Another day, another dump truck full of revelations of how thoroughly awful a businessman, citizen, presidential candidate, and human being Donald Trump is. He skipped out on two decades of income taxes. He encourages the citizenry to check out an alleged sex tape of a woman who put on too much weight for his tastes. He insults veterans suffering from PTSD. He threatens to rake a rival candidate over the coals because of her husband’s infidelity while having cheated on multiple spouses himself, backed up by other men who have cheated on multiple spouses. And on and on.
And the religious right, with a few notable exceptions, continues to support him. And we on the left write blogs and stories about their hypocrisy, about their double standards, wringing our hands wondering how people could support someone whose every action flies in the face of what they claim to be their most vaunted beliefs.
But what the religious right understands is that Trump is going to deliver what they want if he’s elected. Who cares how many wives he’s had if he appoints a Supreme Court who will overturn abortion, gay marriage, environmental protections, Obamacare and the Voting Rights Act while strengthening Hobby Lobby and RFRAs and the like? He’ll deport Mexicans, or at least make trying to a legislative priority. He’ll ban Muslims. Gays and women and atheists and liberals and intellectuals will know their place. It’s everything they’ve ever wanted to see in the USA.
So who cares if the guy doing it is personally the very antithesis of everything they believe? It doesn’t matter, the country he will bring about is the country they want to live in. What’s a little adultery and tax evasion if it means the true enemies of the state are finally put in their place and the Religious Right gets the domination and the culture war victories they’ve always wanted?
Meanwhile on the left, we have the unprecedented chance to move the country in a direction progressives have dreamt of through the long dark nightmare of the Reagan/Bush dynasty. A Supreme Court that will uphold Obergefell, uphold Roe vs Wade, will roll back Citizens United and Hobby Lobby, will reverse so-called “religious freedom” laws that are merely permission to discriminate. A Democratic president with a Democratic Senate will move this country to a place I as a 41-year-old gay man never imagined I’d see in my lifetime.
But so many on the Left want to throw that all away because they don’t like Hillary for various reasons, some of them arguably quite valid. But frankly I don’t care what she’s done or who she is as much as I care about what she will DO. The judges and cabinet secretaries she will appoint. The legislative agenda she will pursue. At a unique moment in our nation’s history, with the opportunity to have a liberal Supreme Court majority for the first time in our generation which will protect the hard-won gains we’ve made and continue on a path of equality and fairness that will reverberate through the rest of our lifetimes, we’re arguing about emails. We’re willing to risk throwing it all away because she’s not everyone’s first choice to be the team leader.
If Trump is elected, his misogynistic, tax-cheating, sociopathic bullying ways that fly in the face of any true Christian belief system won’t mean anything because the Christian Right will get everything they’ve ever wanted to see happen in this country. So no, it doesn’t matter how many allegations of misdeeds and examples of personal moral approbations we throw at him, it doesn’t change the fact that he will remake the country into what they want to see it become.
I feel like I see so little discussion about what Hillary Clinton will DO as opposed to what Donald Trump will do — I see a lot of discussion about her character failings vs his character failings and lots of “lesser of two evils” BS that ignores the simple fact that a Democratic administration, particularly at this moment in history, will move the country in a direction we’ve waited our lifetimes to see it go. The same way that the Religious Right sees that at this moment in history, a Republican administration will move the country in a direction antithetical to everything we on the left claim to believe in.
It stuns me that this fact seems lost on so many people intent on relitigating the primary at every opportunity, who claim to be so committed to progressive principles that they would throw the country into a Christofascist nightmare because of their dislike of a public persona. Am I promoting moral relativisim? Frankly, I don’t care — I’m concerned with keeping the right to perhaps marry a partner of my choice one day with full equality under the law. I’m concerned with protecting a woman’s right to choose, with people keeping their health insurance, with women able to access birth control, with entire religions not being scapegoated for the actions of a radical few. Frankly, whoever leads the team that gets us there is way less important to me than what will be accomplished. That’s what primaries are for, and we had ours and we are where we are.
I have been a Hillary supporter this whole process so I personally don’t see myself as selling out my values. But if somehow John Edwards were the Democratic nominee right now, I’d vote for him. I’d vote for anyone who pledged to pursue a legislative agenda that moves the country where I believe it should go, particularly when the alternative is as harrowing as it is this time around.
That’s why the Religious Right will not turn on Trump, no matter how many horrible revelations are thrown at him. It truly doesn’t matter. What matters to them is what he will do, not who he is. I daresay I admire their pragmatism. Which is about the only thing about them I can say I admire.