Tisias, I will re-read from the top later today and reply. I’ll admit I went into ‘speed read’ mode at a certain point yet the entire post *seemed* at first glance to come less from ‘being open’ and ‘understanding’ to explaining why Trump supporters were wrong. Note you have replies made to each ‘demographic’ ready to go before necessarily understanding their issues in the first place. Drawing parallels between Trump and a misogynist a woman may know to refute her support for him is not getting to ‘the truth’ it is using a pre-canned and tailored rebuttal to railroad over it (“sure, whatever, but he’s a pig like that guy Mike you always complain about”). Certainly there were and are core issues I had with Hillary that anyone who knows me could have said ‘Come on man she ABC or said XYZ like you hate” but I’d prefer that they give me the benefit of the doubt of knowing that and having other over-riding concerns / principles that might motivate me to vote for her regardless (er, not electing Trump?)

In some ways it reminds me of the phrase women always use when fighting for their reproductive rights and complaining about Pro-Lifers “I’m not letting some man tell me what to do with my body”. Now despite my support for her rights I have a plethora of issues with some underlying assumptions in that particular phrase but not the least of which is that fully HALF of Pro-Lifers are women. So it becomes a red-herring to discount the depth/breadth/motivations of the opposition. And again from her perspective the point in actually dealing with the who and why isn’t to give THEM credibility; it is to understand the reality of the opposition’s motivations and demographics in order to be able to *properly* reach your own goals (which may very well be in contrast to the other parties realities and require compromise).

Again, happy to re-read and reframe my reply later today when I have a bottle of wine or two to reread this over :)