Almost Classical

Every online post, newspaper column, or magazine puff piece written "to Trump voters" will be read by exactly ZERO Trump supporters... or will be taken as the condescending, presumptuous tripe it is by the one or two Trump voters who care what The New Yorker or National Review (for that matter) have to say. No Trump voter cares what I write. They don't. They don't care what my opinion of them is. They don't care what any other over-educated Ph.D. or media elite offers as a critique. The reality is, the few Trump voters I know don't actually like him. They voted against the system, against BOTH parties, and hope it all burns to the ground. Some voted for the Supreme Court and district court appointments. But otherwise, they didn't vote "for" anyone. The day-to-day worker has moved on. The majority of people didn't vote and a good portion of those who did aren't that engaged a few weeks later. Life will go on. Some of us will ob...

Eligible citizens in the United States don't vote. A majority of 18 to 25-year-old voters have little faith in government and no desire to serve in public office. Personally, I don't blame them. I was engaged until about 2006. My disengagement is as much a statement as my direct participation was. Too often, though, partisans can't understand that not being engaged is a rhetorical choice. What if a person truly believes that both major parties are horrible for the United States and the world? The notion of voting for the "lesser of two evils" still requires voting for evil. A pacifist I know explained it this way: She cannot, for any reason, vote for any president or party that is likely to take any military action. This is a deep religious conviction. How would she express this conviction? Voting for a minor party doesn't change the outcome, and no major media outlets cover those candidates. I deeply object to policies of the two major parties. I ...

Party activists do not trust our election system. This is true on the left and the right. The left worries about voting machines, the right worries about voter fraud. Both have valid concerns — so why can't the extremes agree on solutions? Because in today's political climate "the other party" is pure evil, driven by party over country if you believe the loudest voices. And in this era of deep distrust and division among the party activists (the general public is nowhere near as divided), facts don't seem to matter. The Democratic party base claims photo identification requirements for voting are an attempt to limit minority access to the polls. This is nonsense, because these same voters use photo ID to buy alcohol, drive cars, attend school, rent movies, and much more. The voter ID laws won't change much of anything, and would probably only limit a handful of instances of fraudulent voting. Still, I do support voter ID laws as a way to increase faith i...

There is an assumption that the GOP is making a mistake when it shift to the right. I'm not so sure, in the short term, based on my travels and work this year. I've been from Florida to California, Minnesota to Texas. What I hear is a shift, a sharp shift, to conservative fiscal views -- and a deep anti-union, anti-corporation, anti-politician sentiment. From Pew (July 16, 2010): "In assessing their own political views, 40% of voters describe their own political views as conservative (either conservative or very conservative), 36% as moderate, and 22% as liberal (including very liberal). There are substantial differences in the way that Republican and Democratic voters describe their political views." (http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1669/political-ideology-democrats-seen-farther-from-center-than-republicans) Working with colleagues analyzing local views, we find a substantial "blue collar" shift to the right. Even in New Jersey, we find that 40% of "likely...