I used to really enjoy being a Democrat. I used to really believe the party when they positioned themselves as the party of compassion, of sagacity, and of defending the rights of those who are often ignored in society. But, in November of 2024, I found myself totally disgusted with the party I grew up in, as did many other Democrats, some of whom stayed home, and many of whom voted for Donald Trump as I did.
When I try to explain my reasoning for voting for Mr. Trump, I tend to get shouted down the
allegedly compassionate Democrats who know me. It does not much endear me to the Democratic Party to be shouted down for not agreeing with them, and instead of actually conversing with me, they shout a series of talking points at me, usually at such a clip that I can’t address one before they’re on to the next, and the next. I call these “Frequently Yelled Statements”. Since that’s the level of compassion and maturity I seem to find within the party, (at least when it comes to this issue) I’ve decided to address the Frequently Yelled Statements of Democrats, mostly 'cause I can't get a word in edgewise in a real conversation with them.
Donald Trump is a Rapist!
The Democratic party needs to pick a lane when it comes to the sexual assault of women. The party seems to be OK with Bill Clinton doing it, and it was OK for Ted Kennedy to do it, and Dems can even get nostalgic for JFK doing it with Marilyn Monroe. None of these prominent Democrat politicians ever faced censure for their behavior from within the party for their sexual adventures in office. Not even retroactively or posthumously. But when Trump allegedly commits acts of sexual violence against women, Dems decry the behavior as evil and terrible, and most importantly, disqualifying for office. I wish the party could see how insulting this doublethink is to women.
Donald Trump is Unqualified!
And Biden wasn’t? Biden was barely functioning in 2024. These days he always sounds like he's getting over a bad case of the flu and acts like he can't remember what he had for breakfast. Dems I spoke to tended to shrug this one off “Oh, well, he delegates important matters to a really good cabinet”. NYT assures me that Biden's sharp as a tack, just not uh, in any of his public appearances. But he's good, trust! That’s not good enough for a President, and if Biden was a satisfactory commander-in-chief despite being beset with dementia, forgetting things that happened 10 minutes ago, shitting himself during public addresses, and only ever accessible between the hours of 10am-4pm, then it’s difficult to understand how Trump could do any worse. In fact it seems this has nothing to do with competence, and more to do with a Donald Trump allergy.
Why wouldn’t you vote for Kamala?!
Because I care about the fairness and integrity of our electoral process. That’s a strange position to take knowing that I ultimately voted for Trump, who famously threw a giant tantrum and failed coup on January 6th . However, Trump also won his 2024 primary, which required him to face his competitors for the nomination, such as Nikki Haley or Vivek Ramaswamy (among many
others.) Kamala was essentially appointed to the be the nominee by Democratic party bosses when it became undeniable and self-evident that Biden could not continue to be President.
And Kamala’s coronation is only the most recent example of a troubling Democratic tendency to put their finger on the scale so that the candidate the party elite likes will secure the nomination. Examples of this include the 2016 Democratic Presidential Nomination, when the party used every superdelegate in its command to award Hillary Clinton the nomination, instead of Bernie
Sanders, who enjoyed a lot of support from Democrats my age. This same thing happened again in 2020, with Biden being the anointed one, and Bernie once again denied the nomination. This behavior of Democrats has no equivalent in the GOP – they do not have “superdelegates” allowed to overcome the will of the base. And this time around, I felt that the Democrats did not even try to pretend that the nomination process would be fair, or perhaps more charitably, the mask fell off after Biden’s disastrous debate with Trump. But to foist a candidate on me whom I never voted for, who nobody voted for, and who had only minimal
support as a nominee in 2020, takes the cake. I am not going to support these shenanigans, and therefore, it was impossible for me to vote for Kamala.
What about RFK?! He’s going to ban measles vaccines!
“RFK will ban vaccines”, is a lie and a nothingburger. RFK has no more authority to ban MMR vaccinations than Anthony Fauci had authority to impose COVID-19 vaccinations. (I recall great consternation among Democrats when they realized they could not force their fellow Americans to take a COVID-19 vaccine if they did not want one.) Likewise, the director of the FDA doesn’t have the authority to ban already-approved drugs, as the GOP itself found out when it tried to ban get the FDA to ban mifepristone.
Furthermore, if you are reading this, you are almost certainly vaccinated for measles, or, your parents made a conscious and willful decision not to vaccinate you for measles. While I personally support vaccination, one of the liberties of a free country is that other people are allowed to make choices you disagree with, and you can do the same. So if you come from a family of Christian Scientists or whatever and were not vaccinated, as an adult you have every right to go get a make-up vaccine. So I’m uncertain of whom is even injured here – the vast majority of normal parents have vaccinated, or will vaccinate their kids, the vast majority of
adults were vaccinated long ago, and RFK himself has little authority to ban already approved vaccines. So people who exist now probably won't be affected by this, and RFK's not going to be able to ban measles vaccines for generations to come.
While I’m on the topic of RFK – I like him. His advocacy and legal work in his thirties and forties to clean up the waterways in NY is why the Hudson River (and other bodies of water) are clean enough to swim, kayak, row, and fish in safely. If you enjoy these activities, or if you just enjoy that the East River is no longer stinky and choked with trash, you should consider acknowledging RFK’s contribution to these environmental causes in the 80’s and 90’s.
What about the immigrants?! Don’t you care about them?!
Frankly, the Democrat Derangement Syndrome when it comes to immigration has reached levels of hypocrisy I did not think possible. Joe Biden continued many of Trump’s immigration policies at the southern border, including the building of walls and barriers, the forcible expulsion of people attempting to cross illegally (as in, literally throwing them back into the Rio Grande by the scruff of the neck), the Trump-era asylee system which requires applicants to remain in Mexico while awaiting a decision on their asylum status – these are Biden’s tools as much as Trump’s, inasmuch as they were in place throughout Biden’s tenure. When Trump did these things, Democrats equated his border policy to torture. And yet, no Democrat would say Joe Biden likes to torture immigrants, would they?
The Democrats themselves seem to have no real ideas about what to do about mass illegal immigration across the southern border, and tend to retreat to platitudes, beatitudes, and gestures at total amnesty. It’s cringe to watch wealthy, college-educated white people living in mostly-white upper-class neighborhoods talk about welcoming immigrants; because if their wishes came true, their neighborhoods would not be the ones that will be affected by mass immigration, nor will these moral scold Dems be sidelined out of a job because an asylee can do it cheaper, nor are these country-club Dems reliant on the social services that would be overwhelmed by immigrant need if total amnesty were permitted. So the Democrats are kind of writing a check on someone else’s account – mostly, the people already in this country with low education, low income, and a high degree of dependency on social services. Basically, the people whom the white, educated, wealthy Democrats claim to speak for and whose best interests they claim to champion. Can you feel the contradiction yet?
There’s a reason that Biden found himself unable to retire Trump’s border control policies, and that reason was necessity. I do not think it is unkind, uncharitable, or unreasonable to expect asylees who want to live here to follow the rules and immigrate into our country legally. My husband is a green card holder, and before that, and he obtained his permanent residency legally. Is it too much to expect these other foreign persons to do the same?
You’re a rube and a moron! Educate yourself!
Dems somehow do not perceive the condescension of telling voters who don’t agree with their policies that they’re stupid rubes in need of education. This talking point falls especially flat when Dems turn this phrase on me, a once-fellow Democrat in possession of a college degree, since the only reason they are saying it is because they don’t like my opinion. Telling voters who disagree with your message and values that your party knows what they need better than they do, and that they’re dumb/uneducated/malicious for not agreeing, will not endear the party to independent or undecided voters. (Actually, it’ll disaffect people who used to be in the tank for Dems too, which is what happened to me.)
Lambasting voters as stupid or lazy or sexist because your party lost the election is a bad look and if Dems want to win races in the future they need to stop doing it. I should know, I have a college degree, and if you disagree with me you’re an elitist snob! (How does it feel when I do it to you, eh?)
If you really cared about the poor, you wouldn’t have voted for Trump!
This statement presumes that the only party capable of caring for the poor is the government, and that it’s the role of the government to act as a charity. That’s factually untrue – there are innumerable charities that are not part of the government in this country. Their operations are not directly affected by who’s in office. If Dems mean by this that Trump’s policies are bad for the poor, well, Kamala & Co. had a chance to make that case and they blew it, in sense of not convincing enough people. Blaming the voters for her poor performance is cringe.
Donald Trump is a fascist! He’s worse than Hitler!!
I recall back in the 2010’s that people my age believed in Godwin’s Law – namely, that if you’re debating someone, and your opponent compares your position to Hitler and the 3 rd Reich, you automatically win the debate, because it’s cartoonish and excessive and alarmist to compare anything to the abuses and horrors of Nazi Germany.
Apparently, the Democrats forgot about this, since in the pinch they resorted to Godwin’s Law-ing their own message over and over,
unaware of how witless and stupid they sounded.
Even setting Godwin’s Law aside, Democrats seem not to understand what the word “fascist” means. Because that word has meaning, and the meaning is not “someone politically to the right of me whose opinions I don’t like.” And by the yardstick of actual, Hitler-y fascism, Donald Trump doesn’t measure up.
Donald Trump didn’t nationalize a bunch of industries and services in his first term. He didn’t flagrantly disregard international treaty to prepare America for a total war of conquest to expand American lebensraum. He didn’t establish breeding quotas for women, nor did he award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to mothers with 15+ children, which Benito Mussolini did. He has
yet to round up people and imprison them in camps based on their ethnicity, (America did do this to Japanese-Americans during WWII… but it’s OK if FDR does it, it seems, because he’s a Democrat.) Trump didn’t order six million Jews killed to purify the state. Trump hasn’t tried to cancel citizenship for American nonwhites and force them to emigrate. He couldn’t even enforce
a ban on Muslims entering the United States.
And for all the ballyhoo about book bans, I didn’t see any groups of state police burning pyramids of Margaret Attwood novels and copies of Our Bodies, Our Selves on the streets of Dedham, Mass. (Do Dems even know what a real book ban is? It’s when you get in trouble with the government, as in, committing a crime, for reading or possessing a certain book. It’s not when a public library decides not to carry that book, it’s not when a book goes out of print, or when a school decides not to teach curriculum from a certain book. Pretending these things amount to book bans is unreal and unhinged.)
There is not, to the best of my knowledge, a Trump Youth practicing for war and political purging. Donald Trump has yet to burn the Capitol and then frame Democrats for it. This is all to say that there is a heavy burden on the word “fascist”, and Democrats cheapen it and make themselves look like nincompoops when they claim DJT is one.
Trump is going to engage in political persecution of Democrats!
LOL. Like Democrats didn’t engage in political persecution of Trump?! He was only impeached twice (acquitted both times lol) and pulled in to dozens of trumped-up (plz excuse the pun) criminal proceedings based on charges as ephemeral and stupid as hush-money payments to a porn star, or a civil allegation of rape that was decades old when he took office, and hadn’t gone
anywhere until the Dems decided to resurrect it.
When Republicans pulled this stunt on Bill Clinton, and impeached him for purgery on the basis of lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, the Democrats decried this as politically-motivated enforcement in order to remove Clinton from office. It seems when the shoe is on the other foot, Democrats are happy to engage in this same kind of activity, if it'll remove Trump from office. So this is a good example of Democrats being absolutely hypocritical and entirely willing to use methods they decry as dirty and not fair play, when it benefits them. This kind of doublethink is why I doubt today that Democrats actually have a coherent morality or set of values, let alone sufficient morality and values to instruct us rubes.
Trump hates black people!
Presidents are allowed to have unpopular opinions. I recall Bush the Elder famously said he didn’t enjoy broccoli. President Biden is Catholic, which I find truly regrettable. If these personal opinions do not affect the President’s job performance, and I don’t think it does (Trump was happy to elect certain black people to his first cabinet, like Ben Carson for HUD,) then I honestly don’t care.
Epilogue:
I still am not sure where I am going with this. I feel mistreated by Dems I guess. They've taken my support for granted for too long and I'm tired of the common Democrat tactic of pretending the only reason other people disagree with them is because they're stupid.
