I am a straight White Man of a certain age. If not for thirty years of God’s grace, the forgiveness of friends, and a near constant repentance for my sins, I could be a Trump voter. Demographically, I’m certainly a person you might assume could be.

I think about this a lot. I think about the White men who will be voting for Trump, and I think about everyone else in what remains of his “post-Republican Party coalition.” I’d like to speak to them one final time before this election…all of the Trump coalition.

I call it this because, at least for this election, it’s very clearly the “Trump Party,” and many Republicans have either fully rejected their party, or are staying home this time.

This is what I did too…only I did it in 1988. And, as I now step back and see it now…I can see the straight line between that election and today.

As I’ve written elsewhere, I left the tribe of “Team Red” on Election Night 1984, when it became clear to me that the the Republican Party —especially it’s leadership— was far too male, far too White, and far too exclusive of “the tribe everybody else.”

It took me some years, in between the 1984 and 1988 elections for that “shift” to become complete. But it was my faith in Jesus, my careful reading of Jesus’ moral teachings, my own United Methodist faith, that compelled me.

I didn’t pull out a list of social issues and bless it with my faith. It was the other way around. I understood my faith on a deeper level, and that made my voting choice clear. Democrats weren’t, and aren’t, perfect.

In fact, bluntly I’ll say: they are deeply flawed in many ways. And there is plenty that makes me want to scream about them.

But in the binary world of presidential choice —and it is, and has, and for the foreseeable future WILL BE a binary choice— it’s been clear to me “Team Blue” aligns more with my Christian values.

The Republican Party of the mid-1980s was a party of White people. That’s what struck me as I watched White college Republicans celebrate Reagan’s landslide victory on election night 1984. In the Student Union at UT Austin, there were a bunch of young White men in blue blazers and top siders.

They were me. Except, suddenly, I was not them. It happened in an instant. I’d voted for Reagan again, because everybody I knew was a Republican…my whole LIFE was…

But on Election Night ’84, I watched this group of college Republican men cheering like they’d been some underdog 5-man high school team who just beat the Super Bowl champs. They were cheering guttural cheers that had a cruel edge to it, like Holy Crusaders placing the heads of their enemy on a pike.

But…EVERYBODY KNEW Reagan was going to crush Mondale…which he did. And they were acting like it was some brilliant victory on their part.

It was the dissonance of that moment that struck me, and I realized in an instant, “I am no longer Team Red.” I was no longer cool with this kind of completely unaware group of White people, celebrating a crushing defeat of “everybody else.” (I couldn’t have said it this clearly back then. It was more a feeling than consciously formed words…)

It was years later that I learned the name “Lee Atwater.”
It was 2012 before the world made the clear connection between his work, and the subtle racism of Republican politics that emerged under his leadership. But when I did learn of this, it didn’t surprise me. I SAW it that night…and I realized I could no longer play along. I was done.

Looking back at the Republican Party of the 1980s, Atwater said this:

“You start out in 1954 by saying, “N*****,N*****,N*****’ By 1968 you can’t say “N***** that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “N*****,N*****”
— Lee Atwater (full interview here)

Again, nobody knew about this in 1984. But I felt it on that election night. I felt what we’d rightly call the “White Privilege” of that ’84 Republican Party.

Atwater famously didn’t just turn those racist tropes on Democrats. He turned it on fellow Republicans as well. Bob Dole and John McCain were victims of the racist, sexist, and homophobic tropes of Atwater, and those who learned to play politics with his style.

If you flash forward to today, Lee Atwater makes Donald Trump make sense. He’s absoutely the perfect, and logical, extension of this kind politics.

Again, plenty of decent humans stayed within the Republican Party for all sorts of reasons which I won’t try to explain. (That’s their story to tell….) But those racists —the ones who by 1968 couldn’t say “N******” loud any more— they stayed too. And Donald Trump, far from being an idiot, understood that they could be activated.

From a certain point of view, Donald Trump is just a more completely, and less subtle, version of Lee Atwater. Trump uses Atwater’s techniques. He rose up through the ranks of an establishment Republican field, using the very same divisive techniques Atwater did in Republican Primaries of his day.

In his general elections, Trump has appealed to voters by “saying the quiet part out loud.”

Atwater was right. Those voters didn’t just vanish in 1968.
Those racist Wallace Democrats became Reagan Republicans.
And many of them are now Team Mega.

You can see the line, and the shift clearly, if only you will look.

As noted, plenty of Republicans have realized “it’s time to get off the Trump Train.” I am grateful for that. And I take that they are, in their own way, quietly repenting, as I did, in the mid 1980s.

These days, I think a lot about what it takes for somebody to change their mind, to change their heart, to “repent, and move in a new way” (as Jesus calls us to…)

One lesson I’ve really meditated on quite deeply since 2016 is: It’s actually quite HARD to change your mind. It’s hard to leave these binary “Teams,” to either become independent or join the other side. It takes some space, some permission to admit your mistakes and not be judged harshly for it.

I’m not sure we have that public space any more. Both teams are incredibly judgmental of each other today, and that makes “change” far less likely. I’m going to assume this, though: That this election, there are a few more White straight men like me who are, as I did in 1988, switching teams. And whether or not you ever admit this publicly, I say “thank you” to you.

But the complicated part of the remaining “Team Trump” is that all sorts of other voters are joining in with the White grievance that drives his politics. And so, having thanked the White men abandoning Team Maga, let me turn to some confusion….

There are gun owners and other mainline Republicans who remain in the Team Trump:
But…a school child would be suspended or visited by police if they threaten classmates with gun violence.
Donald Trump- threatens to line up and shoot Liz Cheney, but somehow gets your gun owner, and or, Republican vote?

There are Evangelicals and White Women in Team Trump:
Right now, Texas Evangelical Pastors (many, Trump supporters) are being fired for allegations of sexual abuse.
But…. among Evangelicals and White Women, a convicted sexual abuser still gets your vote?
(How will you tolerate in a president what you will not in your church?)

There are small business owners in Team Trump:
They often file bankruptcy and often lose much of their wealth.
Donald Trump files for bankruptcy SEVEN TIMES, but somehow still gets your vote?

There are Black Men in Team Trump:
Donald Trump and his family company was convicted of harming Black and poor families through their housing practices….but somehow, he gets your vote?

There are military members in Team Trump:
Hundreds of insurrectionists are convicted in court of conspiring to overthrow our government.
Donald Trump- evades (thus far) accountability for this…and gets your vote?

There are Latinos in Team Trump:
Trump routinely trashes Puerto Rico, calls Mexican immigrants “vermin,” and supports policies which would clearly leads us back to the dangerous practice for “stop and frisk” for all Brown people…but somehow he gets your vote?

Again, these aren’t my “teams” —I’m not a White Woman, or Black Man, or Military, or Latino.

But I am deeply confused why some in these groups would join up with the remaining White Trump supporters, many of whom are the explicitly racist descendants of Lee Atwater’s style of politics. Donald Trump is explicitly calls the dog whistles to White Racists. And they hear him. Let me say at the end, what I said the other day:

Not all Trump Supporters are racists.
But all White Supremacists are Trump supporters.

They are at the core of his most faithful and remaining defenders.

It’s hard to admit you’re wrong.
It’s hard to join another team….or even become “independent.”
Trust me, I know this, existentially.

It was an incredibly lonely move for me to leave “Team Red” in 1984, because almost everybody I knew was still Republican.

But beyond explicitly White Supremacists, every other part of the Trump coalition is, in some way, voting against their own interests this election.

I hope some of them can some to see this.
And I pray for our nation in these next days. I believe there is likely a future for different Republican Party in some theoretical future. But I also believe it will probably be several more elections before that theoretical party emerges.

Until then, I hope America votes for the possibility of becoming a truly multi-racial democracy…the land that “has never been, but could be yet.”