Do Democrats still want to oust Trump?

LGBTQ town hall makes this ex- Republican worry

Dear Democrats:

We’ve been together for a while now. It’s platonic, and probably always will be, as we share a home together as friends ever since I left the Republicans. I appreciate our new relationship, and that’s why I’m comfortable telling you that I’m worried about you.

We don’t agree about everything. Still, we get along pretty well, you and I, centered around the daily understanding that Donald Trump is a dire threat to the United States. That’s why I’ve been comfortable in my public commitment to vote for the Democratic presidential nominee, come hell or high water. You’ve mostly responded by …

Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? I feel like you’re not doing your part here.

We take our walks together and we discuss the importance of getting rid of Trump. Yet when we both leave for work in the morning, it feels like only one of us is really serious about that.

When we watched CNN’s LGBTQ town hall for the Democratic candidates Thursday, we had very different reactions. This is the event where former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas said he’d punish religious institutions for refusing gay marriage, and where Sen. Kamala Harris of California started by informing us of her pronouns, and then host Chris Cuomo, after a mild and dopey joke, had to go on Twitter the next day and apologize for making light of it. This is where Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts fielded a question about traditional marriage with a sneering, smug insinuation that the only people who would ask her about that are men who can’t find a woman.

You thought it was great, a ringing defense of LGBTQ rights and a reaffirmation of what Democrats stand for. I thought: Are these people insane? Are they trying to lose the election?

270 electoral votes

Now, I’d prefer that this not devolve into our usual fights about the importance of same- sex marriage and LGBTQ rights, because we’re not that far apart. I might not get past rolling my eyes at people informing me about pronouns, but I have come to accept the importance of marriage equality.

Even so, you told me when we moved in together that you agreed with me that removing Trump was the most important thing in the world to you. And I believed you. Why can’t you act like you believe it, too? The goal here is to assemble at least 270 electoral votes. Don’t we agree on that anymore?

I’m not asking you to betray your principles. But I’m going to be honest: When it comes to the election of 2020, I don’t care about LGBTQ issues. And neither should you — not because these issues are not important, but because there isn’t a Democratic candidate who is against you on any of this, and not one of them will be worse than Trump.

In fact, what’s the point of a nationally televised LGBTQ town hall in the first place. It looked like a beauty contest aimed at increasing fundraising among a wealthy demographic, but at the risk of alienating those women who propelled you into the majority in 2018.

Now, I know that’s how you do things. And maybe on some other planet where Trump isn’t president and the GOP is not a mindless cult that will vote for him under any circumstances, this would be understandable.

You’re scaring me, however, when you tell me that you have to hammer on these hot- button issues in the places you need to win back electoral votes — in order to motivate your base to come out and vote. Do you realize what you’re saying? If you need a town hall on LGBTQ issues to “motivate” yourselves, then you’re already doomed.

GOP culture warriors

Take it from a former member of the GOP tribe, the Republican culture warriors are waiting for you to do something stupid and pointless so that they can take the spotlight off of Trump — so that you cannot run on the simple platform that Trump is an emotionally unstable ignoramus who is endangering our national security and trampling on the Constitution. Why help them?

I worry that in your zeal to win the Woke Twitter and college campus primary, you will make the same mistakes you made in 2016. Your nominee will crush it in the bicoastal race to be the Honorary Governor of the New Californiork Republic. Blue cities everywhere will welcome you as liberators. And Trump will laugh at you every day.

This election could be a landslide if the public focuses on Trump’s abuses of power, his offenses against the Constitution, his insane foreign policy, his megalomania and narcissism. I support your efforts to impeach him, but that’s likely to fail, and it is well within your — our — power to remove him at the ballot box when that happens.

But if you can’t get to 270 electoral votes, you’re going to have to live with me as the grumpiest roommate you ever had. You can count on four years of me letting the tub get grimy, leaving my dishes in the sink and not speaking to you. Because if Trump wins again, it’s going to be your fault.