Joeff Davis
No matter what happens on Tuesday, Donald Trump will wind up with more than 50 million votes. A good estimate is that about 130 million votes will be cast for president. Even in a blowout (which by modern standards would be 60-40) he'd get 40 percent of 130 million or 52 million votes in the general election. And there's no reason to think right now that it'll be a landslide for Clinton.
So no matter what happens in the election, that central fact has to be dealt with by whomever comes to power in the White House, Congress and state Legislature.
The trouble with Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment was that it was too simplistic. Sure enough, some people voted enthusiastically for Trump because they are racists, misogynists or xenophobes. But some held their noses and voted for him just because he was a Republican or because, inexplicably, they believed that Hillary Clinton was somehow worse. Some voted for him, realizing full well that he was an awful person and unqualified for the job, but their frustration about their personal circumstances led them to want to cast a vote that amounted to a simple, blunt sock in the jaw to the established order.
But even those explanations assume that each individual had a unique reason to vote as they did. But that’s not how it works. People vote for a certain candidate for all kinds of reasons, some not even necessarily clear to themselves. What’s clear in Trump’s case is that tens of millions of Americans will have voted for him despite his seemingly endless string of insults, misstatements and outright lies.
Starting Wednesday morning the first job of our elected leaders, our community leaders and every American is to start trying to figure this out. How did a man so ignorant, intolerant, morally bankrupt and dangerous get this close to the most powerful office in the land (assuming he didn’t make it all the way)? If Clinton wins, how come she didn’t win by twice as much?
It’s easy for someone like me to criticize Republicans and conservatives for what they’ve allowed to happen. A few of them, like commentators David Brooks, George Will and Charlie Sykes and like politicians Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke and retiring Wisconsin Congressman Reid Ribble, deserve everyone’s respect for seeing Trump for what he was from the start and refusing him any quarter. But they were much too rare. Most conservative leaders just tried to hide under a table until it all went away while others actively supported a man they must have understood was the worst candidate for president in modern history.
I wish I could say that all this will prompt soul-searching and reform in the GOP, but there’s no reason for optimism. Even before Election Day Republican congressional leaders are talking about never approving Clinton’s Supreme Court nominees and launching what would amount to permanent investigations against her. There’s even talk of impeaching her the moment she takes office.
But since we can’t control what the other guys do, it’s time for liberals and Democrats to think hard about our own role in allowing things to get this far. This means confronting our own blind spots and our own intolerant attitudes. In my own tribe I hear too much condescension for people with less education. I hear a lack of respect for evangelical Christians and sometimes Catholics. And I hear a parsing of America into unique identity groups, each of which demands respect, but without the notion that we should somehow fit together in some common identity or cause as Americans.
The giant demographic glacier will grind on. Mostly driven by a growing Hispanic population that the Republicans seem to have gone out of their way to alienate, the party is destined for long-term minority status. Whatever happens now, the GOP base of older, less educated, Christian white folks is just not going to expand. But it will be influential for a while longer, and it will be a significant part of the population for generations to come.
America can’t function with any sizable part of its population feeling ignored and left behind. Tomorrow, what could have been the most polarized election since 1860 will finally be over. And now, just as then, things won’t immediately look any brighter. But the person we elected to lead us that year turned out to be all right. If we can find a way to start listening to one another again, and if we launch an effort to find common values as Americans instead of retreating into our own bunkers of identity, maybe we’ll be all right in the end too.
