A week before the election, my dad was visiting and talked to me about his gut feeling that former President Donald Trump might win. He was clear about his choice to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. “But what are they doing?” he asked me, exasperated.
“They need to level with people about the economy,” he continued. “I know so many people who can’t afford a place to live any more. People do not want to hear, ‘Well, actually the economy is good.’”
Then suddenly he pivoted away from Harris to liberals more generally, and away from the economy into culture.
“You know, another thing: I’m tired of feeling like I’m going to get jumped on for saying something wrong, for using the wrong words,” my dad confided, becoming uncharacteristically emotional. “I don’t want to say things that will offend anyone. I want to be respectful. But I think Trump is reaching a lot of people like me who didn’t learn a special way to talk at college and feel constantly talked down to by people who have.”
At 71 years old, my dad is still working full time, helping to run a delicatessen at a local farmers’ market. He didn’t go to college. Raised Mennonite and socially conservative, he is nonetheless open-minded and curious. When his cousins came out as gay in the 1980s, he accepted them for who they are.
So I’m interested in winning elections so that better people can have control of the vast power of the federal government.
Like it or not, these people- most people are the people we need to vote for our ticket, and we need to be listening to them and making adjustments, not saying “typical asshole, they shouldn’t be allowed to vote!” Come on.
We can’t have the electorate you’d like to have. These folks exist and will never hear your criticisms of them in this progressive silo. We cannot keep the government out of the hands of the MAGA people without their votes no matter how much you hold them in contempt.
We have two parties. TWO.
The GOP is obviously never coming to anyone’s aid. You think the DNC is going to somehow morph into a team of winners? They’re categorical losers. They’re a party of neoliberal minds, insulated from the outcomes of their own failures.
Yes, I’d like other options, and yes, the electorate should be inclusive. But the party that determines who runs and the party that sets strategy, and the party that is supposed to be fighting for the common person, is NOT.
And many of those party heads are incredibly old and out of touch, and frankly, just in the way, as they manufacture reasons why they continually lose, yet simultaneously grow their own wealth and influence. The duopoly of being the brightest and best political minds is not congruent with being perennial losers. So they’re just not trying to win. That is not their goal. They are there to gratify themselves, while losing.