Sunday November 13, 2022
Final results in the U.S. mid-term elections may not be in for some weeks. But the political pundits are having a field day finding things to analyse.
I dare suggest that some of them have read the election wrong. This election was not about abortion rights. Or about immigration, racial discrimination, or inflation.
It was not even – despite Joe Biden’s and Barrack Obama’s impassioned last-minute pleas – about the survival of democracy.
It was about one thing -- Donald Trump.
Trump was never campaigning for the Republican Party. Or for any particular political issue. Or even for that glorious abstraction called America.
Ever since November 3, 2020, when Trump broke precedent by refusing to concede defeat, he has treated this year’s mid-term elections as a referendum on his right to rule the nation.
First he denied the results, claiming that a vast conspiracy of electoral officials collaborated to steal victory from him.
Then he encouraged – I won’t say “organized,” because that is still being examined by the House Select Committee -- the January 6 attempted insurrection to prevent Congress from inaugurating any president other than himself.
Most recently, he worked tirelessly to have his choices of candidates win seats in Congress.
Lobbying for a return to power
Trump treated the election as a vote of confidence in himself. He brought back his 2016 rallying cry, “Make America Great Again.” He wore his MAGA cap at public events. He hinted about running again in 2024 if enough people supported him and his platform – which could be condensed to me, Me, ME!
If the election gave anyone a slap across the head, it was Donald Trump.
Yes, the Democrats lost some seats in Congress. That’s to be expected. In the history of U.S. elections, fewer than half a dozen governments have gained seats in mid-term elections.
Since World War II, incumbent U.S. governments have lost, on average, 27 House seats in mid-term elections. That includes Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama. Obama lost 63 seats in the 2010 midterms.
Trump himself lost 40 in 2018.
So on the whole, Joe Biden’s Democrats got off fairly lightly.
Some Democrat initiatives may stall: immigration reform, election reform, paid parental leave, expanded public health care, and statehood for Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico.
Those will all come about, eventually – though under a different administration.
But Trump’s return to glory has also stalled.
His favoured candidates did not fare well. Dr. Oz lost to John Fetterman. Former footballer Herschel Walker faces an uphill December run-off against Raphael Warnock. Florida’s Ron DeSantis emerged as a credible rival to Trump within the party. Trump critic Brian Kemp romped to victory as governor in Georgia.
According to new reports, Trump blamed everyone but himself. Even his wife.
“Conservative” values
The election sent me back to ad Jonathan Haidt’s 2012 book, The Righteous Mind. I read it soon after it was published.
Haidt found that what he called “liberal” voters were mainly influenced by two social values: “fairness” and “care”. The farther to the left those “liberals” were, the more highly they focussed on those two values.
Haidt’s “conservatives” had three core values: authority, purity, and loyalty. And again, the farther they were to the right, the more fervently they clung to those values.
Unfortunately, Haidt’s analysis preceded Trump’s presidency, which legitimized far-right viewpoints bordering on fascism. Haidt’s “extreme conservatives” seem almost middle of the road today.
In articles since then, Haidt extended the right end of his graphs, showing that when conservatives feel threatened, they make loyalty their dominant virtue.
You can see the implications for voting strategies.
Because caring and fairness are both open to interpretation, and to new information, Haidt’s “liberals” will always support diverse issues. They can never form a solid voting block.
But because his “conservatives” focus so strongly on loyalty, they can. They may have scruples about individual candidates, but loyalty will triumph over those scruples.
Failures
That was what Trump counted on in 2022.
He couldn’t campaign on moral purity, after bragging about grabbing women’s genitals.
And he couldn’t claim authority, because he didn’t have it anymore – despite his claims of electoral fraud.
The only conservative value left was loyalty. If his followers truly believed in him as the American Messiah, he preached, they would vote for his disciples.
They didn’t.
Wherever abortion was on the ballot, anti-abortion forces lost. Trump's hardest-core allies lost or under-performed. Although Republicans made some gains, no “red wave” swept across the nation.
Its Trump rocket’s trajectory suggests it has peaked, and crashed. Hopefully, forever.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups encouraged; links from other blogs welcomed; all other rights reserved.
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Your turn
Last week I wrote about invisible racial prejudice in Canada. Fran Ota confirmed my thoughts: “One of our half-Japanese sons has been stopped on the highway for ‘speeding’ even though he wasn’t. Why was he driving such a good car? Where do he live? Where does he work?
“Both that son and my husband have been refused service in a restaurant in southern Ontario, even though many tables were empty. (Son filed a complaint.)
“On my first pastoral charge, the KKK was present, and people of colour stayed away from particular shops as they knew they wouldn’t get served.
“My husband has experienced ongoing micro aggressions from other faculty at work. It’s endless.
And I will confess even I have acted in a racist way towards friends. Why do I say racist? Because white privilege is so deeply embedded in us as white settler peoples that we really don’t notice when we use it. But white privilege *is* racism, even if we don’t see or recognize it in ourselves. And being married to an Asian, or having Black friends, or Asian grandchildren or whatever, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. It means we have not recognized it in ourselves.
“End of rant (I get so angry and there’s so much more I could say.)”
Fran’s point “that we have not recognized it in ourselves” applied to these letters. I am leaving out three, because their vigorously denials of racism demonstrated, too clearly, that they didn’t get it.
Kerry Mewhort agreed “that we aren't necessarily aware of our racist tendencies. Years ago I read ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell and learned about the Implicit Bias Test administered by Harvard University. I didn't think I was prejudiced, but the test was eye opening. It showed that I had a strong tendency towards racial bias. I have no idea how these prejudices appear in our minds, but I do believe we all have them. Here's the link: https://resources.lmu.edu/dei/initiativesprograms/implicitbiasinitiative/whatisimplicitbias/testyourimplicitbias-implicitassociationtestiat/
Vera Gottlieb shared her own international experience: “I was born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela - of German parents. I attended the same private school whose owners had escaped Spain’s Franco. The school was a ‘mish-mash’ of different nationalities and different races - Venezuelans as well as foreigners. As far as I can remember, there never were any racial slurs nor would they have been tolerated.
“Today, being a ‘bit’ older and having lived in 3-4 different countries, with differing social standards, I can’t help but come to the conclusion that the White Race has a lot to account for when it comes to how other races/cultures are treated.”
Mirza Yawar Baig: “Racism is not restricted to Europe, Australia, and the US/Canada. There is huge racism in India. Just look at the matrimonial ads in Indian newspapers, full of people seeking ‘fair’ brides for their sons. The ‘fair’ has nothing to do with a sense of justice.
“In Africa also I saw racism, where Zulus in South Africa consider themselves far superior to the Xhosas, Shangaans and others.
“The Middle East is racist to the core with Arabs considering themselves superior to everyone else, except the whites. That is universal. White people are considered superior to others, by those others, even when those others had been ruled, abused, and exploited by the whites for centuries.”
Apparently strangers DO feel free to paw white girls. Clare Neufeld’s daughter, when she was young, blondish, with hair to her waist, used to get “awed and pawed” in malls, although “always asking permission before they touched.”
Clare went on, “We may, on occasion, fear asking questions of our ‘other’, ‘minority’, ‘new’ neighbours, becuz it has become politically untenable to lack information or knowledge. For some it is difficult to become aware that ‘I don’t know (something) about this person. I don’t want to gossip or whisper my questions to someone else. I want to ask the person directly for help in my learning.’
“The emotive tensions I have witnessed in some such persona, are palpable. It is a delicate path we hope, want, need to walk.”
Helen Rattray: “This morning on the news was a story about a black man in Montreal who had been arrested and handcuffed because the police thought he had a stolen car. Turns out, the car was his. Then the police found they couldn't take the handcuffs off because they didn't have the keys! Has this happened ever to any white person? To further the story, there was no apology.”
Isabel Gibson: “As for what we do about racism when we encounter it, I suspect the answer lies in the relationship. Where we have a relationship, we can speak and work within its limits. Where we don't have one (as with a clerk in a cosmetics store), we can follow your granddaughter's lead and walk away.”
Mary-Margaret Boone noted that prejudice is also a gender issue: “I think of how I was diminished in my role as a woman. It started in Grade 8 when I thought I could be part of our school newsletter, I was very active in sports and thought I had a lot of support behind me. I lost the vote. Friends told me that a girl could not be a sports reporter.
“I remember applying for a management position. I had experience for the job and the interviewer asked me how many words I could type a minute. I left the interview.
“I became part of a large bureaucracy where women made it above the glass ceiling but when I started, there were still dictates about women only wearing skirts.
“I became a minister in the UCC and thought I finally found a safe space but the ‘old boys club’ still exists in people's minds. I have had a good and influential life, but the prejudices are still out there!”
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PROMOTION STUFF…
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. (This is to circumvent filters that think some of these links are spam.)
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” is an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca. He set up my webpage, and he doesn’t charge enough.
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also runs beautiful pictures. Her Thanksgiving presentation on the old hymn, For the Beauty of the Earth, Is, well, beautiful -- https://www.traditionaliconoclast.com/2019/10/13/for/
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD ARCHIVE
The late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures now have an archive (don’t ask how this happened) on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. Feel free to browse all 550 columns