Sometimes politics can trick us into seeing our neighbors as enemies. While I am prepared to stand up for progressive values and fight against the normalization of hatred in the Trump era, I think we can all do a better job of listening to our fellow citizens. A few hours before President Obama’s farewell address last week, I brought some strangers together to try out a new approach. I wrote about it yesterday on MassLive:
A couple of weeks after Election Day last November, I received an email from a fellow veteran and self-described “deplorable” supporter of President-elect Trump. Some days later we sat down to talk, not debate or argue or yell, just talk. It was an eye opening experience and I wanted more.
Along with that Trump-backer, I decided to do a little experiment. I invited three folks who voted for Trump, and three who supported Hilary Clinton to dinner at a popular local restaurant. Every one of them was a little apprehensive, and I’ll admit that I was a little worried about how things would go. But once we started talking and listening to each other, the evening exceeded my highest expectations.
You can read the rest here.
Calling Trump voters bigots, citing misogyny as the reason Clinton lost, tossing them all into a basket and denouncing them as deplorable, blaming the voters for being ignorant or foolish is not the first step in trying to rebuild a party that has now lost the house, the senate, the White House, and a majority of state governors, including Massachusetts.
Getting to know them is key. Gaining understanding of what they need and why they feel the Democratic Party has abandoned them and their needs is the one and only way to begin the road back to political relevance of the Democratic Party.
… For instance, I already know that they are extra-ordinarily poor decision makers. There is no anger, no problem, no injustice, no exigency, nor indeed any legitimate question, for which the answer is ‘Donald Trump”. None. Donald Trump is the 21st-century version of “let them eat cake”
… What if what they need is just a straight shot of reality? That is to say a swift kick in the pants and a wake up?
Maybe they’ve just been lied to by people who don’t want the Democratic Party to help them? Or indeed, help anyone?
Anger doesn’t make them — or you — either right or righteous. It never has. It never will. Please stop acting as though it should.
Read the comments in that article. Just a couple, but I’ll reprint them here.
So that commentor believes that Democrats and Obama want to circumvent, condemn and defile the constitution.
Next up:
So that commentor believes that Obama has no accomplishments.
How exactly should we try and “understand” such people?
Look, from a tactical perspective, sure, politicians and their staff need to learn how to talk to Trump voters to peel off a few of them.
But from a moral perspective, trying to push this dreck on the rest of us is REPULSIVE. These are people who hate us for who we are, or at the very least are willing to put their narrow interests above protecting the rest of us.
Would you tell a slave he needs to sit down and talk with his master, to “get out of his bubble” and “learn about those who disagree”?
Would you tell an abused woman she needs to sit down with her husband and “learn about his concerns”?
I want a Governor who’s going to try to help them.
A bit over the top, you think?
Otherwise no.
I can assure you that my parents don’t hate you (or me!). Not for who you are or for any other reasons. Were their interests narrow? I mean, they’re not thrilled about Trump as POTUS but they’d rather have a GOP Trump POTUS (with a GOP legislature) than a Dem Clinton POTUS. It’s not narrow — they simply don’t trust Democrats to take care of middle class voters with middle class problems. Now you and I may disagree with their analysis, but that does not make their interests narrow.
I think there’s a wide gulf between giving people a platform from which to project thoughts outward and simply having a small conversation to them to, you know, discover that in virtually all cases, Trump voters don’t hate you for who you are.
Democrats are the party that’s looking out for the middle class, and if there are a bunch of middle-class folks who don’t think that’s true, I want to talk to them to find out why.
I look forward to it.
I never understood how some people near the end of the 2000 election cycle were undecided in the choice between Bush and Gore. But we who are campaign hacks pursued these people even while we decried their ignorance. They were the voters who gave us Bush, with an assist from the corrupt FL election system and the SCOTUS.
I have been to a lot of places since then, met a lot of people who do not live in my old liberal bubble in Boston. I have a lot better sense of these voters now. I am currently temporarily sheltering in a spare bedroom one of their contemporary counterparts, a Trump voter. Poor, angry, screwed by the system, just out of work-release after a three year felony term in a state jail this 30 year old black woman fits none of the usual stereotypes of a Trump voter. But she eats up what I try to teach her about politics and economics in our few minutes together every day. She loved Baldwin’s Trump impersonation on SNL this week and thinks Elizabeth Warren is the bomb.
If we want to be serious about winning elections in this gerrymandered nation with completely fakakta campaign finance laws, we need to talk to people we think are “deplorable.” I give Setti Warren credit for being open but will watch to see if it becomes pandering.
Oops, she is a Trump supporter and not a voter, as her felony conviction makes her ineligible to vote.
In the summer I get plenty of liberal exposure, even though my town in Mass went for Trump. A few retired teachers, cops, mid-management banking.
I spend the winter in Fla, where everyone is a transplant so tomorrow I’m golfing with a prison guard from Illinois, public health official – Indiana, and a factory worker from Minn. (all retired). It is great to hear people’s stories and how their experiences have colored their view of the world,especially when they’re from other parts of the country.
“Listen also to the dull and ignorant, they too have their story” or something like that from the ? deserata(sp).
Nice reminder of Max Ehrmann’s Desiderata
I’ve done a lot of this and feel we have underemphasized the class struggle. Our party became too comfortable with capitalism with a socially tolerant face. Lot of good that does to communities devastated by outsourcing, addiction and the sociological disruption of unemployed males-be they black or white working class.
And I am tired of white male liberals comfortable with the status quo accusing those of us-including a majority of voters-who hunger for more radical change of being comfortable with racism, sexism or xenophobia. These are both/and fights.
You can’t help women or minorities if you aren’t willing to challenge the rich to pay their fair share. You can’t help women or minorities if you aren’t willing to fight for living wages and the right to organize. These are both/and fights.
In Massachusetts they are a lot of comfortable suburban liberals perfectly happy with Charlie Baker and a status quo that doesn’t challenge them. We need local radicalism that looks outside the box and says the rent is too damn high, it’s immoral people can’t afford to raise their families in their hometowns, it’s immoral a state with so much wealth, education and health care still boards all three as privileges not rights. Its immoral the T is allowed to die a death by a thousand cuts since it’s the poor and people of color that rely on it most. Anyone making that kind of argument gets my vote.
It sounds like he is at least trying to get some new housing stock added in his city (at least according to this article; those in the know should correct me if it is inaccurate).
Alex Tabarrok in Marginal Revolution (a generally centrist blog which often has some good observations) has this to say about the contribution of land use restrictions to inequality:
“In the past, when a city like New York became more productive it attracted the poor and rich alike and as the poor moved in more housing was built and the wages and productivity of the poor increased and national inequality declined. Now, when a city like San Jose becomes more productive, people try to move to the city but housing doesn’t expand so the price of housing rises and only the highly skilled can live in the city. The end result is high-skilled people living in high-productivity cities and low-skilled people live in low-productivity cities. On a national level, land restrictions mean less mobility, lower national productivity and increased income and geographic inequality.”
Marginal Revolution, April 8, 2016, Declining Mobility and Restrictions on Land Use
I’m on #Team Tito though I have nothing against Marty per se. I just think he hasn’t really delivered on what his campaign promised and has governed largely like Connolly would’ve with all the corporate tax breaks and charters mixed in with some old school Boston corruption scandals. He’s a great guy who’s in over his head? I wouldn’t be devastated if he got re/elected but would be elated if Tito pulled the upset.
that we’ve taken an awful, awful beating for the last three decades from Republicans/Third-Way Democrats. Two-thirds of Americans are in favor of Medicare-for-All, cutting defense spending, taxing the wealthy in a fair way, etc, but neither major political party’s establishment has any interest in such things. Too many “free” trade deals to pass, I suppose.
So, Americans largely agree on what’s been done to them, and where we want to end up (at least economically). We only disagree on how to get there. So there are some good discussions to be had, sounds like you’ve taken a step foward on this and it’s to be applauded, and I thank you.
… is really the first step to helping them. We can have the best ideas in the world, but if we aren’t talking with voters (instead of just talking TO voters) we’re never going to get the support we need to elect our candidates and enact our policies that help middle-class families and the least among us.
It stands in stark contrast to the conduct of our Senator who refused to shake the hand of the Cabinet nominee she was grilling.