CLEVELAND – In October, the state of Ohio explodes in scarlet, gold, hot pink, ochre and apricot hues, miles of trees that shimmer in the sunshine. I grew up pressing oak and maple leaves into books every fall, and jumping into massive piles of leaves.
This year the colors were particularly spectacular as I drove through the Chagrin Valley with my older brother near the home where we grew up, after visiting my father in the hospital. It was a moment of beauty and nostalgia as we prepared for what turned out to be the end.
My father, 90, was a businessman and a lifelong Republican in a state that has been solidly Republican for the last two presidential election cycles. He shared a number of traits with Republican nominee Donald Trump – brash, confident, patriarchal. But one of the last political arguments at home during the summer surprisingly pitted my father against my older brother. My Dad had had it with Trump, calling him a serial liar, a lunatic (he used some choice words, more pungent in the original Yiddish), a narcissist and a danger to democracy.
When my brother expressed skepticism of Kamala Harris’s resume, my father retorted: “What does it matter if we don’t have a democracy?”
It was the first time I’d ever heard him express concern about the survival of democracy. The first time I’d heard him raise the issue of character as a decisive factor in voting. As a child I remember him dismissing criticism of Richard Nixon, whose foreign policy savvy he admired. Watergate was not a thing to him. I wasn’t yet 10 and far from becoming a journalist, but it still bothered me.
But Dad’s anti-Trump views are not widely shared in my family, it turns out. The family sat together for the Jewish mourning ritual of shiva and since it was days before the election – no, we didn’t manage to avoid politics. (I did try.)
An intense discussion with two of my cousins – one only mildly interested in politics, the other very much so – was an exercise in Trumpthink. At the time, Trump’s former chief of staff Jon Kelly had just unleashed a firestorm of debate, giving interviews to The New York Times and The Atlantic warning that his former boss was a “fascist,” and noting that Trump admired Hitler’s generals.
My first cousin had not heard about the Kelly interviews. He was vaguely aware that Trump’s former Defense Secretary Mark Esper and former joint chiefs chairman Mark Milley had come out to warn against reelecting Trump. But hadn’t Trump fired all those guys, my cousin asked? Weren’t they just jealous and lashing out?
My cousin was concerned about the border, he said, and 20 million immigrants pouring in. I agreed that the border was a problem (but questioned the number) that needed to be addressed. But I noted that a bipartisan bill to address border issues was killed, explicitly, under Trump’s directive earlier this year, to help him win the election. Todd was skeptical this was true.
Trump is a lot better on the economy, he stated, another view I heard a lot without much backup. I asked what policies specifically he liked. Todd was hard-pressed to come up with a specific. I noted that The Economist had written a cover story about America’s economy being the envy of the world. I pointed out that Trump favored tariffs, the very policy that helped drive our family’s company to ruin two years ago, because of tariffs on the company’s manufacturing in China.
My cousin said he didn’t agree with the Republican position on abortion and supported women’s reproductive rights. But he didn’t see what that had to do with Trump. And then he asked if Kamala Harris was really Black.
His mother quietly fidgeted on the couch next to me, uncomfortable hearing his views. She whispered: “He won’t change his mind.” The women in my family are pro-choice and not otherwise terribly political. But noting that even in this conservative state, abortion rights were ratified into the Ohio State Constitution by November 2023 Ohio Issue 1, and a previous six-week abortion ban was struck down by an Ohio judge in October 2024.
“We just disagree,” he said. I countered: “I don’t think we disagree. I think you are choosing to find justifications for Trump that don’t stand up to common sense.”
My other cousin was more aware of the political details. He was incensed about illegal immigration. He doesn’t trust Kamala Harris on Israel. He thinks she’s inexperienced. (“What has she done?” I heard from more than one family member.) But when I asked about the risk to democracy and the violence of January 6, his response was this: Why didn’t the Capitol police shoot to kill when the protesters breached the door? I told him this was not an answer to Trump’s role in the violence of that day. He did not respond further.
These conversations were maddeningly circular as I watched them reel off talking points of Fox News or Trump himself. We weren’t having a substantive argument, or an honest one, I told them. These were positions in search of reasoning to support them.
I said to my first cousin that his support for Trump seems to be based on feelings, not facts. The sense that Trump – a familiar figure as an older white guy in a suit – makes him feel safe, despite the particulars. He didn’t dispute the point.
Ohio went for Trump by 8 points in both 2016 and 2020; it’s no longer a swing state, apparently. My discussions with family there were similar to the interviews you see online with Trump supporters, people at rallies, random MAGA folks. It does not come down to facts, which seem fungible. It’s just a feeling.
My father did not get to vote this cycle, but he used his own eyes and ears to draw a conclusion about this candidate who he believed, as I do, is a clear danger to our democracy. I interviewed Dad in October 2020 ahead of the last presidential election, and he had already turned decisively from Trump; he criticized Trump for demonizing immigrants, for ignoring injustice against Black people, for imposing tariffs. This year he was even angrier. He was not voting his pocketbook.
I am not a partisan or an activist. I don’t belong to any party, and as a journalist I do not advocate. My job is to observe and report. But as a citizen, like so many others, I cannot dismiss the evidence of my eyes and ears. As a woman, it seems obvious to say I want my rights back, and those of my daughter and her future children, and all the women in this country.
My family is precious to me, but it’s hard to wrap my head around these conversations. They’re not just a “weird uncle” at Thanksgiving, as Tim Walz might say. And most of them will not vote for Kamala Harris.
Except the women. They’re not going back.
