How Long Are We Supposed To Feel Sorry For Trump Voters?
The time is up.
Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon. He illegally attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election, for which he was indicted. He stole classified documents and stored them in his tacky bathroom, for which he was also indicted. He botched the government’s response to covid, resulting in 40 percent more deaths than other nations with competent leadership. He wasn’t indicted for this, but he should have been.
However, Trump still has a good chance of returning to the White House. That’s only because a considerable minority is willing to support him, again. However, Nicholas Kristof argues in The New York Times that “we shouldn’t demean Trump voters.”
Kristof writes that “too often since 2016, the liberal impulse has been to demonize anyone at all sympathetic to Donald Trump as a racist and bigot. This has been politically foolish, for it’s difficult to win votes from people you’re disparaging.”
There’s no actual evidence provided for this claim. Stating that liberals shouldn’t condemn Trump voters is a fair opinion, if misguided. Stating as fact that liberals have demonized all Trump voters as racists and bigots is less defensible. The New York Times after all has devoted voluminous column inches to rationalizing and humanizing people who willingly support Trump. JD Vance owes his wealth, fame, and current position on the Trump ticket to liberals who wanted to understand Trump voters.
Kristof continues building his house of straw: “It has also seemed to me morally offensive, particularly when well-educated and successful elites are scorning disadvantaged, working-class Americans who have been left behind economically and socially and in many cases are dying young. They deserve empathy, not insults.”
The same old, tired economic anxiety myths
Kristof promotes the myth that well-heeled liberals are sneering at struggling, real Americans who in their desperation turned to a man they didn’t fully understand — a reality TV star with a solid gold toilet and a cubic zirconia wife. However, both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden carried working-class voters and voters who earned less than $50,000.
The Chicago Project on Security and Threats conducted a demographic analysis of the January 6 insurrectionists. Robert A. Pape, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, wrote: “Of the 501 for which we have employment data, more than half are business owners, including CEOs, or from white-collar occupations, including doctors, lawyers, architects, and accountants.”
Struggled, disadvantaged working-class Americans of color voted overwhelmingly against Trump. Black people in particular came out in droves, not just in major US cities but in rural parts of Georgia, to reject Trump. Yet Kristof expects us to empathize with the people who supported a coup attempt that would’ve disenfranchised millions of their fellow Americans.
The theme here is whiteneness. That’s the common thread uniting Trump voters across the nation, regardless of residence, education, and income. America’s obsession with white innocence is also why Trump voters aren’t held morally accountable for supporting a wannabe despot.
Kristof writes, “By all means denounce Trump, but don’t stereotype and belittle the nearly half of Americans who have sided with him.”
No one should stereotype Trump voters, but it’s fair to judge them. Voting is not merely a personal choice or a bizarre peccadillo, like installing curbless showers or vessel sinks in your bathroom. It’s a moral statement that has real-word impact on other people, much like curbless showers and vessel sinks actually. Someone who voted for Trump made a bad choice, and normally I agree that one bad choice doesn’t make someone irredeemable. However, this is the third presidential election in a row with Trump’s gross name on the ballot. Voting for him is no longer just a mistake. It’s a bad habit.
There are groups such as Republican Voters Against Trump that elevate the voices of people who voted for Trump previously but won’t do so again. Republican Geoff Duncan, former lieutenant governor of Georgia, rejected Trump and endorsed Harris. Former DC Metropolitan Police Department officer Michael Fanone probably best represents the idealized portrait of a Trump voter — blue-collar, didn’t go to college, and worked in construction before entering law enforcement. January 6 was a very loud wake-up call for Fanone, who finally saw Trump for what he is.
Trump voters had other options
Americans opposed to competent governance had several non-Trump options during the recent Republican primary. GOP voters overwhelmingly chose Trump. However, a not-insignificant number of primary voters backed Nikki Haley, who’s terrible in her own way but at least clears the very low “not a rapist felon” bar. She probably wouldn’t keep classified documents in her bathroom, either. She doesn’t strike me as a toilet reader.
Exit polls from the New Hampshire primary showed that 51 percent of Republican voters didn’t believe President Joe Biden was legitimately elected, and 85 percent of those voters backed Trump. This was the major policy distinction. It’s not about poor people scratching and surviving. The Trump primary vote was decidedly pro-coup and anti-democracy.
Fifty-four percent of New Hampshire primary voters said they’d back Trump even if he were convicted of crime — thus holding the presidency to a lower standard than Marvel holds its Avengers villains.
Nikki Haley herself has endorsed Trump, despite questioning his mental fitness for office and accurately observing that he tells “too many lies.” She’s said, “Anybody that can’t call out a dictator, that’s a problem. . . . [Putin’s] emboldened by Trump because Trump is not willing to stand up for our allies.”
“[Trump] said that he would stand with Putin and encourage him to invade our allies,” Haley said in the distant past of January. “Trump would side with a dictator who kills his political opponents ... Trump is going to side with a madman who’s made no bones about the fact he wants to destroy America.”
If you vote for a terrible person who you know is terrible, that might make you terrible, as well.
Trump alone is not the problem
Nicholas Kristof is not alone in wanting to treat Trump like an outlier. When both Republicans and Democrats call Trump a “con artist,” they are casting his supporters as gullible rubes and innocent marks. However, the saying “you can’t con an honest person” applies quite well to the MAGA movement. Trump’s not promising his supporters band equipment or a monorail. He’s selling vengeance and the active oppression of perceived enemies.
The people who are voting for Trump because they think he’s better for the economy are both selfish and wrong, a damning combination. Then there are those who are happily voting for Trump because they believe he’ll make life miserable for people who just want to peacefully coexist. Trump was welcomed as the second coming at the far-right Moms For Liberty gathering last weekend. Trump, I repeat, is an adjudicated rapist and convicted felon whose attempted coup ended in a violent attack on the Capitol. Nonetheless, Moms For Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice endorsed this literal criminal and claims that it’s the Democratic ticket that’s radical and anti-parent. She even joined him in the madman’s frug. (You probably shouldn’t watch below.)
If it’s just Trump dancing alone like a moron, we’d have nothing to fear. He’s only a threat because 74 million Americans voted for in 2020 and could do so again. People casting vote for Trump are rejecting democracy, regardless of their motivations, and imperiling the planet. Yet, they’re the ones Kristof thinks deserve our empathy. I’m more concerned for the people who’ll suffer the most if Trump returns to power. When staring down a violent white nationalist movement, you’re allowed to spit in their eye.
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They're never, of course, asked not to demonize us. They lie about us. They call us baby killers. They call us America-haters. They call us communists. They tell us our states aren't real America. They lie about us stealing elections. They called every Democratic president of my lifetime except Carter a dictator. They lie about Black people burning down our cities. They slander immigrants as killers and rapists. They blood-libel the LGBTQ community insinuating the worst things imaginable with children.
So no, I don't feel sorry for telling them the truth. They are bad people. They need to repent. They need to feel shame. They need to seek forgiveness. They are the ones who have turned on America as it is because they long for an America the rest of us seek to leave in the past with its segregation and lynchings and pogroms. They are the ones following an antichrist who leads them to destruction. They are the ones making a bitter mockery of the promise of liberty and justice for all. They are the ones ensuring that the soil of our schools are watered with the blood of teachers and elementary school students.
A prophet said, "Cease to do evil. Learn to do good. Come, let us reason together, though your sins are like scarlet you shall be like snow, if you do good in the land..."
Right now, they have my anger which is justified. If they stop, they will receive compassion. If they seek atonement, they will find forgiveness from us.
But asking us to refrain from telling them the truth is to ask us to continue to accept abuse from a partner in this country. To accept that we deserve the beatings and abuse when we do not. We are every bit the heirs to America that they are and they are demanding that we give up our inheritance to them or suffer them to burn down the nation.
It's yet another reporter for the main stream media mansplaining how we bleeding heart libs should try harder to understand the poor delicate MAGATs who might have their feelings hurt when it is pointed out that they are willingly voting for a lying, cheating, grifting con-man who is weaponizing their racism, lack of critical thinking skills, and rampant misogyny.
WTF?