Democracy is not a spectator sport. This is the old motto of Common Cause and a great rallying cry for our moment. The folks in power want you to feel despair. They want you to feel hopeless. They want you to stay home. What they don’t want you to do is take to the streets, go to the centers of power, or show up at the polls. Optimism is hard to maintain in the face of a despairing reality, but it is essential.
Trump won by fewer than 80,000 votes. He has a two vote majority in the Senate and a 23 seat majority in the House. He is no absolute monarch or dictator. His is a weak presidency that could be crippped by a few percentage points swinging the other way.
So talk to a Trump supporter and ask them if this is really what they signed up for. Where are the new jobs? Where is the infrastructure? Where is the healthcare better than Obamacare? Did the tax cut give them any money or just his rich friends and donors? Do they want their daughters to grow up in a world where accused sex offenders get to be judges?
Send a message to the folks in charge. Take to the streets, go to the centers of power, and take back the country at the polls. This is how we win.
I uprated your diary because I share your view that we need to get out and vote, though I still think you underestimate how many Trump voters got exactly what they signed up for in the racism and misogyny departments.
I upvoted the post because I agree with it.
Nevertheless, echoing Christopher’s point, I have actually talked to some Donald Trump supporters in the deep south (Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi).
What I heard is “Donald Trump is doing God’s work. He is being thwarted by evil Democrats.”
Those Donald Trump supporters called the women in the #metoo movement “sluts and whores” who are being punished for their sins. I talked with them before the Brett Kavanaugh nomination (early April and again in late June), but I’m sure the people I talked with view the accusers of Mr. Kavanaugh the same way.
I agree with your message — I’m not sure you appreciate just how many red-state Americans view people like you and me as the enemy. I’m also not sure you appreciate just how deeply and passionately they believe that they are doing “God’s work”. One actually described “liberal Democrats” like me as “Satan’s spawn”.
This is a Jihad, and it will not be decided by a single election. In fact, I suspect that it will not be decided by politics. I think the dynamic goes the other way — we are in a Jihad that pits literal fundamentalist Protestants against the rest of us. I suggest that the politics will be driven by the outcome of that epic confrontation.