Following the 2020 election, I made it a point to find some Trump supporters who would talk to me and help me understand why they voted for a man who, in my humble opinion, is unfit to be President. I expanded my list of people I follow on Twitter, clicked on links that led to other links, and eventually I found a little group that started having weekly conversations on Zoom. The group was quite heterogeneous at the outset, included some Biden voters with concerns about Wokeness, as well Trump voters, and I learned a lot. 

Most of the Trump voters had leaned Republican over their voting careers, but some had gone back and forth between the Rs and Ds. The Biden voters in the group included folks like me who just couldn’t vote for Trump, but who were deeply concerned about everything that occurred in the summer of 2020 and responses in leftist cities. 

Some of the Trump voters could cite specific things Trump had done that they supported. But many just loathed Biden. Since I loathe Trump, that was a feeling I could relate to, even though I find it hard to attach “loathing” to Biden. He seems likable to me. My biggest gripe with Biden (at that time) was his treatment of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings. My primary favorites had been Michael Bennet and Pete Buttigieg, and I still love Pete. I’d probably still love Bennet if he were visible today.

The main thing I learned from those discussions is that whatever I thought about Trump, I could not apply that judgement to his fans. His fans in this little group were regular people who paid some attention to politics, voted regularly, and had justifiable concerns about voting for a Democrat. They either thought Democrats in general were too extreme about climate change or Covid policies or trans rights or too soft on crime and too hard on police. Whatever their hot-button issue, Democrats were on the wrong side of it, and Trump’s personal qualities didn’t frighten them.

I’ve had the good fortune to live where reasonable Republicans have held office in the past, so it’s hard for me to write off Republicans completely (even though the current iteration of the Republican Party leaves a lot to be desired). Also, during Trump’s term in office, I started listening to some “never Trump” Republicans online and found them to be a group I could relate to. Today, I consider myself to be politically homeless, but I doubt that I’ll veer Republican if things ever settle down again. Depends on whether or not the Democrats get reasonable again. 

The most troubling thing for me right now is how common it is to loathe a candidate we don’t like. Where did all this loathing come from? This is not normal, folks. I suspect it comes from the siloing we’re doing with regard to our media sources and friend groups. Years ago, I read a book called “The Big Sort,” by Bill Bishop. The full title is, “The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded Americans is Tearing Us Apart.” Published in 2008, it’s still worth a read. One point made by Bishop is that it’s so much easier to use harsher language if we’re talking within a group that mostly agrees with us. We might tone it down a bit if we know that some of our neighbors are not like-minded. 

I experience this today because some of my neighbors don’t know how far I’ve drifted from the current orthodoxy that pervades my neighborhood. People say outrageous things that only prove that they have failed to read or listen to any contrary opinions or even look for facts about the matter. And when someone says something I consider uninformed, others nearby will chime in with, “Absolutely,” and other supportive statements. Although there are times when it just doesn’t work for me to object, I do on occasion, and I come off sounding shrill and scornful, when I want to sound well-informed and articulate. That’s partly me, and partly how others hear me.

OK. So we have media silos and back-yard BBQs with like-minded neighbors. And now it’s looking like we might have a rematch of Trump and Biden with fear and loathing again the dominant mood. I want to cry. This really, truly makes me think that democracy is just not viable in the long run. 

Although I personally think that life under Joe Biden has been OK, and that his ability to manage the crisis in Ukraine is remarkably good, I don’t expect to convince anyone who thinks otherwise. But I absolutely hope to convince anyone and everyone that we can only vote for candidates who accept the possibility of losing without insisting that an election is rigged. 

Elections in America are reasonably well run. (Let’s just not talk about the Electoral College.) I love our mail ballot system in Washington even though people have tried to spread fear about mail ballots. Many states have a slew of volunteers who spend a very long day helping people sign in and cast ballots in person. Some of our voting machines in the past have not had a paper trail, and that needs to be fixed. A paper trail is essential to maintain confidence in machine voting. People who think our elections can be rigged have not spent time volunteering or even learning how many protections are in place to secure our ballots. 

No election, even in the US, is perfect. But there simply isn’t wide-spread fraud. The term used in the latest indictment of Trump is “outcome-determinative” fraud. I like this term because it allows for the possibility of anomalies that occur in most elections but don’t affect the outcome. 

I worry that if Trump were to become President again, Ukraine would vanish from the face of the earth and the US would become one of those “democracies” led by an authoritarian who stays in office forever, clamps down on dissent, installs cronies throughout the government, and forgets to help the people who supported him. You might view those outcomes favorably, or have a completely different set of concerns that lead you to support him. We can differ on those things.

But we must agree that a candidate who cannot accept the possibility of losing should not even be running for office. Some candidates lose. It could happen to your candidate. It happened to Trump. That’s the reality of elections.