by W.D. Ehrhart
So here we are just days before the midterm election, and the anticipation is almost palpable. Last weekend, my wife and I went to a No Thrones No Crowns No Kings rally in our neighborhood, and the prevailing sentiment was clearly that a Big Blue Wave is about to sweep the Democrats into control of both the House and the Senate as well as making huge gains at the state level.
I can’t help remembering that the prevailing sentiment in 2016 among Democratic voters and the political pundits was that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in. How could she lose to a clownish buffoon who bragged about grabbing women by their genitals and claimed he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue in broad daylight without consequences?
But Democratic voters and the political pundits didn’t reckon on the ignorance, irrationality, venality, and bigotry of huge numbers of American voters. I’ve been told by at least one newspaper editor that I can’t say that; I’m not supposed to disparage my fellow citizens because I might insult them. All I can say to that is: so what? What are they gonna do? Vote for Trumpsters just to spite me?
A significant portion of Americans don’t need me to encourage them to vote against their own self-interests, however backhanded my “encouragement” may be. Multiple elections since 2016 have demonstrated time and again that the MAGAMobster’s supporters don’t care about broken treaties or counterproductive tariffs, cuddling up to dictators or murdering civilians on the high seas, kidnapping foreign heads of state or waging unprovoked wars of choice, wrecking the White House while installing a gladiatorial arena on the lawn, ruining the Reflecting Pool while destroying the Kennedy Center, trashing our national parks and re-writing American history itself, gutting the environment or packing the Supremely Unjust Court with right-wing activist ideologues, surrounding himself with incompetent lackeys while engaging in blatant criminal corruption to the benefit of himself, his family, and his über-rich friends.
Whatever disillusionment may be developing among the MAGA ranks, as nearly as I can tell, seems to be based on the cost of gasoline and the price of eggs, not on the outrageously lunatic behavior of the grotesque parody of a president currently occupying what has become the Whitewash House.
And that disillusionment is not likely to result in large numbers of MAGAMinions going out and voting for candidates like James Talarico, Sherrod Brown, Amy Klobuchar, or Abdul El-Sayed. After all, Trumpasaurus is not even on the ballot. And given MAGAVoters’ inability to understand that they’ve been getting screwed left and right not just by the current administration, but by the cowards in Congress who refuse to do their sworn duty to uphold and defend the Constitution, I have serious doubts about the outcome of the election that is about to take place.
I have spent a lot of time in the past ten years trying to understand how so many people could be so thoroughly hoodwinked by this grifter and con artist, incapable of seeing what he really is or grasping the damage he is doing to their lives and the country we live in. And I think I have finally figured it out.
The core of his support comes from white men. Yes, there are women who support Trump. The Daily Show’s Jordan Klepper repeatedly braved Trump rallies to interview, among the myriad white men, white women and even a few people of color. But it is white men who constitute the backbone of his support.
And these men are convinced that, ever since the 1960s, women, people of color, homosexuals, and immigrants have stolen white men’s patrimony, white men’s right to privilege and domination, which they do not see as privilege and domination, but simply as what should be theirs by right.
And these men are angry, furious, outraged. They believe all their problems and frustrations and disappointments and failures can be laid at the feet of these non-male, non-hetero, non-white upstarts.
For the most part, they cannot say out loud what they think and feel and believe because it might have serious repercussions on their jobs and families and social relationships.
But their president expresses the intolerance and bigotry and racism and hatred they feel, and he gets away with it. He glories in it. He basks in it. He speaks for them. He says what they cannot say. It doesn’t matter what he actually does. It doesn’t matter what his policies are or how they impact his supporters or what kind of damage they are doing to the nation and the world.
Thoughtful people assume that voters are thoughtful people, but election after election in my lifetime, and long before my lifetime, has demonstrated that huge numbers of voters are not thoughtful or rational or capable of grasping the consequences of their vote. To say all this out loud is a kind of heresy, but history has proven me right time and time again.
So I just don’t have a whole lot of confidence that the voting public is going to behave any differently than it always has, and a lot of that voting public is going to act against its own self-interest and vote for candidates who either agree with their Felon-in-Chief or lack the courage to stand up to him.
I hope I’m wrong. I hope all those folks who think a Big Blue Wave is coming turn out to be right. How could any sane person not hope for that result? But after a lifetime of disappointments—I am 78 years old—I find it all-but-impossible to place any faith in the majority of the American voting public doing the right thing on election day.
–=≈=–
W.D. Ehrhart is a retired Master Teacher of History & English, and author of a Vietnam War memoir trilogy published by McFarland.