First, listen to this as you read. It helps with the pain.
So we took one in the teeth on Tuesday. The Democratic party is as far out of power as one can be in Washington. The state houses don’t look good either. Oh, and the fact that the majority of the Senate seats Dems have to defend are in states Trump carried. We are done. We are through. Socialism has been repudiated and we should all just go away.
Okay, with that out of the way, I can now start moving on. I get it. I’m a white cis hetero male in America. I’ll probably be fine under our new Orange Overlord. But that’s why its on me and others like me to start using our privilege to create the spaces for the movement to rebuild itself. The safe spaces that seem to scare Trump voters so much.
Good, smart people are talking in rooms and online as we speak. Good, smart journalists and columnists have written thought provoking pieces trying to identify the Trump voter. The Atlantic has released a few stories from Trump voters. The comment section is full of people saying some really nasty things about people in our coalition. The ugliness is frightening.
But that is a good thing. The ugliness no longer lies just below the surface, unseen by the privileged. The ugliness is out there for all to see. I don’t care about specific Trump voters but I do care about understanding how they voted. I don’t need them to like me. I just need to know how to talk to them. The answer is conversations with Red America. Not acquiescence but conversation.
There is no doubt anymore about whether or not the US is a regular nation with huge swaths of racial resentment and sexist power dynamics. This fact has been laid bare for all the nation to see. The trick will be rebuilding the coalition that holds us together as a nation. That means Red and Blue talking to each other.
Of course the current batch of Republicans in Washington are not who we should be having these conversations with. You know, get outside of the echo chamber. Maybe not every Republican is a horrible person. Maybe some independents would show up to vote for a person that expressed an interest in Red America beyond lip service. This of course should start with a strong economic plan to talk about in the first place.
The thing about talking about conversation with Red America right now is that it is too early for most of us. I get that. Feel and process your grief and pain fully. It hurts. But it lights a fire that will fuel the resurgence of the Progressive coalition.