It’s the morning after the 2020 election. Trump has prematurely declared victory as we wait for absentee ballots to be counted in WI, MI, and PA. (Other states as well, but these three will decide the election). The ultimate outcome of the election probably won’t be known for days, and I along with millions of others are merely hoping to get through it without legal battles, civil unrest, or worst-case-scenario the toppling of our democracy writ large.

No matter the outcome though, I’ll be left with a deep sadness for the country. From my perspective this should have been a blowout; 90% to 10% for Biden. WHY is it a nail-biter? Why is Trump actually ahead in MI and PA, and we’re merely hoping the outstanding ballots tip the scales to a Biden win? I’m not sure if this post will be coherent or organized or even ever public. But I just need to write down a few things.

First, and most importantly, I’ve tried to understand the other side. I served under a Republican president; I have no problem with people holding conservative views. But how do you get to a place where you think Trump is… good? In any sense of that word? He’s an idiot, uneducated in political matters and disdainful of ever learning. He’s heartless, mean, vindictive, I could go on. He’s the worst of us, all our worst qualities personified. What on earth is your perspective to see this man as deserving of your attention, let alone your vote?? The best I can do is to cobble together a few sad things that are my best guess for understanding the makeup of a Trump supporter.

• Selfishness: You don’t care about helping disadvantaged groups and are operating solely on what the president promises to do to your taxes, wages, etc.
• Fear: You believe the rhetoric put forth by the right of the “socialist” left, that Biden will take your guns, ruin your suburbs with low-income housing, flood the US with illegal violent immigrants, and murder all unborn babies. That’s it, that’s all I can come up with. Selfishness and fear, and throughout all a susceptibility to propaganda. And this is what makes me sad. I thought a larger portion of the country lived with compassion and hope.

Second, I don’t understand why this is close. As to my previous thought… are there really so many people who believe a heartless liar is a better leader than Biden? Part of me worries yes, part of me thinks maybe not but that instead they believe Trump is a bad choice, but are incapable of voting outside their party. This is the same reason McConnel and the other republicans pushed through the ACB SCOTUS seat even though they blocked Merrick Garland in 2016. Retain power at all cost. If you have the opportunity to push your agenda, you have to capitalize no matter what. Morals and norms be damned. To say “We blocked them in 2016 because it was an election year so it’d be wrong for us to push through a nomination now” would be to cede ground, to lose, and this must be avoided at all cost.

The fact that it’s close reminds me of something I heard a long time ago. I heard it in the context of trying to understand why you often see competing gas stations or coffee shops across the street from one another instead of spread apart. It may make sense to think if they’re spread out they wouldn’t be competing for the same clientele. But here’s the analogy; imagine a long beach full of people. A guy shows up with an ice cream cart- where does he set up? In the middle; this minimizes the distance anyone has to walk to reach him. Now a second ice cream guy shows up. The optimal situation for the beachgoers is to have a cart at 1/4 and 3/4 of the way along the beach. That way noone has to walk more than a quarter of the length of the beach to reach ice cream. But from the purveyor’s point of view they want to maximize their patronage and don’t care how far you have to walk. If one cart starts moving towards the middle he retains the patronage of everyone on the isolated side of the beach, but eats into the patronage in the middle. The logical conclusion to this is that both carts end up exactly in the middle of the beach. Politically speaking this explains why having a two party system pushes the parties towards the middle. However, we are clearly in a time where we are deeply divided politically. The left is pushing for human rights, socialized medicine, police reform, and the right is giving tax cuts to the super wealthy, deporting immigrants, and centralizing power. So why in these times are things still split so evenly?