Nasty Words

One of the things that has slowly seeped its way into political conversation, mainly from the Right, but from other quarters as well, it the idea that Liberal/Progressive disdain for President Trump and the people who voted for him, pushed those voters to make that choice, and will do so again in 2020. I, for my part, doubt this. I've never made a choice to cast a ballot simply because someone I didn't like made it clear that they didn't like me, either, and I don't know anyone who has.

On the other hand, I do understand the idea that people who don't feel respected by other people are going to feel that those other people likely don't have their interests at heart, and I can completely get behind people not wanting to vote for people who don't come across was wanting to make their lives better. But I think that there's a fairly simple argument against the whole idea that talking down to Trump supporters will drive them to the polls.

Dirty tricks.

Many of the people I know, even the politically active ones, are not particularly literate when it comes to the views of people that they don't agree with. And this manifests itself in an inability to distinguish between a genuine argument with which they would have a disagreement, and a parody or strawman version of the same. And this leaves plenty of room for impersonation. One could simply create a website devoted to some real or imagined Liberal cause, and lace it with virulently anti-Trump (and anti-Trump supporter) rhetoric. And if this were as sure-fire a way to increase voter turnout, you'd expect to see it happening. Of course, these people wouldn't openly identify themselves as pro-Trump tricksters, but that's kind of the point. They wouldn't be identifiable at all. They'd simply be out there disrespecting people all the way into the voting booth. And when anyone went looking for the paper trail, they'd simply find a dead end.

Because why wouldn't you? Considering the sorts of whisper campaigns, mudslinging and character assassination that makes up the typical political campaign, if all you had to do in order to get even 1% higher turnout was hire some random shmoe off the street to insult voters and pay them under the table, no political operative worthy of the name would ignore that opportunity.

And so I suspect that it's  nowhere nearly as effective as it's cracked up to be. Otherwise, it would be everywhere.