Biden bids adieu. Anoints Vice President Harris. What next? In particular, who runs to become the next Vice President? How can anyone who has endured the last few weeks (months, years, decades?) even guess at that, much less offer a serious plausible proposal for that? Well, I think I can.

What was the final cause of Biden’s decision? We can only guess but I would bet the big donors and a few Party power brokers—read Pelosi and Obama—finally said enough is enough. But regardless, who now rums? 

Barring some kind of perversity or miracle, I think it will be Kamala Harris. She has Biden’s support. She can be an overwhelming or even unanimous choice to avoid a contentious convention. She can fight and debate. A prosecutor for a felon. And for kickers Harris can access funds that were raised for Biden and that others can’t access. But there arises another question. Who runs along with Harris? Who does Harris and the convention settle on to become Vice President?

For that calculation, the key point is to beat Trump and Vance. So I hope they settle on someone who can inject some real excitement, some real hope. Someone who is not a political insider but is also not a ridiculous transplant from an entirely unrelated domain. So not a politician. Not an actor. Not a singer. Not an athlete. Not even a TV talk show star. Okay, maybe Jon Stewart, I guess. But who would I actually want? 

My favorite is Shawn Fain, President of the UAW. To me, if the aim is to beat Trump, this pick is obvious. Peel off much of Trump’s working class support. Election over. Arouse an incredible army of volunteers. Double over. Show Vance who the real deal working class hero is. Triply over. Midwest strength and how about if as a bonus, at the optimistic edge, Fain brings along with himself million worker Harris/Fain marches in New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Las Vegas, San Francisco, phoenix, Houston, Birmingham, Augusta, and Miami. Take that Trump. Time for you to weep. And Trump voters. Here is a reason for you to change teams. More on Fain at the end, below.

But why is beating Trump paramount? Well, if anyone reading this doesn’t already know, we could consider the Republican National Convention. Hulk Hogan? Hannibal Lector? Donald Trump? That isn’t parody. It is actuality. It is real farce. But for me the RNC farce raised still another question. How could anyone watch Trump’s convention, that flaunt farce him in our faces, center stage, no masquerade, star bright, and still decide support Donald Trump? 

Does it give you a headache to consider my question about Trump’s voters? Do you suffer sleeplessness if you mull “why” so many of your fellow Americans support Trump? It breaks my brain too. Crushes my heart too. So why ask why? Indeed why worry about why? Why not just ignore why Trump’s supporters support Trump? Why not just look away? Netflix calls. Olympics are imminent. Escape beckons. What, me worry? Not me. Less painful to look away.

But I do worry. Why do roughly half of U.S. voters still support Trump. I understand and I too feel the inclination to look away. Nonetheless, I worry about how so many voters can visibly see what’s repeatedly flaunted before them, not to mention peruse Project 2025, and still support Trump. 

I worry about that not solely because to Stop Trump it will help to know why so many voters support Trump. I also worry about it because beyond the election, to arrive at a fundamentally transformed society we cannot have half the voting population remain Trumpist. But to avoid having that, we have to successfully communicate with Trump’s voters. And successful communication will not happen while we have no notion why Trump’s voters feel as they do. Much less can we successfully communicate with Trump’s voters while we aggressively avoid Trump’s voters.

Sanders says that even just accounting for only one issue, global warming, no one in the U.S. should cast a vote for Trump. Drill baby drill is, even taken alone, disqualifying. “You are going to boil and drown me. I’d rather you lose.” But even beyond that, no one should believe Trump cares even a whit for other than the rich, and actually, plausibly, for other than himself. Okay, Sanders is absolutely right about all that. So we of course need to convincingly demonstrate Sanders’ two claims, and other similar ones, as well. 

But at the same time, if we are going to be heard by Trump supporters, don’t we need to recognize that to offer such observations alone has been and will remain essentially irrelevant. Trump supporters will mostly not believe, mostly not register, mostly not even hear such communications. Or they will hear them only as lies to reject. They will discount or never register evidence regarding the dangers of Trump’s agenda if we who offer such evidence—whether we do it on late night TV to millions or at a bus stop or bar to one—don’t acknowledge why Trump’s supporters support Trump and don’t sincerely and respectfully address their warranted concerns. 

So why do people support Trump? Don’t we who despise not just Trump but also what Trump is preparing to do as President via his Project 2025 need to know why Trump’s supporters support him despite the dangers to others and even to themselves if we are to effectively convey to them valid facts, figures, and implications? Well, wait a minute. Why? For what reason do we need to know their reasons? 

The reason we need to know Trump’s voters reasons is that in a vacuum, which is to say absent shared compelling explanations of their reasons, anti-Trump voters will fill the explanation vacuum on the fly. And we know that the answer many will grab on the fly is that it’s because everyone who supports Trump is crazy. Or is out of this world racist, sexist, and authoritarian. Or is mind bogglingly greedy. Or whatever other vile characterization one finds comfortable as a summary—like, oh, perhaps everyone who supports Trump is deplorable. 

We know it is undeniably easy for anti-Trump voters to think such thoughts. After all, if no one should rationally support Trump, doesn’t it follow that anyone who does support Trump has some perverse and irrational attribute causing their aberrant choice? And if irrational perversity is at work, then isn’t it reasonable for us to conclude that there is no point even trying to impact that?

No. My point is that our spontaneous answers tend to preclude effective communication with Trump’s supporters. Our spontaneous answers tend to lump all who support Trump into a single mass with common immutable motivations. We then see only an abyss. And we look away. But what if, albeit with some exceptions, our spontaneous answers are not dead end wrong?

“Some exceptions”? Who are the “some exceptions”? Who are the Trump supporters whose reasons for supporting him will remain until November and perhaps for a long time thereafter immutably, untouchable vile?

First, the seriously rich do indeed support Trump for clear and what are for them rationally warranted albeit horribly vile reasons. For example, Trump will lower their taxes. Trump will aid their efforts to obstruct unionization and to crush labor resistance. Trump will remove restrictions on their profit-seeking pursuits. No more pollution controls, no more workplace or product safety requirements, no more minimum wage, no more climate policy, and so on. Trump promises to fulfill every rich person’s wish list. Trump says drill baby drill. So the rich say, “go Donald.” Trump in absolute control? The rich say, “great. Donald is my guy” and pay his bills. Okay, we can’t budge their greedy minds. But on election day, in the tally, they are still at best a few percent of the population. 

Second, truly grossly misogynist and/or racist voters support Trump also for clear and I guess in their clouded eyes rationally warranted reasons. Trump will not coddle women, Latins, immigrants, and Blacks. Trump will instead degrade, denigrate, deny, and deport or at least diminish all those and in that way he will elevate his supporters. Get control Donald, and then get them. You must be for me if you are against them. So “go Donald. You are my guy.” But how many voters are like this? I don’t know and neither do you, but I think it is not all that many.

Structural sexism and racism are still incredibly serious cancers of our society. But are they widely this personally strong, this personally overt, this personally aggressive, so that they individual people’s all other concerns? Even fear of fascism once one stares that in the eyes? Again I would estimate this just adds a few more percent to Trumps rock solid Election Day tally and then Trumpism’s on-going flock.

So, who else is in the unreachable base? Religious fundamentalists who seek a Christian nation and think Trump is saved so Trump can do or is doing God’s work so that for them Trump’s personal history is literally beside the point. He is God’s chosen one. “Go Donald. You are God’s guy so you are my guy too.” Are those reasons valid and immovably entrenched in the heads of religious fundamentalists? Even if they are, how many more voters does that add beyond the above two categories? Sum it all up. Is it even thirty percent of his voters? I think not.

The above says to me that it isn’t only undecideds at play in the coming election. I think it is also soft supporters on both sides. And who is soft support for Trump? It is people who have supported Trump because their friends are doing so and they don’t want any friction with their friends. It is people who have supported and even clung to Trump because they hated Biden, or they thought Biden was too weak or too old. Trump is more robust. Trump is tougher. It is people who supported Trump because he is entertaining and they feel that being entertaining is the only positive attribute either Trump or any candidate can have, so they will vote for the candidate with more entertainment sense and that is Trump. It is people who javelin thought Trump understands them. Trump is not an elitist asshole to avoid. Trump is a guy to have fun with. It is people who have thought Trump bullies the bad guys, but not us. Trump lies to the bad guys, but not to us. It is people who have thought Trump will shake up the government and, indeed, will shake up everything, and who have figured that the ensuing Trumpian chaos might lead to some good. After all, everything is certainly broken. Everything does deserve to be shaken up. None of that seems immutably unreachable to me.

And what resides behind all of that soft Trump support including from so many desperate white and now also some Black and Latin workers, and including from lots of lonely scared and impoverished people, and including even from millions of women?

We can see people who have very real grievances from economic hardship to oxycodone addiction and fentanyl death. People who have had their dignity trampled, their voice silenced. Plus a team, MAGA, that beckons them. A team which they receive some sense of efficacy from. A team which they receive a degree of, yes, camaraderie from. Which they receive a degree of, yes, solidarity from. A team whose members that look like them. A team that doesn’t dismiss, deny, and denigrate them, which the only other big team repeatedly does all day long and late night too. They see a MAGA team that they feel emboldened by. A MAGA team that they don’t want to leave. They feel some power in it, some efficacy. 

Do we want to talk and act in ways that can weaken Trump’s support rather than to look away and ignore looming defeat until it snuffs out more lives and smothers more hope? If so, don’t we have to hear Trump’s supporters’ reasons. And don’t we have to listen to and really hear their either partially or probably more often than not entirely valid grievances? And don’t we have to acknowledge their feelings and then and only then ask, okay, but how does what Trump will deliver improve anything for you? There will be mostly and perhaps even entirely silence. If there are answers, you are communicating. Great. Converse more. Ask them how does each specific agenda item of Trump’s Project 2025 help you? Ask them specifically why various agenda items don’t hurt you. Demonstrate the truth. Conversation then progressing, ask why they think the Democrats’ plans to do so and so and to do such and such, accurately described, wouldn’t be helpful. And finally, when it won’t feel like slapping them upside their head, ask which is better, authoritarian fascism that squeezes and constricts populations unto death, or admittedly oppressive business as usual that we can, however, push to be better, even much better, to then seek still more gains?

You may need to counter all kinds of prejudices, biases, confusions, and sometimes even perverse values. It won’t be fun. To worry about this stuff may engender in you headaches and sleeplessness. But isn’t it necessary to do just that if we are to Stop Trump now and beyond November stop Trumpism and move toward a fundamentally better world?

Are the above observations and the derivative prescription seriously wrong? If so, please write to tell me why, so I don’t keep pounding out misguided words. Or is the above mostly right? If so, please don’t give up. Organize.

I said above that I would provide a bit more about Shawn Fain, my VP pick, to close this article. In Trump’s acceptance speech at the RNC he said the UAW should immediately fire Shawn Fain. The reason he offered was some blather about Chinese auto plants. Fain replied and I think his reply tells us a lot.

“Last night, Donald Trump once again attacked our union on a national stage. That should tell you everything you need to know about the man and the candidate. As we’ve said for many months, he stands for everything we stand against. Trump claims to be attacking us in the name of protecting American auto workers.

“So tell us why, when Lordstown closed in 2019, when Trump was President, and our members were on strike for 40 days, he said nothing and did nothing. Tell us why Trump pushed to move auto jobs out of Michigan to drive down wages.

“Tell us why Trump ‘renegotiated NAFTA’ for the disastrous USMCA, under which manufacturing jobs continue to leave the country and the trade deficit with Mexico has gone up, not down. Tell us why Trump blamed the 2008 auto crisis on the autoworkers. We’ll tell you why. Because Donald Trump always has and always will side with the billionaire class against the working class.

“Trump doesn’t want to protect American auto workers. He wants to pad the pockets of the ludicrously wealthy auto executives. He wants to cut the corporate tax rates of his golfing buddies and keep the stock buybacks and Wall Street manipulation going. He wants autoworkers to shut up and take scraps, not stand up and fight for more.

“Trump talks about the electric vehicle transition as the reason our industry is under threat. Our members don’t go to work every day because they’re passionate about combustion engines. It’s about our families and our communities getting our fair share of the record auto profits, electric or not. The threat we face is corporate greed run wild, and that’s what Donald Trump enables and celebrates.

“America’s autoworkers aren’t the problem. Our union isn’t the problem. The working class isn’t the problem. Corporate greed and the billionaires’ hero, mascot, and lapdog, Donald Trump, are the problem. Don’t get played by this scab billionaire. Stand up and fight for more.”

My reaction: Fain for Vice President and Harris-Fain will resoundingly defeat Trump-Vance.

Michael Albert

Michael Albert`s radicalization occurred during the 1960s. His political involvements, starting then and continuing to the present, have ranged from local, regional, and national organizing projects and campaigns to co-founding South End Press, Z Magazine, the Z Media Institute, and ZNet, and to working on all these projects, writing for various publications and publishers, giving public talks, etc. His personal interests, outside the political realm, focus on general science reading (with an emphasis on physics, math, and matters of evolution and cognitive science), computers, mystery and thriller/adventure novels, sea kayaking, and the more sedentary but no less challenging game of GO. Albert is the author of 21 books which include: No Bosses: A New Economy for a Better World; Fanfare for the Future; Remembering Tomorrow; Realizing Hope; and Parecon: Life After Capitalism. Michael is currently host of the podcast Revolution Z and is a Friend of ZNetwork.