Dear Anti-Trump Campaigner
I’d like you to calm down for a minute or two. Take a deep breath, put down the placard and think about what you are doing. I’d like you to read this little epistle. I’ll make it as short as I can, but I want to make sure that I get three key points across to you. Three things I’d like you to think about.
1. Why did Trump win the election?
2. What do you want to achieve?
3. What constructive things can you do to get the things you want to achieve?
1. Why did Trump win the election?
Before you say anything, let me assure you that he didn’t win the election because racism, Islamophobia or sexism. We know that because we know that many people that voted for Obama in previous elections voted for Trump in this one. Do you really think a racist, Islamophobic sexist would vote for Obama? Me neither.
He also didn’t win because he cheated or because he lied or because he fooled people. He didn’t win because people are stupid. He didn’t win because of nazis or fascists or fake news. If you think any of these things and you don’t have rock solid evidence to support your claim, evidence that doesn’t depend on emotion or feelings or a nebulous concept of justice, you need to rethink.
He won because enough people in enough states voted for him. That resulted in 304 electoral votes for Trump and 227 electoral votes for Clinton (there were also 7 that voted for other candidates).
Yes, Hillary won the popular vote, but that doesn’t matter. In baseball parlance it’s kind of like saying that one team made more runs, but the other team got more hits. Nobody cares. Apart from being irrelevant, it doesn’t take into account that if the game were played by different rules, if the scoring was done a different way, both teams would use different strategies.
No, Trump won because he got the most electoral votes, he got the most electoral votes because the right number of people in the right number of states voted for him and they voted for him either because they liked him or they didn’t like Hillary or both.
And just to be clear, it is indeed possible to dislike a woman without being sexist.
They liked the message that he gave better than the message that Hillary gave.
Would Bernie have made a difference? Who knows? He wasn’t the candidate so it doesn’t matter. Did fake news or the Russians or something else make a difference? I don’t know, but I doubt it. If they did, then the truth will likely come out eventually, but I don’t really think it’s something you can realistically hope for or work toward.
I’ll say it again because it’s really important. Donald Trump won the Presidency because he got more electoral college votes than Hillary Clinton. He got those, because the right people in the right places voted for him.
2. What do you want to achieve?
I’m going to take a wild punt here and guess that one of the things you want to achieve is a President other than Donald Trump at the next election. It’s important that we’re clear on this. Your objective is a change of President by 2020 or sooner.
This means for example that if you have a chance to show the world just what a goose Trump is, but that actually helps him to be reelected, then you wouldn’t do that. It means that if you can show the world just how much you hate Donald Trump and you can demonstrate clearly that only foolish and stupid people would ever support Donald Trump, it means that if there is an incredibly cool and woke meme created by people you really admire that you can re-post and thereby demonstrate that you too are really cool and woke just like those people, it means that if you can use a dazzling series of syllogisms to demonstrate beyond any doubt that Donald Trump really is actually worse than Hitler, if you can do all these things but they help Donald Trump get reelected, then you won’t do them.
Even though doing these things would improve your social standing, you won’t do them. Even though they would make it clear to everyone down at at ‘Kale and Koffee’ for Sunday brunch that you are all in this together, you won’t do them. Even though some people are spouting disgraceful hate speech and need to be shut down, you won’t do them.
You won’t do them because you understand the bigger picture. Your goal, your endgame, your real objective in all this is to make sure that Donald Trump is not reelected in 2020.
3. What constructive things can you do?
For the sake of completeness, I'll note that it’s possible that Trump could die between now and 2020, but that’s not something you can influence unless you are a complete psycho and if that’s the case, you won’t have had the patience to read this far anyway. If you really want to *hope* that he dies, then I guess you can, but don’t tell anyone because that’s a really unpleasant thing to hope for.
It's also possible that he might resign, but he doesn't really strike me as the resigning type. The only way that this would happen would be either due to ill-health or in the event that impeachment AND conviction were inevitable, so this is really covered anyway.
A. Trump is impeached before the next election AND found guilty by the Senate
This is the least likely outcome. Impeachment is a long and tricky process and does not mean that the President must stand down. Impeachment is a little like indictment in US criminal law, it really just means that charges have been formally laid. The process of impeachment requires that the House Judiciary Committee must recommend impeachment to the full House. The full House then needs to vote on the individual articles of impeachment and if they vote to impeach, the President would then have to stand trial in front of the Senate. Only if he is then found guilty, by a two-thirds majority, by the Senate would the President have to stand down.
Note that both the house and the Senate are controlled by Republicans at present, so on party lines, impeachment would never get out of the Judiciary Committee. It would mean that several of the Republicans in the House would need to vote for the impeachment and almost half of the republicans in the Senate would need to vote to convict. A tough call.
Impeachment proceedings have only ever commenced against three Presidents; Andrew Johnson in 1868, which was more a tussle over the powers of the executive and the legislature, Richard Nixon in 1974, who resigned before impeachment proceedings were complete and Bill Clinton in 1998, who was tried by the Senate but found Not Guilty by a vote of 50-50.
B. Trump fails to win the GOP nomination
I guess this is a little more likely than a successful impeachment, but only just. It would require the Republican party to select a candidate other than Donald Trump in their primaries in 2020.
If Trump did not secure the nomination, it would be only the second time in US history that a winning candidate was denied nomination for a second term, the first time being when Franklin Pierce failed to secure the nomination for the 1856 election after having won the 1852 election. So not unprecedented, but again you don’t have history on your side.
On the other hand, there is a large minority within the Republican Party that are not actually very fond of Donald Trump. Many senior Republicans abstained from endorsing Trump’s campaign (notably both the Presidents Bush) and some party elders even went so far as to endorse Hillary Clinton. Even among those that did endorse him, many waited until late in the campaign when it was clear that no other Republican could win the nomination and many provided an endorsement that was lukewarm at best. Jason Chaffetz, a prominent Utah based Congressman, waited until barely 2 weeks before the election before announcing (by Twitter) that “[I] will not defend or endorse [Donald trump], but I am voting for him. HRC is that bad”.
If those disaffected Republicans see that Trump has performed as badly as they feared and they can be brought to rally around one candidate in 2020, it’s just possible that they might be able to secure the nomination.
C. Trump loses the election
As an anti-Trump campaigner, you might think that this is almost a certainty, but again history os against you. The American people tend to re-elect Presidents. Since FD Roosevelt came to power in 1933, only two incumbents have failed to be reelected; Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush. In both cases, they faced strong, charismatic opponents, Reagan and Clinton respectively, and in both cases they went to the polls during a global economic downturn. There were other external factors for both of them too. Carter had just come off the failed Iran hostage crisis and GHW Bush had to contend with a (largely) conservative 3rd party opponent.
So while this is the most likely of your three possibilities, it is still unlikely unless something extraordinary happens.
How can you make ANY of these options work?
Keeping in mind from point 1, that Donald Trump won because the right people in the right places voted for him and keeping in mind that your objective is to stop Donald Trump from being elected, let’s talk about constructive ways that you can get closer to that goal.
Let’s first think about the people that really count. Where are they? What are they like?
Well they’re not in New York and they’re not in California. Those places voted solidly for Hillary and are likely to vote for any Democrat candidate that surfaces in 2020. They won’t help your cause. They’re also unlikely to be anyone at the #WomensMarch, anyone who regularly reads HuffPost or anyone at your local chapter of Black Lives Matter. Those people also most likely voted Democrat at the last election and will continue to vote Democrat at the next one.
No, the people you need to convince for either of the first two options are actual Republican party Representatives and Senators. For the third options, the people you need to convince are likely to be those folks in middle America that voted for Donald Trump. They are likely to by living in suburbia with 1-4 kids and a steady(ish) job and working hard to make sure that each month their spending is just a little lower than their income. They are middle and working class Americans with a house and a yard. Most of them probably go to church fairly regularly and even if they don’t, they call themselves Christian without hesitation. You can rail against this all you like, but these are pretty much the people you need to convince if you really want to achieve your stated objective. So you need to think about how you might achieve that.
You also need to think about the nightmare scenario: entrenching these people in their support of Donald Trump.
So picture in your mind the people that you really want to convince. Imagine them as vividly as you can, place yourself in their position. Their days are spent taking care of the children, going to and from their jobs, maybe occasionally a night out for dinner at the Outback Steakhouse if money is good or at McDonalds if it is not so good. They likely have a car or two. They worry about their security, they worry about their jobs, they think about things like the economy, human rights and climate change only in a fairly nebulous way and are unlikely to react strongly to these issues unless they are affected deeply. They probably haven’t travelled much outside America and they’ve probably never eaten kale or quinoa and never order a low-fat soy-decaf from Starbucks.
Now thinking about these people, picturing them in your mind, hopefully you will see that the #WomensMarch, Black Lives Matter, #NotMyPresident and The Occupy movement are unlikely to convince them. Hopefully you realize that a group of zombie-like people chanting “he will not divide us” at a camera outside New York City's Museum of the Moving Image will in fact do more to divide us. Hopefully you understand that demonstrations like this one are more likely to result in your nightmare scenario of entrenching support of Donald Trump than they are of convincing anyone in middle America that Donald Trump should not be the 2020 Republican nominee.
So what can you really do? Well first I suggest that you understand the issues. Take, for example the Executive Order on immigration. If you don’t like it, make sure you read the order first. If you call it a “Muslim Ban” that simply shows that you haven’t read it, because that’s not what it is, it never mentions the word ‘Islam’ or the word ‘Muslim’. You can certainly point out that it’s aimed at Muslim majority countries, because that’s simply a fact. All seven of the targeted countries are Muslim-majority. You can also suggest that it was implemented too hastily, because although that’s not an objective fact, there is a lot of evidence to suggest that it was the case. You can say that the order lacked proper review or consultation with the DoJ and the DHS. As a result it failed to include even the basic provision that persons in the air at the time of signing should be exempt. You can point at that and say that it’s an example of an administration that doesn’t fully understand what they’re doing.
If however, you use this in an attempt to illustrate that America is no different from Germany in 1933, you lose. Outright hyperbole is unlikely to win you as many votes as considered criticism.
Have a read of Trump’s economic policy. Understand it critically and criticism it logically. Same for Trade Policy. Be measured in your criticism and shy away from the hysteria that has marked the anti Trump movement to date. Remember who you are trying to convince and imagine whether your actions are likely to convince those people. It doesn’t matter that everyone at the rally you attend agrees because that’s not going to get you any closer to your objective. What matters is whether your actions are likely to convince anyone from middle America that they should vote for someone other than Trump.
So when you read and understand the issues, when you formulate a rational and logical objection and when you are prepared to share that rational and logical objection in a calm and measured way, what next? Well the main thing would be to write. Write a letter to the editor, write a blog or a Facebook post. Write to your Congressman. Write a lot.
If you decide to attend a rally or protest, make sure that it’s helping to achieve your objectives. Make sure the rally itself has objectives that are clearly communicated to the public (can any tell me, even now, what the objectives of the #WomensMarch were?). When you attend the rally, play your part in ensuring there is no violence and denouncing unequivocally any violence that might take place (unequivocally means that you don’t get to say “well they were really worked up by these terribly important issues so I can really understand, but yeah, they shouldn’t have scored that guy even though he had it coming to him”). It also mean considering whether profanity and emotive language helps or hurts your cause (hint: it hurts). That’s not taking anyone’s first amendment rights away, it’s just saying that profane language on your banner is more likely to alienate Mr and Mrs America than convince them.
I’m sure that there are other things you can do too, but I don’t want to give the whole game away. See I don’t really matter because I don’t vote in American elections, but I do enjoy watching and I like it best when it’s a close matter. At present I don’t think it’s close at all and, this far out, my feeling is that Trump will be an 8 year President. More importantly than that though, I still haven’t made up my mind whether Trump will be good or bad for the US of A.
Photo courtesy Fibonacci Blue, https://www.flickr.com/photos/fibonacciblue/29099724245
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