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Santa Clara County Supervisor Joe Simitian will discuss the observations he made and perspectives he gained from traveling across the country speaking and listening to citizens of “Trump’s America” at an event this Saturday hosted by the American Association of University Women of Palo Alto and the League of Women Voters of Palo Alto.
Earlier this year, Simitian (a registered Democrat) traveled to Robeson County, North Carolina; Cambria County, Pennsylvania and Macomb County, Michigan — places that had previously voted Democrat, but voted Republican in the past election — where he hoped to gain a better understanding of the concerns of his fellow American citizens.
Forty-six percent of the American electorate voted for President Donald Trump in the fall, which was “dramatically different” from local results including Palo Alto, where 12 percent of voters supported for the GOP candidate, Simitian wrote in a post on the league’s website.
Puzzled by this, and not wanting “to dismiss Trump voters as racist, sexist, homophobic, misogynistic or xenophobic,” he sought to break free from the “bubble” of the Bay Area, Simitian said.
“My goal was to listen, learn and understand. And I learned a lot,” he said.
After spending a week in each place visiting parades, talent shows, candidate forums, biker bars, local museums and a traveling circus and having more than 100 conversations with cops, teachers, librarians, party activists and others from both parties, he is bringing his observations and experiences back home.
Many people were “perplexed” when he introduced himself, but were “hungry to be heard,” Simitian said in a phone interview.
“I really didn’t know what I would find when I went off to have this series of conversations,” he said. He found them to be “not just fascinating, but (also) quite revealing,” he added.
Simitian hopes to be able to share the viewpoints of voters across the political divide in order to promote understanding and healing.
The presentation will be held on Saturday, Sept. 16, at 1 p.m., at the Palo Alto City Council Chambers, City Hall, 250 Hamilton Ave. It is free and open to the public.
Thanks Ellen, I wish there was a cliff notes version of his talk instead of this cliff-hanger. I’m very curious about what he has to say but just don’t have the time to attend. Maybe there will be a follow up article in the voice.
I’m glad to see at least one politician trying to understand why voters elected Donald Trump. I think it would have been more constructive for him to find out why locals voted for him too, but at least it’s a start. It’s certainly far more than most liberals have done after his victory.
I hope he has learned that the identity politics that his party is using are simply wrong. Those voters aren’t Xenophobes or racists. They are people who think that the rights of citizens should not come after those of people who break our laws. They aren’t greedy. They are people who are tired of having their hard-earned dollars taxed away so that politicians can use them to benefit special-interest groups to buy votes. They aren’t heartless. Despite the burdens they have, they still give more to charity than liberals. They are people who have been unjustly demonized and they have had enough of it.
Perhaps he did what other liberals should do and LISTEN when someone with opposing views speaks. It has become fashionable for liberals to attempt to silence any opposition to their views by shouting them down or labeling it as “hate speech”, then banning it. Berkeley, where the “free speech” movement began has morphed into a liberal “safe space”, where any speech that doesn’t parrot liberal dogma to the letter is shouted down or banned and the speakers and attendees verbally and physically attacked.
Words that are spoken in the town square can’t hurt you, but the ones that are silenced hurt us all. If Hillary want to know “What happened” she should think about the rest of the country, not just the coastal liberal elitists. I hope Mr Simitian has learned something helpful. Maybe he could suggest his fact-finding tour to her.
We have spoken in our election of our President. The best man won.(I’m not trying to be sexist for all u left coasters)
The problems in our Country is not with who sits in the White House but who sits as senators and in congress.
We the people are without representation by our representatives and nothing else.
This should be apparent to any righty or lefty by now and if you want change, start there.
@Randy it’s the United States of America. Not the People’s Democratic Republic of America. So – in electing a Chief Executive (one of the Three Parts, the Great Compromise of the Constitutional Convention had a Senate (State Representation) and a House (population representation). That’s the political history of the USA. You and 3/4 of the states can change that history by ratifying a new Amendment changing the compromise first agreed to elect a President.
An entire State that went for Trump probably has more of the political-feel that a smart old pol like Simitian wanted. A “switch county” would be a better place than a Bush/Bush/McCain/Romney county. Don’t you think?
@ Mr Guelph
There were no aspersions cast in my statement. I only stated what I have seen happen at UC Berkeley (and other places) when any speaker who is at all conservative attempts to speak there. College is supposed to be about learning. What value is there in only hearing the speech with which you agree? I find it funny that you are claiming that I don’t listen to what liberals have to say. I listen all the time. What I don’t do is throw a tantrum when I hear things with which don’t agree.
As for going to hear Simitian speak, I have other obligations at that time, but I hope there will be video. I find that Mr Simitian is quite good at speaking at times that are difficult to attend. Though he likes to have “Sidewalk Office Hours”, it doesn’t work for people who attend church, as they are always on Sunday mornings. Perhaps some other time would reach a larger and more diverse audience. I do give him credit for making the attempt though.
Since you are making suggestions to others about speeches to attend, I think you might benefit from attending some of the talks scheduled for Free Speech Week at Berkeley next week. That is assuming that the administration doesn’t cave to threats from left-wing hate groups and cancel. If you do attend, please wear protective attire. The Antifa folks have taken to throwing urine and feces at those who are attempting to exercise their first amendment rights. Though I have no problem with them expressing an opinion, I do object to them assaulting people.
In Moscow – they like Trump. Is that where Simitian went? I won’t even ask who paid.
@Mr. Guelph
The comparison is in the eye of the beholder. In my view, people who think it is okay to spend tax dollars helping people who break our laws to do anything other than be deported as soon as they are found are far worse than any speaker, liberal or conservative, simply stating their opinion. None of those speakers are spending my money to do something that is akin to aiding and abetting criminal activity. So any politician that would do that is far worse than any speaker scheduled for Free Speech Week. That is my view and I am perfectly content that you might think otherwise.
For the record, I think there are plenty of people on both sides willing to listen to the other side. However, the public square has been closed to conservatives in too many places by the violent actions of a noisy and irrational segment of the population. That is the problem.
The issue here is that only one side is being silenced. I have yet to see any liberal speakers cancelled because the crowds are too uncivilized to allow those with differing opinions to speak. It defies reason for the police to be told to stand down when violence breaks out at these events. I was pleased to see that Ben Shapiro was allowed to speak in relative peace this past week. The new management at UC Berkeley appears to be doing more than paying lip-service to freedom of speech, which is encouraging.
In short, there are plenty of people on both sides that may be willing to listen, but the other side of the equation requires that all who desire to speak have the right to do so in safety. Is that really too much to expect in a civilized society?
@Mr Guelph
You might want to stop your own virtue-signaling if your statement about reaching across the the divide is real. Your claim to wish to do so while denigrating me at every turn make it a bit difficult to take your claim seriously.
Your comparison of conservative speakers invited to speak for one week on a publicly-funded college campus is hardly equivalent to a convicted felon being invited to join the faculty of a university. That said, I would like to you to enlighten me about which buildings were burned and how many peaceful protesters were attacked at Harvard by conservative activists during their demonstration against the hiring of Manning. Or are you implying that conservatives aren’t allowed to express their disgust peacefully at such an honor being extended to a person with such a questionable past and little to no academic pedigree? If you had read my previous posts with the intent to understand my view, you would know that I don’t object to anyone stating their opinion. What I DO object to is the notion that it is okay to attack others when you disagree with them.
Also, to clarify for you, since your final statement expresses some confusion about my previous statements, the answer is no. I don’t expect ALL law-breakers to be deported. Those who are American citizens or legal residents should serve any time they are given and remain here. Those who are NOT in the country legally should be deported to their country of origin. Those who do not follow the legal process for entering this country should not be rewarded for breaking the law by being allowed to remain here. I have to abide by the law, so why shouldn’t those entering the country be held to the same standard?
On the contrary, I found psr’s statement to be perfectly clear. Seems a bit deliberately obtuse to me to claim it was ambiguous. I see that a lot in reporting the last 10 months, though.
Jim – you nailed it. I like to call them Republicrats. There are a few minor distinctions the two parties like to wave around which have little to no impact on my life. The primary objective of those in the state legislatures, US congress, and government writ large seems to be preserving/advancing their own power and that of their respective parties.
I wrote in Bernie, but I can certainly listen to and respect the viewpoint of those who voted Trump. I recently saw some Hillary quotes from her book promotion which illustrate she (and others) still don’t get “What Happened.” In one breath she admits her “deplorables” comment probably cost her the election and in the next she calls Trump’s inauguration speech a cry from the white nationalist gut. My God, are you really so dense as to believe that 46% of Americans are white nationalists? And what kind of strategy is it to write off 46% of the population as not worth representing. Good luck with that strategy. Long past time for some folks who represent the middle, something the two party system is denying us.
I don’t consider Bernie to be in the middle. Absent representation of the middle by a candidate worth my vote and knowing California’s vote to be a foregone conclusion, my write-in vote was a vote against the political ruling class. There are few things I abhor more than Washington political dynasties and it’s equally hard to stomach the current grooming of Chelsea Clinton I’ve sene in the media. And while the two-party system may cover the spectrum, it splits the bell curve of political positions at its peak rather than carving out the center where most of the electorate falls. This leads to unnaturally more extreme positions by representatives on both the left and the right with respect to issues where unity among the bulk of the electorate should be possible. Unfortunately I see Democrat leadership misreading the outcome of the 2016 election and shifting further left with Ellison and company to motivate the “base”, which in reality is just the left tail of the bell curve. Must be reading this map with some blue tinted glasses:
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/countymaprb1024.png
You’re correct that candidates tend to shift towards center at the general, but to have survived the gauntlet of the primary means candidates are both coming from either side of center rather than square out of the middle. They can furthermore only bait and switch so far without losing the “base” of support that got them to that point. To that end I’ve wondered if it might behoove Republicans in much of CA to simply re-register as Dems (effectively open primary).
Though I agree with some of Ellison’s positions on paper, I’ve found his rhetoric far more divisive than Bernie’s. I can’t recall him being on the right side (in my mostly Libertarian opinion) of an issue in his many appearances on Stephanopoulos. And with a strong party bent, Keith seems to be happy to jump right down into whatever mudslinging the moderator wants to instigate. Bernie, to my liking, will commonly reject such leading questions and state he’s there to talk about issues that matter to the American people.
What the map is intended to illustrate is what Hillary’s staff failed to understand. We are a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Voters (as you say, “people”) don’t actually elect a president. Electors do. And for good reason. So to a degree, land does vote, and a population weighted cartogram is not correct either – a county-based cartograms needs to be weighted by state electors * county population/state population, which Newman is explicit about in the state level cartograms, but not in the methodology for the county level cartograms. Regardless of the selected map, they illustrate my point that the country is purple, not blue, and shifting deeper into the blue from an already losing blue position is likely a mistake (and here choose any metric of government whether it be statehouses, governorships, US congress, or Presidency to define losing). These things cycle, though, so who knows…
I see Ellison, not failing to disappoint, pulled a play from the progressive playbook in yesterday’s news, comparing thise who oppose DACA to Nazis. Standard progressive playbook stuff. Step 1: Act like your opponent’s position is a fringe position to stifle their opinion. Step 2: label your opponent <insert characteristic here>-ist.
I’m a firm believer that standard debate rules dictate that the first person to call his opponent a Nazi automatically loses.
I attended Joe Simitian’s forum on this topic last week in Mountain View. He spoke to a full house of engaged listeners. His talk was sobering and useful. I highly recommend to Voice readers that they attend his forum this Saturday.
Joe Simitian traveled far away to find Trump voters. Yet according to the article twelve percent of our local population are members of that cohort.
Are Trump supporters some kind of zoo animal? No, they live here among you. I think, to expedite things, we should identify those Trump supporters, perhaps with a small tattoo that cannot be covered up when the person is in public. This way all can be aware and chose, as Mr. Simitian, to engage with these creatures to understand them in their natural habitat. Or one could walk away, perhaps move across the street, so no contact is made with them.
This is a continuation of identity politics: illegal immigrants are a desired class, the Trump voters undesirable. Vulnerable people good, Trump voters bad (and never think that perhaps Trump supporters might be vulnerable in some way, perhaps overwhelmed by taxes and trying to survive economically in this area.) But why try to represent them? They are only 12%, that’s not much.
Instead, travel to other states and talk to these strange animals, get to know them, then come back to the Bay Area where one can educate the masses on the attitudes and character of the Trump voter. And do this from an very high altitude. After all, they are not one of us.
@choose_a_name, why are you denigrating your representative’s good faith attempt to understand the concerns of the people who voted for Trump? This is why bridging the political divide is so difficult. Perhaps, you can meet him halfway, go to his talk, and provide your own perspective if you feel he’s not representing you. We’ll all be better off.
I would attend but I have to work — so I can afford to live here.
That’s too bad. It’s rough out here for all of us, and no one should have to work weekends to make ends meet. Have you tried emailing him or calling his office to discuss your concerns and perspective?
psr, it’s interesting to hear your perspective, maybe you could go to the Supervisor’s talk, too, to share with him your experiences.
I’d also ask that perhaps you could perform some reflection as well, since your post seems to be filled with your own set of identity politics, and lots of aspersions about people who disagree with you. If we want to bridge this divide together, would it be so much to ask to not view “liberals” as the enemy, but fellow Americans who just happen to have different opinions that are worth hearing? We can do this together.
@The people, you certainly do have a point, as gerrymandering, the composition of the Senate, and the Electoral College have led to manifestly unrepresentative outcomes.
I’m perplexed by the “left coasters” pejorative, though, since you live in Blossom Valley…
Certainly, many of these issues making our government unrepresentative are structural. I was merely responding to the previous poster’s discussion of how “we the people are without representation.” I’ll note that you didn’t address gerrymandering, which is one of the strongest forces making our government unrepresentative.
As to your second point, I don’t quite understand what you’re saying, perhaps you could rephrase it to make it more clear?
psr, ask yourself, is this a productive way to bridge the divide?
First, I doubt Joe Simitian is the left equivalent of Milo Yiannopoulos, so maybe free speech week at Berkeley isn’t the best comparison.
But more broadly, we could all go on-and-on forever listing all the bad actors we’ve seen on the other side, and where does that get us? Do you honestly believe that no one on the left listens and doesn’t throw tantrums? Would it be so hard to admit that there are likely millions of people out there on the left, just like you, capable of listening and empathizing and understanding?
For those wishing a “Cliff’s Notes” version of Joe Simitian’s talk, a summary of his talk is on the website of the League of Woman Voters Los-Altos Mountain View.
https://www.lwvlamv.org/league-news/listening-to-all-america-notes-from-supervisor-simitians-talk/
Sigh, psr, this is another example of why bridging the divide can be so difficult. You seem to be more interested in “scoring points” on the other side than hearing what others have to say. Just as you have examples of free speech being stifled by liberals, there are just as many examples of it being stifled by conservatives. Most recently, Chelsea Manning was disinvited from Harvard due conservative pressure, but I can find many more.
I understand the frustration you’re feeling, but taking this opportunity for discussion to simply attack the other side while extolling the virtues of your own gets us nowhere
For your first statement, hopefully you don’t mean to imply that everyone who breaks the law should be deported…
psr, I’m sorry, can you explain to me what virtue-signalling is, and provide an example of how I was doing that?
For one, you claimed our elected Supervisor was worse than Milo Yiannopoulos, a man who resigned from Breitbart after statements he made condoning pedophilia became public. I’m sorry if I find the two speakers to be quite a bit different from each other.
Second, do you see how this game can go on forever? I bring up an example of a speaker on the left whose speech has been stifled due to conservatives, you say that this case is different, and it’s OK that their speech has been repressed. You bring up someone on the right, someone from the left does the same, onwards forever. Nowhere do we make progress if it’s all about showing why “my side” is on the side of angel’s and “your side” is all devils.
I appreciate the clarification of your statement, since your original statement was “people who think it is okay to spend tax dollars helping people who break our laws to do anything other than be deported as soon as they are found are far worse than any speaker, liberal or conservative, simply stating their opinion,” which we can all agree was a little ambiguous.
Unfortunately, I missed seeing Supervisor Simitian here in Mountain View and in Palo Alto. I too am wondering why he went to other states to get a Trump’s eye view of people who voted for the President when there are plenty of people here who voted for the President who are quite capable of coherent thoughts and even speech.
I have met Supervisor Simitian and I like him. I hope that I will have an opportunity to engage him in a constructive conversation sometime in the near future and perhaps even shed some additional light on the matter; although probably what I say to him will be very similar to what he heard in the other states thousands of miles away.
I didn’t vote for the President because he was a Republican. I didn’t even vote for Romney in the last election (for several reasons). I voted for Trump for President because he is an independent thinker and an outsider to professional politics. Also, because I realized several years ago that both the Democrat and Republican Parties are thoroughly corrupt and real change is needed in order to restore the upward mobility that was possible for citizens 20 years ago.
For many conservatives such as myself, the ‘Never Trump” movement was a wakeup call and a confirmation that the Republican Party at the national level no longer cares about the people they govern, but instead have turned into a socialist-lite version of the Democrat Party in order to give the illusion that there are still 2 major parties, instead of one major party, with the other large party giving cover to the first.
This is further evidenced by the fact that, the Republicans, instead of pursuing the agenda that they kept telling everyone about for the last 8 years, have now suddenly reversed course and become obstructionists to the very agenda that they postulated.
The President’s message of creating a better economy, a better standard of living, energy independence, and bringing back manufacturing jobs are among a few of the reasons that he won.
With regard to Trump voters being only 12% of the population and not needing to be represented; Black people are only 11% of the national population and only about 3% of the population in Mountain View, does that mean that we should not be represented also?
Jim Neal
Old Mountain View
Jim, please stop with the “Democrat party” nonsense. You know that their name is the Democratic party, so it just undermines your point. It’s petty and just furthers the divide.
@@, I’m going to assume you’re the same poster, but apologies if I’m mistaken.
I can see how it can be read the way you’re saying, perhaps this contributes to part of the political divide. Each side has so much shared background that we’re almost speaking different languages.
Hopefully, psr will reply to my other questions.
@@ as a Bernie supporter myself, I’m really surprised to see that you consider him to be in the middle. Which policy positions would you consider to have placed him there? I know the left-right dichotomy is often insufficient to describe politics, but it does seem to cover most of the variation. Thanks for discussing this!
@@ that’s an interesting perspective, and not a critique I’ve not often heard of the two-party system. Wouldn’t candidates be incentivized to move towards the middle in a two-party system, since they’ll pick up more votes at the peak of the bell curve?
As for Keith Ellison, he’s very close to Bernie, which should be a good thing for you, given that you voted for him. If not, this could be a lesson not to vote for candidates you dislike, since otherwise you are telling the parties “more of this, please.”
Finally, I’m not sure what you believe that map shows, since generally land does not vote, people do. Here’s your same map population-weighted map and scaling color nonlinearly by vote margin: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2016/countycart30701024.png This article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/2016-election/how-election-maps-lie/) has a pretty good discussion of how to display this information in an informative visual manner.