There is an ongoing debate in the left, right now, about what conclusions to take away from this.
To my dismay, I am seeing a lot of folks double-down on their contempt for the Trump voter. The ideological divide in this country has never been larger, and there does not seem to be much hope of closing that gap right now. I am genuinely concerned that we could see violence of consequence in the next decade, given our current arms race of outrage and other-ing of entire demographics.
What has helped me reach an understanding of how someone could ever have voted for Trump, is realizing exactly how much they hated Hillary. That, in hindsight, was my largest mistaken assumption over the course of the election. Now, I will continue to argue that the hatred of her is totally unwarranted, arbitrary, and augmented by (if not rooted in) sexism. But in the final days of the election, we had:
– Comey’s absurd double-blunder, wherein he causes a media firestorm over literally nothing, and then further enhances the perception of corruption by retracting it days before the election
– Fox News running a false story based on a tip from an anonymous FBI employee that Hillary was being indicted. This ran for an entire day.
– An endless stream of emails from WikiLeaks. While none of these contained much information of consequence, they drew attention, fueled speculation, and plenty of them were vague enough to inspire all manner of conspiracy theory.
Every one of Trump’s horrifying tirades was buffered on each side by a controversy from Hillary. Yes, this is a false equivalence of the highest order. It’s an insult that we would ever compare the two as equals. But the fact remains: there was a compelling and legible narrative from the right, readily available for all.
What was the narrative from the left?
For all our talk of inclusiveness and equality, what tangible vision of change did we offer for rural working-class Americans? To the person who does not see climate change as an imminent threat, who does not know any black or hispanic or Muslim Americans and thus has little reason to care about how we treat them, who does not see sexism as a relevant force in the story of their lives, whose quality of life is more immediately threatened by the price of gas than nearly anything else – what did we offer?
Look, I’m as bleeding heart liberal as you get. I believe firmly in the policies of the left to bring meaningful, positive change to people in every walk of life.
But my belief in this stems from a vivd, tangible concept of what these possible futures look like. My fear of climate change is rooted in a very clear image of a world with a billion more refugees. My love for basic income stems from an understanding of how soon robots are going to be replacing all of our unskilled labor. My passion for feminism and anti-racism comes from listening and hearing stories from people I care about, learning the ways that my friends have suffered at the hands of bigotry and stereotypes.
You cannot expect people to just get it. Nothing in this world is as obvious or clear-cut as we like to think. It is on us to explain ourselves, to justify our ideas, to fill in the blanks, to populate the imaginations of people across the world so that we can have a shared vision, a unified goal.
It is time for the left to take up the burden of proof and run with it.