesting as long as it’s peaceful, but this is destroying the country,” said Ann O’Connell, 72, a retired administrative assistant in Syracuse who voted for Mr. Trump. “I feel like we are in some kind of civil war right now. I know people don’t like to use those terms. But I think it’s scary.”
Mrs. O’Connell is a registered Democrat. She voted for Bill Clinton twice. But she has drifted away from the party over what she said was a move from its middle-class economic roots toward identity politics. She remembers Mr. Clinton giving a speech about the dangers of illegal immigration. Mr. Trump was lambasted for offering some of the same ideas, she said.
“The Democratic Party has changed so much that I don’t even recognize it anymore,” she said. “These people are destroying our democracy. They are scarier to me than these Islamic terrorists. I feel absolutely disgusted with them and their antics. It strengthens people’s resolve in wanting to support President Trump. It really does.”
Remember when we keep talking about the Democratic base? Look at that, here’s a Democrat, who sounds like a Republican. Also, Mrs. O’Connell’s idea of “middle-class economic roots” is “the dangers of illegal immigration.”
What about the economic anxiety again?
Bye Felicia!
Polling data suggest many center-right voters feel the same way. The first poll by the Pew Research Center on presidential job performance since Mr. Trump took office showed last week that while he has almost no support from Democrats, he has high marks among moderates who lean Republican: 70 percent approve, while 20 percent disapprove.
“Moderates who lean Republican” ARE NOT MODERATES!
“It’s like I need to get from Charleston to Atlanta, and suddenly the most beat-up car on earth shows up and says, ‘Do you need a ride?’ I think, wow, if I had any other way to get there, I’d choose it. But there’s only this terrible car. And it might not even make it.”
But he doesn’t want to get out, at least not yet, and the resignation of Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, hasn’t changed that. Late last year, he hit it off with a woman in New York he met online. They spent hours on the phone. They made plans for him to visit. But when he mentioned he had voted for Mr. Trump, she said she was embarrassed and didn’t know if she wanted him to come. (He eventually did, but she lied to her friends about his visiting.)
“It invalidated anything that’s good about me, just because of how I voted. Poof, it’s gone.”
You bet it did.
If you voted for Donald Trump, IT ABSOLUTELY DOES INVALIDATE ANYTHING GOOD ABOUT YOU.
You gave the most powerful job in the world, an office held by great men like Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, to a man who openly admitted to committed sexual assault. who openly mocked disabled people , and openly said racist, sexist, xenophobic shit. You gave him the most powerful job in the world, why? Because you needed a ride to Atlanta?
Donald Trump isn’t a old beat up car, you souless ingrate.
Maybe it’s true that there are a bloc of voters who believe in double standards, who are offended by activist Democrats who but are perfectly fine with Republicans treating Democrats like crap.
When I was in grade school, I was tormented for years by a bully. He would hit me, make fun of me, humiliate me in various ways. Finally, in the sixth grade, he pushed me against the wall and I had enough. I punched him and it led to a fight.
I was suspended from school. He wasn’t. When I asked why I was being punished so severely, my principal said to me “We expect it from him, we don’t expect it from you.” He further explained that he hoped this would serve as a lesson that “hitting back is never the answer.”
Many of the kids sided with the bully, because they felt that my response was “harsh” and “nasty.”
I had upset the order of the school. I wasn’t supposed to punch back. That’s not how it was supposed to work.
I find some of the same parallels here. Democrats are expected to take the abuse and not fight back and they’re expected to be the “reasonable ones in the room.” But even when we do that, the “moderates” vote Republican.
Or maybe we progressives are way too concerned about how our messages are received, and what people think of us. Maybe it’s better to just say what we feel and think and let the chips fall where they may.
The interesting thing is that I’ve been seeing varying reaction to this. White male straight pundits/journalists like Nicholas Kristoff, Michael Powell and Will Brenneman seem to be in agreement liberals must be nicer to Trump voters. But people of color like Jamille Bouie and Joy Rid are like “nah, fuck that.”
As for me, I simply cannot break bread with anyone who voted Trump, especially if they had voted for Obama before. They’re the worst kind. They’re horrible, disgusting, insensitive scum. Some of them may come around, but when they do, they will realize we were right about them being deplorable.
That’s the only way any Trump supporter comes around, if they have the A-HA moment. No amount of ass-kissing by us is going to do it.
