Since most people I know voted for Clinton, I presume most of my readers did. Though I don’t like Trump as president, as long as tens of millions of Americans voted for him, I hope my readers represent the population more faithfully than the population of lower Manhattan.
Trump’s win surprised most Clinton supporters. My reaching out to Trump voters and speaking with them explained a lot to me. The Trump voters I spoke to weren’t the racist, sexist, xenophobic, etc people so stupid as to vote against their own interests that Clinton supporters made them out as.
The tragedy for Clinton supporters is that many I hear don’t seem to have learned why so many people voted against their candidate.
I thought of a way to simplify the message that their behavior is driving people to vote for Trump.
The following may oversimplify things, but I hope it leads people who dislike Trump to figure out how to overcome their behavior leading people to vote for him.
A simple rule that creates Trump votes
Here’s a simple rule that if you follow it, you’ll create votes for Trump:
Every time you call someone sexist, racist, xenophobic, privileged, islamophobic, mansplaining, manspreading, narcissistic, or the like, you create a new vote for Trump.
Maybe you think, “But that person is sexist!” or racist or whatever.
I’m not commenting on your rightness or wrongnesss. I’m commenting on why people vote. Our constitution doesn’t say people have to vote based on your reasons but for what reasons they want.
Here’s the extreme version of the rule:
Call people deplorable and they’ll vote against you.
If you reflect enough, you may learn why your speech leads people to vote against you. For now, simply keeping this rule in mind should at least help guide your behavior.
Since I care about many issues where my values oppose Trump’s and see this rule as reasonably accurate, I hope people who oppose Trump don’t, through knee-jerk behavior, cause his reelection.
If you don’t want Trump reelected, remember,
Every time you call someone sexist, racist, xenophobic, islamophobic, privileged, mansplaining, manspreading, narcissistic, or the like, you create a new vote for Trump.
There are plenty of ways to behave and communicate than what I can only conclude is venting that don’t lead people to vote against your interest. If you want to win elections, it helps to lower the number of people voting against you, which should seem obvious, but people act as if they didn’t know it.
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