Got It

It's an interesting enough idea: Voters Say Those on the Other Side ‘Don’t Get’ Them. Here’s What They Want Them To Know. And it's interesting to read. But, of course, it left me curious when I was done. And what I found myself wondering was how many of these statements would be people want to be delivered to the other side.

Sure, the message from the 60-something Trump voter that “I'm an ordinary citizen like them, working hard every day to pay bills and make a positive contribution to sustain and grow jobs in the U.S. ... I care about you and want us to openly communicate and be the answer, not the problem,” or from the 50-something Biden voter that “We all want the same things: To take care of our families, be financially secure as much as possible, and live in communities that thrive and serve our needs. I may not support your choice of candidates, but I will fight for your right to support them,” are broadly inoffensive. They strike that conciliatory tone that many people feel has become rare in American politics these days. And while I'm sure that there are some people in both camps that might find those messages a bit too conciliatory, I could see them winning the vote to be the letter in a bottle that is sent to the other side.

But on the other hand, there is the message from another 60-something Trump voter that informs the opposition “That I am for America and they are not. I am for freedom, they are not. I am for free elections, they are not. I am for giving a hand up, not a hand out. I am for legal immigration, they are not. I am for all races, they are not. I am for law and order, they are not.” Is this something that the Trump camp would endorse for being the one thing that the other side should know about them in order to truly "get" them? Or how about this from a 60-something Biden voter: “I would like them to understand that I believe that they’ve been brainwashed into being members of a cult. Thus, I have no regard for them or what they think of me.” What would the show of hands be that this is what Trump voters should understand about their opposite numbers?

According to Pew "about 3% of Biden and Trump voters took this opportunity to share personal, humanizing details about themselves." And, for me (and I suspect a lot of other people who read this), this is where the interesting bits were, even if there weren't that many overall. And that's because, as noted, the details were personal, even if some of them did come across as being cliché.

Most of the rest of the statements, however, left me with a question: "What makes anyone think that 'the other side' doesn't know this?" For example, one Trump voter's message to "the other side" was: “I want our country to retain our basic rights (e.g., religious freedom, freedom of speech, the right to life for all including the unborn).” I don't think that I'm particularly more informed than the average person who isn't a Republican, but aren't these standard Republican/"Conservative" talking points? Or this Biden voter who says: “That they are uneducated, so trying to push their beliefs on me is not going to go over well.” I'd dearly love to ask this guy why he thinks that Trump voters are unaware of what I'm pretty sure that most of them feel is the single most common stereotype of them among Democrats/"Liberals."

The more I read through the sample responses that Pew posted, the more it seemed that rather than addressing the reasons why Trump and Biden voters didn't understand one another, people were revealing them. So many of the statements that people were making seemed directed at stereotypes, if not outright caricatures, of the people they presumed to be speaking to, that neither side comes off as being particularly educated or thoughtful.

In the end, I found myself wondering what people would think, if they were given a list of the statements that their fellow partisans had made. Would they feel that it reflected positively on them? How many of them would they feel would really help other people to better understand them? The irony of the question "What does someone else not understand about you?" is the presupposition that the person being asked knows that someone else's understanding of the world well enough to accurately answer. And for me, the primary lesson of the Pew study is that it's quite likely that they don't... What I suspect they do understand, is that they don't see themselves in the "other side's" mirror in the way that they do in their own.