Election day is tomorrow and I couldn’t be more thrilled—for it to be over. While I consider my stubbornness to be a gift, I’m ready to stop screaming at my dad for being a Trump supporter. Over the past few months, I have sent my dad countless articles highlighting how Trump is a racist, sexist bigot who is clearly unfit to be the president. My stubbornness evidently comes from him because the man did not budge.
Since I was a young, I understood that my dad was a loyal republican. While I didn’t really understand political parties myself, I knew this and accepted it. However, when I took a government course in high school, I learned more about the parties and explored my own beliefs. It was around this time that I really began to question my dad’s party preference.
My dad is 56 years old, white, jewish, and a small business owner. Aside from being Jewish, he adheres to the mold of a stereotypical republican. He told me it wasn’t always this way, admitting that back in college he volunteered for the democratic party and even hosted events in his own home. He claims everything changed for him when he started his own business, had a family, and paid his own taxes.
When Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were announced to be the 2016 presidential nominees, I immediately called him.
“You’re voting for Hillary, right?” I said.
“No, I’m voting for Trump.” He said. I laughed aloud. He had to be joking, right? I could (kind of) understand why he wanted a republican nominee, but I absolutely could not understand how he could possibly want Trump as our president. I knew he was only voting for him because of taxes—so I asked him specifically which of Trump’s policies he supported to which he replied: “he wants to make America great again” and “he wants to a build a wall.” I was livid. He couldn’t even answer my question seriously. Perhaps because he knew there wasn’t a serious way to answer it. I threatened to secede from my family twice.
When the Access Hollywood tape blew up the internet, I had just about had it with this man (Trump, not my dad, although I was getting there with him too). The tape, which caught Trump making disgusting comments about his unwanted sexual advances toward women (that he merely brushed off as “locker room talk”) was horrifying. And what horrified me even more than the prospect of our next president being this man was that my own father supported him. I told him once over the phone, “you have two daughters, doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
I would get so upset that I decided it wasn’t even worth discussing. At the end of the day, he was going to vote for whomever he chose. But a week ago, after I saw that he voted early via his Snapchat story (his snaps are on another level I highly recommend you add him), I asked him, with a glimmer of hope, if he had changed his mind.
He hadn’t. And yet instead of being disappointed in him, I was disappointed in myself. What if I sent more articles? Pestered him a bit more? What if I hadn’t given up? I could’ve changed his mind, I thought.
Like I said, I consider my stubbornness to be a gift. But sometimes you have to know when to let go. I’ll never understand why my dad voted for Trump, and I do see him differently after this election, but I won't hold this (colossal) mistake against him-he is a wonderful father regardless of who he checks off on his ballot.
