Also, having a few Trump supporters in my family, I can attest that there’s little a liberal can do to influence voters who remain willfully ignorant of facts and have bought into the fear-based platform of the modern GOP. Can we somehow minimize the impact of the stupid voter without causing the same problems we face already?
Well, that’s ultimately a bit of a purity test. We’ve already established that they can be influenced by fear-based misinformation, so the question is–can we use the only known method of influencing them and still remain liberal? How much fear-based misinformation can we mix into their Wheaties before we’re as bad as Breitbart?
It’s not a hypothetical. Susan B Anthony deserves a lot of credit for helping bring about the end of minority rule in the US in 1920. But you know what she doesn’t get enough credit for? Being incredibly racist about it–playing off fears of black votes by pitching women’s suffrage as doubling the white vote’s margin. Lots of historical progressive wins were really only progressive in hindsight–at the time, they were as reactionary as anything else going on at the time.
I’m not saying I’m comfortable with or even willing to go there. But if it’s already been established that facts don’t work, continuing to use facts isn’t logical.
But what’s also not clear is if we need to convince Trump supporters at all. It would be much easier to convince the 50% that didn’t vote at all than the 24% who answered the call of the assclown.