Vote on Tuesday!

In 1993, I was up for a very prestigious award, whose recipients were determined by popular vote. I won by one vote, because the guy who I’d lost to for 12 years previously was so sure he was going to win again that he didn’t bother to vote that year.

They recounted the ballots three times.

Your vote really can count!

In the last 8 years, the Republicans have tried to give us Sarah Palin for VP and Donald Trump for President. If you are one of the people voting for these idiots, you should take a long look in the mirror… then smash the mirror, take one of the glass shards and kill yourself with it.

LOL! McCain isn’t a mainstream republican!?! You’re lost, Dibs. The fact of the matter is that the republican party IS NOW THE BASE that you have disdain for. So go get your chewing tobacco, your AR-15 and your bible and get to the voting booth with the rest of your buddies!!!

I share your sympathies (a lot). And more often than not I’m just dumbfounded how there can be so much support for such egregiously unqualified candidates. Like it really does seem people have to be stupid or malicious to support them.

But I think the reality is a lot more subtle. Trump has over 40% support. That’s many millions of people and a non-trivial swath of the entire U.S. population. Some of them can be dismissed outright, but I really believe a lot of them are basically honest and decent people who do believe that offers a better world. While I obviously don’t agree with those beliefs, I think we ultimately need something stronger than them just hating us and us just hating them.

What that is, I don’t know. But I don’t think everyone who’s going to vote for Trump tomorrow is intrinsically evil or iill-willed.

I agree with you, despite my hyperbole. Every Trump voter is not evil or ill-willed. But, at the very least, they are ill-informed. And because of their ignorance, our country has almost had Sarah Palin at VP and Trump at President.
I blame the individual, but I think the real reason for this is Fox News, who have created an alternate reality for 35% of the country. It’s hard for these ill-informed voters to know they’re ill-informed when a tv station that swears they’re news and “fair and balanced” is lying to them at almost every turn.

You need to find a hobby. Your infatuation with me is getting a little creepy. You’re not as witty, clever or smart as you think you are either. Maybe better suited to be over on Gothamist!

You people behave yourselves! Don’t make me come up there!

I’d be interested in reading that. It seems like far fetched propaganda. I mean, we’re really going to blame the media and Jon Stewart for creating Trump??? What created Trump is fear. Fear that “others” are taking our country and jobs away and that ALL politicians are horrible. Fox News perpetuated all of those fears.

Interesting. I see their point, but i think Stewart and Mayer would have engaged in civil discourse, if there was any to be had. These guys got all their material from dishonest zealots like Karl Rove, who would create an Act that deregulated corporations so they could pollute waterways, and then call it “The Clean Water Act”. (see The Patriot Act). And then they want opposition to engage in civil discourse. That’s how Dems got run over by W. Rove and the boys were playing by a different playbook: Deregulation of the banks, corporations, retarding stem cell research in the name of religion, decimation of the 4th amendment privacy as well as the 7th amendment with tort “reform”. Even the press had no way to figure out how to fight this, because they were now devalued as biased because Rove and Ailes made sure that there was a “liberal main stream media”.
Either way, I see the point of the article and it is probably valid, but I find that there is little weight to their assertions. Nevertheless, thanks for sharing.

I mean, if you’re anything like me you probably have a lot of liberal friends posting stuff on social media about how terrible Trump supporters are. Can you honestly say that a lot of it isn’t classist, patronizing vitriol?

I think that the annoyance at the Trump voters is justified. But the attacks manifest themselves as unfair, classist, patronizing vitriol. It’s bifurcated.

As justified as annoyance at anyone who holds different political views, or anyone whose views aren’t based on thoughtful reflection and some amount of fact-based research, perhaps. That paints a pretty huge chunk of the voting population, I’d wager. What I’m trying to point out is that I haven’t observed too many innocents participating in the past year or so of political discourse. There has been a saddening, unilateral absence of compassion and understanding, or even attempts at these.

I agree with you. It’s a problem. But have you tried to speak with a Trump supporter? I have. I have two close midwestern friends who both are voting for Trump (well, one MIGHT be voting Gary Johnson, now). They’re both educated, white males. It’s difficult to get past cursory talking points with them. Have you had this experience? Or different experiences?

Probably much deeper psychological issues.

I’ve had a wide range of experiences with Trump supporters. (Tangentially perhaps, yesterday some guy with a Trump sticker on his car started cursing at me because he felt he was entitled to my parking spot, even though he was actually on a different block when I arrived in it. Sadly, the conversation didn’t evolve to friendly political exchanges as it often does for me online.) I have Marxist friends who are hoping voting for a Trump victory because of the possibility that his election would force revolution on the left. I have some extended family who are probably more of your typical Trump supporters, though, and the nice thing is that on the rare occasions when I permit politics to come up in conversation between us, they’re very amenable to friendly ribbing. As I’ve said to many people in the last few months, I’m really much more interested in whether someone is a jerk or a nice person than who they’re voting for or why.