2016 Postmortem

I'd like to add that it's also important that voters like your father not be shielded from the racial, misogynistic and other related implications of their vote. It's not sufficient for them to say, "I'm not racist, but" or "Donald Trump may be a bigot, but my vote had nothing to do with that," etc. Voting for Trump in no way makes someone, ipso facto, a bigot, but it does demonstrate a troubling and dangerous insensitivity to racism, sexism and other problems - they showed that they have other interests that they feel outweighed those horrible attributes and that they believed justified putting a racist into the White House. That can't be ignored, explained away or defended.

They must bear the consequences for lining up next to the worst elements of our society, bolstering their votes and giving them the political power they need to inflict truly dangerous impacts on people of color, women, Muslims, immigrants, and others who will be damaged by this man. The least of those consequences is to have their vote and perspective questioned and, if so inclined, to feel uncomfortable about the choice they made. We certainly don't need to beat up on, humiliate or scapegoat your father and others like him, but, by the same token, we also can't pull punches, coddle them or pretend that what they did wasn't tremendously harmful to real people who deserve better than to have their fellow Americans throw them under the bus because a demagogue sold them fool's gold.