The debate is tomorrow night. It does seem that the tRumpies are scared, because they know that “sleepy Joe” is a fictional character who does not match the president who has revitalized NATO, stood up to Putin, engaged in give-and-take at the SOTU, is bringing back manufacturing and investing in infrastructure, and has made the US economy the envy of the world.
The tRumpies also know that their candidate is a convicted felon with a terrible jobs record, deficits, and — well, let’s not try to list all tRump’s faults because we all have better things to do.
If the debate goes as expected, then this may be an opportunity to reach out to some people who may be on the fence. Please don’t assume that all Rs are lost causes. The videos below show they are not.
We should not give up before we try!
Below: first some videos (not the same as the last diary), and then some suggestions — pretty much the same as the prior diary.
From Wednesday, June 26, 2024: I like this because it’s an in-depth conversation with a single former tRump supporter. It shows how low the enthusiasm has become with respect to tRump, something I have noticed myself with the lack of signage and what has happened in special elections.
From Sunday, June 23, 2024:
These are some of the stories shared with me today from former Trump voters who will never vote for him or anyone MAGA ever again. We receive thousands of stories like this each week:
- -“Ben, my husband voted for him twice. Its strained are marriage. After January 6th he started listening to the rhetoric and he swore to me never would he vote for him again.”
- -“Ben, I held my nose and voted in 2016, I have always leaned conservative and hoped that a outsider would be beneficial to America. Knowing what I know now, I would like to apologize to my fellow Americans specifically for the Supreme Court appointments. Never again will I vote for a Maga candidate.”
- -“Ben, I was a Republican for 58 years but I cannot support an anti-American Trump party. I won't vote for him, or any other Republican candidate, until they throw him from the party.”
- -“Ben, I was a lifelong Republican and former SrMilitary Officer who voted for Trump in 2016 and quickly regretted it. I became a proud RINO never Trumper and after Jan 6th became increasingly critical of the Republican Party and its refusal to acknowledge the continuing disfunction and continued support of this criminal and threat to the Republic. Accordingly, I became a Democrat on 29 Sep 2023 and haven't looked back...”
- -“Ben, My dad was a Fox News addict, and voted Trump 2016. Soon thereafter I was pleasantly shocked to hear him call Tump the Idiot in Chief.”
And this is not that new. This is a year ago:
It’s not just Meisalas!
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Heck, even Melania doesn’t want to be with tRump (I don’t blame her).
Now that we know that it is possible to get people to stop voting for tRump — we know this because it has happened already — what can we do? Read the following, and please add your own ideas.
What to do to encourage people to leave the maga cult.
Repetition is good. We at Daily Kos tend to learn the first time, and to us it may feel rude to repeat stuff, especially true stuff that seems so obvious. But repetition is how most people learn; it is how a message sinks in. It also helps if you can expose them to the same idea from multiple sources.
Baby steps. Maybe don’t expect them to fly Biden flags or even vote for Biden. Maybe the best you can get them to do is to abstain from voting at all. That’s not as good as a vote for Biden, but it’s a lot better than a vote for tRump.
Don’t expect an instant conversion. Let your words sink in. Also, don’t overwhelm them. Instead, ask questions, listen to their concerns, and address them specifically. One tRumper challenged me about crime, and I pointed out that crime was way down, something confirmed by another.
They may say the media is fake. Well, we can agree with them there. A lot of media is fake. Can use many recent examples. Can show the testimony of David Pecker and how many stories he and tRump arranged to put into the National Enquirer.
What not to do
Don’t insult them. It can be tempting to insult them, call them names. And I am not impressed by their logic, their hypocrisy. Their cognitive dissonance is so deep that it hurts me – how can it not hurt them?
But name calling – of supporters, not of the leaders, because calling tRump a convicted felon is not only true, but necessary, and must be repeated over and over – only pushes them away.
Don’t give up. OK, some people are lost causes. My own dad, liberal Democrat for most of his life, started to vote R at the end. Well, he was in the initial stages of dementia, so I could not really argue. Still, if you’re not comfortable, start with low-hanging fruit, people you think might be reachable.
On the other hand, many people who you think are unreachable may be reachable after all.
Don’t spend too much time with one person. As I wrote above, we can’t expect the buzz of instant conversion. Let people know a few facts, answer their questions, encourage them to do more research. And let them know that if they want out of the maga cult, you’ll be there for them.
Why it’s hard to leave maga
You may think this is hard for us – and it is – but it can be harder for them. Remember that. Here are some reasons leaving the maga world is so difficult.
Hard to admit you were wrong. These people have to admit they were wrong, which is really hard for self-esteem. And, not were they wrong, but they may have been conned, which is extra embarrassing.
It could help to show them the videos above. They are not alone. Also, let them know there are powerful billionaires who have dedicated substantial resources to keeping them in the dark, which may be why they were fooled. And they are not named Soros!
Hard to leave your tribe. It may be that all the people they know – in their churches, their neighborhoods, their workplaces and their families – are committed to supporting tRump and tRumpsters. It’s hard to disagree with, like, everyone you know.
We can help them by telling them there are lots of recovering tRumpsters. They can find others like them. Also, our side has plenty of nice people, because here at team blue, cruelty is not the point. Anyway, it’s important to help them leave, as opposed to insulting them when they do. It makes it easier.
Sometimes leaving has a price. Several Rs who came out against tRump lost their jobs (Liz Cheney, Adam Kizinger, and more). Of course, other who supported tRump lost their jobs, too. Senator Lankford stopped supporting his own border bill when Sean Hannity threatened him with adverse coverage on Fox. George and Kellyanne Conway ended up getting divorced, and although neither has said anything about it in public (for which I commend them), one has to suspect that her work for tRump and his disgust with tRump must have been an issue.
I’m not sure what to suggest here, except that not leaving is even costlier, in terms of what will happen with the world.
Sometimes leaving is dangerous. Here are some cases we know about: Rusty Bowers, the former Speaker of the House in Arizona, was threatened when he refused to say that tRump won the election. Lindsey Graham, after condemning the Jan 6 attack, was threatened in an airport himself. Michael Cohen – never really a Republican, but certainly a tRump fanboy for a very long time – gets death threats. I expect this is just the tip of the iceberg. On the other hand, some of the threats are coming from other countries. This has been true of many swatting attempts.
We can naturally say that our side is already in danger. People were hunting Nancy Pelosi on Jan 6. People tried to kidnap Governor Whitmer in order to kill her. And look what happened to Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman!
We can expose these threats and fund the FBI and local police to track them down. And we can remind people that not leaving is even more dangerous, again in terms of what will happen to the world.
The best way to make the danger go away is to make more people leave. The thugs can’t target everyone.
Why it’s so important to try
About 74 million voters went for tRump in 2020. That’s a huge number, and not good for our country. It’s also not good for the world. We need the Biden-Harris administration to be in place for a second term to keep Europe from being overrun by putin and autocrats and to keep working on human rights and climate mitigation measures.
The more we can get people to stop supporting tRump and the maga movement, the more it benefits us.
As Meiselas reports, there are some excellent indicators. Ds are outperforming in special elections. More and more often, the tRump rallies are exposed as staged with numbers exaggerated ten-fold. Hardly anyone showed up to protest his indictment or his conviction. From anecdotal reports, and during my own drive across Texas at the time of the eclipse (April 8), I only saw two tRump signs that might be recent.
Remember, many of these people are in information silos and they do not know the truth. Also, lots of people are just not that good at numbers or logic.
Let’s do this! It’s so important for our country and for the world.
Also 🎩 Gaelsdottir, a comment in the last diary.
When a bedraggled MAGA refugee shows up here, hat in hand, ragged, exhausted, broke, and sick, and tells us they’ve seen the error of their ways, and are looking for sanctuary,
- Stop with the kneejerk verbal abuse.
- Stop with the snide remarks behind your hands about how you’ll just NEVER trust ANY Republican, current or former, living or dead.
- Stop with all the other standard, predictable snidery, too, about how they’re just softening us up for the attack, or how they’re going to turn on us once the common foe is vanquished, or all the other Golden Oldies.
- And for God’s sake don’t go off in a snit and write a spite diary about them or anyone like them.
If you can’t accept and you can’t welcome and you can’t be a decent human being to
“our tired, our poor, our huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
those wretched souls who were for Trump before,”
then sit down, put a sock in it, and wait it out. It develops character.
- If they’re nogoodniks, it’ll show soon enough, and you can crow and gloat, but you’d also damn well better be right at the front, then, helping to flag any such trolls under the banhammer.
- And if they turn out to be exactly who they said they were, people he fooled who then fooled themselves until something snapped them out of it, have the grace to admit that you too, yes even wonderful you, are human and imperfect and can be -gasp- wrong, and that in their case, you were.
- You don’t have to announce it, you just have to live as though you’ve realized it. It develops character.
🐦 I do a lot of other writing. A recent offering: the CrowNickels (chronicles), a trilogy about crows who want to save birdkind fromextinction: Hunters of the Feather, Scavengers of Mind and Familiars of the Flock(They’re really good! They’re really cheap! Buy and review or rate positively!And Hunters is also available on Audible!) Other stories,based on Jane Austen novels — such as TheMeryton Murders — and others based on history and Greek mythology,such as Jocasta:The Mother-Wife of Oedipus, can be found here. Alltitles are available through Kindle Unlimited, but I only get paid if you turnthe pages.