Anand was on Morning Joe today, talking with Joe Scarborough about the truly important question facing America in November: not the one about who wins the election, but the one about what happens the morning after, to begin to win back millions from authoritarianism. Above, a clip from that conversation. And below, some notes from Anand on the subject.
The work of this season is defeating Donald Trump. The work of a generation is facing, and changing, the fact that tens of millions of our fellow citizens, friends, relatives, and neighbors want authoritarianism.
You vote out bad leaders. But you can’t get rid of your fellow citizens. We can’t only focus on each election. There is a generational organizing project to win millions of Americans back from this madness. And, frankly, it will require a much more empathetic understanding.
I see a lot of people, people I respect, say: After looking at these two candidates, I cannot imagine how anyone would choose him. But our work is to be able to imagine that, in order to defeat it. You cannot beat something if you don’t understand its appeal.
There’s the obvious stuff: racism, misogyny, lust for revenge. That brings some people in. But particularly in 2024, with new voter pools flirting with him, there are other factors not well enough understood: a loss of faith in government, tortured masculinity, other things.
A very large number of otherwise decent people are deeply committed to the most indecent political movement of our time. We have to be as curious about what’s going on with them as we are resolved against what they stand for in order to win.
The worse he gets, the less curious we become. It feels obvious. But I don’t think you can think that way in a democracy. You have to push your own understanding to ask what is going on with the other half of your people. I fear we’re not as insightful about it as we must be.
For example, if the pro-democracy movement was sufficiently attuned to how lost and adrift large numbers of men are, looking for mooring in authoritarianism (and podcasts), we would have a giant apparatus of meeting them where they are and pulling them toward democracy. We don’t.
In private discussions, I hear more interesting searching about why voters of color are flirting with Trump. But the public stance is that it’s just false consciousness. I don’t think it is. I think things are happening that need to be understood with imagination and empathy.
A mantra of mine: The burden of citizenship is accepting that what is not your fault may be your problem. There is a real anti-democracy movement in our country right now. On good days, it's at 48 percent. On bad days, it's at 52. Neither is acceptable.
This is the work ahead.
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November is just the beginning