Sam’s Tavern in San Francisco opened in 1867. It’s the kind of place where you might think Mark Twain or Jack Kerouac would have cavorted in its cozy confines, but the conversation we had there this week was about elections better than most pundits can muster these days.
I started my day by having breakfast at a restaurant and chatting with Cliff. He teaches at Brigham Young University and is visiting the city with his wife. He is a Donald Trump supporter, but still somewhat skeptical, and not exactly what you would call MAGA.
Kamala Harris’ San Francisco is a dystopian nightmare. Is this what she has planned for America?
“I’m still frustrated with the two choices,” he told me. “But when you look at the results, there’s only one way to vote. And it’s not always easy.”
He was like a guy I spoke to recently in Virginia who had a hard time finding a specific moral objection to Trump, but was convinced there was one out there.
While it is clear that Trump does not share Cliff’s Mormon sensibilities, he is unimpressed with the alternatives and does not believe Trump poses a significant threat to democracy.
Some of the Kamala Harris supporters I spoke to expressed similar concerns about their top ticket and party. One called Harris “the legacy of Willie Brown,” which didn’t sound like a compliment, and another, not to be outdone, joked when I asked him who the last great governor in the state was, “There hasn’t been one yet.” It wasn’t a rousing endorsement of the California Democrat.
But these somewhat sentimental types on both sides say that, for now, at least, they will stick to their party.
I met Scott later at Sam’s. He and his wife had just come off an Alaskan cruise and he was wearing a hat to prove it. He was a traditional Trump supporter.
“Honestly, I don’t know how this could be close,” he told me. “It’s crazy.”
He was primarily concerned with border and economic issues, issues on which any sane person would believe Trump rather than Harris.
Soon after, one of the restaurant owners joined us for oysters. He was a nice old man, a devoted Democrat who knew Vice President Kamala Harris and was friends with the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and many Beat writers.
The ensuing conversation was a trade-off for lowered expectations, with Trump supporters reluctantly acknowledging that the former president had expressed a wish for more stability and less spending while in office, and Harris supporters accepting that things in San Francisco and California were not perfect under a Democratic administration.
Soon we were joined by a group of mostly Harris voters at the bar corner. Later that night, some of them took over my notebook and scribbled on the side like a high school yearbook. I wasn’t in complete control of the situation, but it turned out that Americans know how to talk about politics.
At the heart of the friendly, sometimes intergenerational conversations was the clear recognition that everyone was acting and speaking in good faith.
The most important political divide in this country is not between Trump voters and Harris voters, but between those who believe the other side’s views are valid and honest and those who don’t.
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In my experience, these two types of voters exist almost equally on both fronts of our political spectrum.
At the airport on the way to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, I had a beer with a plate of eggs in front of me and a guy who was flying back from Munich to Portland, Oregon.
“Portland is very Democratic, but the rest of the state is pretty much Trump,” he said. “I just told my wife, she really hates Trump, but I can see both sides.”
These partisans who still respect others who vote differently from them may decide this election. They are a thoughtful group, a minority or not, but one that we can all learn from. In the end, no matter who wins the White House, we will all be Americans together.
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