Last Friday New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote a profile of Obama-voter-turned-Trump-voter Shannon Kennedy, One Honorable American’s Love of Trump. Trump voter profiles, particularly ones which take a “forgotten man” angle and suggest that the Democratic Party needs to listen to them, are a regular thing in the Times and elsewhere. I’ve read a fair number of them. None have made me go, “Wow. I hadn’t appreciated that. I see where they’re coming from.” I get where they’re coming from. We have different values and different visions of what we’d like our country to be. What irks me about columns like Cohen’s is that they don’t acknowledge that we do hear Trump voters and we understand what they’re saying. The core problem isn’t a lack of understanding. The problem is that we want fundamentally different things for our country.
Towards the end of his column Cohen commented “The Democratic Party should listen to [Shannon Kennedy], or risk losing in 2020.” No, we shouldn’t listen to Mr. Kennedy. We shouldn’t listen to him because he doesn’t offer a positive vision for the future or suggest how we can fix the problems our nation faces. Mr. Kennedy doesn’t even indicate what he believes the nation’s most urgent problems are. He only offers generalized anger and resentment. That being the case, what is there to learn from him? If anger and resentment are all you have to offer then please stand aside and let the rest of us get some useful work done. That stated, if Mr. Kennedy wants to help solve problems then I welcome his assistance.
I believe that the biggest problems the United States faces are:
- Perpetual war and militarism
- Climate change
- Lack of access to affordable healthcare
- Limited economic opportunity – reduced opportunity for upward mobility relative to a few generations ago
- Our culture of violence – gun violence in particular
Let’s consider healthcare, as Mr. Kennedy indicated that he supports “a good national health service.” The ACA (“Obamacare”) did good by reducing the number of uninsured by >20 million but, as Mr. Kennedy alludes to in Cohen’s column, many people are still priced out of the health insurance market. There are still 28 million uninsured. That’s not good. We need to make healthcare more accessible and affordable for all Americans. To Mr. Kennedy and those of like mind, if you’re serious about making healthcare more accessible and affordable then how do you propose to achieve that? Do you support universal healthcare? Medicare for All? Something else? If something else then what? Tell me. If you have something to offer then I will listen. I’ll listen but know that generalized dissatisfaction with our healthcare system is nothing but whining if it’s not accompanied by a commitment to make the current system better. That’s why I have little regard for most self-declared centrists and independents: They don’t hesitate to criticize the current state of affairs or other people’s ideas for improving upon the status quo but they offer no constructive suggestions of their own for fixing the problems we face.
All that brings me to Cohen’s concluding sentence, “Look to purple-state America, not blue-state coastal America, for a candidate who is grappling with the country’s toughest issues and is strong on can-do, down-to-earth values.” Purple-state America isn’t grappling with our country’s toughest issues. They either turn a blind eye to perpetual war, climate change, affordable healthcare, lack of economic opportunity, and gun violence – as well as numerous other issues – or they kick the can down the road. (If you believe otherwise then please cite examples.) To the extent that there is political leadership on those issues, it’s coming from blue-state coastal America. If blue-state-coastal-American leadership doesn’t win in 2020 then all Americans will lose.