It's the morning after the election. I went to bed last night heavy at heart and woke up feeling the same way.
A friend of mine once told me that my method of choice when I've been dealt a blow is to gather information. And that's exactly what I did. The rest of this newsletter tells you what I found.
I subscribe to two online news sources that purport to offer viewpoints from both sides of the political spectrum.
The first is SAN, Straight Arrow News. Their slogan is "Unbiased. Straight facts." They offer perspectives from the left and from the right. I recommend it. This early after the election, they didn't have much analysis, so I went to my other source.
Tangle is a newsletter that claims to be a "non-partisan politics newsletter that gives you a 360-degree view on the news." Here is what they promise (and deliver): "What the left is saying. What the right is saying. Tangle's take on the story."
Note neither of these claim to provide an “objective” or nonbiased perspective. Rather, they offer competing perspectives, so we can understand the terrain and make our own decisions.
I stay away from any opinion claiming to be objective. Rather, I look for sources that will provide a variety of perspectives, recognizing that each has their own sources of bias as well as insight.
Reading this morning's edition of Tangle actually made me feel better. It reminded me the importance of understanding multiple perspectives, not just our own.
In the introduction, Tangle declared this:
"Trump appears likely to surpass his performance in the 2016 election, when he won 306 Electoral College votes but lost the popular vote by roughly 2%. He is also on track to flip every swing state President Joe Biden won in 2020." |
Seriously? Have I/we been so far off of the national sentiment? What did we/I miss in our glorious anticipation of a Harris victory?
Then Tangle offered their take on what the left and right are saying about the election. Here are excerpts:
For one of the Left’s perspective, they quoted Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine:
"The American public has not embraced Trump. The decisive bloc of voters always evinced deep misgivings about Trump's character and rhetoric, even if they didn't fully recall all his crimes and offenses (who could?). Trump didn't win by making people love or even accept him. He won because the electorate rejected the Biden-Harris administration." “The Democrats’ only chance of winning, in retrospect, was to pick a nominee who could credibly run as a complete outsider untainted by either the 2020 primary left-a-thon or the Biden administration’s record on inflation and immigration,” Chait wrote. “Why is it important to understand all this? Because their defeat is fundamentally rooted in concrete events and decisions, many of which lay in their control. There is no mystical bond between the public and Trump they cannot sever. The Democrats allowed themselves to be prodded, and sometimes bullied, into either fooling themselves about the true nature of public opinion or fooling themselves into thinking public opinion didn’t matter.” |
Ouch! “True nature of public opinion”? I thought I knew what that was. What did I miss?
This theme repeated in what they said the Right was saying. They quoted Robby Soave in Reason:
"Biden was not merely unpopular because he was too old to serve as president. He was unpopular because the American voters dislike his policies. On the issues that mattered most to voters—the economy, inflation, and immigration—majorities of voters solidly preferred Trump over Biden." "Harris never ran from Biden's record or pretended that she represented some actual sea change in policy. Her pitch was: Biden's second term, overseen by a younger and more capable person. This pitch did not merely come up short—it vastly underperformed expectations. That's because voters wanted to part ways with both Biden and his inflationary policies." |
Here is mention of inflation again. Here he is including immigration. The news I heard (and paid attention to) was about jobs growth, and GNP growth, and slowing inflation. I thought concerns about immigration were overblown. Didn’t the Statue of Liberty declare we were a refuge for people yearning to be free? What did I miss?
After giving the perspectives of the left and right, Tangle gives their own perspective:
"The Democratic Party has no scapegoat this time around — no Comey letter, no Russian disinformation plot, no Jill Stein, and probably not even the Electoral College (Trump looks like he'll win the popular vote, too). They lost by wider margins than people expected in every single battleground state and won with less room to spare in blue ones. They are going to have to reckon with that between now and the next election cycle — and the party will have to have some very real and very tough conversations." |
In other words, we either learn or face repeated failures. I get that. What did I miss and should now learn?
"One reason Trump may have won in such dominant fashion is that — on issues like abortion or working-class appeal that Republicans do worse on — he is the most liberal. I do not think Trump is a "pro-life" president, I don't even think he is particularly conservative. "That is what is so interesting about what he has done to the Republican Party: He's an ultra-rich former Democrat from New York City, a moderate on abortion, a hardliner on immigration, and an anti-globalism populist. If you were to chart all of Trump's genuine views on a Venn diagram with traditional Republican and Democratic views, I think he'd overlap nearly as much with Democrats as with Republicans. "So, Democrats are now forced to rebuild, but are they going to pick some Trumpist positions to build from? Will Republicans leave some behind? It is an odd dynamic." |
Are you gagging? Or are you seriously considering – as I am – the possibility that we can learn from this and move forward-- on shaky legs, and with queasy stomachs, yet with more open minds, we may still move forward?
It helps to know all sides, including those we don't like.
My husband and I went to the Essence Festival in July where I participated in the Authors' Forum. Our Uber driver was a Black guy from the Islands who talked with us for the whole ride about his frustration with the Biden-Harris administration. The rising price of groceries was eating up his meager profits as a small business owner. As he saw it, they were letting hordes of immigrants in who competed with him and other ride-share drivers for jobs. He emphasized that most of the Uber drivers he knew had the same complaints.
He didn't think that Biden or Harris were for "the little guy". In his view, Trump was the better bet. He kept saying, "This is what *I* think," indirectly acknowledging that neither my husband nor I agreed or refuted what he was saying. In his worldview, Trump understood what they were going through and would take care of it.
What had I been missing so that I was caught unawares by Harris's loss? I had missed what the Uber driver had been trying to tell us. It's that straightforward.
But wait – I can hear you ask. Isn't race and gender at the heart of the loss? Didn't she lose because she is a Black woman?
Well, yes, of course. That was part of it. We know especially that gender played a role. Throughout my life, race and gender have been at the heart of blockages and unfair impediments. Yet I've seen too many people overcome those barriers to lay it all on that single explanation.
My father was chased out of Mississippi by a Klan mob, yet he still managed to learn how to succeed in the segregated South.
The threat the Uber driver was experiencing went beyond race and gender. He was fearful of not being able to provide for his family. Probably gender and maybe even race just added fuel to the fire, but most importantly, they were not the fire.
The Uber driver tried to tell us, but what I focused on was his misogyny and anti-immigrant sentiment. It's difficult to acknowledge, but I didn't really pay attention to his pain.
What I have learned from the last 24 hours of dashed hopes is what I already knew: How vital it is to overcome our own narratives and to Seek to Understand Others' Perspectives.
