When I started this journey, I'm not sure what I would learn about my Uncle. I didn't like what I found.
You’ll never believe who the New York Times interviewed.
Despite Democrats representing the majority of American voters, with more voters having chosen the Democratic nominee the last 7 out of 8 times. Despite the fact that the current 50 Democratic Senators represent 43 million more people than the 50 Republican Senators (187 million to 144 million).
⬆️Every political story in America should begin with these two important facts.⬆️
Despite the fact that rural Americans are a whopping 19.3% of our population (and rural Americans in diners certainly fewer), the New York Times finally managed to find a Biden voter to interview.
...
I’m just kidding.
No they didn’t.
They interviewed supposed “independents” who voted for Trump and Obama or Biden at some point in their life. Frank Luntz helped them scrounge up these voters.
You want to know how these voters are feeling despite peace and a record economy?
Frank Luntz: Give me a word or phrase to describe life in America today.
Scott (53, white, Florida, works in health care): Divided.
Janet (66, white, Ohio, customer service): Dismal.
Julia (50, white, Illinois, small-business owner): Disappointment.
...
Nick (43, white, Pennsylvania, merchandise designer): Burned out.
...
Travis (45, white, Kansas, corporate finance): Lost.
No you don’t, and neither do I. Really don’t bother reading any further. Save your sanity.
The New York Times continues to embarrass itself with its inability to find a Biden voter to interview, despite there being millions more of us.
But there is a bizarre compulsion to seek these voters out and center them in our discourse. I presume it is not just neuroses or stupidity, so I set to find out why. Why are these angry, white, rural voters so appealing.
* * *
One of the blessing and curses of the social media age is that these platforms can, under certain circumstances, provide us with a real-time, direct link to a person’s stream of conscious. Social media is probably the closest we, as humans, will ever come to reading minds. That is, if Elon Musk stops torturing monkeys and gets neuralink to work (Warning: trigger link).
And now, it’s time for me to introduce my uncle.
You see, my uncle would’ve fit right in with Frank Lunt’z focus group.
My uncle openly claimed to be a Democrat, but had no problems voting for Republicans starting in the 80’s. He voted for Obama in 2008, disgusted with George W. Bush’s stewardship of Iraq, the economy, and Katrina, before immediately turning on Barack Obama before he was even inaugurated. He would vote for Romney and Trump, before pulling a crazy Ivan once more and voting for Biden in 2020, based on Trump’s chaos, complete mismanagement of the government, and the pandemic. An educated man and a manager, his criticisms of Bush and Trump were insightful, truthful, and precise. Each time he publicly repudiated a Republican President, I was hopeful he had connected Republican misgovernment with his distaste for mismanagement. Before the Biden was even sworn in, though, he would immediately turn on the new President. Thanks to the miracle of social media, I could watch on Election Night as his feed morphed from hoping Biden would win, to anger at Biden for actually winning.
* * *
The electorate is full of idiots. When canvassing for John Kerry in Florida in 2004, I spent almost an hour trying to convince an undecided voter to vote for John Kerry. Her self-professed most important issue was the environment, and she felt Bush (not Kerry) had a better record on the environment. I’m not kidding. And she could not be persuaded otherwise.
This is not my uncle.
My uncle is educated man and a consumer of mainstream news sources. I’ve never seen a far right link appear on his social media feed. I have no evidence he watches FOX News or has ever listened to Talk Radio. He’s dismissed Limbaugh and Hannity as frauds and blowhards. He watches PBS News Hour. So what would make someone immediately become disillusioned with Democrats, before Democrats even take power?
I followed his social media feed closely, and engaged.
* * *
Have you heard crime is up? If you have someone like my uncle in your life, you have. There are a lot of statistics, and many are contradictory. It appears many statistical indicators lag, and so we don’t have a full picture for 2021 yet. But I can tell you that while crime is up a little, this isn’t the 1980’s. In the aftermath of the January 6th riots, I inquired how he felt about this major assault on the US Capitol that left four police officers dead. His response? Did I hear about the latest petty crime? This culminated in him telling me that while the capitol attack was bad, did I hear about the smash and grab of Louis Vuitton hand bags in San Francisco? Four dead officers. Hand bags for rich people stolen. Which do you think was more on his mind? Hand bags.
Have you heard that some transgender people are athletes, and they are competing in sports? Of course you have, but if you have someone like my uncle in your life, you’re going to really hear about it. He’s especially obsessed with the story of the transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. Athletes may cheat by changing their gender, he says, and this is a major problem, as opposed to the actual long, sordid history of athletes cheating the typical ways in professional sports. Forget shoeless Joe Jackson, to my uncle, transgender athletes herald the collapse of competitive sports. I asked him how he felt that Trump planned to cheat the election outcome, through various measures, and draw a salary for which he was not entitled should he have succeeded. Cheating to gain the Presidency or Lia Thomas? Which do you think was more important to him? Lia Thomas.
And this would go on and on, across too many subjects to detail here. No matter what the actual pressing issue facing society, my uncle would respond with the latest moral panic.
Like all panic, it wasn’t rational. The same person could be upset over stolen handbags, while deriding prosecutorial overreach of the parents of the Michigan school shooter.
* * *
If I didn’t know better, I’d say the Glenn Youngkin campaign was calling my uncle for advice on a daily basis.
My uncle’s opinion of the economy and the direction of the country tanked not upon President Biden’s inauguration, but on Election Night, two months before a Democratic President would even take office. I’m reminded of this famous graph of economic sentiment showing the sharp uptick when Trump won the Presidency, and sharp downtick when he lost it.
The perception of the economy changed on Election Night, not Inaguration.
And it changed radically back on Election Night, not Iniaguration
It’s hard to fathom such a level of irrationality.
* * *
So my uncle behaves as a typical Republican, despite how he self-identifies? This explanation is facile and unsatisfactory. It also runs counter to what I know of the man.
My Uncle is loving and intelligent. He has never uttered a prejudice or sexist phrase.
But one day, my Uncle flew economy. My Uncle flew his entire life, many times in economy and many times in business and first class. The day in question he was flying economy. And while boarding the plane, he passed an African American woman sitting in first class. The story gets painful and hard to write, but passing a first class passenger, who also happened to be Black and a woman, was noteworthy to him. Noteworthy enough to keep talking about it, way more than necessary (which was not at all). He would not (or could not) come out and say why this was so noteworthy, only that her hairstyle, in his opinion, was quite extravagant.
You see, my uncle is racist. Is he prejudice? I don’t know. But he is a racist.
* * *
I suspect that people like my uncle are equally mysterious to the DC Press. This wasn’t an easy journey, I doubt they have the fortitude to undertake one of their own. Why else keep interviewing rural white voters in diners?
A non-insignificant number of Biden voters wanted good government but also white supremacy. When I first heard Law and Order, I assumed Order meant something like towels on the bath rack being neatly folded. I now realize it means racial and gender order.
Good government and the Republican Party are incompatible, so these voters, like my Uncle, ping pong between the parties. The Democratic Party is the only institutional power many minority populations in the United States have. Once in power, people, like my Uncle, feel that the order is inverted, and this is anathema. And the polls show their disappearance. Being the first to leave, and also being white men, the media pays extra notice.
* * *
The point of this painful diary is not to go chasing after voters like my uncle. The New York Times has been beclowning itself for 6 years doing just this. As long as the Democratic Party provides institutional power to those people that these swing voters feels should be on the bottom of the American order, there is no message, no strategy, no platform that will win them over. That’s why I laugh at all these messaging articles. People like my Uncle are gone the minute Biden takes the lead in the electoral vote count, and so Democrats might as well as turn out their remaining voters. There are millions more of us, after all.
