Dear Trump Voters: President Biden Would Not Be the End
Why a Biden victory in November is no cause for panic
By Quinton Skinner and Mo Perry
Everyone’s thermostat is set to boil these days, whoever you’re voting for this November. As in: Everything is on the verge of falling to pieces forever, and if my candidate doesn’t win, things will never be the same.
The thing is, both sides feel the same way.
In all likelihood, you’re very conscious of that fact, yet you still feel (whichever side you’re on) that if this upcoming U.S. election (and the election as a stand-in for other developing events) lands on the wrong side of the net . . . well, you know what they say, America is over.
Full disclosure, in tribal terms, we’re pretty firmly aligned with team blue. That’s a cultural as well as a political affiliation, as we know in these very tribal times. But as we’ve seen the heated rhetoric on our side ratchet up in the weeks before the election, we’ve also seen glimpses into the anxieties among Trump voters. We say “glimpses” because it’s harder and harder to hear the opinions and anxieties on the other side unless we go looking for them.
We understand that many of the people who believe in the President increasingly see him as a barrier against national ruin. We see that they have invested belief in the President as a strong, steadfast leader who may well be all that protects them from the dangerous agenda of the Democratic party.
It’s a hell of a way to feel, and we’ve felt it too, from the other end of the aisle.
We’re not here to try to change your mind. You’re adults. You’ve seen the lay of the land, and you’ve made your decision based on your beliefs, your values, your patriotism, and your love and concern for the future of your families and friends. We get it because we have the same values.
This is a great country, and you should vote your conscience. What we would like for you to consider, though, are a few points about why the possibility of Joe Biden winning the election doesn’t mean the end of the country we both love, wish to prosper, and should be living in together with a lot more mutual understanding.
Let’s start with the big charge, that the Democratic Party is engaged in an organized effort to take away freedom of thought and expression, redistribute wealth, and make the U.S. into a socialist dictatorship.
Speaking as lifelong Democratic voters, and with all due respect, you gotta be kidding. The ability of the Democratic Party to execute a vast conspiracy is about as likely as a group of kindergarteners building a rocket to the moon and back. What drives Democratic voters crazy year after year is the infighting, self-defeating, disorganized, and strategically inept nature of the party.
Look, there may well be any number of members of the Democratic Party in congress who are avowed socialists. There are a lot of people in the American Congress. There are always going to be congresspeople with extreme positions — it was designed that way. The system is made for the extremists to have lots of room to express themselves, then get voted down in ways that disappoint nearly everyone. Everyone gets a voice, but ultimately the country tends to end up somewhere closer to the middle than the extremes, even if it’s after more drastic short-term pendulum swings. As individuals, we often don’t like it, but we do believe in this country.
And if you want to know how Socialist the Democrats really are, look at how much money they raise and who they raise it from. Do you think the banks, insurance companies, pharmaceutical industries, and major corporations are donating to Biden because they want to live in a socialist dictatorship?
Again, we’re not here to change your minds. We’re just trying to say we’re all in this together. A single election won’t ruin the country.
But Biden is senile, you might say. He’s a puppet. The Democrats are just running him out there long enough to take the Presidency and end democracy forever.
We agree, that would be a terrible thing. But let’s be honest. We sat through hours of Joe Biden during the pre-COVID Democratic Party debates. He’s prone to slips of the tongue. Give him long enough, especially after a couple of hours of debate, and he’ll say something sort of baffling. And he’s obviously not a young man.
But he can manage the Executive Branch. First, you may or may not know he’s a lifelong stutterer. That affects the way he talks sometimes. If you have a second, you might check out the short video of Biden offering help to a young person who stutters. It’s hard to fake that big of a heart. Don’t vote for him because of it, of course not, but maybe see the humanity.
Our side doesn’t see the humanity in President Trump often enough. We watched a video of one of his campaign speeches recently, talking about walking down a wet ramp in soft-soled shoes, and it was really funny. The man has timing, and he can tell a story. The man connects with a crowd for sure, in a way that he doesn’t get enough recognition for from the left.
So doesn’t it piss you off when they take a ten-second clip of Trump in an off moment and make a social media meme out of it to make him look bad? Social media gives us what we want to see, so you might not come across the clips of Trump looking senile or worse — but they’re out there. And they’re also doing it to Biden.
That’s manipulation on both sides, to sell our clicks and our likes for advertising dollars. And while they make money, we keep moving further and further apart and trusting each other less and less.
We hear accusations that Biden wants “open borders.” And you know what? We’ve been to protests against President Trump’s policies and seen people holding signs calling for just that. But nothing in Biden’s history suggests he wants anything other than robust enforcement of immigration policy. You guys have pointed out that some of the immigration policies that Trump takes grief for originated under Obama. Democrats don’t like hearing that, but doesn’t that lead you to believe that American policy is in all likelihood going to be something you can live with no matter who wins?
And let’s also remember the American system of government functions on checks and balances. Your side cancels my boldest idea, and my side cancels yours. That’s frustrating for people who want to see the government make progress on big issues, but that’s how our system is designed.
Take guns. We hear that the Democrats want to confiscate guns. And it is entirely possible that there are people in the Democratic Party for whom gun control means confiscating all guns from everyone in the country.
But you know what? They can’t. There are too many guns, they’re too deep in the country’s sense of identity and conception of freedom and personal protection. You guys and the Second Amendment won. It doesn’t make sense to keep fighting after you’ve won. There is no version of the future of America in which your guns will be taken away, because the whole country is essentially a well-armed militia.
As for abortion, there’s an issue we understand goes right to the core of your personal values. And sometimes you feel disrespected and belittled for your beliefs. That sucks. That’s a lousy way to feel. For some of you there is no middle ground on the issue. It has to be outlawed. For others, you’re mostly concerned about what you’ve heard about Democrats enabling late-term abortions, and worry that more Dems in office equals more murdered babies.
Let’s take a quick look at this. Abortion rates have been steadily declining since the 1980s, and the rate of decline is actually slightly greater under Democratic Presidents. It’s hard to draw a connection between whichever party happens to be in the White House and the reproductive decisions of millions of women, but what is clear is that evidence doesn’t support the idea that having a Democratic president results in more abortions.
I think we can all agree that’s a good thing.
As for late-term abortions, the focus they receive far outweighs reality. According to the CDC, just 1.3 percent of abortions occurred after 21 weeks of gestation in 2015. These are often medically and emotionally complicated decisions made by a woman and her doctor(s), and the fact that they’ve been so highly politicized is a shame. It adds to what is almost always a painful and sad episode in a family’s life.
Here’s one thing we can promise: no one is gleefully ripping babies from the womb to murder them out of sheer demonic sadism. That’s something people are being told to elicit a (perfectly understandable, deeply human) response of outrage and disgust. If that were truly happening, we would be right beside you in that outrage and disgust. Instead, we see that horrific fiction being peddled to justify the intrusion of politicians into a woman’s most private, personal, complex, intimate decisions with her family, doctor, and spirit.
Thanks for hanging with us this far. If we can draw a quick comparison — you know how you feel about the possibility of the government deciding whether or not you get to keep your guns? That’s how many of us feel about the possibility of the government deciding what kind of care our doctors are allowed to give us, especially in some of the scariest, most fraught moments of our families’ lives.
That’s why we fight so hard to protect a woman’s right to choose. It’s not because we love the idea of late-term abortions, any more than you fight to protect the Second Amendment because you love the idea of school shootings.
Speaking of violence, let’s talk about one of the other fears you might have about a Democratic administration. We know there’s been a lot of talk about rising rates of violence in Democrat-run cities, particularly rioting and looting by Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and left-leaning groups.
We’re writing this from Minneapolis, ground zero of a lot of the civil unrest that’s been gripping the country since George Floyd was killed in May. There have been some scary days and nights. Violent crime is up. Yes, there have been extensive protests, and many people are calling for reimagining and restructuring what law enforcement and public safety look like.
There’s a lot going on that none of us like. A pandemic, a recession, civil unrest, fingers pointed, and inflammatory words from politicians and the media. These are hard times, and often it feels like we’re looking at each other across the political divide and speaking completely different languages.
But we all want safety, solutions, and fairness. We’re as invested as you are in peace, safety, and law and order, from the street corner to the boardroom. We want our children, and yours, to grow up in a country that’s calm, just, and where they feel safe and happy.
We have really different opinions about what that means, and very different views on how we could get there. And this is the area where each side feels the most frightened of the other, because each side feels the other wants to make us less safe, less happy, and less loved: the things that every human needs.
It’s been said that naming a fear takes away at least some of its power. This is about more than politics. The way we’re talking about each other is the language of mortal fear. Again, in our opinion, that fear is being stoked across the board by those who benefit from it.
You know who doesn’t? Us, and you.
It may be hard to hear, but on our side, our words are meant to reflect striving for what makes peace possible — justice, equality, fairness, and a social safety net that allows people to feel less desperate and despairing. We hope our teams can start to work together to create circumstances — and a political and cultural environment — more conducive to peace and stability.
We know that these are only a few of the fears and perceptions “your side” has of “our side,” and of what swift decline and ruin you see in store if Biden/Harris win in November. Our goal is not to change your vote or convince you that our positions are better, smarter, or more reality-based than yours.
Our goal is simply to turn the temperature down. To calm the inflamed fears that could lead to greater civil unrest, more armed confrontations in the street, more families being torn apart, and more hate, alarm, and division in our already terribly divided nation.
We have far more in common than we have differences, once we get past the cloud of anger and misunderstanding. We want to be happy and safe, we want our children to live good lives, we want to be loved and live in a country we believe in. We want other people to understand that we’re trying to do the right thing.
We’ll see what November brings. Whatever it is, we hope we can all — left, right, and center — keep breathing, keep talking, and keep trying to occupy as much of a shared reality as humanly possible. Life is hard, and we need all the empathy we can get.
