The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:
Gerald Farrington
“Your vote is your voice and your voice is your power.” Kamala Harris said this repeatedly on her campaign trail for President. This truth also applied to MAGA voters, and it put Trump into the White House once again.
Another truth about the 2024 election is that it seems to have been more about the feelings of the core constituencies of the two political parties than about policy preferences or rational choices. Iconic poet and writer Maya Angelou is reputed to have said: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
The divide in America, now a chasm, is fueled by a sense of loss for both bases of the two political parties. It’s actually more than just loss. For both groups, the feeling is one of theft of something basic — an entitlement. Let’s call it “theft of a birthright” claimed in different ways, but claimed nonetheless. “Birthright” claims are as basic as it gets.
The MAGA base or core largely consists of non-college-educated white working-class folks populating rural, small towns, and medium-sized cities across America. These folks are right to feel that they have been “left behind” because they actually have been left behind. When globalism and technological change took manufacturing jobs away from America, these folks and their middle-class livelihoods were left behind as debris to be cleaned up after a catastrophe, but the clean-up crew never arrived.
The MAGA people feel that their best times, the prosperity of their forebears, were in the past. So, of course, why wouldn’t they believe in a leader who promised to take them backward to a glorious-type past? Hence the slogan “Make America Great Again.” For them, a largely white and Christian middle-class America was their past, and they want it back. Why? It was their perceived birthright — before “others” arrived in sufficient numbers to seize the leftovers from all the change taking place in their lives.
Redress of this loss is perceived to require a dramatic turning of the clock backward and to that end the MAGA base repeatedly is being told that millions of illegal immigrants and their liberal Democratic Party enablers stand in the way of being able to go back. The Democrats, they say, want to go “forward” to enable and protect the illegal immigrants (who will then vote with the Democratic Party). For MAGA people, to go “progressively forward” would be more of the same — a loss of what they feel they had. And they are resentful of snooty Democrats and college-educated elites telling them how they are supposed to feel.
The other group feels that it remains behind — that it made progress but never quite caught up. These folks, the base of today’s Democratic Party, largely consist of America’s racial and ethnic minorities, pro-choice women, and many college-educated folks from across all demographic groups. Many of these folks believe that previous constitutional and civil rights gains have been stripped away first by Republican-dominated courts and then by Trump and his Republican political and legislative cohorts. Constitutional and civil rights, once gained, have now been lost. Slaves, native Americans, and women were left behind by the original Constitution, but the dream of equal rights for all remained to be fought for. And fight they did.
Then came the unraveling of the gains. The pace was a trickle at first. Then came Trump, and the pace of loss then became a flood. “Turn back the clock,” in the form of “Make America Great Again,” became a movement with a leader and a cultlike following. This movement accelerated the Democrats’ feeling of loss of a human entitlement of rights, a kind of birthright embedded in Constitutional Promise. For Democrats, the feeling of loss is considered a profound theft of birthright-type rights. MAGA Republicans cannot sneer and tell Democrats how they are supposed to feel.
Bridging the chasm can begin to occur only when each side begins to acknowledge the legitimacy of the feeling of loss of the other side. I’m a moderate Democrat with working-class roots who continues to fight for the steady and necessary improvement in the lives of all people. I also acknowledge the profound feeling of loss felt by MAGA people.
The core, often called the base, of each of the two political parties might be thought of as home for two angry disaffected or alienated groups. Stereotyping any large group is risky in the sense that component parts cannot be neatly put into a group. Still, for analytical purposes the MAGA people and the Democratic Party core can be seen as two centers of unfulfilled promises —profound feelings of loss for both. The first step toward healing is for significant parts of the core of each alienated group to acknowledge the other group’s legitimate feelings of loss.
Follow these steps to easily submit a letter to the editor or guest opinion to the Arizona Daily Star.
