On Election Day four years ago, I drove to my local firehouse to cast my vote for Joe Biden. But as I went to enter the building, I froze for a moment; my neighbor, a man who has a giant billowing Trump flag on his lawn, was manning the door. Each of us knew exactly who the other was voting for, and I briefly wondered if we ought to hate each other for it.
But by that point, I’d spent a decade as a Democrat living in Trump Country. And in that time I’d slowly come to reject the political prejudice so common among my tribe.
I live on a small family farm in Greene County, New York, south of Albany and on the wrong side of the Hudson River for a lifelong leftist type like myself. This area overwhelmingly votes Republican—in 2016, only 34 percent voted for Hillary Clinton; in 2020, only 41 percent for Biden. The morning after local elections, I’ll hear Democrats console each other: “Well, we lost by less than usual!” And at a meeting of local Democrats a few years ago, several attendees discussed the open secret that working for the county in any position requires you to at least pretend to be a Republican.