Trump Voters Should Do Some Soul-Searching Too
Their predictions of election fraud and riots were wrong. They should take some time to reflect on that.
I’M AN OPTIMISTIC PERSON BY nature—but also by necessity.
As a professional screenwriter, I’m confronted on a daily basis with the long odds of turning a blank page into a hit movie or TV show. Since it’s my job to try anyway, I’ve trained myself into taking a Lloyd Christmas approach to life. So you’re saying there’s a chance!
True to character, I went into Tuesday night believing it was more likely than not that Kamala Harris would be elected our first female president.
I was not delusional. I knew that Donald Trump’s standing as an elderly grifter with an observably worsening personality disorder wasn’t enough to preclude the chance that he might win. But as the polls closed and I lit the butter cow-shaped candle atop my homemade shrine to Ann Selzer, I felt pretty good.
When the Blue Wall started to crumble shortly thereafter, I went to bed tossed and turned in a sweaty shiver, as I realized I was incorrect to assume that the Mussolini-pilled man, who was kind enough to repeatedly give a heads-up that he intended to rule like a dictator on his first day in office, probably wouldn’t pass muster with most of us. Silly me. Could I be more out of touch?
Being wrong isn’t easy, especially when the consequences are this grave. And apparently, I’m not the only one who thinks so.
Since Tuesday night, my phone has been inundated with an ongoing barrage of virtual penances by everyone from my pundit pals to my college friends over just how badly “we” got it so wrong.
This is the time when we should be turning our focus toward how we might try to survive the next four years under the leadership of a maniacal demagogue. Instead, the anti-Trump coalition finds ourselves engaged in a level of contrition I haven’t seen since a promising young Yale Law School graduate and avowedly apolitical truth-teller wrote a mediocre memoir that thrilled a large subset of shame-prone coastal elites after the 2016 election shock.
But here’s the thing that puts a 20 percent tariff on my patience when it comes to the question of who really missed the mark this time around: They got it wrong, too.
Leading up to the moment of truth on Tuesday, Trump’s core constituency screamed incessantly about the terrifying specter of the electoral fraud they saw lurking around every corner. Before the votes started being counted in their favor, a wide swath of the MAGA faithful painted a bleak forecast for the country, in which Democrats would revolt if they didn’t get their way—copying the playbook that their exalted leader had used four years ago.
Trump himself warned on Tuesday night of the “massive cheating” that he claimed was in progress in Philadelphia.
Isn’t it at least somewhat interesting to the MAGA minions who blathered on for four years about imaginary stolen elections that when their team actually won fair and square, not only were the shouts of “Voter fraud!” suddenly silent on the right, but no one other than the fringiest figures on the left cried foul?
Despite all of the darkest, most deeply felt fears that Steve Bannon’s acolytes whispered in advance of the Trump victory they correctly anticipated, Democrats are not trying to block the election result. No hordes of pink-pussy-hatted huns are descending upon statehouses to demand that the count be stopped.
Instead, Vice President Harris conceded defeat and congratulated the man who deserves no congratulation. President Biden then invited Trump to the White House and promised the kind of orderly transition that the president-elect so childishly, vindictively, and dangerously denied him four years ago.
In the prediction sweepstakes, Team Trump was off by an insurrection. That, in my book, counts as an even more consequential misfire than an incorrect estimation of which way a couple hundred thousand voters in three Rust Belt states would swing in 2024.
So, is it too much to ask our Trump-supporting brethren to examine some of their own priors—not only about how Democrats would handle this defeat, but also what their implicit backing of Trump’s brand of heads-I-win-tales-you-lose situational election denialism says about them?
Harris voters can reflect in good faith on whether we may have alienated getable voters with our “he/him” email signatures and collective failure to recognize the blinding brilliance of pushing our candidate to interact with Barron’s favorite podcast hosts.
But can’t Trump voters also pause for a moment to consider the possibility that they might one day find themselves tongue tied if a future grandchild were to ask why they supported for president a man who made fun of people with disabilities, considered American military heroes suckers and losers, and rode into office as our nation’s first convicted felon and adjudicated sexual offender commander-in-chief?
I realize that it might be pollyannaish to even bring this up. Asking a certain type of Trump backer to turn their gaze inward is a bit like taking the mic at the Mar-a-Lago New Year’s Eve party and challenging the attendees to consider whether that next round of Botox is really necessary.
But is it beyond the pale to suggest that when the fog of November clears, the more reasonable among them might spend some time pondering the righteousness of their enthusiasm for a guy whose first vice president was nearly hanged by his most vociferous enthusiasts and whose second vice president openly worried he might turn out to be America’s Hitler?
I’M NOT BLIND TO THE DISTINCT POSSIBILITY that the anti-Trump crowd has the self-flagellation market cornered. But I also believe that maybe—just maybe—some members of the new Trump coalition can be persuaded to think more deeply about how history will judge them.
I raise this issue because, in spite of my natural optimism, I’ve been surprised to find myself feeling even more pessimistic than just about everyone I know regarding what we have in store during a second Trump term. In my estimation, it’s going to be even worse than we think.
So, while the ongoing thought experiments on what the Harris campaign did wrong and how Democrats might improve their brand could one day be valuable, right now, it all feels a little like what I’d imagine the opposition party might have been ruminating on after Viktor Orbán was swept into office with a mandate to govern what was, until then, a democratic Hungary.
We vanquished, Tokaji-sipping dweebs must admit we’re out of touch and strive to meet the triumphant, stuffed-cabbage and goulash majority where they are isn’t the kind of thinking that cuts it when you’ve just elected an aspiring autocrat who wants to punish his enemies and consolidate power.
We’re in a severe and unprecedented crisis now. So can we spend a little less time chastising ourselves and a little more energy grappling with how we’re going to make it through the next four years with the American experiment intact?
I’m not entirely naïve. I know that the aspiring Proud Boys of the “Don’t Tread On Me” George Washington cosplaying set are never going to “do the work.” But as we all start to chart our way out of this abyss, I’m hanging onto the expectation that a lot of Trump voters will end up having buyer’s remorse.
And maybe they can be persuaded to partake in some soul-searching of their own before the most dangerous man who’s ever held the nation’s highest office succeeds in stamping out the freedom of expression that we’ve long taken for granted.
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