The Dos and Don'ts of Talking with Third Party Supporters
This article
is not directed at people who have decided to support third party candidates. It’s really meant for people who are
distressed about them, and feel a need to shake them by the collar and convince
them they are being petulant sore-losers who need to face the reality that they
are only helping Trump. To them, I have
two messages: 1) You are wrong to criticize them the way you do; and 2) You may
still be able to convince them to vote for Hillary if you just learn to
understand them.
The problem
I see with the criticism of third party supporters is that it is based on the assumption
that they are all sore losers, willing to let the country go down in flames to
make a point, and/or don’t understand that their decision is more likely to
benefit Donald Trump. That is a naïve and
unfair view of them. And as long as you
hold that view of them, you will not convince them to re-evaluate their
decision to support Johnson, or Stein, or any other candidate of a third
party. This applies to the Bernie supporters who have
decided not to support Hillary as well as those Republicans who have made what
I think is an even harder and nobler decision to leave their party over their
disgust of Donald Trump.
Listen, they
know exactly what they are doing. They
are not blindly running to a fringe party that they just realized supports
their views with an unrealistic belief that their candidate can win, nor are
they ignorant to the fact that they just may tip the balance and put Donald Trump
in the White House.
We should,
of course, begin with what should go without saying: they have the right to
support or not support whomever they want.
But the next point is more important: they have a goal in mind, and it
is a legitimate and honorable one.
People all along the political spectrum have expressed disgust with the
status quo; with the establishment; with business as usual. And many of them see the solution to be the
breaking up of the two-party system.
However, any third party, to be viable, will need to grow from humble
beginnings. As a practical matter that
means people will need to support that party, or the movement generally,
beginning at a point where they will not win.
But they would hope to grow that movement, and build support over
time. And in the meantime, that means
they will need to bring people in from the two mainstream parties. That also means they will cause some degree
of short-term havoc and disruption, even to the detriment of certain causes and
policies, and candidates they might otherwise support. But that would, in their view, be a
short-term price for a long-term solution.
Therefore, to yell at them about what the short-term (read: current
election) consequences are would be of little value. They know.
And they have accepted that. And
you are making an ineffective argument to them.
They have accepted that very consequence, but have decided that the goal
of a new electoral process outweighs the short-term consequence.
How to win friends and influence voters (and Bernie supporters)
Does all this
mean they can’t be convinced? No. It means you need to understand what they are
doing, and why they are doing it. In a
nutshell, they are balancing two interests.
To be specific to this presidential election, they are balancing two things:
1) the relatively short-term risk of Donald Trump becoming president, and 2)
the long-term goal of overhauling the entire process by which we chose
candidates so that our leaders are more responsive to the people. That is the essence of their decision. And once you understand that, and respect
their decision and why they are making it, you can begin to have a discussion
with them that may actually convince them to change their current decision to
not support Hillary. And how would you
do that? Not my trying to convince them
that they are ignorant or naïve, but rather by convincing them that they should
re-evaluate how they analyze those two competing interests. Almost universally, they do not want Donald
Trump to be president; so stop wasting time telling them they don’t understand
what they’re doing and they are effectively supporting Trump. Instead, recalibrate the scales and emphasize
just how dangerous a Trump victory would be;
that it is not simply a short-term
sacrifice; it would cause real harm to the nation in a way that could last for
generations; that our standing on the world stage could suffer irreparable harm
that will forever impact us; that millions of people including racial and religious
minorities, women, immigrants, will be impacted in real ways that could turn
back progress we have made as a nation by decades; that there is a briefcase
with a button in it, and Trump is going to have access to it. The list is endless. But only through respectful and reasoned
debate, that also acknowledges that there actually are competing interests that
would have to be put aside, are you likely to accomplish what you want: to get
them to look at the facts, and the real consequences of their decisions, and
decide to support Hillary, even if it means deferring the goal of overhauling
an admittedly broken and corrupt system.
And nothing prevents them from pulling the lever for Hillary while still
supporting, whatever way they want, the growth of another party that can play a
bigger role in the future. Hopefully in a near future where the stakes are not
as high, and the risk of a megalomaniac becoming leader of the free world has
gone away.Will this work on Republicans?
This all may
seem to fit the Bernie Sanders supporters, but how about Republicans who have abandoned
their standard bearer, and in many cases their entire party, over the
nomination of Trump? Does the same
argument apply to them? Absolutely. I have more than a couple of conservative friends
who are absolutely dismayed at what has happened with the Republican Party, and
have decided to support Libertarian Gary Johnson. But at least one good friend of mine
indicated that if forced to choose between Hillary or Donald, he would have to
choose Hillary (although it was clearly a hold-your-nose-and-vote attitude, and
I was sworn to secrecy). That tells me
that just like people running to third parties from the left, those fleeing the
right are not people who all of a sudden decided they support the Libertarian Party, or the Green Party. Heck, I bet
that a month ago most of them wouldn’t have recognized Johnson or Stein if they
were sitting across the table at a coffee shop.
They’re settling. And that
means they are ripe for convincing.
While the points to emphasize with the Republican defectors may differ,
the approach is the same. They need to
be convinced, in a respectful and credible way, that they need to reconsider
the real and harmful consequences of Donald Trump getting into the White
House. They may not be ready to see
Hillary Clinton as someone who is particularly qualified, but there are greater
risks of a Trump win: for national security, integrity of our international military
alliances, our global standing, respect for our military and military families,
and yes, conservatives do care about equality and equal justice and creating a
society built on respect and inclusion. So
again, it comes to recognizing that they are balancing competing interests, not
blindly screaming “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!” in a rush towards
self-destruction. Talk to them about all
the concerns they have, and provide the data, which is not hard to get, that demonstrates
how particularly unfit for the White House Donald Trump is. Nobody is going to agree with you when you
tell them they are being ignorant and self-destructive; but reasonable people
can be swayed by facts and respectful discussion.
As for actual Trump supporters... sure, give this a try. Many Trump supporters are likewise motivated by the anti-establishment sentiment, and it's important to consider that when talking to them. To be frank, I tend not to engage them anymore. I don't pick fights with them, but even if I try to have a conversation, most seem to want to raise everything to a vitriolic level that I can't deal with. There are only so many times I can have somebody scream "Benghazi!" at me, even when I'm talking about immigration policy. So I'm not saying they're a lost cause, but I have decided to dedicate my time elsewhere.There are some with whom I can have a rational discussion, but they seem to be the minority and I would rather use my time more effectively. Which leads me to the final point...
What we don't have time for
Sarah Silverman
received applause at the DNC for saying that Bernie Sanders supporters who didn’t
support Hillary Clinton were being ridiculous. She was wrong, and I can’t
imagine she actually won any Bernie supporters over. And Seth Myers screamed “We don’t have time
for this” and “Stop crying” at those same people during his talk show last
week. I’d say that Seth got it half right. Labeling them as a bunch of spilt milk
cry-babies is not only incorrect, it is counter-productive. Are you trying to convince them to change to
your way of thinking? OK, has yelling “stop
crying” and belittling people ever worked for you? Of course not. So it makes a good line, but I imagine only
the Hillary supporters were laughing and tweeting about it. But Seth was right about one thing: we don’t
have time for this. The stakes are high,
the danger is real, and time is short.
People who are on the fence, or are just in the past couple of months
flirting with third parties, are overwhelmingly not staunch libertarians or
green; which is not to say that there aren’t many devout and long-term
supporters of those parties out there.
But for the newly disillusioned, remember that many of them came to
where they are through some degree of research and introspection, and are not
trying to kamikaze dive out of pure spite.
So understand where they are coming from, respect the decisions they
have made, and then reason them back to where they see the real, short-term
danger that our nation is in. Let Donald
Trump continue to repulse them with his language of division and disrespect. We need only speak the truth to attract them
to our side. Let’s take full advantage
of that.
Note about
the author:
Here’s a
little self-disclosure, relevant to this blog.
I am a registered independent.
Many years ago, when I lived in New York and I first voted, I was a
registered Republican, and I have voted for some Republicans and some Democrats at various levels
of government. I left the party over 15
years ago when I could no longer support policies that I considered elitist, pro-business
at the expense of the common citizen, and in many cases downright unethical and
even cruel in social policy and justice issues. Ironically,
I found the party that more and more loved to wrap itself in the flag and the
Bible to be advocating policies that to me were un-American and un-Christian.
Since then I have remained independent, evaluating each candidate on his or her
own merits, with little thought of party politics. If I had to do what independents in Congress
do, I would probably now “align” myself with the Democratic party, although it
would be a tepid show of support for one other party with certain policies that
I cannot support. Six months ago, I was
very much opposed to Hillary Clinton’s candidacy. Since I support her now, I will refrain from
listing the reasons I would give. But
times have changed, and I have come to feel very strongly that “I’m with her”. Admittedly, it is a position driven in part
by the horror at the top of the other side’s ticket. But I have also researched Hillary some more,
particularly her public interest work and advocacy out of law school, and I realized that
much of my discomfort stemmed from hearing the anti-H narrative repeated so
often. But it also means that I went
through much of the soul searching that I now see in the people I describe in
this blog. And it was through my own
research and respectful conversations with colleagues that brought me to where
I am today. And that is also what
compelled me to write this, in the hopes that it will convince some readers to
change their approach to how they talk to those third-party supporters. Hopefully there will a lot of soul-searching
over the next 3 months similar to my own, and with the same results.