Finding common ground
Late on election night last November, when it became evident that Donald Trump was going to win the presidency, CNN political commentator Van Jones famously got choked up on air. He called the electoral result in part “a whitelash” and said, “It’s hard to be a parent tonight.”
For many brokenhearted supporters of Hillary Clinton, Jones’ reaction was a muchneeded articulation of their shared pain. In his new book, “Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart, How We Come Together,” the former adviser to President Barack Obama makes an impassioned and pragmatic case that it’s time those same fedup liberals stop the handwringing and blaming others (neo-Nazis, James Comey, the Russians), stop being diverted by the torrents of distracting tweets and instead get busy “with the hard work of democracy.”
Jones, a longtime Bay Area activist (he lived here from 1993 to 2009 and founded Oakland’s Ella Baker Center for Human Rights), believes it’s possible for both parties to have strikingly different political values and still tackle issues that affect us all with a shared urgency. “Common pain should lead to common purpose,” he writes.
Jones spoke about his book during a recent visit to San Francisco. The conversation has been edited for length. Q: Why did you want to write this book? A: Well, people have pointed out that Donald Trump may be crazy, and there is evidence to support that. But another definition of crazy is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different outcome, and liberals have been in an outraged tizzy ever since Trump came down that escalator two years ago. It’s troubling to me that they still haven’t adjusted to meet this challenge. If just pointing out that Trump’s an unqualified, erratic bigot were enough, he wouldn’t have won the primary. So what can we now do to make sure this doesn’t happen again? Q: You take Democrats to task for not looking inward and taking some blame themselves for the election’s outcome. It’s a hard message for many liberals to swallow. A: The sad irony is that most progressives did not fight hard or smart in 2016. Most worked harder to stop John McCain and Mitt Romney than we did to stop Donald Trump, and given the chance right now, I think most people would vote for either of those guys in a heartbeat over Trump. We also drew our circle too small, and I’m willing to catch hell from liberals for saying that. I don’t want Trump to continue winning the battle for the emotional tone of the country. He is easily distracted, petty and mean, and now many of us are, too. There is evidence Trump is crazy, but he has also driven us crazy. Q: One of your book’s main points is that liberal outrage isn’t unwarranted, but that it’s being expressed in ways that are condescending as well as ineffective. A: Because I’m a Southerner, I feel it personally when people say, “Those idiots in the red states.” Those are people I grew up with. I think liberals like to see ourselves as very smart, but there is sometimes an emotional intelligence missing. I grew up in a small town where you can’t just swipe left and right to get rid of people. You have to learn to disagree without being disagreeable. You don’t convince people to change their views by haranguing and insulting them. Q: How do you reconcile your desire for constructive dialogue with being a talking head on CNN, where there’ s so much argument counter argument? A: It’s the hardest thing for me. I don’t have a good strategy yet for myself to live up to my highest ideals every time on television. The structure of every American conversation has collapsed into “I’m right, and you’re wrong.” To the extent that I contribute to it, I feel badly. I try to show people I am willing to be fair. If Trump says something I agree with, I’ll say that I don’t agree with the other 12 things he said, but I agree with that. And liberals hate it. You would think I had joined Trump’s Cabinet. Q: What about your own anger? Isn’t it hard to stay reasonable in the face of irrational statements from the White House? A: I do get passionate. And when it’s time to fight, nobody fights harder than I do. I’m not going to let Muslims be persecuted or let LGBTQ soldiers be chased out of the military. I’m not saying we don’t fight for what we believe in. I’m saying you can’t only fight and still have a country.
I work with Newt Gingrich on the opioid crisis, which killed my good friend Prince as well as people in coal country. Republican governors and Black Lives Matter have more in common on criminal justice reform than they’ve ever sat down and talked about. We can fight about everything else but still find areas of common ground that exist beyond the battleground. Q: Do you regret calling Trump’s victory a “whitelash”? A: Nope. Doing live television, your job is to report what you’re seeing and feeling. My cell phone was blowing up with friends of mine, Muslims and immigrants, who were terrified. The fact that nobody was addressing the elephant in the room meant the conversation wasn’t complete. You don’t have Steve Bannon and neo-Nazis as part of your movement and say there is no racial element to it. Now, it’s also a mistake to say it was only a racial element. The truth is messy. Q: Does it feel odd to be seen by some liberals as too forgiving, when you were once considered radical even by San Francisco standards? A: When I lived here, I was known as a radical leftist in the Bay Area, which is pretty hard to pull off (laughs). I am proud to say I was on the left side of Pluto. The problem with the outrage machine here is that we’re actually driving people further into Trump’s arms without knowing it, by shaming everyone who voted for him. And both sides do it. When somebody says “those people,” I don’t know if it’s a racist talking about black people or a liberal talking about Trump voters. You will never, ever get out of this if you only blame the other side.
“You have to learn to disagree without being disagreeable. You don’t convince people to change their views by haranguing and insulting them.” Van Jones, CNN political commentator and author