Some of my Republican friends are cheerfully dismissive of those who oppose Donald Trump’s re-election. Some gloat. Others sympathetically offer their misplaced pity: you poor dears, no wonder you’re upset after being brainwashed by the mainstream media. [You know the mainstream media, right? The playgrounds of professional journalists who report and analyze facts within a framework of law and ethics, unlike gleefully unfettered subsidiaries of the right-wing propaganda machine.] Also among Trump supporters are those charmless souls who call us sore losers who should “just get over it.”
There are some Trump voters, however, who in good faith do not understand why the outcome they are celebrating is so alarming, even appalling, to the rest of us. They aren’t writing us off as blind partisans, and honestly don’t get it.
The explanation of why we’re so bitterly discouraged would vary from person-to-person and is pretty complex. There is one psychological aspect of our despair, though, that is easy to grasp.
One reason people who are deeply, rationally, and passionately opposed to Trump are so upset is that we don’t have a “Plan B” giving us a twisted kind of hope.
We have no consolation from a plan to overthrow the election results through baseless lawsuits, undermining the Electoral College, disrupting the Senate, or manipulating Democrats to engage in violent or even non-violent insurrection. After losing in 2020, Trump cynically infected his supporters with the sickness of this hope. He would likely have done so again in some form if he’d lost this time.
We Harris voters have no such outlandish vision of polluted possibilities to rally ’round.
On our side, we are attached to the idea that elections call the shots. Election integrity matters more than losing, even when we hate losing.
This leaves us with, in place of hope, acceptance of what we despise. We’re coping with the task of swallowing an awful, bitter pill: the election’s outcome and all that it portends.
We’re outraged because of our assumption that a Trump Administration will implement at least a portion of what he said it will. His agenda undermines our values, people we care about, and principles we hold dearly. We hate this election outcome because of the kind of future it represents and because of our complete lack of trust in a Trump Administration to do no harm.
We hate it … but we are not throwing ourselves into a frenzy of denial fueled by our candidate’s treasonous conspiracy to “win” by anti-democratic means. Why is this unthinkable when it wasn’t for Trump and his base?
Because for us, that would be an even larger defeat.
