The Ted Johnsons of New Hampshire
My realization that 2016 is happening all over again.
One of my favorite parts of my weekly routine is my early Wednesday morning barre class. I don’t love the 4:30 am alarm, but there’s a certain quiet and calm that comes only in the hours just before the sun rises. As a lawyer and mom of two young daughters, I normally welcome the solitude in my drive to the studio.
But this week, instead of a peacefulness in my solitude, an unsettling and unwelcome isolation crept in.
Because this week, when I turned on NPR, the news of the morning was Donald Trump’s win in his second presidential primary, this time in New Hampshire.
It’s not as if Trump’s victory in the state was a surprise to me. But fresh in my mind was an alarming profile I read the day before in Politico about a New Hampshire voter—a self-described independent and former Nikki Haley supporter who has since shifted his loyalties to Trump.
His name is Ted Johnson, a 58-year-old white man, who has been persuaded over the last four and a half months that Trump is the answer to our country’s problems.
What alarmed me about Johnson’s change of heart was that he voted for Barack Obama twice before voting for Trump in 2016. What alarmed me more is that Johnson wanted someone other than Trump this time around (“For Johnson, Trump had shifted from ‘being the rebel’ to ‘being a rebel without a cause.’”). But what alarmed me most was this:
“And trust me, the guy’s a pig, he’s a womanizer — arrogant a-----e,” Johnson said of Trump. “But I need somebody that’s going to go in and lead, and I need somebody that’s going to take care of the average guy.”
Despite knowing Trump is a bad guy—a pig, to use Johnson’s words—Johnson is now convinced that Trump is not only capable but the best choice to be our next President.
With Johnson in mind, NPR’s reports of Trump’s New Hampshire victory made my stomach turn.
“Oh my god,” I thought as I drove through the pre-dawn darkness. “It’s going to happen again.”
And there it was: the moment I finally allowed myself to realize that Donald Trump is going to win another presidential election.
I knew it was coming, of course. I’ve known since January 6, 2021. But I hadn’t let myself accept it. Because I’d been hoping, futilely, that maybe I was being too cynical. That maybe the dozens of criminal charges facing Trump would cause enough people to snap from their hypnosis. That maybe his continued incoherent and offensive rhetoric would begin to gnaw at enough traditional conservatives.
Nope.
The Ted Johnsons of New Hampshire quashed my last remaining bit of hope.
What invaded was the same feeling of isolation and desperation I felt in the hours just before the sun rose on Wednesday, November 9, 2016. With swollen eyes and a glass of whiskey in hand, I sat alone on my living room floor that morning asking a one word question: How?
Seven and a half years later, I’m preparing myself to have to ask it again.
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I understand your feeling. Yet take solace in the many, if not more, making the (Adam) Kinzinger move in the other direction.
I had the same feeling, although Biden did get more votes in New Hampshire even though they had to wage a write-in campaign. Keep using your powerful voice!