Whichever side wins the national election Nov. 5 needs to think about why they did not get a larger share of the vote.
Not that they ever really expected to win over the hearts, minds and ballots of 60% of voters. The honest reality is that most candidates would accept 51% as a clear victory in this divisive world.
OK, maybe they’re prefer 52%. But they’ll happily declare a mandate on the thinnest of margins.
Gloating is ugly. It makes sore losers out of disappointed losers. Even worse, many of those sore losers are increasingly embracing anger — as if this country could get any angrier.
Regardless of whether former president Donald Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris wins the White House, regardless of whether the Republicans or the Democrats take control of the U.S. Senate or House, no matter which side wins the multiple gubernatorial, legislative races and ballot propositions around the country, all the winners should remember one thing: The people who did not vote for them still matter.
There is a growing attitude among candidates and political parties to dismiss people who did not vote their way as unworthy, uninformed, maybe even uneducated — if they were smarter, the winners figure, they would not have made such a poor choice in the voting booth.
But making them feel like outsiders only strengthens their belief that they are ignored and ensures they will be even angrier at the next election, further dividing the country.
Next month’s winners need to ask why so many people voted against them and their positions; why there is so much hostility on the campaign trail; why so many voters hold inaccurate information in their heads and why they are so eager to embrace destructive emotional appeals.
There are reasons for why so many Americans feel left out, and whether they are fueled by dishonest campaign garbage on social media isn’t the point. The problem is that too many people are too receptive to outrageous messages. Too many people are turning to hate as an acceptable way to express themselves.
Too many resent that others are succeeding in life while they can’t understand why they are not.
The winners of next month’s elections need to address the animosity, to understand the source of the anger and confront it. They need to listen and respond, not dismiss.
That doesn’t mean holding negotiating sessions with people who advocate intolerance, who believe only one religion matters, who believe violence is an option to change the country to their point of view. They don’t deserve equal consideration, not when they want to deny equality to others.
What it does mean is realizing that divisive politics is growing into a terminal illness, and the hostility will not disappear just because the election is over. Those tens of millions of Americans will not go silent; they will merely await the next election, even more frustrated than ever. The country needs to break the cycle.
The country needs political leaders who put good policy ahead of winning with lies; who want to unite, not divide; who understand that today’s voters will not go away just because they lost.
Ugly politics is like an invasive species. It needs a focused effort to stop it. It will not disappear, but cutting it back might be enough to restore a balance in the environment.
Larry Persily is the publisher of the Wrangell Sentinel.
