No matter who wins, there is no exit from the roller coaster anytime soon
CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pennsylvania — He has no idea which candidate he's going to vote for next month.
The 36-year-old registered Republican and conservative found President Trump’s comportment so distasteful in 2016 that he voted for Hillary Clinton. Since then, he found himself reluctantly liking Trump’s accomplishments and started leaning toward voting for Trump in 2020. But he puts the brakes on supporting Trump every time the president says something he thinks is outrageous.
“I just want this chaos to end,” he says in frustration. “That is what I am going to vote for, no chaos.”
This suburban voter, like many others who might decide this election, now leans more toward Joe Biden. He is not alone.
Many voters going into this election next month believe if Biden wins the presidency, the constant disruption, chaos, and social unrest will recede because Trump will no longer be president. Some of them are actually hinging their vote on that. Those exasperated voters and every reporter who spins that reasoning are as wrong about that as they were in their belief that the 2016 election was all about Trump. It never was.
Trump was never the cause of the conservative populist coalition that put him in office. He was the result of it. After decades of voters' dissatisfaction with both political parties, institutions, government, and culture, they voted for themselves and their communities over both party’s establishments. It wasn't about voting for Trump.
A lot of very smart people keep missing that critical nuance.
If Trump's opponents, or those who cover him, spent any time listening to voters and not making fun of them, categorizing them as a cult, racists, stupid, or whatever word of the day they are using to describe them, they would understand that.
I don’t mean parachuting in for a day at a diner and calling that understanding of a community. But walking in their shoes and their community's streets to see how government has either failed them or passed their communities by. It wouldn’t hurt to stay in town for a couple of days, attend church with people, go to work with them, or watch them coach little league.
Look someone in the eyes on the very ground they walk on, and not from the bubble of your life experiences, and you might experience a little empathy.
As for Biden, despite his wistful assertion that he is going to bring this country together, anyone with a smidgen of understanding of the Democratic Party knows he will be hard-pressed to bring his own party together, let alone an entire country.
The hard and very vocal Left will demand climate change legislation, defunding or deep restructuring of our nation’s police forces, free college tuition, a $15 minimum wage, "Medicare for all," and a restructuring of our education system to include radical lessons like the 1619 Project as part of the curriculum.
They will take their demands to social media, the streets, and to Washington until they get what they want. That is not a threat; that is just a reality. Biden is not the far-Left's candidate, but he is the means to an end of Trump. Once elected, there is a valid expectation of a far-left reward for voting for Biden.
The moderate Democrats, independents, and suburban Republicans who may put Biden into office won’t go willingly along with sweeping government changes to satisfy activists, nor the higher taxes needed to support them. They won’t take to the streets, but they will silently move away from the coalition they decided to dip their toe in. The result will be an instantaneous shift back toward Republican candidates for the 2022 midterm elections, and the wildly swinging wave elections we’ve been experiencing since 2006 will continue.
In short, there is no exit from the roller coaster anytime soon.
We keep sending Washington a message with our votes every two years, and Washington keeps misreading the results. Journalism has contributed to this, a government that operates out of a bubble has contributed to this, Hollywood and our national sports leagues have contributed to this, and our national institutions have contributed to this.
Our institutions' lack of both racial and cultural diversity in the boardrooms are root causes. They need more people involved in the decision-making processes of places that have an affect on our lives who come from a state school or community college. People who sit in a pew every Sunday, or attend a mosque or synagogue. People who own a gun or grew up in the projects.
Instead, they are mostly filled with the best of the best Ivy League graduates who never had those experiences — or if they did, forgot their significance along the way.
People feel left out. People feel as though all of these entities are picking winners and losers. Our elections reflect that chaos, and the result is people feel whiplash.
Biden's team has tried to portray him as the salve that will heal our country. The hard truth is, no matter who wins, our country will still be on a bender, no matter who takes the oath of office on Inauguration Day.
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