Talkin' Politics: My reply to 'Non-Trump Voters: What would Trump have to do to get your vote in the 2020 election?'

Hi, there.

Uh, okay. So today’s question is: For those who didn’t vote for Trump, what would Trump have to do to get your vote in the 2020 election?

First, you have to understand that the people who didn’t vote for Trump in ’16 don’t make up a huge monolithic bloc or live in a leftist, anti-American mythical land called Utopia. (Or, as the most aggressive of Trump supporters might put it, Libtardia.) I can’t speak for every anti-Trump voter, I can only speak for myself, although I’m sure that my reasons for not voting from the current President are not too different from other non-Trump voters.

Photo by Michael Stewart/Getty Images

Second, understand this: Donald J. Trump is 71 years old (as of December 12, 2017). As such, he is older than the late President Ronald W. Reagan at this point in his first term. People at that age simply do not change their personalities, philosophies of life, political views, or their agendas. These are pretty much set in stone and can’t easily be altered unless a person is intelligent and self-aware enough to realize that he or she must change course.

As a 71-year-old man of power and privilege, President Trump is not a person who is capable of doing what one might call a full one-eighty degree turn as far as his view of the world is concerned. He’s not smart enough to understand where he has gone wrong as a newly-minted politician, and he is certainly not honest enough to admit that he made a “yuge” mistake in running for the Presidency. And because he thrives on the loyalty and adulation of his fans (the MAGA crowd, as I call them), he would not dare incur their wrath by reversing course on the following planks of the extreme right’s platform:

• Repeal and replacement of the Affordable Care Act
• The “wall on the Mexican border”
• Refusing to participate in climate change-related accords
• Lowering taxes for the wealthy
• Fostering a jingoistic “America First” foreign policy
• Tolerating and even encouraging white supremacists and white nationalists
• Supporting the “birther conspiracy” that claims, falsely, that former President Barack Obama was not born in the U.S.
• Undoing everything the 44th President accomplished in his eight-years in the White House
• Waging a war against traditional media outlets and calling any reporting that he doesn’t like “fake news”

U.S. State Department Photo

I didn’t vote against Trump because I am a Clinton loyalist. I’m not. She’s a remarkable woman - a former First Lady who was the first member of that grand sorority to run for and win a seat in the Senate (representing the great state of New York), and later became President Obama’s first Secretary of State. But rightly or wrongly, she has a lot of detractors and can often come off as just another ambitious politician with ideas that many conservatives find unpalatable.

I also don’t believe any of the crazy conspiracies that the Republicans invented about Mrs. Clinton as long ago as the 1992 campaign, but she doesn’t come across as America’s answer to Angela Merkel.

Nevertheless, I voted for Hillary Clinton not just because I thought she was the better candidate, but because I don’t like Trump.

I did, however, vote against Trump because I do not like him on any level.

So my vote was a two-fer: For Clinton and against Trump.

So, let’s go over the list of why I do not like Trump. You know, so there are no misunderstandings:

I do not like him as a public speaker.

I do not like him as a businessman.

I do not like him as a TV personality.

I do not like him as a candidate.

I do not like him as a President.

I do not like him as a human being.

Not one bit.

So, basically, to answer the question “For those who didn’t vote for Trump, what would Trump have to do to get your vote in the 2020 election?” I can only say this.

Nothing. Nothing at all. There’s no way on Earth that Trump can get my vote in the next election.