ONE REASON WHY TRUMP WON

I’ve heard a number of explanations for why Donald Trump won the presidential election—racism, sexism, bigotry, isolationism, [insert derogatory description of your choice here]. There’s an old saying that goes something like this “Never attribute to malice that which can as readily be explained by [other reasons].” The original saying had the word “stupidity” in the brackets, but I think that there are other explanations which serve better than stupidity for why Trump got elected. Here’s one of those explanations:

I had a conversation today with a blue-collar worker, a man from the demographic that purportedly helped propel Trump into the White House. I didn’t ask him how he voted, but I did mention the election. He said he didn’t follow the election news much, but he was looking forward to one thing in the Trump presidency—the repeal of Obamacare. He told me that he had a wife and three children, and that the cheapest insurance he could get under Obamacare consumed half of his weekly paycheck. After payroll deduction of the insurance premium, he took home around $250.00 per week. The copay for a doctor’s visit was $125.00, and there were some catastrophic illnesses that the insurance didn’t cover. One of his children had such an illness. Once every six months the child had to see a specialist, and the specialist didn’t come cheap. He said that he tried to get that child on Medicaid, but the child didn’t qualify because he made $5.00 a paycheck too much. He had been dreading the expected 25% jump in the cost of insurance premiums next year.* Under Trump, he now hopes that (1) the uninsured penalty will be abolished, and (2) whatever replaces Obamacare will allow for some competition among insurers and drive premiums down rather than up.

Take my acquaintance’s situation and multiply it by several million. Trump said he was going to get rid of Obamacare; Clinton promised more of the same on Obamacare. Who are these millions of people struggling with huge Obamacare insurance premiums going to vote for? Will they say “Well, Trump’s a sinner, so I’m going to vote for Saint Hillary and continue to pay exorbitant prices for near-worthless insurance”? Or will they say “Trump’s not a nice man, but I’m voting for him because he says he’s going to take this half-ton weight off my shoulders”?

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AMERICA'S FAVORITE PASTIME: LAMBASTING PRESIDENTS

Lyndon Johnson was looking forward to running for a second term when an ABJ (Anybody but Johnson) movement began. Public opposition to him and his policies hounded him to the point that he decided not to run for that second term. Richard Nixon was driven from office by the Watergate scandal. His successor, Gerald Ford, was ridiculed as an incompetent klutz who had “played too much football without a helmet.” Ford was defeated in the next election. Jimmy Carter was roasted as an incompetent and lost his bid for reelection. Ronald Reagan was reviled as a nincompoop, and his second term was mired in the Iran-Contra scandal. George H.W. Bush was so roundly criticized that he lost his bid for reelection. Bill Clinton’s second term was mired in the Lewinsky scandal. George W. Bush is still being blamed for perceived problems in our society.

America’s favorite sport is not football, it’s lambasting presidents. Critics of our presidents have attacked them for many and varied reasons. Sometimes those reasons have been laudable, sometimes not. I have to believe, however, that the vast majority of those criticisms leveled at our presidents were motivated by a sincere desire to advance the best interests of the United States.

We again have a president who is under fire, and it appears that his second term might be mired in a controversy over Benghazi. I have heard a number of persons spring to his defense, not by defending his policies and actions, but by accusing his critics of racism. He’s being criticized just as his predecessors have been criticized, and his critics are guilty of racism? I think not.

Besides, when we are evaluating criticisms of our public officials, the question should not be whether his critics are racists, it should be whether their criticisms are valid. What if a racist shouts, “The building is on fire! Head for the fire escapes!” Would you say “Pay no mind to him, he’s a racist,” and stay in the building?

Now, if the critic were to, say, manufacture a bogus student ID as “evidence” that the president was not a citizen of the United States, you might have reason to suspect that the manufacturer of the fake ID was a racist (and not very smart because the job was so poorly executed. See http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/barackobama/ss/Obama-Student-Id.htm). But you would reject the evidence of the ID because it was forged, not because it was being proffered by a suspected racist.

If there’s one thing I learned from 32 years as a trial lawyer, it’s the fact that valid evidence can be proffered by despicable people. When you reject a criticism out of hand by characterizing the person who voices it as a racist, you are not engaging in critical thinking. In that situation I’d say that one of two things is going on.  Either (1) you are not doing much thinking at all, or (2) You are hoping that your listeners are so gullible that you will be able to get them to reject the criticism without doing much thinking at all. I think the proper term is demagoguery.

We’ve come to a sorry state in this nation when the best we can do for civic discourse is to shout down a proposition, not by examining its validity, but by demonizing its proponent.