Recycling this from election night:
I am sick over the outcome of this election. It is a sad statement that our nation turned to this man in this election. Politics is a real world activity however and there are some things liberals must understand if they hope to win down the road.
1. Yes, racists voted overwhelmingly for Trump, but (even if true) if our argument to them “You are a racist asshole, why do you keep voting against your own economic interests?” we will get no where, no where.
2. It is just factually incorrect that all Trump supporters are in fact racist. There are a couple of points here. Trump outperformed Romney with Latino voters with a much expanded Latino vote. Romney drew 27% while Trump drew 29%. Barack Obama outperformed Hillary Clinton in counties that are still 85% white. 41% to 33%. There is 8% there lost from cycle to cycle that voted for a black man as president, or did not actively vote against him because he was black.
3. The economy is a trainwreck. Corporate values are corrupt, people have lost almost any sense of stabiity, people are treated as machine parts, tossed aside at a whim to boost stock price. The mindset of the tech sector, bringing so many tools to our fingertips while promoting a process of “disruptive economics” where a busniness model like Uber is championed, pushing risk ever outward to employees and the public while extracting wealth out of communities. This mindset has infiltrated the democratic mindset as well, mainly because it works for them, the professional class, but every disruptive model put forward ends somone elses job, there is a consequence that we must stop ignoring or we will be stuck with ever more right wing government over time.
4. Since we are where we are, it is incumbent for us to stand firm in defense of our black and brown brothers and sisters. My heart aches right now, I fear for so many of my friends right now, we must protect the people we love in this environment. But we must figure out how to attract more people from rural america to the liberal cause, they support the issues we stand for (even on immigration) other than the economic model the party has championed these lst 3 decades, to win, we must grow, to grow we must find a way to love people with differing priorities.
5. I know that we are in for a great deal of finger pointing and political warfare within the “left”. We must refect earnestly and listen to each other. We must, if we can not listen to each other, how can we expect to attract the votes needed to win local races, to win Senate seats and so on. Frankly, to lose it all as we have is frightening, some of that is rooted in the divisive nature of our internal dialogue, the inability to try to understand others anxieties and pain.
This is going to be a distressing 4 years I fear. I know many of you feel completely rejected by our culture. I am truly sorry for that. Know that you are loved. But we must open our hearts to the “other side”. I don’t know what will happen, none of us do.
What I do know, is on both sides of the gaping divide, there is a great deal of fear, a great deal of pain and a great deal of anger. We must not succumb to the fear, the pain, the anger, we need to love one another. We must open our hearts, not harden them. We must reach out. Most people on the planet just want to be able to provide a better future for their children, we will only ever figure out how to do that for everyone when we find a way to heal the breach. There will be no form of reconciliation if we harden our hearts now, no matter how dark things seem or are at the moment.
We must prove in the end that Love Trumps Hate.