Something like 40% of eligible voters in the U.S. choose to not bother to vote for one reason or another in a typical presidential election year. In 2020, for example, 79 million eligible voters didn’t vote. Some may have been in the hospital. Others hated the two candidates. Some were too drunk to get out of bed. I heard about one old guy, a crazy MAGAt in Bethpage on Long Island, who planned to vote but his adult children locked him in a closet until the polling station had closed. Fortunately, the turnout rate is lowest among the least educated voters in the most MAGAty states. In 2020 that was Oklahoma and West Virginia, states filled with angry, confused voters motivated by fears and vengeance, while the highest turnout was in states where voters are motivated by civic-mindedness like Minnesota, Colorado, Maine and Washington. Look at the difference in Trump’s share of the vote in these 6 states:
West Virginia- 68.62%
Oklahoma- 65.37%
Minnesota- 45.28%
Maine 44.02%
Colorado- 41.9%
Washington- 38.77%
Hatred and anger might be good motivators in the short run but not in the long run. Trump’s voters are tired of voting. It’s played out for them and that’s why Trump was whining to them on Friday that if they just vote for him in November, they’ll never have to do it again. Just vote for me one more time and then you can go commit suicide for all I care. Actually, this is what he said:
“Christians, get out and vote! Just this time— you won’t have to do it any more. Four more years. You know what? It’ll be fixed! It’ll be fine. You won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians. I’m not Christian. I love you. Get out— you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not gonna have to vote.”
Listen and see if you catch any nuances or hidden meanings:
The easiest way to interpret that— as with most things Trump says off the cuff— is that he’s senile and it’s just part of the verbal diarrhea he’s always spewing. That’s a lazy interpretation and possibly a dangerous one. Another way to look at it was that he was appealing to Christian nationalists’ desire to see a dictatorship supplant democracy. Brian Klaas wrote that “Trump’s remarks represent an extraordinary departure from democratic norms in the United States— rarely if ever has a major party’s presidential candidate directly stated his aim to make elections meaningless, a notorious hallmark of autocracy… A second and slightly more charitable interpretation of his remarks is that Trump believes his presidency will entrench so many pro-Christian policies into the United States government that no future election could realistically undo his transformation of the country. Both interpretations lead to the same conclusion: that Trump is telegraphing his authoritarian intentions in plain sight, hoping to sever the link between voters and government policy.
More dystopian still, Trump’s acolytes are co-opting the language of autocracy and are using it to describe fully democratic processes while ignoring or excusing Trump’s authoritarian ambitions. Republicans have begun talking about the “coup” against President Joe Biden, even though his decision to not seek reelection according to the formal rules of his own political party is a typical— and relatively common— way that unpopular incumbents behave in democratic states. Meanwhile, many Republicans insist that the insurrection on January 6 was a “normal tourist visit” and balk at the notion that a president launching a coordinated conspiracy, pressuring election officials to find additional votes, and inciting a violent mob to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power are textbook attempts at a so-called auto-coup.
This funhouse-mirror inversion risks creating the false impression that both sides are a threat to American democracy. In fact, Trump is a unique threat to the core institutions that constrain power in the United States and make self-governance possible. We must not make the mistake of, yet again, giving Trump an undeserved benefit of the doubt. He has told Americans who he is and what he intends to do. All that voters need to do is believe him— and care enough to vote for democracy. After all, Trump said it himself: If you don’t, you may never need to again.
I guess this— the dirty little secret— would take care of it all for MAGA. Reminder, whether Kamala wins or not, we really have to help flip Congress by replacing as many conservatives with progressives as we can. You can help that process along here. You won't regret it.
Hey, YOU wrote it. All I did was 'splain what it meant. If you can't stand to have truth spelled out letter-by-letter, don't write the summation.