Love thy Neighbor: or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Accept the 2024 Election Results

This has been an exhausting yet interesting presidential election cycle. After kicking off in the most predictable way possible (Biden v. Trump – are you kidding me?), the yawning subsided with the none-dare-call-it-a-coup switcheroonie by the Democrats. Since I have always been involved in the arts and music, most of my social media friends skew on the left side of politics, and no sooner than Harris’ campaign was announced, my Facebook feed was infiltrated with all sorts of Harris memes — Harris as Rosie the Riveter, Harris as the Statue of Liberty, and Harris as Wonder Woman. To say the majority of my friends embraced her candidacy with a no-questions-asked gusto was an understatement. 

Now before you think this is just another right wing piece gloating over Trump's triumph, let me preface this by saying I was never a Trump fan and remain confounded by his unwavering popularity. Yet, glimmers, where I am beginning to understand his massive appeal, are beginning to emerge. Those glimmers became apparent after I watched one-on-one interviews with him on the popular podcasts The Joe Rogan Experience and Flagrant. In these sit-down conversations, Trump showed an articulate and approachable side that sharply contrasted with the outrageous and offensive buffoonery displayed at his rallies and emphasized in out-of-context sound bites. 

I try not to wear my politics on my sleeve or share my voting history in public or on social media. My politics is so upside down and all around that it would be pointless, anyway. Since the election, most of my social media acquaintances have expressed anger, denial, disbelief, disappointment, and fear over the election results. It’s a virtual five stages of grief where acceptance has not quite settled in. I have spent significant time trying to assuage their grief by diplomatically pointing out that Trump voters are just like the rest of us and have legitimate reasons for how they voted. I have found this tactic mostly ineffective. 

The majority of Americans chose not to vote in this presidential election and the turn-out was less than in 2020. Yet, it was still significant with voters waiting hours in lines after polls closed in states like Nevada and Arizona. More numbers of Hispanics and blacks and working class voters chose Trump. An NAACP poll released in September showed that 25 percent of black men under 50 planned to vote for Trump. The high numbers of “people of color” voting for Trump have shocked and dismayed liberal pundits. My friends don’t quite know what to make of it. Even though they are of the “Black Lives Matter” generation, 99.9 percent are white and probably don’t spend much time hanging out with inner city black dudes (for Trump!). 

On social media and in the legacy/mainstream media I am seeing the blame game predictably played out: Trump tricked and bamboozled voters with his lies. Blacks and Hispanics are misogynists. Trump voters are just-plain-dumb. But the one that really gets me is the insinuation that Trump voters are selfish and more interested in their pocketbooks than larger social issues. Well, duh! Highly educated Democrats who are living the epitome of white privilege may have a difficult time understanding the concept of voting with one’s pocketbook. 

I think the reasons historically Democrat voting blocks turned to Trump is much deeper and more complicated than any of these stereotypical reasons. Harris assumed that all women place "reproductive freedom" as a number one priority. As someone who has lived inside and outside of California, I am aware that many American women are happily married, give birth to three, four, five, six – even ten – children and still manage to get advanced degrees and pursue fulfilling lives. Based on the number of women that voted for Trump, reproductive freedom is not the number one issue for many of these women and belittling them and saying they are Stepford Wives or Handmaid's Tale wives is not helpful. The New York Times, that bastion of liberal thought, actually published a post-election opinion piece written by a woman that examined how Harris took female voters for “granted.”

Just as many Democrats were not particularly enamored with Harris and many voted for her as a vote against Trump, this same phenomenon could be seen on the Republican side. I believe many voters decided to give Trump a try because Harris did not connect with them in a personal way and speak to issues that concerned them. 

Harris’s presidential campaign began with a flurry of memes lauding her; Harris’s loss had been accompanied by a flurry of memes implying that Trump voters are reprobates. The reality is most of us share common truths, but we will only discover this if we dig deeper and try to understand why others think and vote differently than we do. Here is my final message to Democrats in mourning: if your goal is to have a different outcome in the future, I believe this can only be accomplished through empathy and understanding, not through sharing Facebook memes and posts that only speak to people who already agree with you and alienate everyone who feels otherwise. Look left and right as you walk down the street: Some of your very nice neighbors voted for Trump. They are not evil. They are just like you and me.