To a Friend Planning to Vote for Trump

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In a democracy, in normal times, we should try very hard to keep politics and morality separate. No matter how much we may argue with someone’s political choices, we should avoid judging those choices as morally wrong, because that way lies intolerance, the opposite of the core, small-d democratic value of freedom of thought.

But this is not a normal time.

We have come up against a limit: if you believe that democracy itself is morally good, you can’t help but believe that an attempt to end it is morally wrong. 

I’m guessing that most of the people listening to this hold that belief, as I do. But what do we say to people we know, and people we care about, who plan to vote for Donald Trump? 

If we believe in democracy, I believe we have a responsibility not only to vote for it but to speak up for it, including to family and friends, despite how hard that might be. That doesn’t mean berating or insulting them. It can be done quietly and respectfully. In my own view it’s a mark of respect and even love to give people the whole truth about what we believe.

So I’ve written an appeal to a Trump-supporting friend, imploring them, before it’s too late, not to make a mistake I believe they’ll regret for the rest of their life. I hope it might be useful for you, however you plan to vote.

Here it is:

Dear Friend,

I know you believe sincerely that in voting for Trump you’re doing the right thing. But I hope that before you do it, if only as a favor to me, you’ll think about the following, with an open mind.

And I hope you know me well enough to know I don’t say any of it lightly.

In the coming election, we aren’t just voting for a Democrat or a Republican. We’re voting for or against democracy. It’s not just me saying that, or my fellow Democrats. It’s also an unprecedented number of respected Republicans, who have joined Democrats and Independents in defense of democracy.

They believe, like I do, that if you believe in democracy, you can’t vote for Donald Trump.

This is “a time for choosing,” as Ronald Reagan said about another time. Many of Reagan’s former senior staff recognize it. They recently issued a statement announcing their rejection of Trump and their plan to do what they would never do in normal times: vote Democratic, because this time, that means voting to preserve democracy.

The Reagan veterans wrote:

“President Ronald Reagan famously spoke about a ‘Time for Choosing.’ While he is not here to experience the current moment, we who worked for him in the White House, in the administration, in campaigns and on his personal staff, know he would join us in supporting the Harris-Walz ticket. The time for choosing we face today is a choice between integrity and demagoguery… Our votes in this election are less about supporting the Democratic Party and more about our resounding support for democracy.”

The Reagan veterans are joined by hundreds more from the administrations and campaigns of George H.W. Bush, John McCain, and George W. Bush. It’s known that George W doesn’t support Trump, although he’s remaining quiet. But his Vice President, Dick Cheney, is not. In a statement, Cheney said:

“In our nation’s 248-year history, there has never been an individual who is a greater threat to our republic than Donald Trump. He tried to steal the last election using lies and violence to keep himself in power after the voters had rejected him. He can never be trusted with power again.”

More than 700 former senior national security officials agree — people whose core responsibility, and heavy burden, was protecting the nation from all threats, foreign and domestic. They too see this as a time for choosing. They stated:

“This election is a choice between serious leadership and vengeful impulsiveness. It is a choice between democracy and authoritarianism.” 

The choice is seen similarly by senior members of Trump’s own administration. They include his Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly; his Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper; his National Security Advisor, John Bolton, his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley; and his Vice President, Mike Pence, who has said he “cannot in good conscience” vote for Trump. Pence says he objects to Trump betraying the principles of conservatism. And he objects to Trump’s attempt to subvert the will of the people during the Jan  6 insurrection.

Gen. Kelly is more blunt. He has told friends that Trump is “the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.” He has publicly described Trump’s dishonesty as “just astounding to me.” He has exposed Trump’s belittling of wounded and slain veterans, whom Trump described to Kelly as “suckers and losers.” Kelly says Trump was bewildered by their willingness to sacrifice, asking “What’s in it for them?”

Kelly sums up Trump as “a person who admires autocrats and murderous dictators, a person that has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution, and the rule of law.” 

This is not normal. It never happens that so many national security officials and so many leaders in a former president’s own party repudiate him, and warn the rest of the nation against him. 

But this is not a normal time.

None of the principled Republicans I’ve mentioned agrees with all or in many cases any of Kamala Harris’s policies. But all agree that the choice to defend democracy must outweigh all others.

As the very conservative, Republican, former Rep. Liz Cheney says, the nation can survive what she thinks of as bad policy. But “we can’t survive a president who is willing to torch the Constitution.” 

If, despite all these warnings, and despite the evidence of your own eyes and ears these past many years, you still plan to vote for Trump, why?

I can’t believe that you believe what Trump says. You know about — or can, if you choose to — his fraudulent business career. You know about his sham university and his sham charities, including sham fundraising for veterans. You know that he launched his career in politics with the racist birther lie and has told tens of thousands of lies since, the most serious of which is the Big Lie that’s central to his continuing attack on democracy.

And surely you don’t believe his transparently opportunistic or deluded enablers in politics and media, so many of whom were so recently among his fiercest critics — including his vice presidential pick, who has called Trump “an idiot,” “reprehensible,” and “cultural heroin,” and wondered whether Trump is just “a cynical asshole” or “America’s Hitler.”

For any educated person, the truth is easy to find — easier than ever before in history. And the truth is as Trump himself has said: He wants to make the military, the judiciary, the bureaucracy, and the media loyal only to him. He wants to punish those who are not loyal to him. He has repeatedly argued for the imprisonment or execution of such people. He wants to make America like his friend Viktor Orban’s Hungary: a sham democracy, run by an autocrat.

Just talk? We’ve already seen him try to overthrow an election, an act which, if it had succeeded, would have made our democracy meaningless. We’ve seen him organize the insurrection and then watch it on TV, refusing to intervene for three hours — refusing to intervene in the attempted assassination of his own vice president, an attempt he incited. And he refuses to commit to accepting the results of the next election, unless, of course, he wins.

So if you do still plan to vote for Trump, what, as Trump might ask, is in it for you?

Whatever it is, I hope that before it’s too late, you face the fact that you’re choosing it over democracy. I know the choice may not look that way to you now. And you’re far from alone. There are so many Trump supporters. How could they all be wrong?

That’s the way it always looks, like it did before the Civil War and before World War II. Figures like Trump can be very popular, until suddenly they aren’t. And supporting them can look right, until it becomes inescapably clear that it wasn’t.

But everyone has to live with the choice they made.

In this we’re all wrestling with human nature. Yes, I’m saying I think you’re about to do a bad thing. But that doesn’t make you any worse than the rest of us. It makes you human. All people do bad things. And because we can’t bear to think of ourselves as bad people, we instinctively invent convincing stories that explain why what we’re doing is actually right.

Except… that bothersome voice inside knows it isn’t. And that voice doesn’t go away.

Liz Cheney has tried repeatedly to warn her Republican peers about this. She herself supported Trump, up to the point when he tried to sabotage the election. These were her words to those who stuck with him, even after that:

“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible: There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Liz Cheney is unpopular in today’s Republican Party. But she’s brave and she’s right. And she will have a much easier time living with her choice than will those who make the other one.

Everything is riding on how each of us makes the choice, for the country and for ourself. Please, think hard before you make it.

Image: “Our Banner in the Sky,” by Frederick Edwin Church, 1861, via Wikimedia Commons.