A sane view on the election…read this

Almost no one I know voted for either of the presidential tickets. We—my friends and family and I—all voted against Donald Trump and JD Vance or against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. And we made concessions to do it. At a dinner party last weekend, I was lamenting this necessity.

“I’d love to see an election where voters are excited about the person they’re voting for,” I said. “When was the last time we had one of those?”

“Actually,” a friend said, “I think this is optimal. An election where you vote against rather than for is more logical, less emotional. It yields better results.”

My friend is in his early 60s, a crusty closet conservative. I’ve known him for 30 years but had no idea about his politics until 2020, when the Twin Cities became ground zero for progressive activism and I started questioning my lifelong faith in Democrats.

That’s when my friend, a theater instructor and ethicist, came out to me. We agreed about the illiberal trends we were seeing, especially in public schools. Extended Covid closures even as much of the rest of the country was reopening. Teachers’ strikes blocking roads. Soaring rates of transgenderism in urban teens. Glaring educational inequities between white and black areas, despite the teaching of “critical race theory” as early as third grade.

My people were so bathed in righteousness, they’d become a living satire. For three months, I sat on a Minnesota water-conservation board with wealthy travelers who kept golf courses green while recommending water rationing for farmers. The group’s leader proposed we stage a “Pearl Harbor level” event that would scare the public into taking shorter showers.

Any objection to such ideas is met with gentle murmuring about xenophobia or fascism. Yard-sign speech is rhetorical kryptonite, especially in an all-blue place.

That’s what Americans like me voted against. We didn’t vote for Mr. Trump. We voted to stop the cancerous mutation of well-intended ideas, misused by institutions, turned self-serving and dictatorial by an elite few. This is the story of so many catastrophes, from Lysenkoism and the internment of Japanese Americans to weapons of mass destruction and the Patriot Act. We’ve been watching parallel manias unfold on myriad fronts.

Loving acceptance of trans people was transformed into speech control, and a consumer pool for Big Pharma’s hormone treatments. Empowerment of educators became disregard for the well-being of kids. Opposition to racism morphed into elaborate and profitable shaming rituals. Privileged, lucky people filched the causes of the impoverished, becoming irate and striking back when the downtrodden dared speak for themselves.

Speech has been under attack, universally. Many people I know voted against Mr. Trump in part because he has threatened to shut down unfriendly media. This is a position I respect. But from my vantage point—shared by many of my fellow anti-Harris voters—it is the Democrats who have gone too far, breaching our First Amendment rights again and again, using canny convolutions like “misinformation” and “conspiracy” to justify suppressing ideas they don’t like.

We voted to check the momentum of these movements—to halt a progressive disease. We voted against the idea that going further is always better. In our hearts, many of us were striking back against the hectoring superiority, the people who told us we were too stupid to understand, or too racist, too sexist, too self-hating, too similar to Nazis. We voted to make those fiercely divisive and destructive arguments stop.

I realized my friend had a point about the drawbacks of voting for a candidate. The last time I did so was in 2012. Barack Obama was smooth and kind and wicked smart. He wept over slain children (authentically, I believe), spoke with everyman authority, and had great taste in music and books. I felt a deep emotional tie to this man who represented hope and change. How lovely, how feel-good, how vague. Yet I—along with my community—felt held and “seen” and celebrated when he prevailed.

Years later, the revelations about Mr. Obama started to emerge. Like old infidelities, each one was a slap. The razing of protected park land in Chicago so his presidential library would have a better view. Invented histories that casually elide his cronyism and transactional social climbing. His lavish, star-infested 200-guest birthday party during Covid shutdowns. More recently, his astonishing condescension stumping for Ms. Harris, when he scolded black men for their assumed sexism and told them how to vote.

Voting for a candidate back then led me to soft criteria: charm, warmth, a quick smile. Ultimately I felt disappointed and betrayed—the pitfalls of an emotional relationship. None of this is at play with Mr. Trump. I’m not looking for him to be charming or warm; I don’t care for “YMCA.” I often dislike the things he says.

His behavior on Jan. 6, 2021, was egregious, pure hubris, and it might have been disqualifying if not for the confounding response from Democrats, who seized on the event and used it to justify constitutional infringements from that day forward. In a recent echo of this effect, I cringed and nearly caved in the day a comedian told an inexcusably offensive joke at Mr. Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. But my will to vote against the Democratic regime was resurrected when President Biden sneered that more than half of the country’s citizens were “garbage” for supporting Trump.

I fear the sway of Big Pharma, the mad scientific modification of children, inflationary monetary policy and Cheneyesque forever wars. More than anything, I cherish freedom of expression and believe it is our most spiritual right. Prayer, poetry, stories, music—they’re what lift us above this mortal space. Ideas have metaphysical weight. I’d rather die than live in a world without this freedom, which I saw Democrats repeatedly trying to control and restrict. 

My best wager in 2024 is that Messrs. Trump and Vance will put the brakes on these dangerous runaway trends.

I spoke to my friend Wednesday morning, to get his permission to write about our conversation. Then I asked if he was happy about the election outcome.

“Not exactly happy,” he replied. “But it was so much better than the alternative.” 

Ms. Bauer is an essayist and novelist in St. Paul.

The sane view is that Trump won on the economy. A large portion of the public in America rightly or wrongly hold Biden to account for the high inflation in the first two and half years of his presidency and despite the the good shape of the US economy at the moment, positive economic projections for the future and it out performing most of the rest of the worlds economies, a lot of the American's haven't felt that in their pocket. They can remember back to before covid to Trump's presidency, to lower food and fuel prices and they rightly or wrongly accredit him for that. So he got the benefit of the doubt on the economy.

The Democrats picked a continuity candidate who was offering voters the choice of pretty much more of the same as Joe Biden. Her campaign didn't focus on the key issued that mattered, the economy and inflation. She didn't speak enough about her actual policies and in the end she wasn't able or didn't spend enough time explaining to voters how she was going to make their lives better in the future economically. 

The people who give a shit about being anti woke or fighting culture wars were already voting for Trump back in 2020. As of right now, he's just a few thousand votes above his 2020 vote number so its not like he got a massive sudden influx of new voters driven to him out of repulsion for wokeness.  But it was enough to win in the face of Harris being unable to convince enough Democrats to come out and vote, which resulted in a Democratic vote collapse of almost 11 million.

Nobody, least of all the writer who is a novelist or her friend who is a theater instructor would claim this is a main stream view. It’s an essay on why educated, cultured people with a history of not engaging in bias, voted for Trump. Do try to keep up.

 It’s an essay on why educated, cultured people with a history of not engaging in bias

LOL, sure it was.

I wonder what Eggfaced Moffie thinks he knows about educated or cultured people?

What was the part you were laughing at Anger, tell us?

Moffie still ejaculating over a typo. How pathetic!

"What was the part you were laughing at Anger, tell us?"

He was laughing at you, Eggface.

Most incumbent parties around the world have lost recent elections, more so than in the last hundreds of years. Inflation has been the biggest factor driving voters away from the incumbent. 

I saw something the other day that showed that wage growth has slowed in the US. So even after being normalised by excluding inflation- the wage rise growth is declining.

So it was higher in the Obama and Trump years than it was under Biden. 
Offshoring jobs is perhaps buggering around with supply and demand slowing down wage growth. 

What was the part you were laughing at Anger, tell us?

I'm sure you'll work it out eventually.

There has never been sout about suiflation being a major part of  the reason  shy US voters voted for Trump - but there are other reasons as well.     Let me explain - for much of he last 100 years the base of the Democratic Party - while the elite was supporting he Republican Party.    In that period the Government treated the working claa peorod the Democrats ebh ances he iterests of he Blacks and Hispanic as well,   

When Carter became Presidnt in 1977 the theoretical  leftists took ove and in he end inlation reachd record levels and suddenly the workers class found them inm desperation thy voted frm Reagan and in 8 years prosperity returned to the  working class people.    Bush  Senior was Regan.s VP  and contuned some of Regan's policies - but he was not consided   He was suceded by Clinton who   came to Washington after an investment scandal which were not publicized at the ime penniless - but he and his wife started the Clinton Foundation to whci Government and Pivate organiztion donated hubdreds of million and hdistribution went aas follows:- 10$ for the elfare pojects and 90% for the benefit of the Clintons.   That Foundation  fliourished when Clinton was President  and when his wife was Seceretary of State under Obama,   In the case f Clinton he did no car abou what the orling class getting poorer evey year.    He alsos tarted the expor of USA jobs to China and other low wage countries,    The main Industrial area  in the USA - Pensyllania, Ohio, Michigan and Wuscobsin became known as the Rust Belt Syayes.  Bush. Junior did not care either - he as more inerested in rsnd statred the Afghanistan and Iraq wars,    Obama wa and is a snooth talking  person  - bu he did exactly what Clinon dbecame a Sentoer in 2004 and delared his assts as $100 000 .  Four years later when he ebcame President he  dec;ared his assets as $3.5 milion andwhen he left the  residency he ent on a buying spree f luxury home that caost him $32 million.    He promside the voters the world and deliver nothing.    

When Trump against all expectations win - one of the CBS commentators said that over he period 1988 to 2016  the wotking class people got poorer at a rate of at least 1%  pe year.  He stated that the working class felt rejected by the Democratic Party.    ht ccoding to the people he spoke o was the reason for the Trumpelection.    thee working class, the Hisanics found they had spare mney in their prockets = spmething hey did not ahve when Clinto, the Bushes adn Obama was Presient.   That lasted until the Covid Pndemic.   As is normal Biden in 2020 win ahe eelction  and the whole structure concerning  working class oers collapsed voters collapsed and people could not evn have money to feed themselves and their children every mnnth.

Aside from that the application of low and order deterioratd drastically due to te approach of the ultra-lefists.   According to them criminas must be treated as people who were forced into crime in the environment they grew up.    So they must be treated gntly and they should not be jailed,    So when police arrest even murderers they were released within 24 hours without the need to pay bail,    Be i s it may - Law and Oder collapsed in the USA  - especially in States like  Califonia and New York as ell as ohe States Governed  by teh rpublican Party or even to Europe and Mexico. - over 2 million people were involved,   When refuees from C alifornia was aksed why they moved to Mexco - the answer was that the Mexicn Cartels is ess dangerous than the Califonia Gangs,   

The hird majr problem was the over 11 millio migants that ilegally enered he USA when Biden was Preisdnet.    Initially the Biden Government theory was  yp pay billions in aid yo Cetral and South Americas to keep their citizens at home.  They took the money and a an opening tos olve prolems in her own countries that cost them money - so the freed their prisoners and haded them to the Mexican cartells to get them into the USA.    The whole thing trned into afarce and ended up with the loss  jobs by US Citizns and was replaced by less paid migrantsm  whogo additional grants from h Government , got free housing and  medical eamts and schooling or eir chidlren.    Yje voters believe hat he U S Givernment tratred igrantsbette than  j,udid for mogsndhsn for them,   

Their were a nmber of other issues hat the voes regatd the Bideb Regime fo bein gnadled badkt byvoters,  .    So he ordinary working clas peple said o ell of their rtrmentors and vite h em out of ofice,    so they tuned on them i eht election,]

 Syv is righ inlation as not confined t the USA only - the same happened in EU elecions and  the mood of people are h sameas the USA.  In all countries  the feelinsg was that i they get media support and opposig paris are amliging  the opposition they will win elections,   ere the same and lefitst Givernments are for the same reasons lose in elections, like Cnnda and Germany nest year,

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