The Deplorables
It's always the same.
Fuck your socialist commie bastard!
You'll never take my guns!
Every life is sacred!
Were true Americans here!
Sleepy Joe is a creep!
Biden wants to end airplanes!
Aint no Democrat voters in this house!
Joe Biden is a pedaphile!
Loose this number asshole!
MAGA bitches!!!1
Trump 2020!!
Over the course of 3 weeks, I've had the pleasure of receiving countless messages like this from Donald Trump supporters in Texas. As part of the campaign work, a team of hundreds of volunteers, some in-state and some out-of-state, are going through the state's voter rolls and are text messaging each and every registered voter to ID them ahead of the November election. Since this is all voters rather than targeted ones, we get to interact with Democrats, independents, Green Party voters, Kanye supporters, and, as you can see, a number of affable Republicans.
What I'm seeing is nothing new. These people are unreachable in every way. They've gone too far down the rabbit hole of Trumpism. They live in a bubble that in no way reflects our current reality. In their Fox News-inspired world, Donald J. Trump is flawless and Joe Biden is the antichrist. In their world, the country is flourishing. In their world, the real threat is Democrats trying to overtake their current way of life. These Democrats will bring forth socialism and/or communism by defunding the police, taking their guns, aborting their children, and banning air travel, thereby leading the country to become a hellhole even worse than Venezuela. The only thing preventing this from happening is 4 more years of stellar leadership from President Donald John Trump.
It's easy for us outside this bubble to mock the kind of thinking that these people exhibit. But the truth is there are 63 million registered voters who think this way to varying degrees. Sure, they might not all believe that George Soros is using Joe Biden to put us all in reconfigured FEMA camps but there are more than enough to believe that wearing masks during a pandemic is a gross example of government overreach. They might not all believe in Pizzagate but more than enough believe that the next Democratic president will institute a nationwide gun grab. And they might not all believe that Barack Obama is secretly coordinating a military takeover but more than enough believe that Black Lives Matter and Antifa are a serious threat to our national security.
This is where we're at in 2020. Joe Biden saying this is a battle for the soul of our nation is not hyperbole. These people are out there and they will vote. Their version of America is a dark and sinister one of constant threats. But their enemy isn't Vladimir Putin or Kim Jong-un. Instead, their enemy is the immigrant speaking a language other than English at the local Walmart. Their enemy is the high school history teacher discussing slavery as the main cause of the Civil War. Their enemy is the local mosque and its members during Friday service. Their enemy is the teenage girl making the heartbreaking and life-altering decision to abort her child. Their enemy is the successful person of color, making it to the top despite countless systemic barriers designed for them to fail. And their enemy is the Democratic Party, the multiracial and multiethnic party that actually acknowledges the changing demographics of 21st century America.
The good news is there are more of us than there are of them. That is why Trump can never top 40% approval no matter the poll. But we cannot merely eke out a victory in 2020. We need to absolutely destroy these people at the polls, at all levels of government. Democrats need to end up with 250 congressional seats, 53 Senate seats, and an electoral college victory of 350+ electoral votes. Even then, Republicans will still remain in their bubbles. But those bubbles will be further and further detached from reality. QAnon will become a safe space. OANN will replace Fox News. But now, instead of telling us Democrats to eat shit and waving their AR-15 around in public, these couch warriors will retreat back into their trailer parks and dilapidated homes, crying themselves to sleep and dreaming of a world where they can once again tell a campaign volunteer to go fuck himself without having to deal with the consequences.
I, for one, cannot wait for that day to occur on January 20th, 2021.