Last week I totaled my car, which hydroplaned on ice and ended up 80 yards in the woods. Fortunately I was able to walk away from the accident with only a lot of pain, which turned out to be broken ribs and compressed vertebrae, but no neurological damage.
While waiting for a wrecker to come pull my car out of the trees, I was sitting in a police car with an officer who engaged me in a lot of interesting conversation. Much of what we talked about was religion and politics. I didn’t intentionally steer the discussion in that direction, and neither did he, but somehow it happened. Fortunately, as a person who has done a lot of talking with both political and religious conservatives over the years — and as a person of Christian faith — I am able to engage respectfully with people such as the police officer, who had a Bible on his dashboard and said he will likely vote again for Donald Trump.
There are two points that really stood out to me from our conversation, which I would like to share here.
1. The police officer said he dislikes Trump and considers him to be an immoral man. Nevertheless, he plans to vote for him because the economy is good. As he put it, “When you hire a CEO for a company, you’re more interested in what he does for the business than his personal moral failings.”
I didn’t argue the point, but if I hadn’t been exhausted and in pain at the time, or if I had been more inclined to debate, I would have said: A big part of the job description of the President of the United States is to be a good example for the American people, and if he fails in that department, he’s a poor CEO of the country.
I think this police officer represents a fairly large demographic in America today: people who think Trump is repugnant, but who reluctantly support him because the economy seems to be humming along under his presidency. The damage he’s doing to the country is less obviously visible — it’s in our character as human beings, and our character as a nation — and this is more important than economic statistics or anything else.
I think this is the argument we need to be making to swing voters, especially conservative people of faith who, deep down, probably realize that Trump is a charlatan who is trumpeting his fake Christianity to get votes, while acting in a grossly immoral manner in his public and private life. Character matters, and Trump is setting a very bad example. Four more years of Trump will solidify the new identity of America as a country where nastiness reigns. A whole generation of children will spend the formative years of their childhood seeing this morally sick man as the highest example of leadership. Is that really what we want?
2. The police officer, an ex-Democrat, said that “identity politics” turned him away from the party. He said he is half white and half Hispanic, and that his brother is very liberal, which has led to tensions between them. As for himself, he said he feels “politically homeless.” He does not like the fact that American politics is increasingly dividing along racial lines, where the Republican Party is seen as the white people’s party and the Democrats are seen as the party of color. He expressed concern that Democrats think most police officers are racists, which he adamantly denies, and which apparently makes him feel that his former party hates people like him rather than appreciating him.
I agreed with the officer that identity politics is a problem which is dividing Americans. And although I didn’t say it, I was thinking to myself that the officer’s own family was a perfect example of why identity politics is so damaging, because it can tear mixed-race families apart. If one party is perceived as being for white people and the other party for people of color, what do you do if you’re both? In the case of the officer’s family, one brother perhaps identifies more with his Latino heritage and chooses the Democrats, and the other brother has gone in the other direction. He didn’t look Hispanic. Perhaps his Democratic brother does — or so I wondered.
The Trump-voting police officer kindly drove me to a hotel, carried my luggage, and helped me check in. He gave me his business card, shook my hand, and wished me well. Unlike the president he reluctantly supports, he was a total gentleman.
For anyone wondering, this happened in rural Maine, a part of the country that is politically up for grabs. I would urge all my fellow Democrats to remember that there are some Trump voters — perhaps many of them — who, in their heart, do not actually want to vote for Trump. They know that he is a nasty and immoral man. They suspect his religious faith is a sham. They don’t like the Democrats either — but they are NOT the caricature of hopelessly unreachable, foaming-at-the-mouth Trumpist ideologues that many liberal Democrats suspect them to be. If some of these reluctant Trump voters decide not to vote for Trump next year, that could swing the election.
Let’s do the best we can to engage respectfully with such people. The future of the country could depend on it!