Note: These emails are from members of a debate club I belong to. For the record, I’m the “Independent”.
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Before the Election:
Trump Supporter: Will Mr. Trump do some things I don’t like in a second term? I’m sure he will. If that was the question before voters, then I imagine Mr. Trump would lose. But that isn’t the question in any election. No politician gets everything right. For those of us clear-eyed enough to see Mr. Trump’s flaws and honest enough to acknowledge them, the question is whether we’re better off with his policies or his opponent’s. On taxes, spending, inflation, immigration, energy and national security, the candidates are miles apart. And Mr. Trump is clearly the better choice.
Harris Supporter 1: Trump's message in the final days before the election is *not* on bread-and-butter economic issues, energy, national security and everything else Nikki Haley is talking about. His message is straight-up misogyny, transphobia, racism, xenophobia. This is the kind of President he is, and Trump voters must know this. If Trump wins, that means this is who America is also.
[Referring to an anti-Harris sign] Don’t forget the "cackling Kamala" in large font for extra misogyny points. The "issues" are in smaller font. "Open Borders" is a xenophobic dog whistle, and is NOT Harris' or any major Democrat's position. "Major tax hike"? Yes, for billionaires only. "Sky-high inflation"? Trump's idiotic tariff plan will increase inflation, as per pretty much every credible economist. Biden’s on the other hand is down significantly, down almost to prepandemic levels.
Never-Trumper/Critic of the Left: "cackling" isn't a female stereotype. If anything, it's a witch trope which I guess makes this miswitchandry. Regardless, saying a woman cackles has fuck-all nothing whatsoever to do with hating women, and one of the reasons Trump is going to win so easily is the CONSTANT accusations of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and racism from progressives. Translation: "Shut up, you're not allowed to talk about things."
People are absolutely fed up with the progressive left dismissing and belittling anyone and everyone who dares question the sewage coming out of American universities and the 2024 election is going to be a revolt. Republicans will take all three branches including both houses of congress. Book it.
I am STILL a liberal, but Democrats deserve this beating. They deserve it more than I could possibly describe. There is no humility on the left and I'm sick and tired of being shouted down by idiot little girls (and boys) with all the vast wisdom and practical life experience of a coed in her 2nd or 3rd year of undergraduate studies. Fully paid of course because students with jobs don't have time to take over libraries or attend protests every weekend.
Tomorrow Democrats will inherit the wind. They bought it, they paid for it, and now they will reap what they sowed.
Trump Supporter: The only way the Democratic Party comes back to sanity is by some serious ass whooping. So a total Republican victory would be a good thing for the country. We need both major parties to be sane.
After the Election:
Harris Supporter 2: I know some of you are feeling pretty happy right now, and I hope last night's event leads to some good outcomes. I just listened to a podcast on The Bulwark that was pretty interesting. They covered a lot of ground, but they made three predictions:
We will abandon Ukraine and Taiwan.
Trump will use his tariff system to get control of the entire business community.
At some point Trump will use the military against protesters, just to show that he can.
I'm not sure whether these were outcomes you had in mind when you voted for Trump, but they were certainly foreseeable as possibilities.
On the plus side for you guys, I think DEI and any kind of a boost for minorities will go the way of the dinosaurs, and even I think that that's not entirely a bad thing (as you should know). People will start to realize that inflation has stabilized and will give Trump the credit.
I just hope that Biden's progress with onshoring and infrastructure can continue. It goes without saying that climate change policy is fucked.
It will be a different country and a different world, hopefully we can all adjust.
Independent [who didn’t vote for Harris or Trump]: What does "Trump will use his tariff system to get control of the entire business community" mean, ie, what does controlling the entire business community entail, what is being controlled, and how would tariffs accomplish that?
While we're doing predictions, I predict Trump will crack down hard on illegal migration while greatly expanding legal migration. This is what "anti-immigrant" countries with labor shortages are doing, e.g. Italy. And it's in the 2024 Republican platform, plus Trump mused about it.
Trump Supporter: This is where the war with reality has taken the Democratic Party. Refusing to believe that "printing" shiploads of money causes inflation, that releasing illegal immigrants into the country while awaiting processing will effectively break the border, that defunding and demeaning the police and neglecting to prosecute criminals will bolster crime, that appeasing global thugs will only embolden them, that men can't be women and women can't be men, that we can't have male athletes complete against female ones, that America is not systemically racist... (the list goes on)... is picking a war with reality.
And reality always wins, sooner or later. More precisely, in this case, the people's common sense has spoken.
Harris Supporter 1: As we are again reminded, people vote on their emotions, not on a rational analysis of the facts. Studies have repeatedly shown that people's perceptions of inflation, crime, immigration etc. often don’t match actual statistics. I can certainly understand that.
Donald Trump is the change candidate, but also has every imaginable disqualifying factor. His policies would make the very problems he is supposed to solve actually worse. Whereas his policies are unlikely to address economic issues, they will likely have severe impacts on the people he has targeted. At the Trevor Project, we've had no time at all to process the election loss. We had the largest number of support calls in our history from LGBT kids and parents all over the country in crisis…. These are real people, facing life-and-death decisions, not anti-social misfits deciding to change their genders and sexualities on a whim.
Multiply these experiences by millions more as Trump rips families apart in his deportation zeal. The lack of empathy from right-wingers who refuse to understand is deeply distressing and infuriating. My hope is that ordinary Americans will soften their hearts once they see what their voting decision has wrought.