Data story from the blue bubble: how we're driving voters red

This San Francisco-area progressive's lifetime of evidence shows Democrats' self-destructive superiority

If there’s one thing that bugs me in everyday political conversations, it’s the smug belief among lefties — my tribe — that they’ve figured out what’s wrong and what needs to be done. Often, they seem to resent having to explain anything.

That’s at the heart of my story to help explain the election. It’s not the whole explanation for Trump’s win, of course, but I think it’s a big one. It seems to me that smug righteousness by many of my fellow lefties helped to drive a stake through the heart of the might-have-voted-for-Kamala vote.

I’ve spent most of my adult life among the rabid left in the famously far-left Berkeley. I arrived when I was 21 and quickly learned to watch my step. For years, I was on guard for someone nearby who was eager to serve notice of some faux pas.

So I apprecite what I read last week in The Taegan Goddard Political Wire, quoting CNN. It describes a scene in a recent focus group.

CNN: “Pick one word to describe Republicans and Donald Trump, the focus group moderator asked, and one word to describe Democrats and Kamala Harris. ‘Crazy,’ said the White woman in her 40s, who hadn’t gone to college. Then: ‘Preachy.’” “Asked to pick between the two words, the woman said she’d ‘probably go with ‘crazy,’’ anguish clearly in her voice. ‘Because ‘crazy’ doesn’t look down on me,’ she said. ‘Preachy’ does.’”

I’ve known preachy. I recall seeing it in my parents’ living room when friends from Berkeley visited and ranted about the “immorality” of the Vietnam war. To me, a 16-year-old male a few years away from possible military induction, the war wasn’t so much immoral as it was horrifying. But I was curious. I asked their ranting friend,“What do you mean ‘immoral’” — to which I got no answer, just a quick stare and a snort.

I still ask such questions, and my true friends respect them. But some others have scolded or ignored me for asking. I ask such impertinent questions as, “What exactly do you mean by ‘woke’?” Or doubting whether an early teen should receive “gender-affirming” surgery without serious counseling first. Or whether the demonstrably dangerous and disruptive auto “side shows” should be tolerated or even encouraged for “cultural value,” as my city council’s majority has decided they are.

Others around the U.S. no doubt wonder why inflation has cooled yet they and their friends suffer such financial stress? About guns, “What’s the matter with the people who think I should have to register my gun when there are so many shootings? Don’t I have a right to protect myself?” Or, “Why are we sending so much money to Ukraine?”

An old man up the hill from me in the neighborhood just north of Berkeley that I adopted decades ago told me he would vote for Trump. If he’d had any education past high school, he doesn’t sound like it. He knows motorcycles. Why Trump? Because gas was cheaper then. I argue, but he waves me off. Oh, stop it with the economics, the limits of presidential influence, “the soft…what?” I suspect that it’s not so much about gas prices as it is how Trump sounds like his kind of guy.

I can imagine the thoughts: “If our president, senator, or congressional representative waves off our complaint, then they must also dismiss my concerns. I’m nothing to them! Yet they keep telling me I should vote for them. So what if he’s a ‘fascist’ if he seems like he knows me.”

Of course, it’s all explained in the New York Times. Let them eat cake.

My questions, my education, and my friends are different, but I know the feeling of being not quite one of the important crowd.

I suspect that hordes of would-be Democratic voters are similarly turned off. Many may not have ever felt like full citizens, and never had a good grammar school education, much less any college. So where do they go but toward the side that seems to speak like they do and for them? That’s who gets their vote.