I don’t think anyone can say definitively why anyone voted for any particular candidate without asking each person individually, but I can tell you and those reading why I voted for Trump.
Quick background: My first Presidential vote was for Reagan. After that I voted, and supported with get out the vote efforts, (small) financial contrib…
I don’t think anyone can say definitively why anyone voted for any particular candidate without asking each person individually, but I can tell you and those reading why I voted for Trump.
Quick background: My first Presidential vote was for Reagan. After that I voted, and supported with get out the vote efforts, (small) financial contributions, jawboning friends etc , every Democratic candidate until 2016. The George Bush/Cheney Presidency and the devastation of the. Idle East and bankrupting of the USA was the low point (and still is) of my political life. Like the rest of America, we breathed a HUGE sigh of relief when Barack came to power. ANYBODY was better than Bush/Cheney. I couldn’t stomach the later Obama years, with the bailout of the banks while huge swaths of American lost their homes after they fell behind on payments. So 2016 I voted Libertarian, which is where most of my heart and mind is when it comes down to it.
I knew nothing about Trump apart from the fact that he seems to be a pompous jackass, arrogant, shallow and mean spirited. I have that same opinion of him, today, but it wasn’t even a close call when it came to picking him vs. Harris. There are probably 50-60 really, really good reasons why, but here are a few, in no particular order:
1. Harris openly sought the endorsement of the Cheneys, who have more blood on their hands than probably any other American family. Dick Cheney is a war criminal, and should be in prison for life. His daughter is cut from the same cloth. How the De o ratio nominee thinks that buddying up to a vicious war criminal is going to win any votes is beyond me, but it does show how close the establishment will go if both parties is.
2.Kevin Cooper. A black California man on death row, who is still on death row, because Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris refused to allow DNA tests which would definitively rule out Kevin as a suspect. The only eyewitness saw a white man……but Harris and Brown (“progressive liberals”) will back the system even when it is obviously, egregiously wrong, literally when an innocent man’s life is at stake. No thanks.
3. Despite what the policy wonks from the Fed say, the ACTUAL COST OF LIVING has skyrocketed since Harris & co.took control of the White House. This isn’t a “feeling” or “fear” this is 100% real. Everything that people actually need to live and work has gone up from 25% to 200% since they took over. This isn’t political. This is fact. Go ask the people on the food bank lines snaking around the corner here in Detroit if you trust the Fed over the people on the street.
4. The COMBINATION of generally Democratic policies, at state local and federal levels make it extremely difficult for small businesses, such as mine. Here in Detroit, you have on the one hand ridiculous levels of property (and violent) crime, which is shrugged off as “That’s the D, man….” and “no resources”…, yet I receive a stern warning from the Police Department for a truck illegally parked in a residential area. When it was parked legally, in a parking lot I owned, and the catalytic converter was cut off, toolboxes r smashed, door windows smashed, and a homeless person pissing in my cab, ….”no resources”……when my $25,000 skid steer was stolen, and I attempted to make a police report at the precinct house, I was turned away because it wasn’t valuable “enough” according to the sergeant who blocked my way into the station house.
Then you have the pool of workers who are paid to stay home, collect some benefit or another so that even at $25 an hour, cash, starting pay, I have NO takers who aren’t addicted to some substance or a cellphone…they can make more on the dole, or through easy crime….so no work. Then we have the pandemic “two weeks to flatten the curve” nonsense, which lasted for months, in which my little tree service was shit down by the state goons, while all the weed stores, liquor stores and lottery sellers were wide, wide wide open (“essential services”). I think you get the point….
5. While MSM twisted and lied about Trump’s poorly worded attack on Liz Cheney, his point that all of the chicken hawks, Dems and Reps alike, gout song a different song if they ever had to face down the barrel of a gun was dead on, and resonated with a huge amount of people, including former military like myself. Probably the single biggest reason to vote FOR Trump is that, for four straight years, we had NO WARS. Say what you want, but there was no Ukraine, no genocide in Gaza, no bombing of Lebanon, he withdrew from Syria and started the withdrawal from Afghanistan, while the Harris/Biden experience has been a shitshow at best, and a catastrophic abomination at worst for four long years. I, as an ex Marine, my brother in law, as a Marine with a brutal combat tour in Nam, and all the rest of my family voted Trump JUST FOR THAT REASON. Those who opine from the safety of their college dorms or corner offices with their goat milk lattes have no fucking clue how much that means to families like mine, whose mother grew up in France under German occupation, who was highly decorated for service for the French and American armies, and who abhorred war, and rumors of war, that she immigrated (legally) to the USA after her service to get away from the hatred and recrimination that enveloped Europe after the war.
6. It is unconscionable that, according to Mayorkas, Biden/Harris’s homeland security chief, some 300,000 children that they allowed into the country (illegally) are unaccounted for. Let that fucking sink in. On that issue alone, I would vote AGAINST the monsters who allowed that to happen. Taking all partisan politics out of it, the fact that they can’t even keep records of minor children in their charge, without even imputing bad motives, is proof enough that they, the entire administration is morally, ethically, and administratively unfit to wield any power. Let them start with running a lemonade stand, and then move on…
7. Vaccine mandates. I am 100% for allowing people to put whatever they want into their body, and 100% against government coercion. Take whatever you want whether it is weed, heroin, Botox or vaxxes, but leave the rest of us alone. It simply should NEVER be the prerogative of any government, at any level to mandate medical treatment. Biden way overstepped his authority with his mandates, and for that reason alone, we would never vote for Harris, since she never disavowed his policies.
8. Censorship. The Democratic Party of my youth and most of my life was strongly pro- freedom of speech, (real) diversity, tolerance, anti-corporate, “ big tent”, anti war, pro family, pro small business/working class. That is why I and millions of others faithfully supported and voted for their candidates, as imperfect as they (and all of us) were. The Biden/Harris regime, and the current iteration of the Democratic Party, has completely flipped on all of those issues, and now aligns itself with the worst elements of the corporatist neo-con Republicans/Establishment. I haven’t changed my positions one bit, but now I Ron’s myself squished over to “right wing” because someone moved the goal posts and yard lines.
9. There are ZERO racist, misogynistic inclinations in any of the Trump voters i know. Many are not white, many are, many are women, many are men. NONE of them admires Trump as an ideal candidate, and none of them are under any illusion that he is in it for anything more than glory for himself, and more money for his family. Having said that, ALL of us are choosing him over the alternative, because we feel that we will have a slightly better chance at survival, that there is a better chance that we will not go to war and send hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the slaughter overseas, that at least some of that money might be left in our pockets or at least spent helping the less fortunate here.
It isn’t complicated, at all. Anyone who is surprised by the huge swings in working class votes towards the Republicans should step out of his echo chamber for a few minutes and mix with those of us who take a shower after work. It ain’t about race, it ain’t about women, it’s about the pocketbook, the safety of the streets, it’s say out the wars, it’s about freedom.
"I knew nothing about Trump apart from the fact that he seems to be a pompous jackass, arrogant, shallow and mean spirited"
I read this whole thing with interest, but I actually think you nailed it with this line. I think that many of the people who voted for Trump are in the same boat. Or, if they did know, they've joined millions of people in grading him on this insane curve where they condemn the Democrats for something but have nothing to say when he does the same or worse.
Case in point, your list:
1. You're the second person to say something along these lines, but what do you mean by "openly sought the endorsement of the Cheneys?" Harris received Dick Cheney's endorsement, but never sought it as far as I'm aware.
Nor did she seek Liz Cheney's. She received it, and Liz joined her on the campaign trail, but I'm not really seeing the issue there (please feel free to clarify). Liz Cheney is one of very few Republicans who took and maintained a principled stance against Trump. Even though it cost her power. Agree or disagree with that stance, I think she showed integrity.
Links to stories about two of several controversial executions of black men carried out under the Trump administration. I'm not arguing that Trump is uniquely bad because of this, but how Kevin Cooper's case moved the needle for you is beyond me.
3. Yes, the cost of living has increased since Biden took office. Not just in America, but all over the world. In fact, the US economy has, according to reports I admittedly haven't read in depth, performed better than other nations over the past four years. As for *why* the cost of living has increased, do you think it's as simple as Biden taking office and not, y'know, the global pandemic? Or Russia's war in Ukraine affecting energy prices? Or greedy corporations trying to recoup their losses after COVID?
I wouldn't dream of denying that people are struggling. I'm saying a deeper level of analysis is required than looking at who's in the White House.
4. You just got done telling me that "most problems can be solved at the hyper local level" and then you're telling me that you voted for Trump because of a "stern warning" you received from a local police officer? Or because of petty theft? Do you think Trump is going to change that? Or that any president would? Do you not see this contradiction?
The pandemic was poorly handled in many ways by both Trump and Biden. But I don't understand how so many people forget that the "two weeks to flatten the curve" was under TRUMP!!! I've seen Trump voters sneer out this line so many times and it's like, WHAT??!! Are you crazy??!
But yes, the pandemic was mishandled by almost every nation I paid any attention to.
5. "Say what you want, but there was no Ukraine, no genocide in Gaza, no bombing of Lebanon, he withdrew from Syria and started the withdrawal from Afghanistan,"
Come on man, Did Biden start the war in Ukraine? Did Biden force Hamas to attack on Oct 7th? Like, what is this? Presidents are responsible for everything that happens in the world while they're in office? Well then, Trump is responsible for COVID, no?
And yes, Trump started the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But I bet you blame Biden entirely for what a disaster it was, right? And for any instability that comes out of the region now that the Taliban are back in power?
If your mother grew up under German occupation you understand the importance of fighting for freedom, right? Not withdrawing from the world and saying, unless it's directly affecting America right now, we'll just back away and let it play out. Can you imagine what would have happened if America had done that in WWII? Please, pick a lane here.
Your initial claim to have known nothing about Trump rings truer and truer.
7. Hmm, yeah the whole vaccine thing is tricky. First, I see no reason to believe that Trump wouldn't have implemented mandates if he were in power during the rollout. Given what was known at the time, there was an argument to be made that leaving people unvaccinated was a significant risk. But I completely share yours and every sane person's very strong aversion to pressuring people to take vaccines.
COVID was an insane and unprecedented situation. If you feel strongly enough about how Biden handled his part of it to vote against him, that's fair. But I'll remind you, Harris wasn't president during COVID, and Trump was the one telling everybody it was a "Democrat hoax" instead of ordering vaccine supply and PPE gear as early as possible and encouraging people to stay safe.
8. There's no denying that the Democratic Party and the Left in general has changed. If it were any other Republican candidate, we wouldn't be having this conversation. In fact there are many universes where I'd have supported a Republican candidate over Harris/Biden.
But that would be to ignore how dramatically the Republican party has also changed. Far more than the Democrats. As I wrote recently, there was a time when the Republicans would have stormed the Capitol to keep a candidate like Trump *out* of the White House.
This is a man who was caught on tape trying to strong-arm the Georgi governor into "finding him some votes." A man who publicly undermined American intelligence agencies (even privately I could understand, but publicly???!!!), by taking Vladimir fu**ing Putin's word over theirs. A man who satin the Oval Office sipping Coke while his supporters Stormed the White House and called to hang his vice President. If you can turn a blind eye to all of this, you can't tell me you "haven't changed one bit."
9. "There are ZERO racist, misogynistic inclinations in any of the Trump voters I know"
This is just a dumb thing to say. Trump got what, 74 million votes? Not a single racist or misogynist among them? Really? Yes, actually there are a great many racists and misogynists among his supporters. I've spoken to many of them and seen countless more spreading that racism on social media. I've seen them in the spike in hate crimes that *oh-so coincidentally* accompanied Trump's election in 2016 and again now.
But I've been saying for well over four years that this is a simplistic, worthless way of analysing why people voted for Trump. Obviously many of the people who voted for Trump aren't racist or misogynists. And I'm sure plenty of racists voted for Obama too. Because they thought there was something in it for them. And this, ultimately, is why most people vote the way they do.
But as this response has hopefully illustrated, it IS complicated. It's complicated to understand why people who voted for Trump know so little about him and his policies. It's complicated to understand why the Democrats did SOOO catastrophically (I have lots of thoughts on this coming). It's complicated to understand to what degree people think or want a presidential election to change their lives at the local level.
Economics are complicated, foreign and national policy is complicated, global pandemics are complicated, wars are complicated. The big issue here is that so many voters are convinced they can bypass all of this complexity by going on vibes.
No 9…..Please pay a bit closer attention to what I said: “in any of the Trump voters I KNOW”….i obviously can not and will not speak about the motives or inclinations of people o have never met or interacted with. I can speak for myself and my wife and what my family has told me: my wife, black African, “I don’t like Trump but the alternative is so much worse” or my friends from the bar, one white of Eastern Europe background, one black, black “native Detroiter” in local parlance who came down to the bar to celebrate Trumps victory…or my 30 something year old daughter-born and raised liberal who to,d me “I just went MAGA”….come on, just stop with the race bullshit. People who do this for a living have charted the movement of people like myself who voted for Barack Obama and 8 years later (12 in my case) went for Trump. Believe your eyes, Steve, believe what people are telling you.
8. “Undermining American intelligence agencies publicly “ is a bad thing in your world ?????? This is the most mendacious, bloodthirsty, anti democratic cruel and evil grouping in society, and undermining them is a character flaw? Have you forgotten any of the lies they spin to keep us in endless wars, to take away our freedoms, to spend our treasure to spread misery throughout the planet? Does Julian Assange or Edward Snowden ring a bell?
6. I’m not taking about separating children at the border. I’m talking about children going missing, unaccounted for, after having come here on the invitation of Biden/Harris, entering our system and then having vanished from the bureaucracy…..if the bureaucrats can’t keep track of the children in their care, do,you want to give them another four years with the nuclear weapons, with yet more children? Seriously? Hopefully this is just a paperwork SNAFU, but whatever it is, it should be unacceptable to all people from all walks of life anywhere on the political spectrum.
5. Ukraine/Russia was and is solvable in days or hours, and it is to our eternal discredit that instead of pushing the parties towards peace we nudged Ukraine towards war. Russia will not accept NATO missiles that close to Moscow, just like we wouldn’t accept similar armaments pointing at Washington got. If they were in Montreal. So yes, Biden is responsible for the Ukraine Russia war as are all the neocons of both parties (Lindsay Graham, McConnell, Mike Johnson, the Cheneys on the Republican side…and more).
4. I,put the word “COMBINATION” in ALL CAPS just so you wouldn’t miss it, but somehow you did……I will try the word “aggregate effect” o see if that catches your attention.
I live in Detroit, Michigan which has been ruled by the Democratic Party for 50 years. The entirety of the state apparatus is run by Democrats. So they own the mess they created….my point was, and I thought I fairly obvious, if you add up all the ill effects on society from the skewed, myopic policies of the current Democratic Party elites, even though possibly just mildly irritating and relatively easily surmountable individually, the NET EFFECT on a regular, working class person is devastating……NET CUMULATIVE EFFECT. There is MUCH LESS, not non existent, but MUCH LESS of this nonsense in areas controlled by Republicans these days which is why I and tens of millions of others have walked across the aisle. It isn’t even remotely complicated. It is called “quality of life”. And quality of life issues have gotten drastically worse under successive Democratic administrations at the local, state and national level because the Party has become obsessed with pronouns, micro aggressions, safe spaces, “democracy”, Putin etc….anything but the working class people and values they claim to (and used to) represent.
3. Obviously it isn’t just Biden Harris who are responsible for the cost of living, but dumping trillions of fake dollars into an already overheated economy, combined with for: workers who didn’t take their fucking vaccine, plus paying people to stay home, demonizing us who were “non-essential” puts a fair share of the blame on their shoulders. Trump’s populist bullshit of sending out fake “stimulus” dollars is also, obviously, part of the problem, but Biden Harris put that on steroids, and then made it much worse by their subsequent policy decisions.
2. Kevin Cooper’s case shows that, when given the opportunity to do the right thing, to save an innocent man’s life, Harris will choose what is politically expedient and let him suffer. This is a woman with no moral compass, no convictions, no lodestar besides power, all the “progressive “ rhetoric notwithstanding……..I know I know “Trump bad. Trump bad.”
1. Cheney: I don’t know who made the first call, fairly obviously, but Harris and Cheney appeared on stage together. At a bare, bare minimum, Harris accepted,,publicly the endorsement of a mass murderer and appeared with his daughter, a blood thirsty neo con…..and you don’t see the problem, because, once again “Trump bad. Trump bad”???
Steve, I think you are one of the most gifted and thoughtful writers on race and trans issues, but it really seems as though there is a blind spot when it comes to the whole Trump thing….
Please ask yourself WHY people like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and myself, and millions and millions of others who were previously very favorably inclined towards Democratic Party values, just said “Fuck it” and abandoned the party they had always supported and been a part of?
You might dislike every one of those people, including me, but, in the interest of getting to the bottom of why so many people just shifted “right”, it might be worthwhile to listen….just listen….
"“Undermining American intelligence agencies publicly “ is a bad thing in your world ??????"
Also, just on this point (I don't think its worth going back and forth on a 10 point list indefinitely) yes, I think it's bad for the leader of a country to publicly undermine any branch of its military of government. ESPECIALLY when you do so in favour of the despotic, authoritarian leader of a hostile foreign power. I mean, come on! You don't see this?
It's not just a character flaw, it reveals an absolutely catastrophic failure to grasp geopolitics and the systems that build faith and morale in one's country. It demonstrates a willingness to side with anybody, absolutely anybody, who flatters your ego, and the attendant weakness of character. It leads every sane person to worry about where your loyalties actually lie.
Trump was the president at that time. If he has reason to believe there's a problem with the CIA or whoever else, he can and should address it. No problem there. But god, OBVIOUSLY not with the whole world watching. The managers of sports teams have enough sense to understand this!!
This is my issue. This. Again, I have plenty of criticisms of the Democratic Party. I'm about to publish an article laying some of them out. I've never been afraid or unwilling to criticise the Left.
But this throwing your hands up and saying "fuck it," this refusal to hold BOTH political parties to sane, equivalent standards, this abdication of responsibility and focus, this willingness to overlook gross errors of judgement and morality, is dangerous and stupid and just painful short-sighted.
I quite like Rogan and Gabbard, I absolutely loathe Musk while acknowledging that he has made enormous contributions to society (I can't understand how anyone doesn't see through this slimy, pathetic, man-child), I think the brain worm might have gotten too much of RFK, and I obviously have no problem with you at all, but I think you're all badly wrong to support Trump blindly. Or worse, to put your brains and your moral compasses on hiatus when it comes to him because you hate the Democrats.
I am listening. It's just that some of what I'm hearing is categorically insane. Or is based in a fantasy world every bit as delusional and dangerous as the woke Left. I'll be making the case for this point of view over the next few weeks. I'll be interested in your thoughts.
Quite my point…. if you evaluate both major party candidates in the last election by their proven track record, but the same standards, it wasn’t even a close call.
Once again, there’s nothing close to blind support from the people I know who pulled the lever for Trump. It’s much closer to scenario where we were in a boat teetering on the precipice Niagara Falls with 100% certainty that we would crash and perish and somebody threw us a life ring. I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to catch the ring or if so, we’ll make it to shore, but at least it’s a fighting chance for survival which we did not have with the Biden regime.
I don’t support or even know much about Elon Musk but I was extremely happy when he bought Twitter and gave the free speech advocates in the world someplace to go at least for now.
He may or may not be slimy, but I was pointing out that he was a lifelong left of Center, Democrat as were all the other people I had mentioned. Add to the first list the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, long time, principled left of center bloggers and writers who have been persecuted relentlessly by the Biden security state. There’s a pattern here worth noticing: all the people I mentioned I’ve stayed fairly consistent to their values and positions, but the Democratic Party took a massive lurch to the authoritarian war mongering anti first Amendment side leaving many people with no political Home
Add to that the disastrous economic policies, the national disgrace at the border the bizarre and perverse dictation on cultural stuff like pronouns and sex changes for teenagers and you get what we just saw. I think it was something like 70% of Hispanics in South Texas voted Republican this past election…..who would have thunk…..
I don’t think anyone can say definitively why anyone voted for any particular candidate without asking each person individually, but I can tell you and those reading why I voted for Trump.
Quick background: My first Presidential vote was for Reagan. After that I voted, and supported with get out the vote efforts, (small) financial contributions, jawboning friends etc , every Democratic candidate until 2016. The George Bush/Cheney Presidency and the devastation of the. Idle East and bankrupting of the USA was the low point (and still is) of my political life. Like the rest of America, we breathed a HUGE sigh of relief when Barack came to power. ANYBODY was better than Bush/Cheney. I couldn’t stomach the later Obama years, with the bailout of the banks while huge swaths of American lost their homes after they fell behind on payments. So 2016 I voted Libertarian, which is where most of my heart and mind is when it comes down to it.
I knew nothing about Trump apart from the fact that he seems to be a pompous jackass, arrogant, shallow and mean spirited. I have that same opinion of him, today, but it wasn’t even a close call when it came to picking him vs. Harris. There are probably 50-60 really, really good reasons why, but here are a few, in no particular order:
1. Harris openly sought the endorsement of the Cheneys, who have more blood on their hands than probably any other American family. Dick Cheney is a war criminal, and should be in prison for life. His daughter is cut from the same cloth. How the De o ratio nominee thinks that buddying up to a vicious war criminal is going to win any votes is beyond me, but it does show how close the establishment will go if both parties is.
2.Kevin Cooper. A black California man on death row, who is still on death row, because Jerry Brown and Kamala Harris refused to allow DNA tests which would definitively rule out Kevin as a suspect. The only eyewitness saw a white man……but Harris and Brown (“progressive liberals”) will back the system even when it is obviously, egregiously wrong, literally when an innocent man’s life is at stake. No thanks.
3. Despite what the policy wonks from the Fed say, the ACTUAL COST OF LIVING has skyrocketed since Harris & co.took control of the White House. This isn’t a “feeling” or “fear” this is 100% real. Everything that people actually need to live and work has gone up from 25% to 200% since they took over. This isn’t political. This is fact. Go ask the people on the food bank lines snaking around the corner here in Detroit if you trust the Fed over the people on the street.
4. The COMBINATION of generally Democratic policies, at state local and federal levels make it extremely difficult for small businesses, such as mine. Here in Detroit, you have on the one hand ridiculous levels of property (and violent) crime, which is shrugged off as “That’s the D, man….” and “no resources”…, yet I receive a stern warning from the Police Department for a truck illegally parked in a residential area. When it was parked legally, in a parking lot I owned, and the catalytic converter was cut off, toolboxes r smashed, door windows smashed, and a homeless person pissing in my cab, ….”no resources”……when my $25,000 skid steer was stolen, and I attempted to make a police report at the precinct house, I was turned away because it wasn’t valuable “enough” according to the sergeant who blocked my way into the station house.
Then you have the pool of workers who are paid to stay home, collect some benefit or another so that even at $25 an hour, cash, starting pay, I have NO takers who aren’t addicted to some substance or a cellphone…they can make more on the dole, or through easy crime….so no work. Then we have the pandemic “two weeks to flatten the curve” nonsense, which lasted for months, in which my little tree service was shit down by the state goons, while all the weed stores, liquor stores and lottery sellers were wide, wide wide open (“essential services”). I think you get the point….
5. While MSM twisted and lied about Trump’s poorly worded attack on Liz Cheney, his point that all of the chicken hawks, Dems and Reps alike, gout song a different song if they ever had to face down the barrel of a gun was dead on, and resonated with a huge amount of people, including former military like myself. Probably the single biggest reason to vote FOR Trump is that, for four straight years, we had NO WARS. Say what you want, but there was no Ukraine, no genocide in Gaza, no bombing of Lebanon, he withdrew from Syria and started the withdrawal from Afghanistan, while the Harris/Biden experience has been a shitshow at best, and a catastrophic abomination at worst for four long years. I, as an ex Marine, my brother in law, as a Marine with a brutal combat tour in Nam, and all the rest of my family voted Trump JUST FOR THAT REASON. Those who opine from the safety of their college dorms or corner offices with their goat milk lattes have no fucking clue how much that means to families like mine, whose mother grew up in France under German occupation, who was highly decorated for service for the French and American armies, and who abhorred war, and rumors of war, that she immigrated (legally) to the USA after her service to get away from the hatred and recrimination that enveloped Europe after the war.
6. It is unconscionable that, according to Mayorkas, Biden/Harris’s homeland security chief, some 300,000 children that they allowed into the country (illegally) are unaccounted for. Let that fucking sink in. On that issue alone, I would vote AGAINST the monsters who allowed that to happen. Taking all partisan politics out of it, the fact that they can’t even keep records of minor children in their charge, without even imputing bad motives, is proof enough that they, the entire administration is morally, ethically, and administratively unfit to wield any power. Let them start with running a lemonade stand, and then move on…
7. Vaccine mandates. I am 100% for allowing people to put whatever they want into their body, and 100% against government coercion. Take whatever you want whether it is weed, heroin, Botox or vaxxes, but leave the rest of us alone. It simply should NEVER be the prerogative of any government, at any level to mandate medical treatment. Biden way overstepped his authority with his mandates, and for that reason alone, we would never vote for Harris, since she never disavowed his policies.
8. Censorship. The Democratic Party of my youth and most of my life was strongly pro- freedom of speech, (real) diversity, tolerance, anti-corporate, “ big tent”, anti war, pro family, pro small business/working class. That is why I and millions of others faithfully supported and voted for their candidates, as imperfect as they (and all of us) were. The Biden/Harris regime, and the current iteration of the Democratic Party, has completely flipped on all of those issues, and now aligns itself with the worst elements of the corporatist neo-con Republicans/Establishment. I haven’t changed my positions one bit, but now I Ron’s myself squished over to “right wing” because someone moved the goal posts and yard lines.
9. There are ZERO racist, misogynistic inclinations in any of the Trump voters i know. Many are not white, many are, many are women, many are men. NONE of them admires Trump as an ideal candidate, and none of them are under any illusion that he is in it for anything more than glory for himself, and more money for his family. Having said that, ALL of us are choosing him over the alternative, because we feel that we will have a slightly better chance at survival, that there is a better chance that we will not go to war and send hundreds of billions of dollars to fund the slaughter overseas, that at least some of that money might be left in our pockets or at least spent helping the less fortunate here.
It isn’t complicated, at all. Anyone who is surprised by the huge swings in working class votes towards the Republicans should step out of his echo chamber for a few minutes and mix with those of us who take a shower after work. It ain’t about race, it ain’t about women, it’s about the pocketbook, the safety of the streets, it’s say out the wars, it’s about freedom.
"I knew nothing about Trump apart from the fact that he seems to be a pompous jackass, arrogant, shallow and mean spirited"
I read this whole thing with interest, but I actually think you nailed it with this line. I think that many of the people who voted for Trump are in the same boat. Or, if they did know, they've joined millions of people in grading him on this insane curve where they condemn the Democrats for something but have nothing to say when he does the same or worse.
Case in point, your list:
1. You're the second person to say something along these lines, but what do you mean by "openly sought the endorsement of the Cheneys?" Harris received Dick Cheney's endorsement, but never sought it as far as I'm aware.
Nor did she seek Liz Cheney's. She received it, and Liz joined her on the campaign trail, but I'm not really seeing the issue there (please feel free to clarify). Liz Cheney is one of very few Republicans who took and maintained a principled stance against Trump. Even though it cost her power. Agree or disagree with that stance, I think she showed integrity.
2. https://www.vox.com/2021/1/16/22234447/dustin-higgs-execution-death-penalty-trump-administration
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/10/trump-administration-justice-department-federal-executions
Links to stories about two of several controversial executions of black men carried out under the Trump administration. I'm not arguing that Trump is uniquely bad because of this, but how Kevin Cooper's case moved the needle for you is beyond me.
3. Yes, the cost of living has increased since Biden took office. Not just in America, but all over the world. In fact, the US economy has, according to reports I admittedly haven't read in depth, performed better than other nations over the past four years. As for *why* the cost of living has increased, do you think it's as simple as Biden taking office and not, y'know, the global pandemic? Or Russia's war in Ukraine affecting energy prices? Or greedy corporations trying to recoup their losses after COVID?
I wouldn't dream of denying that people are struggling. I'm saying a deeper level of analysis is required than looking at who's in the White House.
4. You just got done telling me that "most problems can be solved at the hyper local level" and then you're telling me that you voted for Trump because of a "stern warning" you received from a local police officer? Or because of petty theft? Do you think Trump is going to change that? Or that any president would? Do you not see this contradiction?
The pandemic was poorly handled in many ways by both Trump and Biden. But I don't understand how so many people forget that the "two weeks to flatten the curve" was under TRUMP!!! I've seen Trump voters sneer out this line so many times and it's like, WHAT??!! Are you crazy??!
But yes, the pandemic was mishandled by almost every nation I paid any attention to.
5. "Say what you want, but there was no Ukraine, no genocide in Gaza, no bombing of Lebanon, he withdrew from Syria and started the withdrawal from Afghanistan,"
Come on man, Did Biden start the war in Ukraine? Did Biden force Hamas to attack on Oct 7th? Like, what is this? Presidents are responsible for everything that happens in the world while they're in office? Well then, Trump is responsible for COVID, no?
And yes, Trump started the withdrawal from Afghanistan. But I bet you blame Biden entirely for what a disaster it was, right? And for any instability that comes out of the region now that the Taliban are back in power?
If your mother grew up under German occupation you understand the importance of fighting for freedom, right? Not withdrawing from the world and saying, unless it's directly affecting America right now, we'll just back away and let it play out. Can you imagine what would have happened if America had done that in WWII? Please, pick a lane here.
6. Yes, separating of children at the border from their parents IS unconscionable. But do you know who started the policy in 2017-18? That's right!! Trump! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_administration_family_separation_policy)
Your initial claim to have known nothing about Trump rings truer and truer.
7. Hmm, yeah the whole vaccine thing is tricky. First, I see no reason to believe that Trump wouldn't have implemented mandates if he were in power during the rollout. Given what was known at the time, there was an argument to be made that leaving people unvaccinated was a significant risk. But I completely share yours and every sane person's very strong aversion to pressuring people to take vaccines.
COVID was an insane and unprecedented situation. If you feel strongly enough about how Biden handled his part of it to vote against him, that's fair. But I'll remind you, Harris wasn't president during COVID, and Trump was the one telling everybody it was a "Democrat hoax" instead of ordering vaccine supply and PPE gear as early as possible and encouraging people to stay safe.
8. There's no denying that the Democratic Party and the Left in general has changed. If it were any other Republican candidate, we wouldn't be having this conversation. In fact there are many universes where I'd have supported a Republican candidate over Harris/Biden.
But that would be to ignore how dramatically the Republican party has also changed. Far more than the Democrats. As I wrote recently, there was a time when the Republicans would have stormed the Capitol to keep a candidate like Trump *out* of the White House.
This is a man who was caught on tape trying to strong-arm the Georgi governor into "finding him some votes." A man who publicly undermined American intelligence agencies (even privately I could understand, but publicly???!!!), by taking Vladimir fu**ing Putin's word over theirs. A man who satin the Oval Office sipping Coke while his supporters Stormed the White House and called to hang his vice President. If you can turn a blind eye to all of this, you can't tell me you "haven't changed one bit."
9. "There are ZERO racist, misogynistic inclinations in any of the Trump voters I know"
This is just a dumb thing to say. Trump got what, 74 million votes? Not a single racist or misogynist among them? Really? Yes, actually there are a great many racists and misogynists among his supporters. I've spoken to many of them and seen countless more spreading that racism on social media. I've seen them in the spike in hate crimes that *oh-so coincidentally* accompanied Trump's election in 2016 and again now.
But I've been saying for well over four years that this is a simplistic, worthless way of analysing why people voted for Trump. Obviously many of the people who voted for Trump aren't racist or misogynists. And I'm sure plenty of racists voted for Obama too. Because they thought there was something in it for them. And this, ultimately, is why most people vote the way they do.
But as this response has hopefully illustrated, it IS complicated. It's complicated to understand why people who voted for Trump know so little about him and his policies. It's complicated to understand why the Democrats did SOOO catastrophically (I have lots of thoughts on this coming). It's complicated to understand to what degree people think or want a presidential election to change their lives at the local level.
Economics are complicated, foreign and national policy is complicated, global pandemics are complicated, wars are complicated. The big issue here is that so many voters are convinced they can bypass all of this complexity by going on vibes.
No 9…..Please pay a bit closer attention to what I said: “in any of the Trump voters I KNOW”….i obviously can not and will not speak about the motives or inclinations of people o have never met or interacted with. I can speak for myself and my wife and what my family has told me: my wife, black African, “I don’t like Trump but the alternative is so much worse” or my friends from the bar, one white of Eastern Europe background, one black, black “native Detroiter” in local parlance who came down to the bar to celebrate Trumps victory…or my 30 something year old daughter-born and raised liberal who to,d me “I just went MAGA”….come on, just stop with the race bullshit. People who do this for a living have charted the movement of people like myself who voted for Barack Obama and 8 years later (12 in my case) went for Trump. Believe your eyes, Steve, believe what people are telling you.
8. “Undermining American intelligence agencies publicly “ is a bad thing in your world ?????? This is the most mendacious, bloodthirsty, anti democratic cruel and evil grouping in society, and undermining them is a character flaw? Have you forgotten any of the lies they spin to keep us in endless wars, to take away our freedoms, to spend our treasure to spread misery throughout the planet? Does Julian Assange or Edward Snowden ring a bell?
6. I’m not taking about separating children at the border. I’m talking about children going missing, unaccounted for, after having come here on the invitation of Biden/Harris, entering our system and then having vanished from the bureaucracy…..if the bureaucrats can’t keep track of the children in their care, do,you want to give them another four years with the nuclear weapons, with yet more children? Seriously? Hopefully this is just a paperwork SNAFU, but whatever it is, it should be unacceptable to all people from all walks of life anywhere on the political spectrum.
5. Ukraine/Russia was and is solvable in days or hours, and it is to our eternal discredit that instead of pushing the parties towards peace we nudged Ukraine towards war. Russia will not accept NATO missiles that close to Moscow, just like we wouldn’t accept similar armaments pointing at Washington got. If they were in Montreal. So yes, Biden is responsible for the Ukraine Russia war as are all the neocons of both parties (Lindsay Graham, McConnell, Mike Johnson, the Cheneys on the Republican side…and more).
4. I,put the word “COMBINATION” in ALL CAPS just so you wouldn’t miss it, but somehow you did……I will try the word “aggregate effect” o see if that catches your attention.
I live in Detroit, Michigan which has been ruled by the Democratic Party for 50 years. The entirety of the state apparatus is run by Democrats. So they own the mess they created….my point was, and I thought I fairly obvious, if you add up all the ill effects on society from the skewed, myopic policies of the current Democratic Party elites, even though possibly just mildly irritating and relatively easily surmountable individually, the NET EFFECT on a regular, working class person is devastating……NET CUMULATIVE EFFECT. There is MUCH LESS, not non existent, but MUCH LESS of this nonsense in areas controlled by Republicans these days which is why I and tens of millions of others have walked across the aisle. It isn’t even remotely complicated. It is called “quality of life”. And quality of life issues have gotten drastically worse under successive Democratic administrations at the local, state and national level because the Party has become obsessed with pronouns, micro aggressions, safe spaces, “democracy”, Putin etc….anything but the working class people and values they claim to (and used to) represent.
3. Obviously it isn’t just Biden Harris who are responsible for the cost of living, but dumping trillions of fake dollars into an already overheated economy, combined with for: workers who didn’t take their fucking vaccine, plus paying people to stay home, demonizing us who were “non-essential” puts a fair share of the blame on their shoulders. Trump’s populist bullshit of sending out fake “stimulus” dollars is also, obviously, part of the problem, but Biden Harris put that on steroids, and then made it much worse by their subsequent policy decisions.
2. Kevin Cooper’s case shows that, when given the opportunity to do the right thing, to save an innocent man’s life, Harris will choose what is politically expedient and let him suffer. This is a woman with no moral compass, no convictions, no lodestar besides power, all the “progressive “ rhetoric notwithstanding……..I know I know “Trump bad. Trump bad.”
1. Cheney: I don’t know who made the first call, fairly obviously, but Harris and Cheney appeared on stage together. At a bare, bare minimum, Harris accepted,,publicly the endorsement of a mass murderer and appeared with his daughter, a blood thirsty neo con…..and you don’t see the problem, because, once again “Trump bad. Trump bad”???
Steve, I think you are one of the most gifted and thoughtful writers on race and trans issues, but it really seems as though there is a blind spot when it comes to the whole Trump thing….
Please ask yourself WHY people like Tulsi Gabbard, RFK Jr, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk, and myself, and millions and millions of others who were previously very favorably inclined towards Democratic Party values, just said “Fuck it” and abandoned the party they had always supported and been a part of?
You might dislike every one of those people, including me, but, in the interest of getting to the bottom of why so many people just shifted “right”, it might be worthwhile to listen….just listen….
"“Undermining American intelligence agencies publicly “ is a bad thing in your world ??????"
Also, just on this point (I don't think its worth going back and forth on a 10 point list indefinitely) yes, I think it's bad for the leader of a country to publicly undermine any branch of its military of government. ESPECIALLY when you do so in favour of the despotic, authoritarian leader of a hostile foreign power. I mean, come on! You don't see this?
It's not just a character flaw, it reveals an absolutely catastrophic failure to grasp geopolitics and the systems that build faith and morale in one's country. It demonstrates a willingness to side with anybody, absolutely anybody, who flatters your ego, and the attendant weakness of character. It leads every sane person to worry about where your loyalties actually lie.
Trump was the president at that time. If he has reason to believe there's a problem with the CIA or whoever else, he can and should address it. No problem there. But god, OBVIOUSLY not with the whole world watching. The managers of sports teams have enough sense to understand this!!
“Fuck it”
This is my issue. This. Again, I have plenty of criticisms of the Democratic Party. I'm about to publish an article laying some of them out. I've never been afraid or unwilling to criticise the Left.
But this throwing your hands up and saying "fuck it," this refusal to hold BOTH political parties to sane, equivalent standards, this abdication of responsibility and focus, this willingness to overlook gross errors of judgement and morality, is dangerous and stupid and just painful short-sighted.
I quite like Rogan and Gabbard, I absolutely loathe Musk while acknowledging that he has made enormous contributions to society (I can't understand how anyone doesn't see through this slimy, pathetic, man-child), I think the brain worm might have gotten too much of RFK, and I obviously have no problem with you at all, but I think you're all badly wrong to support Trump blindly. Or worse, to put your brains and your moral compasses on hiatus when it comes to him because you hate the Democrats.
I am listening. It's just that some of what I'm hearing is categorically insane. Or is based in a fantasy world every bit as delusional and dangerous as the woke Left. I'll be making the case for this point of view over the next few weeks. I'll be interested in your thoughts.
Quite my point…. if you evaluate both major party candidates in the last election by their proven track record, but the same standards, it wasn’t even a close call.
Once again, there’s nothing close to blind support from the people I know who pulled the lever for Trump. It’s much closer to scenario where we were in a boat teetering on the precipice Niagara Falls with 100% certainty that we would crash and perish and somebody threw us a life ring. I don’t know if we’re gonna be able to catch the ring or if so, we’ll make it to shore, but at least it’s a fighting chance for survival which we did not have with the Biden regime.
I don’t support or even know much about Elon Musk but I was extremely happy when he bought Twitter and gave the free speech advocates in the world someplace to go at least for now.
He may or may not be slimy, but I was pointing out that he was a lifelong left of Center, Democrat as were all the other people I had mentioned. Add to the first list the journalists Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi, long time, principled left of center bloggers and writers who have been persecuted relentlessly by the Biden security state. There’s a pattern here worth noticing: all the people I mentioned I’ve stayed fairly consistent to their values and positions, but the Democratic Party took a massive lurch to the authoritarian war mongering anti first Amendment side leaving many people with no political Home
Add to that the disastrous economic policies, the national disgrace at the border the bizarre and perverse dictation on cultural stuff like pronouns and sex changes for teenagers and you get what we just saw. I think it was something like 70% of Hispanics in South Texas voted Republican this past election…..who would have thunk…..