I objected to the “dimwitted coal miners with hearts of gold” narrative in 2016 and I still object to it now. Yes, Trump threw out a line about coal jobs. He was also a transparent liar, and it was just as obvious before he was elected as it is today. His campaign was entirely centered on hatred and racism. That was his platform, and that was why those, yes, MORONS voted for him. Not because Democrats weren’t being nice enough, but because they wanted to hurt brown people and they didn’t care about any other consequences of electing an incompetent reality TV star into the highest office in the land.
Edited to add:
Deciding that such a large number of people are too stupid, or racist or whatever to deal with is not a great strategy.
What do you do when that’s the reality, though? When Trump was elected, a lot of Democrats (and Republicans, for that matter) were shocked, and ironically because they’re so nice, immediately started blaming themselves for being too “elite” and not doing enough to win over these people. But the past four years have shown over and over and over and over that Trump’s supporters are fueled by racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia, conspiracy theories, violence and white privilege. Some of them are literally Nazis and KKK members, and many are living in a completely bonkers alternate reality where equality is oppression, 5G networks transmit disease, vaccines contain magic microchips, Democrats meet in phantom basements to drink the blood of babies, and wearing masks accelerates pandemics instead of suppressing them. The past half decade has been spent trying to reason with these people, confronting them with evidence, appealing to their decency, attempting to win them over by showing them how they’re working against their own interests, etc. etc. Do you think we’re just a few magic words away from winning over people whose own families have been forced to cut off contact with them because of their odious views? Does it seem like playing nice with them and treating them as merely misguided has BEEN a great strategy so far?
