Families soon will be gathering around tables to celebrate the winter holidays, and families of mixed political affiliation might be a bit wary. I’ve had more than one conversation with friends who are struggling with what to do about relatives who might not be of the same political persuasion. MSNBC’s Joy Reid even suggested cutting off family members who voted differently.
I think that’s the wrong approach.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
I know many of my Democratic friends feel betrayed, and I don’t want to diminish that. I was recently visiting some friends who are gay and discouraged about going home to North Carolina to break bread with family members who had voted for Donald Trump. These friends love their family and are loved in return, but they find it hard to square that someone who loves them would vote (as they see it) against their ability to be married and live normal lives.
Before my Republican friends start sniggering about snowflake Democrats, I’d just point out that many in their party lost their minds when Trump lost in 2020. Elections do reflect real differences in values and beliefs about who we are as a country and the way forward.
However, in this spirit of the season, I suggest that it’s time to give everyone a little grace and to remind each other that you love them.
We live in an era of “affective polarization” — people not only disagree with someone from a different party but also ascribe evil intent to them personally. As I wrapped up my time in Congress, I was stunned when a usually pretty normal Democratic friend asked me, “Can you name me one Republican I shouldn’t spit in front of when they walk past me?”
The vitriol can, of course, be equally fierce on the Republican side. Even after leaving office, I was threatened by a local Republican activist who followed me out of a public meeting and promised to “lock me up in Gitmo” for “corruption.” I have met people in the community who wouldn’t look me in the eye or shake my hand.
But, really, this is not most people.
I was visiting with family over Thanksgiving and saw my uncle Steve’s truck with a tiny, discrete Trump-Vance sticker on the corner of the bumper. I imagine he put on a small one knowing that his niece is a former Democratic Member of Congress. We have kept it civil over the years (mostly), but one conversation always sticks in my mind.
For many years, Uncle Steve drove a truck delivering automobile parts to repair shops. But his truck was clipped from behind at a high speed and flipped over, leaving him with a broken back. Through no fault of his own, he couldn’t work and his employer laid him off.
He continued to collect modest workers’ compensation, but buying private health insurance was prohibitively expensive and the state he lived in had not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. He went for four years without health insurance, eking by with the help of various public health clinics until he was eventually able to get Social Security disability insurance and Medicare.
I knew he voted Republican, and one day I couldn’t help myself. I told him: Steve, you’ve struggled to get health care and you need health insurance! Democrats are going to make sure you have health insurance. I don’t need health insurance. I have a good employer-based plan. Really, I’m voting Democratic for you!
Steve thought about this and then replied: Carolyn, you have a young son, and if this country keeps spending like it is, it’s going to be bankrupt by the time he is an adult. I’ll be long gone — I don’t need the budget balanced, but I know Republicans will keep federal spending in check so we’ll have a strong country. I am voting Republican for you and your son!
Every Christmas, my father used to read to my family the O. Henry story “The Gift of the Magi,” which tells of a young husband and wife who each sacrificed the thing that they held most dear to buy a Christmas present for the other. To my father, this was the essential spirit of the Christian holiday.
I’ve always thought of my conversation with Steve as a kind of rough political equivalent. We can quarrel about policy (and we do), but if we are at least starting from a point of caring about one another and, in a certain sense, being willing to sacrifice for the good of one another, surely we can figure things out.
So don’t cut your family off for how they voted. Most of our family members, our fellow countrymen and women and, yes, even most of our elected officials of both parties are acting in good faith as they see it. Maybe try to understand it. Maybe talk about where you are coming from. Or maybe just have a drink and watch a football game together.
As President Abraham Lincoln said so beautifully, in a time much harder than our own: “Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory … will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
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