Dear Democrats

Just hear me out, please. No, we don’t agree, but hear me out.

First, it is going to be okay. It really will. You’ll have the midterms in two years. There’ll be another presidential election in four years. Those of you reading this insisting there will be no more elections are no better than the idiots on my side who think 2020 was stolen and that if Harris won, there would be no more elections.

In 2004, you guys were pretty stunned by George W. Bush’s re-election. Within two years, you had Congress. In two more years, you had everything. And, again, many of you believed after 2004 that it was the end of all things. It was not.

Second, please consider this.

You lost, in part, because your side of the aisle engaged in a cover-up of the sitting President’s cognitive decline. His staff, Cabinet Secretaries, members of Congress, and senior members of the press with access to Biden told everyone he was fine. They lied, and Biden got exposed on a debate stage.

If you are not willing to hold your own side accountable for engaging in a coverup of the President’s decline, don’t expect Republicans to take you seriously about holding Donald Trump accountable.

In 2008, I launched an effort to find, identify, and drive from politics those people who were leaking damaging information about Sarah Palin to the press from inside the McCain campaign. Nichole Wallace herself told me my effort pushed her out of Republican politics.

It would help if you guys did the same thing now. Your own team lied to you all and to the American people about Joe Biden. Those people set you up for failure on Tuesday night.

Before you blame Americans for rejecting you, maybe identify and oust the people who made that rejection possible. They are both in politics and the press.

If you are not willing to clean up your side, don’t expect Republicans to clean up theirs. It was not our side complicit in a coverup of historic proportions. It was the voices in the press who assured us Biden was better than ever and the Democrat politicians and appointees who hid him, excused him, and deflected for him.

To rebuild trust, perhaps demand accountability. People can’t trust a party that says the economy is fine when they’re also saying the president is fine and everyone can see with their own eyes that he is not.

Lastly, please consider this next point, though some of you might not want to.

Many of you have become secular and do not have a profound theology. There is some interesting data out there that shows secular people and Democrats who go to church are more fearful than evangelicals. Couple that point about Democrats who go to church still being fearful with the data that shows progressive churches are more likely to preach on political topics. You can see that progressives are way more steeped in politics than evangelicals, even if that is hard for you to accept. The data is there.

The most politically active Protestant denominations in America are not the Presbyterians and Southern Baptists, but the Episocpalians and United Church of Christ, the two most progressive denominations in America.

The data shows liberal Christians are more engaged in politics than conservative Christians.

All of the above is to say that your eschatology is that we must bring about a heaven on earth because heaven itself is not real. And politics harnesses power to bring that about.

I’m not going to dissuade you from that. But it is not my worldview. My worldview is that God is in control, and His will be done.

We see things differently, but my point is that you are as steeped in your world view as I am in mine. However, I am more likely to encounter progressives in my daily life than you are to encounter people like me.

Just consider that a lot of Trump voters still feel like they cannot be vocal about their support. You may think that is a good thing, but it sure does fester resentment.

Please understand that it is not misinformation and disinformation that have convinced these people that they are suffering economically. It is their lived experience. There costs really have gone up and their wages have not kept up. When you look at the map of red versus blue, understand that those red areas are areas that suffered more from inflation and cost increases than the blue areas.

I saw The Bulwark crowd head into dangerous territory, lamenting Joe Biden did not destroy the republic to save the republic — that he should become a tyrant to stop Trump. That’s unhealthy thinking. It is poisonous thinking. If you really think progressives need to kill the filibuster, pack the Supreme Court, etc. you are risking being perceived as the tyrant you think Trump is. And don’t be surprised when others do not credit to you the purity of the purpose you ascribe to yourself.

Consider how Taegan Goddard, a progressive political writer, summarized Trump’s win:

The majority of Americans are not concerned with Trump’s blatant racism or sexism. They are not concerned with his vows of retribution on his political enemies. They are not concerned with warnings of “fascism” by his former top aides. They are not concerned with his extensive criminal and fraudulent behavior.

If there’s a takeaway from this election, it’s that this is who we are.

Not all of us, to be sure. But it makes clear what the rest of us are up against.

I’m a terribly flawed person, but I do believe God is real, and I do believe I’ve got to love my neighbor. You guys don’t have that divine admonition, but I’d suggest you give it a try. In my religion, there are no carve-outs, footnotes, or exceptions. I’ve just got to love my neighbor, even if I disagree with them. I’m not “up against” any of them.

A lot of Americans rejected your side on Tuesday night not because they like Trump or excuse his behavior but because they think you guys haven’t been loving your neighbor and your behavior impacted them in their daily lives more than Trump’s. You’ve been correcting them, trying to control their behaviors, and admonishing them for not speaking or thinking like you. You’ve got kids in college who believe they can’t speak up in disagreement. You’ve got a move to censor in the name of protecting people from misinformation and disinformation, which sometimes is that and sometimes is just something you disagree with.

Beyond that, it was Joe Biden and Kamala Harris who passed a stimulus plan that your own economists warned would cause inflation. After it did, it was your side that lied and said it was temporary. Then your side lied that actually everything was better because inflation had slowed, but y’all said it had gone down. Prices never did go down. We may be better off at a macroeconomic level, but not at the household level. It was your side that flooded neighborhoods with illegal aliens and then were more outraged at people saying “illegal aliens” than you were about the actual illegal aliens.

You and I may not like Trump, but what gives you the right to lecture a group of black and Hispanic working-class families about their lives and families when it was your party that made their lives more costly and less stable? Please, please, I am begging you — exercise some humility instead of settling on your moral superiority.

Some of you right now are reading this and trying to either deflect or justify it. But you want a world of equality and truth and have treated people badly because they disagree with you politically or on policy. And yes, you bullying someone because they might support Trump impacts those people on a daily basis more directly than Trump’s behavior. You, not Trump, are making people scared to express their opinions.

And even now, you are going to judge a majority of the country as inferior because they voted for someone you don’t like.

Try loving your neighbor instead of condemning him. You are not, Taegan Goddard, “up against” your neighbor. You just see the world differently because you’ve had different experiences, and you aren’t going to win your neighbor over any more than a Christian will convert someone by standing on their lawn with a bullhorn yelling, “Repent!”

Democrats, y’all have become the street preacher with the megaphone yelling at people that the end is near and they must repent or burn in hell. Nobody likes that guy.

NewsNation

I’ve done news hits with NewsNation, and I love their coverage. They are the network that limits talking heads yelling at each other, opting instead to have anchors who ask tough questions of both sides one-on-one. They are the network that was first to declare Trump the winner on Election night. Their coverage has been growing, and it is very, very even-handed and focused on what people across America are interested in.

Put another way, NewsNation is not Trump-obsessed. It does not make every story about Trump and does not obsess about whether someone did something in relation to whether Trump did or did not do that thing.

It’s just the news, foreign and domestic and not singularly obsessed with Washington. Their cover of the southern border has been exemplary. Bill Melugin at Fox News gets lots of deserved praise and coverage, but Ali Bradley of NewsNation has been there too providing quality coverage putting in perspective not just the sea of humanity crossing the border and the crime, but the fallout in local communities.

I want to bring to your attention my friend Leland Vittert’s show’s ending last night. As Democrats protested, many Americans were quite happy with Trump’s win. To my Democrat friends, if you are still reading this, I hope you’ll consider why people would be so encouraged by Trump. And if you think it is about misogyny or sexism or racism or hate, you need to touch some grass and make a concerted effort to be friends with people who see the world differently from you.