It’s hard to find any silver linings in our current political situation. They exist! They’re just hard to find, and particularly hard to stomach at the moment. Whatever benefits will accrue won’t happen for several years, and we can genuinely wonder if there’ll even be a planet in four years after popular vote loser Donald Trump is done with the place.
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But there is one silver lining that I’m enjoying right now—the comeuppance Republican voters will get when they no longer have Democrats to bail them out. Finally, those assholes are getting exactly what they voted for, and only what they voted for.
For too long it’s been easy to vote Republican. They could cast their angry vote (whether out of racism, or bigotry, or mean-spiritedness) for Republicans, always knowing that some Democratic-held institution (the presidency, a filibuster-empowered Senate minority, etc.) would mitigate the worst excesses. They could vote for a Congress happy to pass dozens of Obamacare repeals, all the time spared the repercussions of those votes thanks to President Barack Obama. They could vote for the people promising to eliminate the minimum wage, all the while knowing Democrats would fight to ensure that wouldn’t happen. They could vote for warmongers, all the while knowing they or their kids wouldn’t be shipped off to die in Iran or Syria because, again, the Democrats would hold the line.
In short, there were no consequences to voting Republican. Congratulations to them. That’s no longer the case.
It fucking sucks for those of us in the American majority who voted for Democrats. Three million more of us voted for Hillary Clinton than Trump. In the Senate, the 48 Democratic senators received a combined 78.4 million votes, to the 54.9 million votes earned by the 52 Republican senators. We don’t live in a real democracy, and Republicans have been able to game the system to their advantage.
My compassion, and sympathy, and fears all rest with people who voted for a kinder, gentler, more compassionate and inclusive America. But the assholes who voted for the other team? They finally are getting what they voted for, unambiguously. Democrats no longer have the ability to bail them out. And now, over the next two to four years, they’ll get to decide: is this what they really wanted?
If it is? So be it. But Democrats need to remind those Republican voters, time and time again, that all the shit coming down the pike is their fault, it was their choice, it was their vote. Those of us on the left had their interests at heart, and they didn’t give a damn. Instead, they built their own hate-filled bubble and stocked it with fake news.
(Remember, the people who are really in bubbles are the ones who need to create a fake reality to support it!)
But maybe, as these Republican voters start losing their health care, losing their jobs, losing their wage protections, losing their children to war and conflict, and losing their shorelines and crops to climate change—perhaps then they’ll reassess their electoral choices. Perhaps. Really, that’s a choice they’ll have to make, and they’ll have to make it on their own. Either they’ll get it or they won’t. We don’t have a say in the matter, particularly in this era of fake news. Their bubble is impenetrable.
What we need to do is make sure that our core voters register and turn out and vote. We need to create a culture of activism, so that more of us are rallying and organizing and engaging. We need to better educate people, outside our own media circles, reaching marginalized and underserved communities.
There are more of us than there are of them. In a real democracy, we’d already be in control of everything. But we don’t live in a real democracy, and we need to be exponentially bigger than the other side to win. So be it. We have the numbers, we just need to engage.
As for those conservative voters, time to see if they enjoy getting the governance they voted for. And if they don’t, whether it forces a change of worldview. I wouldn’t presume to know the answer to those two questions. Only time will tell.