Welcome to the inaugural episode of Breach the Bubble, a semi-regular column in which I’m going to have an actual conversation with a Trump voter in an effort to convince him to vote for the Democratic candidate in 2020… or at least not vote for Donald Trump.
After putting out a call for Trump voters on Twitter and sorting through many applicants for this position (five), I selected Tim M., a working-class guy in a rural area who was, until 2016, a self-identified “life-long Democrat.” That changed in 2016 when Tim cast a ballot for the Republican nominee. Despite that massive error in judgment (sorry Tim), Tim says he may be open to voting for the Democratic candidate in 2020, and over the next 384 days, I’m going to try to convince him to do just that. Stay tuned.
So you used to be a Democrat?
Yes. I voted for Dukakis, Clinton, Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Obama, Obama. And then Donald Trump.
That’s quite a leap. What happened?
Hillary Rodham Clinton. I just feel like Hillary represented everything wrong with politics. After the “deplorable” moment there was no going back. There are a lot of people who are struggling in this country who were voting for change or thinking of voting for change and to say that 30 million of them are irredeemably deplorable, it’s hard to get somebody to vote for you if you feel like they despise you.
Yeah. As soon as she said that, I thought, “Shit. This is it. She’s going to lose.” The Democrats already have a reputation for being elitist and she just played right into that. But from a policy perspective, what appealed to you about Donald Trump?
Not much. At that point, it was very much a protest vote. I was a Bernie person in the primary. I was actually pretty pumped for Bernie, and I just decided I could not vote for her. There was one point she named negotiating the TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] as one of her top five accomplishments, and at the same time, during a debate, she said she was against the TPP.
Did you have a problem pulling the trigger for Donald Trump?
I thought he’d be a bad President. I thought he’d be divisive. My biggest concern was that he would get us into wars.
Would you have voted for him if you’d known he would actually win?
Oh, yeah. Absolutely.
Ok, so even though he didn’t have any policy positions that you actually liked and you thought he was going to be a bad President, it was still worth it for you to vote for him?
I don’t know this for sure but I have a very deep suspicion that we would be in a war right away with North Korea or Iran or Turkey or Syria or all of the above if Hillary had won.
But you just said a second ago that you were afraid Trump was going to drive us to war.
Yeah. But now it’s three and a half years later and we’re not in a war so that worry has gone away. That was a large issue to me and I feel right now that I picked correctly.
Well, we are at war. We’re in Afghanistan and Iraq and have troops all over. We’re in a perpetual state of war.
Yes, you’re right. But it hasn’t expanded under Trump.
What do you think about his performance so far?
We’re incredibly divided. I think he says a lot of really, really stupid stuff but I don’t think he does as many stupid things. The economy is pretty good right now.
What did you think of the Democratic debate last night?
It doesn’t feel like the party I used to be a part of. I watched a YouTube video of an old debate from 2008 or 2004 and the whole tone was very, very different than it is now. Now, it seems like it’s about who can propose the most free stuff. Like Warren: Last night it was free healthcare for everybody, free college for everybody, student debt forgiveness, we’re going to have free daycare, and then when it comes down to how we are going to pay for it, it’s, “Oh, we’re going to tax the billionaires.”
What’s wrong with that?
I don’t think we’ll be able to do it.
Why not?
Because they will move their money overseas.
Part of Warren’s proposal is that she’ll have a tax on billionaires and companies that move overseas so you’ll pay a penalty if you move your money or your company to avoid taxes. I have no idea if this would work but she does have an enforcement mechanism written into her plan.
I think my biggest issue with Warren is that I don’t think she’s nearly as liberal as she is projecting right now. I think she’s actually pretty moderate and I think she would govern pretty moderately. I can’t really get a fix on her. I think Joe is too old. Bernie is too old. Mayor Pete, there is just something about him that I don’t like.
Let’s go back to Warren for a second. I agree with you that she’s probably more moderate than she’s acting like she is in this race because she has to appeal to the media and the farther left side of the party to win the primary. It might come back to haunt her in the general, but for you, is the problem that she’s too moderate or too liberal?
Actually, I don’t think I’d have a problem with her as President. She’s not my number one choice but I don’t think she would be bad or incredibly divisive. The reality is, the President can’t do that much. He can do maybe one or two major legislative things and some executive orders and foreign policy but the country moves pretty slowly. But that comment she made about religious people at the LGTBQ town hall, I’m not a religious person, but I don’t know why you would take shots at people like that.
I agree with that. She basically made fun of people who don’t support same-sex marriage. It played well in the room but was super condescending and really echoed Clinton’s deplorable moment. She’s already got a reputation for being elitist and then she says this thing, totally pandering to the room. I almost feel bad for her. You have to play to the room, but that room isn’t the Electoral College. It’s such a catch 22.
I watched parts of that town hall and I watched parts of the climate change town hall and where were the moderate Democrats in there? There are a lot of moderate Democrats who think climate change is an existential problem but who are are kind of scratching their heads over things like the Green New Deal. There doesn’t seem to be any debate about that. It’s just like they are pandering to the extreme part of the party and assuming everyone will go along with them. The thing is, Trump is such a lunatic that nobody is going to remember any of this.
Ok so you say he’s a lunatic but you’re still willing to cast a ballot for him.
Yeah, and a big part of that is a protest. But now it’s a different kind of protest. The day after I voted, people began trying to overturn the election. People in Congress and the State Department and the intelligence community and the media have been working to overturn my vote.
I mean, he did lose the popular vote. I know that’s how our system works but it’s not hard to understand why people were pissed about the outcome of the election. It doesn’t feel like democracy. And he is a unique threat.
I get that. The way the Electoral College is set up, you have to win these swing states. Hillary didn’t even visit Wisconsin. She showed that she kind of despised the people in rural and working-class Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania. Not only did she not seem to care about them, she didn’t like them.
Sure, but Trump isn’t a man of the people. He’s a billionaire and his policies have actually hurt working-class people. His trade war is hurting farmers and industries and consumers who don’t have a lot of money to spare. Maybe she’s a snob, but he’s enacting policies that really hurt people.
It’s the same thing as the last 30 years. I don’t think Trump has made things significantly worse or better.
What about his immigration stuff? That, to me, is maybe the most egregious thing he’s done. Not that Obama was great on immigration either, but separating families at the border is such an act of unnecessary cruelty.
It’s a very complex problem and I think a lot of the narrative has been driven by how much people hate Trump. The kids in cages thing that set off that whole scandal, they were Obama era pictures that went wild on social media. Should families be separated at the border? No, that’s absolutely against everything that America stands for. But it’s a complicated problem. Immigration does make the country on the whole wealthy but the benefits basically go to like the rich and then it makes it harder for working-class people.
Right. Cheap labor suppresses wages. But I don’t care if somebody is born in the U.S. or Mexico or Guatemala. As human beings, we should have an intrinsic right to seek safety, and so if there are no jobs where you live, if there’s no food, if your town is being overrun by gangs, I know it’s complicated but these are just human beings trying to survive.
I think that’s maybe the crux of the problem. On a moral basis, yeah, I buy that argument, but the American government should put Americans first. There are billions of people living in abject poverty all over the world. At some point, we should be able to say, “This is how much immigration we are going to allow.” Have some kind of agreement and then enforce it.
Ok, so as a voter, what are your top issues?
The number one thing is the idea that my ballot in 2016 wasn’t valid.
So how do you feel about impeachment?
I think you can make a case for it but he’s not going to get kicked out by the Senate. I don’t understand why you would kick somebody out of office nine months before an election unless there was something incredibly egregious, and I don’t think looking into why Hunter Biden got 50 grand a month for a parttime job is egregious.
Except he wouldn’t be looking into Hunter Biden if Joe Biden wasn’t running against him.
That’s your assumption.
It is my assumption but I find it highly unlikely that Trump is a man who cares about corruption at all and that he would give a shit about Hunter Biden if his dad wasn’t running for President.
I find it highly unlikely that a Ukranian oligarch thought that Hunter Biden was a phenomenally qualified person for this job. He was absolutely paid because he was the Vice President’s son. This is something that really bothers me: There is this feeling that I get from the media that what happened with Hunter Biden is completely kosher because the bribery was laundered through a legal contract.
But you don’t have any evidence that this was bribery or that Hunter Biden has any impact on the Obama administration’s foreign policy.
Yes, and I don’t have any evidence that Trump was doing anything other than looking out for corruption.
What about the other allegations against Trump, for instance, the allegations of sexual assault? Does that make you pause at all?
He’s a bad guy. He’s a really, really despicable human being.
That’s why I have a hard time understanding why anyone would vote for him.
That’s how I felt about Hillary.
So you think she’s worse than Trump?
I think she would have been a worse President. I think she would have been as divisive but a worse President. I think she would have made a big mistake in foreign policy that would have killed people.
But he has, too. I mean, right now in Syria, he’s abandoned our allies for who knows what reason.
It could be a lot worse.
Maybe. I think he has underperformed, which I’m glad about because he hasn’t gotten that much done aside from his tax cuts and his executive orders and judgeships. It could be more chaotic.
I would absolutely vote for Yang over Trump.
What’s the appeal with Yang?
I don’t think he hates half the country. I think he wants to help the country as a whole. UBI is kind of interesting. You heard it last night at the debate. Everyone was talking about free stuff for the middle class but no one is talking about the waitress, the call center person, the guy who fixes cars or works at Walgreens.
They did talk about it. Like Warren’s plan for universal childcare. Childcare is a massive expense and it does impact the working class. I somewhat agree with you on the college stuff. I think too many people go to college and I don’t think the upper-middle class are really the people we need to be focused on, but childcare impacts the poor more than the wealthy.
Yes. And I think UBI would help that. If Bernie drops out, I read that his supporters are three times more likely to vote for Yang than Warren. If Yang jumped up to like 12 percent, that could change things. But I think he’s really running for 2024.
If the Dems wanted to win you back, what would it take?
For the past few years, it feels like a loud minority of Democrats are trying to make people like me seem like the enemy. I didn’t graduate from college, I don’t have a lot of money, and I am a Trump voter. I am the face of everything that is wrong in this country. There is so much nastiness out there. I know in my head that this is a very, very small group of people but they feel completely emboldened to say whatever they want about people like me, and it makes it hard for me to support them.
I see the kind of rhetoric you’re talking about, but at the same time, that’s not what voting should be about. Voting should be about policy issues like healthcare and foreign policy and climate change. These cultural issues aren’t decided by how we vote for President, and voting for Donald Trump isn’t going to change the fact that a lot of people think Trump voters are trash.
The best case you could make to me is that voting for Donald Trump will make that stuff worse.
It will! The division has gotten worse since Trump came into office and I think a lot of the hate directed at people like you is a reaction to Trump.
It’s very weird to me that the people who are attacked are not necessarily the models of success in society. It’s the guy in Ohio who got laid off from work and lost his house and his pension and he wanted change so he voted for Trump, and that is somehow unforgivable. If you want to convince me to not vote for Trump, focusing on the divisiveness is by far your best chance, and if Warren can get to election day without having a deplorable moment, there’s a pretty good chance that I would vote for her. I don’t agree with all the things she says she’s for, but for the sake of the country, I would vote for her. But if it turns into an us-versus-them race, that would be the path that would get me to stay with Trump. I get that it’s not rational and that it’s not policy-based, but I won’t vote for someone who I think despises me.
