The Schadenfreude Dilemma
On how to respond to the regretful Trump voter bloc.
As the rapid unscheduled disassembly of the federal government continues apace, the Regret Caucus is growing. Earlier this month it was Venezuelan migrants in Florida who, according to NPR’s Greg Allen, “say they feel betrayed by a Trump administration decision to end legal protections for hundreds of thousands of people who fled dictatorships and sought refuge in the U.S.” More recently it was farmers explaining how Trump’s freeze on federal payments were pushing them to the bring of bankruptcy.
Over the weekend it was the Financial Times reporting that, “there are indications that large swaths of corporate America are already beginning to sour on Trump, as concerns grow about the negative economic impact of his trade and immigration policies.” One banker told the FT reporters: “With hindsight we did not appreciate the nature of what the administration was going to be like. I do believe they are hurting their stated objectives of peace and prosperity.”
Yesterday, the hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World took note of the Wall Street Journal’s Eliza Collins, who wrote one hell of an opening for her story about how Trump voters are reacting to the Trump/Musk blitzkrieg on the federal government:
Staci White said she voted for President Trump because she wanted lower prices and to stop fentanyl from coming into the U.S.
Now, with widespread federal layoffs and expected cuts, she worries her family will lose their house if her partner is laid off from his government-adjacent job. At the dialysis unit where she works, staff have started doing drills for what to do if Immigration and Customs Enforcement comes to deport their patients, some of whom are in the country illegally.
“When we said safer borders, I thought he was thinking ‘let’s stop the drugs from coming into the country,’” she said. “I didn’t know he was going to start raiding places.” She said she didn’t believe he would actually follow through on some of the more hard-line policies he touted during the campaign.
“Now I’m like: ‘Dang, why didn’t I just pick Kamala?’” said the 49-year-old Omaha, Neb., resident, referring to the former vice president and last-minute Democratic nominee.
Then I made a mistake: I posted this particular anecdote on Bluesky.
Why call this a mistake? Because the responses to it ranged from at best schadenfreude to at worst vitriol. To be clear, none of it was directed towards me, but towards regretful Trump voter Staci White. Here’s a random sampling:
“Nope. They published the plan. THEY PUBLISHED THE PLAN. They published the plan. THEY PUBLISHED THE PLAN. They published the plan. THEY PUBLISHED THE PLAN.”
“These people need to know what it is like to hurt and we cannot alleviate that from them.”
“I'm sorry, I'm not emotionally mature enough NOT to primal scream in someone's face if they voted for Trump and now regret it [because] he's targeted them or their loved ones. Someday I hope to be, but [right now] they'd be lucky not to get a throat punch while they cry about leopards.”
“THEM: ‘He tells it like it is!’ ALSO THEM: ‘I can’t believe he’s doing what he told me he’d do!’”
“I will never forget, and I will never forgive, the people who did this to us. We warned them. There was ample and overwhelming evidence that all of this would happen, and worse. Oh, and January 6. So, yeah, screw these guys. I hope they have the day they voted for.”1
As someone who warned wavering voters in October, “Trump is not going to reverse course on his core campaign planks. He will not be stymied by checks and balances if he gets re-elected” I have some sympathy with this sentiment.
Still, I cannot entirely share in the eagerness to heap calumny on these voters who are now regretting their choices, for a very simple reason: any scenario in which Republicans lose power in the coming years requires some of these regret voters to switch their allegiances yet again.2 And I just don’t think screaming at them is gonna work:
MSNBC’s Hayes Brown also got at this a few months ago:
The schadenfreude that others are feeling or anticipating seems as hollow as the beliefs that Trump supporters projected onto him. As I see it, the problem with taking solace in the suffering of others in this case is that it still requires the suffering of others.
I understand the desire to see people endure consequences for their own actions. But it simply ignores the very selfish reality that in this scenario, we’re all suffering too. The hardships that Americans will face should Republicans succeed in decimating the social safety net will be immense. There’ll be no comfort that some of the people crashing to the ground thought they were only voting to have that net taken from others. After all, they were told that they’d be able to fly just fine without it.
The biggest reason for my reluctance, however, is simple: Trump voters are hardly unique in wishcasting their hopes onto their candidate and using cognitive dissonance to minimize their preferred candidate’s less savory aspects. Remember, a year ago at this moment there was a lot of hostility to the press covering Joe Biden’s age? That hostility did not age well.
As for voters not being completely informed, I’m afraid the political scientist in me cannot be shocked about that. Welcome to American voters — there is so much they don’t know! The solution to that is not scorn, but knowledge. Well-informed voters preferred Harris over Trump last year, so maybe the key to the anti-Trump electoral future is to better inform voters rather than insult them.
I am going to be processing a lot of rage over the next four years due to inept and counterproductive Trump policies. Rage at Trump voters who realize that they made a mistake? No thank you — I’ll direct my anger towards the MAGA folks who have zero regrets about their ballot.
That last one was from Wil Wheaton, which certainly checks off something on my Star Trek bucket list if nothing else.
This includes accepting back some true morons into the anti-Trump coalition. That WSJ story, for example, quote one voter who thought everything Trump did was awful except appoint RFK Jr. as HHS Secretary. Do I think that is an insane position? Of course! But does wooing their vote no longer matter?
Well, I hate to be a doom oracle, but with what is happening with Elon Musk's activities aimed solely at the destruction of the government (who in their right mind thinks he is making the government more efficient and ridding it of fraud, waste and abuse?), the Trump administration highly likely to ignore court orders and with no enforcement mechanisms in place and the continuing, and soon-to-be more massive voter suppression legislation across the US, do people really believe the administration and all of the complicit Republicans are going to give up power? So many are focused on 2026 and 2028 and how Democrats have to "win back" the voter. However, the "Mump" regime (per Timothy Snyder, Musk-Trump or Mump) has all of the levers of power and are not going to give it up, and frankly, are running circles around Democrats, media, voters, the international community, you name it. Look at how they are gleefully firing thousands, throwing Ukraine under the bus, and the list goes on. It is a nauseating and frightening spectacle. It will not end well, and it will be too late to do anything about it as people "wake up" to what was obvious. The country is being destroyed before our very eyes.
I agree that primal-screaming at regretful Trump voters is unhelpful in bringing them back into any future political coalition. But John Stoehr gets at a fundamental challenge to that next step: how do you persuade people who are so steeped in right-wing media delusions (fentanyl streaming over the border, etc) that they are functionally, politically insane?
https://www.editorialboard.com/how-do-you-reason-with-people-who-are-politically-insane/