If I Was A Liberal Speech Writer
The Trump win still has me reeling.
And on top of that I’ve spent this week watching Democrats seek to appease Donald Trump’s voters and Donald Trump himself.
I don’t think i can overstate what an enormous mistake this is. These people who wish to be seen as leaders are abandoning any and all concern for the trust and wellbeing of marginalized peoples, who they depend on to be elected and who are forced to depend on them to defend their rights. The people who show up to vote for them in the 90+% range, like Black women. This is deplorable.
I’ve had enough conversations about whether Democrats are being strategic or are simply capitulating that I would like to propose a framing for those Democrats who can’t bring themselves to call Trump voters the bigots they are, to at least make the case for not cooperating, and seek some base level of accountability.
Generic Democrat Approaches The Lectern
I’d like to talk about cooperation and accountability today.
I don’t think the majority of Trump’s voters set out to do harm.
Some definitely did, and we need to be conscious of them, & mindful of the people they seek to harm, but I don’t believe that is the majority.
What I do think the majority did was respond to a changing world by trying to put things back how they were. A man said he could make it how it was and they said, “that sounds good”.
I think there are two critical takeaways from that:
First, that man is lying to you.
He cannot and will not make things how they were. He seeks only to empower himself and will betray your trust.
And second, putting things back how they were is a dangerous idea for many, many people. For these people, these fellow Americans, equality is only recently a viable idea. In many ways, the equality they have found isn’t durable. Their place in our society is conditional on good behavior, not the inherent right it’s meant to be.
Enabling a man like Donald Trump, cooperating with him in any way, presents a very real, even life-threatening danger to these people. These people that are our friends, our families, our communities.
We need to be mindful of everyone’s struggles, but when making policies and choosing leaders we need to resist asking the marginalized peoples we share this country with to shoulder more than their fair share.