Sam’s Tavern in San Francisco was founded in 1867. It’s the kind of place where you’d think Mark Twain or Jack Kerouac might have mingled in its cozy surroundings, but what I found there this week was a more brilliant election conversation than most pundits could pull off these days.
The day began with a conversation over breakfast at a diner with Cliff, who teaches at Brigham Young University and was in town with his wife. A supporter of Donald Trump, he still harbors some doubts and isn’t particularly MAGA.
Kamala Harris’ San Francisco is a dystopian nightmare. Is this what she has planned for America?
“I’m still not happy with either choice,” he told me, “but when you look at the results, there’s only one way to vote, and it’s not always that easy.”
He reminded me of a man I spoke to recently in Virginia who was struggling to find a specific moral antipathy to Trump but was certain there was one somewhere.
While it was clear that Trump did not sit well with Cliff’s Mormon sensibilities, he was unimpressed with the alternatives and did not see Trump as a serious threat to democracy.
Some Kamala Harris supporters I spoke to had similar concerns about the top of the shortlist and the party. One called Harris a “Willie Brown legacy,” which didn’t strike me as a compliment. Not to be outdone, another quipped when I asked them who the state’s last good governor was: “Not yet.” Not exactly a glowing endorsement of the California Democratic Party.
But most of the more sentimental people on either side tell me they plan to stick with their party, at least for now.
I met Scott later at Sam’s. He and his wife had just returned from a cruise to Alaska, and he had the hat to prove it. He was a classic Trump supporter.
“Honestly, I don’t know how it got so close,” he told me. “It’s unbelievable.”
He focused primarily on the border and the economy, issues he believes any sane person should trust Trump with more credit than Harris.
We were joined shortly after, over oysters, by one of the bar’s owners: a dapper older man, a staunch Democrat who knew Vice President Kamala Harris and was friends with the poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti and many of the beat writers.
The conversation that followed was a master class in low expectations, with Trump supporters reluctantly acknowledging that they sometimes wish the former president had been more stable and spent less in office, and Harris supporters acknowledging that things in San Francisco and California under Democratic administrations were, well, not necessarily perfect.
Soon, more people, mostly Harris supporters, had gathered in the corner of the bar. Later that night, someone snatched my notebook and scribbled on it sideways, like a high school yearbook. I had completely lost control of the situation, but it showed me that Americans know how to talk politics for themselves.
Key to these friendly, and at times intergenerational, conversations was the clear knowledge that everyone was acting and speaking in good faith.
Arguably the most important political divide in the country isn’t between Trump supporters and Harris supporters, but between those who believe the other side has a point and is honest, and those who don’t.
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In my experience, these two types of voters are roughly equally present on either side of the political divide.
I was at the airport on my way to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, eating eggs and drinking beer with a man who was on his way back to Portland, Oregon, from Munich.
“Portland is heavily Democratic, but the rest of the state is pretty much all pro-Trump,” he said. “I just told my wife, she really doesn’t like Trump, and I can see both sides.”
These partisans who still respect those who vote differently than they do may be the ones who decide the outcome of this election. They are a thoughtful group, and while they may or may not be a minority, they are a group from which we can all learn. After all, we are all the same Americans, no matter who wins the ultimate prize of the White House.
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