It’s Okay to Hurt

Dear friends,

I know that many of you are hurting today. It’s okay to hurt.

I know that many of you are scared today. It’s okay to be scared.

I know that many of you need time to process and decompress. It’s okay to take that time.

It is important to take care of yourself.

I understand that the future seems uncertain right now. Just remember that politics does not start or stop at the ballot box. There are other ways for you to influence the future, and there is a lot of good that can still be done via activism regardless of who is in office.

In the meantime, I would like to present some information regarding the election. Firstly, contrary to national trends, the two precincts that cover Swarthmore College reported a significant increase in voter turnout versus 2020. They also show similar margins of victory for Vice President Kamala Harris versus President Joe Biden in 2020. Perennial Green Party nominee Jill Stein got just 1% of the vote in each precinct. Swarthmore turned out in full force for the election. Narratives of Swarthmore students costing the Democrats the election via boycotts are simply false.

Secondly, it is important to understand that the average Trump voter did not vote for the man because of what he has said about Puerto Rico, women, or minorities. Around half of Trump voters, according to polls, were broadly motivated by the economic condition of the country. It is not active hatred towards transgender people or other individuals which drove this election. You may believe that Trump will destroy our country, but it is not true that a majority of Americans — intentionally — voted to destroy our country.

This leads into an overall theme, which is that countries around the globe are kicking their governing parties out of office. People seem widely dissatisfied, from Japan to Uruguay to Sri Lanka to the United Kingdom. What just happened in the United States is a microcosm of a global phenomenon. I contend that the especially conservative views of the Republicans are simply a side factor, not a main driver of the election results. Americans did not vote for Trump because of personality or policy: they voted for Donald Trump solely to punish the governing party, the Democrats. The other night, 68% of voters thought the economy was “not so good” or “poor,” and FiveThirtyEight reported that 56% of Americans were dissatisfied with the Biden administration. That dissatisfaction was successfully metabolized into a Trump win.

How does this end? That’s up for people to decide. Four years from now, there will be another presidential election, and it will be up to the Democratic Party and the American left to determine whether they will be ready for that election. It will be up to the Democratic Party and the American left to determine whether they will have been productive in the intervening four years, or whether they will have ignored all of the warning signs and changed nothing about themselves.

So the future is up to you. Yes, things may seem scary, but there is also opportunity here. Again, a lot of good can be done via activism regardless of who is in office. That’s how America has continued to survive despite a continuing torrent of unpopular administrations.

It’s okay to hurt. It’s okay to feel pain. Use it to build something new.