TRUMP

280 ANATOMY OF A MONSTROSITY
to their nastiest, most inhuman and un-neighborly instincts. But he
inspires the nonetheless. We have to have an agenda that gets people
excited. It can’t be like trying to make people eat their vegetables.
“You’ll vote for me and you’ll like it, because you have no alternative”
is not an effective way to get votes.
Progressives need to understand how people who are different from
them think. No more writing them off as racist and deplorable. Even
if they are, what good does that do? You need to understand racists
not so you can sympathize with them, but so you can figure out what
shapes people’s beliefs, and help them reach different beliefs. People
on the left must reach out to people on the right. They must make
their case. They must go into red states. They must take counter-arguments
seriously and respond to them. It is not sufficient to have
John Oliver eviscerate Trump on television and call him Drumpf. It
is not sufficient to have Lena Dunham dance around in a pantsuit. 761
It is not sufficient to line up a bunch of Hollywood celebrities to tell
people how to vote. When someone asks “What kind of world does
the left want to build?”, we need to have a vision. When someone asks
“Why should I vote for you?” the answer cannot be “Because I am not
Trump.” After all, people like Trump.
The Clinton campaign was a disaster. Let’s never do anything like it
again. Let’s never again have a campaign in which people were constantly
having to defend the indefensible. Let’s never again run on
“experience” rather than values. Let’s never again treat everything as
fine when it clearly isn’t.
Let’s also never again underestimate Donald Trump. The man is
wily. He may have never read a book in his adult life. But he knows
how to win an election. Calling him stupid, or treating him as stupid,
misses the point. For a “stupid” man, he sure showed the elites.
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