The New York Times brings us this article from Nicholas Kristof who makes the argument that the attitude and tone of the left, to say nothing of their current tactics, is working only to alienate the independent and middle of the road voters who voted for Trump. The left’s tendency to automatically demonize their opponents is indeed paying dividends, for Republicans, by convincing many people they were correct to cast their vote for Donald Trump.
This sounds to me like damage control on the part of the NYT. Certainly, there are some Democrats who are at least somewhat observant who have realized that the current leftist scorched-earth strategy is only going to alienate voters across the country who voted for Trump because they see real problems in their lives that need solutions. However, the left is not motivated by logic and reason but rather by rage and hatred.
Emotional and vengeful leftists cannot be reasoned with and will not listen to any suggestions from media that they need to cool down. We must expect the current leftist war on regular Americans to continue at least until the next mid-term election in which the left is likely to be crushed by the voters that they are attacking. Only then will they likely pull back and re-evaluate their tactics. Note that they will never question their goals, only how they expect to get to them. Their tactics will change but they will still be the enemy of us all. They will likely look for less annoying means to trick Americans into accepting their anti-American agenda.
A few days ago, I blithely tweeted a warning that Democrats often sound patronizing when speaking of Trump voters. That provoked a vehement reaction.
“Sorry,” Jason tweeted back, “but if someone is supporting a racist ignoramus who wants to round up brown ppl and steal my money, I’m gonna patronize.”
“This is normalization of a hateful ideology and it’s shameful,” protested another.
“My tone isn’t patronizing,” one person responded. “It’s hostile. Intentionally. I won’t coddle those who refuse to recognize my humanity.”
“What a great idea!” another offered. “Let’s recruit a whole bunch of bigoted unthinking lizard brains because we could possibly ‘WIN!’”
And so the comments went, registering legitimate anxieties about President Trump — but also the troubling condescension that worried me in the first place. I fear that the (richly deserved) animus toward Trump is spilling over onto all his supporters.
And by the way, if you want to see how correct my assessment is, just take a look at the comments on the New York Times site for this article. What you will see is plenty of hatred and bile for regular Americans in flyover country for the crime of voting against the leftist agenda.
